The Silencing (27 page)

Freedom of speech is supposed to be protected by the Johns Hopkins student government constitution. But another one of the reasons the Student Government Association denied Voice for Life’s request for university status was because Voice for Life’s website linked to the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform’s website, which was judged “offensive” for showing pictures of bloody fetuses.
¹¹⁹
The complaint was not that the group linked to pictures that were falsified or untrue. Just that they offended the sensibilities of the liberals on campus who claim to love scientific facts, except in situations where it might make them feel bad. Voice for Life’s Andrew Guernsey said the obvious: the student government is “ultimately intolerant of pro-life views being expressed on campus. They want to censor the message. . . .”
¹²⁰

Guernsey was under no illusions that his plans for a “pro-life” group on campus would be popular, but he was surprised that the members of the student government did not “separate their personal views from being able to tolerate differences of opinion on campus.”
¹²¹

Eventually, the group was able to appeal to the Student Government Association Judiciary, which overturned
¹²²
the SGA’s decision to deny recognition. Finally, Voice for Life was allowed on campus after having to fight tooth and nail for the basic rights and recognition that liberal students take for granted.
¹²³

ILLIBERAL FEMINISTS AGAINST HUMOR

It should not be a surprise at this point to learn that illiberal feminists also suffer from a humor deficit. In late 2014, when the European Space
Agency landed the
Philae
spacecraft on a comet, scientists and engineers involved in the mission participated in a live-stream of the event. One of the scientists, Dr. Matt Taylor, wore a wild shirt with cartoonish pinups on it. The feminist blogosphere, which apparently had nothing better to do, exploded with outrage. The
Guardian
’s
¹²⁴
Alice Bell complained that the European Space Agency “can’t see misogyny under their noses” and called the shirt “sexist.” The
Atlantic
’s Rose Eveleth tweeted, “No no women are toooootally welcome in our community, just ask the dude in this shirt.”
¹²⁵
A headline at the
Verge
blared, “I don’t care if you landed a spacecraft on a comet, your shirt is sexist and ostracizing.”
¹²⁶
One of the writers alleged, “This is the sort of casual misogyny that stops women from entering certain scientific fields” and noted the ESA hadn’t apologized.
¹²⁷

At
xoJane
, a writer accused the astrophysicist of “casual sexism” and claimed his “unbelievably sexist” shirt helped create an “environment where a lot of women might feel uncomfortable.”
¹²⁸
She fretted that the shirt “with naked women”—though none were naked—explained the shortage of women in the Science, Technology, and Math (STEM) fields. “We ask why more women don’t want to become astrophysicists, or mathematicians, or bench researchers, and, well, this is one example of why,” she proclaimed.
¹²⁹

Really? It’s hard to believe that a crazy variation of a loud, Hawaiian shirt could be so powerful. One might more plausibly say that feminists obsessed with a sexist shirt, rather than with the science of the story, are a bigger problem. Or maybe, just maybe, the unequal distribution of women in different fields has something to do with many women’s choices to be mothers and spend more time with their families.

It turned out that a female friend had made Taylor the shirt for his birthday.
¹³⁰
It was something of a joke. But the facts be damned, the illiberal mob got what they wanted. On a live-stream two days later Taylor apologized with a sob, saying, “I made a big mistake, and I offended many people, and I’m very sorry about this.” Syndicated columnist Jonah Goldberg called it “very North Korean.” The
Daily Telegraph
blared the
headline: “Matt Taylor’s Sexist Shirt and the Day Political Correctness Officially Went Mad.”
¹³¹

A British scientist had his shirt. A student at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks had her April Fools’ Day joke, a faux story about the university’s plan to build “a new building in the shape of a vagina.” The story ran with a picture of oversized legs protruding from a building.
¹³²

Sine Anahita, a sociology associate professor and the coordinator of the school’s women and gender studies program, was not amused. She filed a sexual harassment complaint with the university’s Diversity and Equal Opportunity office, accusing the paper of creating a “hostile environment”
¹³³
that contributed to “rape culture.”
¹³⁴
She invented the term “sexual slander” and lobbed it against the paper for attributing a fake quote to a professor at the university. Anahita deemed the picture, taken from a PG-13 movie,
Patch Adams
, “patently offensive.”

The perpetrator of this alleged misogynistic travesty was a female African American student named Lakeidra Chavis, editor-in-chief of the student newspaper. She told me she thought the piece was “funny” and was intended “to poke fun at the political culture” at a university where the majority of the students are women. Chavis, who describes herself as a feminist, was shocked by the illiberal feminist reaction to her satire. She was accused of sexual harassment for writing the piece and at one point the campus police visited the newspaper as part of an official university investigation.
¹³⁵

The university dropped its case against the student newspaper when lawyers from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) sent a letter warning the public university that it could be sued for violating the First Amendment.

ILLIBERAL FEMINISTS AGAINST SCIENCE

In February 2011, Dr. Lazar Greenfield—an emeritus professor of surgery at the University of Michigan School of Medicine and president-elect
of the American College of Surgeons—reported in
Surgery News
on the discovery of mood-enhancing effects of semen. Research from the Archives of Sexual Behavior discovered that female college students practicing unprotected sex were less likely to suffer from depression than those whose partners used condoms. The kicker of the seventy-eight-year-old Greenfield’s article was clearly meant to be clever. “So there’s a deeper bond between men and women than St. Valentine would have suspected, and now we know there’s a better gift for that day than chocolates.”

Perhaps his kicker fell short. That’s hardly a reason to fire someone. Yet even though Greenfield apologized to the Women in Surgery Committee and the Association of Women Surgeons, five women surgeons
¹³⁶
on the governing board of the American College of Surgeons (ACS) issued a letter demanding Greenfield step down as president-elect. The then-ACS president tried to argue that, “If someone is truly apologetic, we have to consider that,” but it didn’t matter.

