Monday, May 7, 2018

Social Justice Warrior Goes on Warpath Over Lame ‘Lingerie’ Joke

Simona Sharoni
Richard Ned Lebow, a professor of political theory at King’s College London, and Simona Sharoni, a professor of women’s and gender studies at Merrimack College, ended up in the same crowded elevator during an International Studies Association  conference at a Hilton Hotel in San Francisco last month, reports The Chronicle of Higher Education. 

She said she offered to press the floor buttons for people in the elevator, whom she described as mostly conference attendees and all, except one other woman, white middle-aged men. Instead of saying a floor, Lebow smiled and asked for the women’s lingerie department "and all his buddies laughed," Sharoni wrote in a complaint.

Sharoni wrote that she was shaken by the incident, said it took her a while to figure out that Lebow thought it was funny "to make a reference to men shopping for lingerie while attending an academic conference. I am still trying to come to terms with the fact that we froze and didn’t confront him," she wrote.

Lebow insists it never should have gotten to that point because he tried to resolve the problem informally, as the association’s conduct code recommends. After being informed that his conduct was under investigation, Lebow
wrote Sharoni an email assuring her that "I certainly had no desire to insult women or to make you feel uncomfortable." He suggested that Sharoni, who was born in Romania and raised in Israel, might have misinterpreted his remark. When he was young, in the 1950s, he said, it was a "standard gag line" to ask the elevator operator for the hardware or lingerie floor as though one were in a department store.

Mark A. Boyer, the association’s executive director forwarded the complaint to the group’s Committee on Professional Rights and Responsibilities, which determined that Lebow had violated the conduct code.

 Boyer informed Lebow that his remarks had been deemed "offensive and inappropriate." An even "more serious violation," than the elevator remarks, Boyer wrote, was "that you chose to reach out to Prof. Sharoni, and termed her complaint ‘frivolous.’ "

Lebow was told to write an "unequivocal apology" to Sharoni and submit a written copy by May 15 to the association’s executive committee. The apology should focus on Lebow’s actions, rather than Sharoni’s perceptions of them, it said, adding that if he failed to comply, the executive committee would consider appropriate sanctions.

Lebow refused. He also sent an email to colleagues calling his treatment "a horrifying and chilling example of political correctness" that "encourages others to censor their remarks for fear of retribution." In an email to The Chronicle on Sunday, Lebow said he made the joke "to relieve the slight claustrophobia I felt in such a crowded lift.

As word of the incident spread, Sharoni said she started receiving dozens of emails and comments on her web page, most including sexual innuendo, the word "lingerie," and some commenting on her physical appearance. She forwarded the most troubling to Merrimack officials, who reached out to the campus police. James Chiavelli, chief of staff to the president at Merrimack College, said on Sunday that the campus police are monitoring the reaction.

Sharoni, by the way, apparently sees gender conflict everywhere. She is author of Gender & The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.

She wrote, "Integrating Campus Sexual Assault into the Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Curriculum."

-Robert Wenzel 

 (via The Chronicle of Higher Education and Simona Sharoni website)

18 comments:

  1. Hopefully, at some point society will say: "OK enough!" and that witch and her fellow crones can go back to their knitting or whatever it is crones do.

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    1. "...her fellow crones can go back to their knitting.." While I appreciate the gist of your comment, there are many women in my family who are talented knitters. Providing an enjoyable activity for themselves and a valuable product for friends and family. To associate such a noble art with Ms. Sharoni's actions does a great disservice to all productive people. On the other hand, harassing a prof of political theory at a state sponsored college seems like poetic justice.

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    2. My partner is also a knitter. Trust me, I cast no aspersions upon knitters. I tried to come up with something about "kettle stirring" but nothing punchy came to mind. My best to your knitters.

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  2. At least he didn't ask for sporting goods.

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    1. Will anyone think of the poor children?!

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  3. It appears everyone, even Richard Lebow himself, believes his remark "made her" feel uncomfortable. This is a fiction and is not how emotions are created.

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    1. What are emotions? SJWs seem to use them effectively. And how should one engage or otherwise deal with people acting on some deep commitment flowing from emotion?

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    2. It is also a fiction promoted by cognitive-behavioral and REBT therapists that emotions are nothing but the product of the way we conceptually construe situations.

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    3. Sean, what are emotions to you?

      I think emotions stem from thinking, as CBT and REBT folks do; but that doesn't diminish their importance, right?

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    4. Thanks, Sean. REBT does not say emotions are "nothing but." It recognizes many influences on emotions.

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  4. (((Which group))) is responsible for pushing this garbage of political correctness onto society? Now they are starting to eat their own and it's beautiful.

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  5. Maybe she is this way because she is ugly.

    On the inside, of course.

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  6. She does have a striking resemblance to the witch on Disney’s Snow White.

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  7. I recently saw a tee - shirt that said: My freedom of speech does not stop at your feelings". I'm going to start wearing that shirt.

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    1. Now this is a constructive approach to educating the idiocracy at large thanks John!

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  8. If economists are puzzling over the stagnation of productivity in western nations today, maybe the copious amounts of time people spend on this lunacy might be worth considering.

    (I'm not suggesting that there is any productivity in academia, but those outside the academy have to deal with this lunacy too.)

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  9. She's either unreasonably sensitive and defensive, or she's lying. Probably the latter. Lefties more and more seem to get offended "by proxy." That is, they get upset for and on behalf of a hypothetical victim who, were they present, might become upset. It's "what would others think of such a remark?!", constantly, interminably.

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  10. He should have said in the email that she shouldn't get her panties all in a bunch. That would have set her off!

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