This post involves two separate stories. One happened not so long ago and involved a woman who uses the name of a famous postmodernist theorist in her Twitter handle. She had made a comparison between Germany in the 1930s and the US today and I had said that I didn’t think that the two cases were identical. I gave my reasons but she dismissed them, telling me that she was a sociologist who teaches on German politics and that I was mansplaining to her.
I still don’t agree with her but note for the record because of her attitude she made it impossible to have a conversation but I retired gracefully, maintaining my pride intact. In the end, she had not convinced me, she had merely insulted me.
The second story involves another conversation that took place on social media, this time on Facebook where a well-known Australian author had announced that she was going to be involved in the judging of a literary prize. I made some comments about novels and the fact that women had historically been the main readers of novels in the early days. Another person, who is American, said that female conduct had been controlled through novels by the dominant culture in England in the 19th century and that other countries had done novels differently.
I had mentioned Jane Austen, and I noted in the ensuing conversation that Austen had been publishing well before the Victorian era. I also noted that women had been the main readers of novels even as far back as the early 18th century, and for that reason mentioned the readers of the novels of Samuel Richardson. It turned out that we were in furious agreement, although the emphasis was not always placed in the same way by both parties. She ended up saying that we had no disagreement but then took the conversation offline onto Messenger. Here, she backed herself into the conversation sideways, mentioning that some of her friends had verbally raised their eyebrows at our exchange. I let her go on and it came out that she had a doctorate specialising in the early modern novel and had felt that I was trying to win the argument while she felt that she was merely trying to get acknowledgement for her learning.
I thought back onto the conversation we had held and said that I thought that I had been fair. In the end, she firmly insisted on her scholarship as the basis for the truth and I wound up conceding that Laurence Sterne had been a singular genius. She said she would try to find the biopic ‘Mary Shelley’ that I had recommended and I left the conversation as it was.
What the whole shemozzle made clear for me was that for this woman the fact of her doctorate was of more importance to her for the purposes of the argument than any point that she might make in the moment to back up her claims. I tend to fall in the other camp, and demand that people who claim to profess expertise must substantiate their arguments with real evidence. As an American, she possibly felt that my democratic Australian spirit was at odds with her keenly-felt identity politics. For my part, I don’t care what letters you put before or after your name, I have to hear your arguments first before I will concede defeat.
The whole thing reminded me of Vladimir Nabokov’s quarrel with people he characterised as “lady-novelists”. His way of explaining the difference between himself and this breed of personage that he felt was common in his day was that they buttoned up their shirts with the opposite hand. In my mind, the method used by today’s femmesplainers is to adopt the scholasticist’s pose, claiming knowledge by dint of a-priori academic attainment, rather than through an empirical process of conversation and argument. It reminds me of the quarrel Petrarch had with stubborn Aristotelians in the 14th century: he critiqued men who assigned truth merely on the basis of who had said what rather than on the objective merit of the assertion itself.
I still don’t agree with her but note for the record because of her attitude she made it impossible to have a conversation but I retired gracefully, maintaining my pride intact. In the end, she had not convinced me, she had merely insulted me.
The second story involves another conversation that took place on social media, this time on Facebook where a well-known Australian author had announced that she was going to be involved in the judging of a literary prize. I made some comments about novels and the fact that women had historically been the main readers of novels in the early days. Another person, who is American, said that female conduct had been controlled through novels by the dominant culture in England in the 19th century and that other countries had done novels differently.
I had mentioned Jane Austen, and I noted in the ensuing conversation that Austen had been publishing well before the Victorian era. I also noted that women had been the main readers of novels even as far back as the early 18th century, and for that reason mentioned the readers of the novels of Samuel Richardson. It turned out that we were in furious agreement, although the emphasis was not always placed in the same way by both parties. She ended up saying that we had no disagreement but then took the conversation offline onto Messenger. Here, she backed herself into the conversation sideways, mentioning that some of her friends had verbally raised their eyebrows at our exchange. I let her go on and it came out that she had a doctorate specialising in the early modern novel and had felt that I was trying to win the argument while she felt that she was merely trying to get acknowledgement for her learning.
I thought back onto the conversation we had held and said that I thought that I had been fair. In the end, she firmly insisted on her scholarship as the basis for the truth and I wound up conceding that Laurence Sterne had been a singular genius. She said she would try to find the biopic ‘Mary Shelley’ that I had recommended and I left the conversation as it was.
What the whole shemozzle made clear for me was that for this woman the fact of her doctorate was of more importance to her for the purposes of the argument than any point that she might make in the moment to back up her claims. I tend to fall in the other camp, and demand that people who claim to profess expertise must substantiate their arguments with real evidence. As an American, she possibly felt that my democratic Australian spirit was at odds with her keenly-felt identity politics. For my part, I don’t care what letters you put before or after your name, I have to hear your arguments first before I will concede defeat.
The whole thing reminded me of Vladimir Nabokov’s quarrel with people he characterised as “lady-novelists”. His way of explaining the difference between himself and this breed of personage that he felt was common in his day was that they buttoned up their shirts with the opposite hand. In my mind, the method used by today’s femmesplainers is to adopt the scholasticist’s pose, claiming knowledge by dint of a-priori academic attainment, rather than through an empirical process of conversation and argument. It reminds me of the quarrel Petrarch had with stubborn Aristotelians in the 14th century: he critiqued men who assigned truth merely on the basis of who had said what rather than on the objective merit of the assertion itself.
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