The illiberal feminist mob wanted a scalp and they got one. Greenfield—the author of one of the major textbooks of surgery—was forced to step down as editor of
Surgery News
and as president-elect of the ACS. In an interview, Greenfield explained what should have been obvious to anyone reading the article: “The editorial was a review of what I thought was some fascinating new findings related to semen, and the way in which nature is trying to promote a stronger bond between men and women. It impressed me. It seemed as though it was a gift from nature. And so that was the reason for my lighthearted comments.”

Indeed, it is fascinating research. But thanks to the feminist jihad against this man, the entire February issue of
Surgery News
was removed from the website in the hopes that this medical information would disappear forever. The study Greenfield referred to in his article was done by a group of evolutionary psychologists at SUNY-Albany. Remarking on the controversy that met Greenfield’s article, one of the researchers, Gordon Gallup, told the
Guardian
, “I think it’s a tragic overreaction. The point at
which we begin to let political agenda dictate what science is all about is the point when science ceases to be a viable enterprise.”
¹³⁷

A
New York Times
wellness blog noted that “Many surgeons chose not to comment on the matter, for fear of professional repercussions, but one said, ‘It’s frankly been heartbreaking for all of us.’”
¹³⁸
The few who did speak out were ignored. Dr. Diane M. Simeone, professor of surgery at the University of Michigan, told the
New York Times
that while gender bias exists in surgery, she never saw it expressed by Dr. Greenfield. She described him as “always . . . completely above board and a role model for supporting women in surgery.”
¹³⁹
Dr. Mary T. Hawn described him as “always . . . above reproach.” She should know. Before becoming an associate professor of surgery at the University of Alabama School of Medicine in Birmingham, Hawn worked as a medical student, surgeon-in-training, and faculty member under Dr. Greenfield. She said that “he went out of his way to recruit women on the trainee and faculty level.”
¹⁴⁰

After his resignation, Dr. Barbara Lee Bass, chairwoman of surgery at the Methodist Hospital in Houston, told the
New York Times
she was glad he resigned, despite his positive track record, saying “some things you can’t recover from if you’re in a leadership role.” That’s true. It’s just that nobody thought that the “things you can’t recover from” would include citing a peer reviewed scientific study. Three of the researchers who produced the study—Drs. Steven M. Platek, Rebecca L. Burch, and Gordon G. Gallup Jr.—issued a statement that concluded: “How can someone be asked to resign for citing a peer-reviewed paper? Dr. Greenfield was forced to resign based on politics, not evidence. His resignation is more a reflection of the feminist and anti-scientific attitudes of some self-righteous and indignant members of the American College of Surgeons. Science is based on evidence, not politics. In science knowing is always preferable to not knowing.”
¹⁴¹

Illiberal feminists love to crow about how they are the intellectual members of society; the only ones who rely on science, not faith for their worldview. They invoke their worship of “facts” and “science” usually in
furtherance of whatever silencing campaign they are on that particular day. But what to do when science says that women benefit mentally and emotionally from male sperm? This doesn’t fit with feminist dogma—after all, “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle,” according to the slogan popularized by feminist icon Gloria Steinem. The idea that there might be some symbiotic relationship between men and women is offensive to this notion. The only option here is to silence the person sharing medical research that undermines feminist ideology. The fact that it might be interesting to the majority of the population that is heterosexual is irrelevant. Big Sister will decide what information you need to know.

ILLIBERAL FEMINIST STATISTICS

Illiberal feminists are as committed to silencing research they don’t like as they are to promoting phony facts and statistics that support their ideological goals. If one questions these statistics, then a campaign of delegitimization begins.

As we will see in the following chapter, they have intimidated and shamed anyone who doubts their questionable rape statistics. But this shading of the facts goes beyond one issue. Domestic abuse is a serious enough issue without its prevalence needing to be inflated. In 2009, Attorney General Eric Holder claimed that intimate partner homicide was the leading cause of death for African American women aged fifteen to forty-five.
Washington Post
“Fact Checker” Glenn Kessler investigated this claim and found the statistic was made up. Charting a lengthy and complex genesis over more than eleven years, Kessler traces the statistic back to 2003 studies in the
American Journal of Public Health
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and the Justice Department’s
National Institute of Justice Journal
,
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which themselves erroneously cite a 1998 Bureau of Justice Statistics survey that says nothing of the sort.
¹⁴⁴
Confusing though this years-long factual mutation may be, the truth is simple—the number is entirely fabricated.
¹⁴⁵
The Department of Justice admitted they learned the fact was wrong after Christina Hoff Sommers
(widely considered a feminist antichrist by the illiberal left for her frequent debunking of their pet theories) pointed it out in
USA Today
¹⁴⁶
but did not correct their website until the
Washington Post
raised the issue in 2013.
¹⁴⁷

Another favorite “liberal fact” is that American women earn 77 cents for each dollar
¹⁴⁸
a man earns. The White House often cites this “fact” even though they know it’s been thoroughly discredited. A number of publications—including
Forbes
,
¹⁴⁹
the
Washington Post
,
¹⁵⁰
and the
Wall Street Journal
¹⁵¹
—have outlined how the calculations are based on the difference between median earnings for men and women, and do not compare men and women with the same jobs in the same industries.
¹⁵²
The statistics also fail to take into consideration the fact that women tend to work fewer hours in a year, and often leave the workforce upon having children. A study done for the Department of Labor in 2009 suggested that the gap “may be almost entirely the result of individual choices being made by both male and female workers.”
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