The End of The Valve?

[X-posted.  FYI: This is written in the spirit of yesterday's "misogynistic" post.]

The vibe around [The Valve] has been terrible of late.  Dismissive.  Drained, nay! desanguified.  Why?  An unhealthy percentage of our readership responds rigidly and unthinkingly to what we publish.  Constitutionally incapable of actual research, this lot prefers to think intuitively.  They are frequently hostile, with bitter and ill-tempered dispositions.  They flap their corrosive tongues in an attempt to dominate conversation. 

You heard me, ladies, I'm calling you out.  I learned all about you in an article I read today:

Intellectual activities unsex a woman, and she pays a high price for her intellectual life.  As a result, she is prone to all sorts of nervous disorders and may become severely maladjusted.  There is little hope she will marry, and, in a few cases, her intellectual activities are said to make her frigid.  In any case, intellectual activities seem to make some women cold and lacking in human warmth.

Of course, that only applies to our unattractive female readership, as the rare "hottie" (as the kids say) isn't even "credible to many, and ingenious explanations are necessary to accont for her scholarly interests.  Usually the explanation is some type of early psychological experience." 

"Unattractive women," however, "are perfectly credible as scholars and their interests in intellectual activities do not require any explanation."  Better unspeakably traumatized than unattractive, as "no greater misfortune can befall a woman than to be physically unattractive, and this misfortune of physical unattractiveness warps her soul and makes her a spiteful creature."

In the article in question, "Social Attitudes Toward the Professor in Novels" (1961), Michael V. Belok analyzed forty novels published since 1940 in which at least one significant character was a professor.  Here are the common attitudes toward male professors, listed in order of their frequency:

1. The college professor is unworldly, impractical, and simple when it comes to the real affairs of life.
2. Intellectual life may make him timid, shy, nervous, and repressed or it appears to attract many men of this type.
3. The college professor who is interested in the arts is unmanly and possibly, a little "queer."
4. The college teacher is a second-rater, a man who could not "make a go of it" in the really important affairs of life.

Belok then combines the aforementioned attitudes toward female professors with those of the male and produces a list of differences:

1. Male college professors were usually depicted as married; the women were almost without exception, unmarried.
2. There was a pronounced tendency in the novels fo the woman to be depicted as having some sort of emotional difficulty.
3. It was significant that the unfavorable characterizations of women always had them as ugly women; whereas in the case of men, they might have been handsome and were still characterized in a very unfavorable manner.
4. It was also significant that there was a suggestion that intellectual activities either made or attracted hostile and aggressive women; whereas intellectual activities were supposed to either make or attract nervous and timid men.

I enjoy these sociological takes on literature more, perhaps, than I ought to.  Moretti has his teams of researchers.  I'd be (and, in fact, am) stuck reading shelves of terrible novels in order to generalize trends to my satisfaction.  But I'm curious to know whether these stereotypes of male and female academics persist, or whether the countless David Kapeshes in contemporary letters, male and female alike, render them quaint. 

Comments

[Nate]

Scott,
I can't believe you haven't made the obvious conclusion: professors appear in novels written by frustrated, socially and/or romantically inept male research assistants. I'm sure only self-interested research tampering on the part of his RAs prevented Belok from seeing this.
Regards,
Nate

[History Geek]

*hides the broadsword*

But..but what about all those time people said I could be ANYTHING I wanted! They weren't lying to sweet innocent blonde-haired brown eyed petite me, were they?

Let me bring you another drink and a sandwitch, you must be so worn out after slaving on that post.

*eye starts to twitch*

[Rich Puchalsky]

Well, looking at the comments on The Valve, I see a repeat of the reactions to your Anti-Semitic-bigot mockery post, or the Duke Lacrosse team racist mockery post, or perhaps even the original fincholar post ... am I forgetting more of them? Seems like there have been more. The next time you get the urge to write one of these, you should write two versions, the second of which explains in plain detail what you really mean, and put the second on a Web page somewhere. Then link the first to the second at each paragraph. Otherwise resign yourself to spending more and more time explaining that you really don't think X.

