
Last Week at Wellesley - jseliger
http://alicedreger.com/Wellesley
======
greenyoda
Best quote:

 _" A number of students came up to me to say they had really had their minds
opened by realizing what they’re told about someone might not at all be
true."_

I thought that this was something that people generally learned long before
they got to college.

(The student protest against the author was inspired by fake social media
accounts that impersonated her on Facebook and Twitter, not by things that she
had actually ever said.)

~~~
brlewis
This is something that people generally need to relearn many times. Believing
what we're told is the path of least resistance.

------
DoreenMichele
I recognized the name because she also made the news for live tweeting her
opinions when she went to her son's abstinence only sex ed class at school.

[https://mashable.com/2015/04/16/alice-dreger-sex-
education/#...](https://mashable.com/2015/04/16/alice-dreger-sex-
education/#rATp.73kjGqj)

I posit that part of why she is so controversial is because she is a woman.
One of my comments today has a dead reply to it characterizing it as _redpill
garbage._ My assumption is that the individual who said that thinks I am a guy
with a lot of emotional baggage surrounding dating and what not. I did not
specify that I am female, something I fairly often do just to try to avoid
weird accusations based on exactly that type of assumption.

Women are not expected to have the kinds of opinions about human sexuality
that she has or that I have. We are seriously not supposed to express them in
public.

Given how controversial she is, I am pleasantly surprised by her diplomatic
handling of the situation. My assumption is that she is younger than I am. I
was a lot more controversial when I was younger. My opinions have not changed.
My ability to express them less provocatively is the only real difference.

I intentionally kept a low public profile for a long time. I don't like drama.
This has actively undermined my ability to establish a real career. Perhaps
the groundwork I have laid will allow me to eventually make sufficient money
without the kind of drama she is facing, but it has come at a cost of putting
off having a public life. So perhaps the primary reason she is so
controversial is she went ahead and pursued a career while still in the prime
of her life.

I don't regret the choices I have made. But I also don't want to see it be
some standard expectation that women can't speak in public until they have
mastered doing so inoffensively or something. That sounds like a career
killing double standard to me.

------
tptacek
I do not come close, to even 1% of understanding all the backstory and subtext
behind this post, but 4 minutes of Googling strongly indicates that there is a
_lot_ of it, and it goes quickly into the weedy intricacies of gender science
--- something this author is authoritative on, but clearly not _exclusively_
authoritative on, since she's apparently controversial among practitioners in
her field --- and which virtually nobody on this site is qualified to remark
on and thus, as a basis for a discussion, seems pretty far outside the remit
of Hacker News.

~~~
haberman
I think the story here is that the protesting students clearly didn't
understand even 1% of the backstory either. They didn't come to the protest
with a deep and sophisticated understanding of Alice Dreger's positions and
history. Rather the protest was fueled by an inflammatory quote posted by a
fake social media account under her name. Then the students blamed their
confusion on her for not policing social media.

If you are against HN users commenting on Alice Dreger's story because we
don't have the background, what do you have to say about 100 students from one
of the country's top liberal arts colleges who showed up to a protest without
even verifying basic facts about what they were protesting?

~~~
tptacek
What makes you so sure they didn't?

~~~
haberman
> Earlier in the day, in a class co-taught by the Freedom Project’s Director,
> Tom Cushman, a student had read aloud to me something I supposedly have said
> about transgender people. It was so comically bigoted, it was hard to take
> seriously. But apparently someone somewhere said I said this, and this
> “quote” from me was being transmitted in an email around campus, the one
> calling for the protest of me.

The email organizing the protest was based on a false narrative, and the
students who were receiving it were apparently unaware of this.

~~~
tptacek
Why do you assume that one bit of false narrative was what organized the
students? Dreger has said _a lot_ of controversial stuff.

~~~
haberman
Because it was literally in the email that called for the protest. An email
that was circulating around campus prior to the protest.

Because some of the protesters came forth to say that they had been misled
about her:

> A number of students came up to me to say they had really had their minds
> opened by realizing what they’re told about someone might not at all be
> true.

This thread is a perfect example of why modern leftist criticisms ring so
hollow. If this is such a complicated issue that HN readers are not qualified
to even discuss it, why are you suddenly so inclined to give these students a
pass that their protest was well-informed, despite strong evidence to the
contrary?

~~~
tptacek
I don't think you're presenting the evidence you think you are. What you've
pointed out so far is a single sentence from this article saying that an email
contained (presumably among other things) a reference to a fabricated quote.

You don't even know what I think about Alice Dreger; all you know is that I
think there's a lot more going on than is apparent from this one story. But
from that one data point you've allocated me a spot among the "leftists".

~~~
haberman
This sounds like an isolated demand for rigor
([http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/14/beware-isolated-
demands...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/14/beware-isolated-demands-for-
rigor/)). Your initial message judged nearly all HN readers as unqualified to
comment based on _no_ evidence. Now you can't hold the protesters to the same
standard unless every element of their ignorance is proved.

What makes you think that my impression of you comes from one data point? This
and other threads make it clear who you are willing to take to task and who
you will not call out for their bad behavior.

~~~
tptacek
And now, instead of talking about Alice Dreger, you've completed your pivot to
addressing the entire argument to me personally.

I can't imagine anything productive coming out of this discussion anymore and
so have collapsed the thread.

~~~
haberman
This whole thread I've been arguing that Alice Dreger isn't the point, the
point is that a lot of people are willing to protest and tar the reputations
of others based on flimsy (and in this case completely fabricated) pretenses.
I wish you would be willing to see that this is a problem, but instead you
spent the whole thread redirecting.

I addressed you because you incorrectly accused me of forming an opinion of
your beliefs based on one data point.