[Lauren]

Or you can ignore Rich and let people fume while you giggle and twitter at your desk. I think this option is far more fun.

[Rich Puchalsky]

It would certainly be more fun for some people, but I'm guessing that Scott is constitutionally incapable of not sending back explanatory replies to the e.g. 18 people who he said sent him Emails on the last one. If you know that you're going to explain anyway (three explanatory comments so far in that thread, and more to come, I'd guess, for the people who seem to think that Scott was really criticizing Valve commenters in the first paragraph), you might as well get it over with at the start.

[Rich Puchalsky]

Btw, your sidebar link to Noah Cicero is wrong now -- the site name got bought by some person trying to sell books about how to get published, complete with a link to another site with celebrity pictures, which is like the perfect thing that you'd expect to happen to Noah Cicero. His new blog seems to be at noah-cicero.blogspot.com.

[Brian]

Rich may have a good point - see:
http://www.michaelberube.com/index.php/weblog/comments/917/
comment #36 for a nice description of the _physical_ dangers of parody.

[Scott Eric Kaufman]

History Geek, you're not slipping the broadsword into the sandwich, now are you?

Unfortunately, Lauren, Rich is correct: I love to crack wise, but am also unfailingly polite, a combination which leads to endless wasted hours (fretting or apologizing). I wish I could say it's a matter of needing thicker skin, but it's plenty tough when people attack me. Not having much in the way of pride, I'm not easily bothered by attacks; but the thought that I've done something, that someone's misunderstood something I've said, that bothers me. Most people find it personally endearing, but even I'm started to be annoyed by how it looks in print.

(Yes, Rich, I need to update the link, and will shortly.)

Brian, I couldn't follow that formula, as it had many numbers. But I'm wagering it was correct, much like Belok's analysis...I kid, I kid.

[Scott Eric Kaufman]

Also, forgot to mention:

The idea of linking back to another post which indicates that one is, in fact, kidding. That's not a bad idea, and it's actually something I'd thought of doing yesterday. I'd actually collected a number of seemingly offensive articles yesterday--I'm tracking down some information on turn of the century ideas about the evolution of feminity--and I was going to recommend them, but then realized that not everyone has JSTOR. The articles themselves were remarkably progressive, but the titles, well:

On The Brains of Women and Primitive Bushmen

In which the author proves that they're identical to that of white European males, &c.

You weren't referring to this Belok, were you?

http://www.fictionwise.com/ebooks/eBook26818.htm

(Sorry, given the content of the post, it was just too silly not to link)

[Jodi]

Have you looked at Harvey Mansfield's new book on Manliness? My guess is that it is strikingly similar in sentiment to what you've written above--although his is completely serious.

[Scott Eric Kaufman]

I haven't looked at Mansfield's book, but I believe I saw him on The Report being savaged by Colbert. I'm not sure, though, whether the fact that people still say what I mocked makes my satire more or less effective. (I received an email earlier this evening claiming that mocking misogynists is, well, old hat, something not to be done anymore because there aren't any real misogynists around anymore to make the satire bite. I'm now inclined to believe that emailer completely and utterly wrong, both about this and Matthew Sweet and Susanna Hoffs, to hop to another thread.) But Jodi, to be frank, the reason I mock certain strands of thought is because I believe it creates an awareness of their existence/persistence, and I think such awareness a healthy thing. So I resolve to continue to mock, without mercy, all those morons who insist that we still live...at some other historical moment than the one we actually inhabit.

[Jodi]

Seems to me that there is no need to choose: mocking past as well as present idiocy is always good fun; in fact, the confusion can make it even better--I'm thinking of the Brokeback Mountain cowboy bit on the Academy Awards.

[courtney baum]

I do not agree with this especially on a black or white situation. Not all unattractive women only have their intellect to rely on and not all attractive women rely on their looks. It is more of an individual matter. I do agree that women do use their beauty to benefit themselves in certain situation, but it cannot be a generalized statement.