Next Legal Steps for the Far Right, The Sociology of Tay-Tay, Philosopher 'Cancelled' Over Thought Experiment - Dinner Table Digest № 63
The Dinner Table Digest is an intermittent collection of interesting material from around the internet, curated by Peter Thurley at Dinner Table Don'ts. Subscribe today!
They’re coming fast and furious these days! In today’s Digest, I share an important longread from David Kirkpatrick at the New Yorker on the next steps of the far-right legal firm Alliance Defending Freedom [sic], successful in having severe restrictions placed on the abortifacent mifepristine. I then turn to academics, with a detour through Kansas City and Taylor Swift, before landing on a philosopher who was ‘cancelled’ for proposing a thought experiment that, while provocative, was phrased in common academic parlance.
Sections: Next Targets for the Far-Right ADF / The Sociology of Tay-Tay / Taylor at the Football Game / Misunderstanding Philosophical Parlance
The Next Targets for the Group That Overturned Roe - David D. Kirkpatrick - The New Yorker
I made an editorial decision to only include pieces written by right-wing apparatchiks in my Sunlight is the Best Disinfectant series. If I were to expand it to include pieces written about the fascist right, this piece from The New Yorker would have been included in SITBD № 6, published on October 3, 2023. It describes the far-reaching influence of the conservative Christian legal organization Alliance Defending Freedom [sic], who's decision to target a specific Texas judge resulted in the steep curtailment of access to the drug mifepristone, otherwise known as RU-486 or the abortion pill.
"Through pronoun policies, anti-discrimination statutes, abortion laws, and other impositions of “sexual ethics,” Waggoner said, liberal government officials were threatening to set up a new kind of police state—one in which dissenters who believe that marriage can involve only a man and a woman are forced to salute the rainbow flags flying outside every town hall, in which teachers are required to indoctrinate children into the belief that gender is not binary, and in which shelters for battered women must make room for trans females. No wonder that her “rights talk” evokes the civil libertarians who once defended the free speech of Communists or neo-Nazis. As Waggoner sees it, traditionalist Christians are now the besieged minority in need of protection. Waggoner told me that the fundamental question was “Are we going to be a majoritarian-authoritarian system of government? Or are we going to stick with our commitment that the power of persuasion is better than the power of government force?” She added, “I would say every single team at A.D.F.—every single litigation team that we have—is working against government censorship.”"
Describing the history of the organization, Kirkpatrick explains how the A.D.F. was able to secure for themselves a pipeline of young legal activists from some of the most prestigious law schools in America.
Sears was determined to prevent A.D.F. from capitulating to the language of the gay-rights movement. In 2000, he created a summer program, the Blackstone Legal Fellowship, which taught first-year law students conservative Christian thought. The organization sent visiting Blackstone lecturers a “lexicon,” which all participants at A.D.F. events were expected to follow. A seven-page version sent out in 2013 included the following:
instead of “bigotry, anti-tolerance,” say “defending biblical, religious principles”instead of “homophobia,” say “convictions against homosexual behavior”instead of “hate crimes,” say “so-called ‘hate’ crimes”instead of “sex education,” say “sexual indoctrination”instead of “gay marriage” and its “advocates,” say “marriage imitation” and “opponents of marriage”instead of “transgender,” say “cross-dressing” or “sexually confused”instead of “gay and lesbian civil rights movement,” say “homosexual agenda.”
The whole piece is worth a read, for many of the same reasons why I feel like the SITBD series is important to read - without knowing the thoughts and beliefs of far-right fascists, we simply have no hope of countering their hate and the harm that it causes.
The Sociology of Taylor Swift - Steven Hill - KU Alumni
At Kansas University, Professor Brian Donovan is teaching a seminar class on the sociology of Taylor Swift. Maybe Kansas City Chiefs player Travis Kelce could arrange for the pop queen herself to make an appearance? That would accomplish one of the goals Donovan has for the class:
Thanks to a research pivot that has its roots in the COVID-19 pandemic, the professor and self-described Swiftie is now concentrating his teaching and scholarship on the entertainment icon—in particular, on a product of her music and the community around it that is more difficult to quantify than tax revenue and other economic boosts, but that is essential for human well-being:
Joy.
After explaining a little bit about how the pandemic shifted his focus to the topic of joy, Donovan explains a little bit more about how that led him to a class on Taylor Swift:
“There was this sense of maybe I could do something in these pandemic times that’s more upbeat, that isn’t about human suffering as much,” Donovan says. “Focus on something that’s more joy-producing.”
Thus was born The Sociology of Taylor Swift, an honors seminar that (according to the syllabus) uses the pop supernova’s life and career “as a mirrorball to reflect on large-scale processes like the culture industry, celebrity, fandom, and the intersection of race, gender, and sexuality in contemporary American life.” The class, new this fall, will explore many of the cultural sociology topics Donovan normally teaches, such as the construction of authenticity, symbolic boundaries and gatekeeping, fandom and fan labor, and celebrity politics. “We will also use recent controversies and legal conflicts involving Swift,” the syllabus continues, “to examine questions about intellectual property, copyright, and the economics of creative industries.”
But just like T. Swift doesn't only write happy songs - with a new boyfriend always seems to come sad songs about the old one - the class will look at more than just joy.
“Let’s carve out a space for happiness,” Donovan says of his concept for the seminar. “At the same time, some of the conversations I hope we have in class do get at some of the more serious questions about race and gender in American society. You know, is Taylor Swift a good ally? She says she’s a feminist: What kind of feminist is she? Most of her fan base are white women: Is there room for folks from marginalized communities within this largely white fan base? Those are some of the conversations that I hope we have.”
The National Football League and the Taylor Effect
A Professor’s Remarks on Sexual Consent Stir Controversy. Now He’s Banned From Campus - Vimal Patel - New York Times
Being a trained member of the philosophical community - that is to say that I have grad school level training in the discipline of philosophy - this kerfuffle is absolutely fascinating to me, because it highlights some of the ways that philosophers think about moral issues that might sound fucked up or even wrong to the general public. Before I quote the thought experiment that got this particular professor ‘canceled,’ I present without commentary the words of Justin Weinberg, who is the editor of influential philosophy news blog Daily Nous:
Dr. Kershnar is a “Socratic gadfly” who goes around questioning fundamental assumptions, often quite annoyingly, to try to get at a clearer understanding of morality and why something is or is not wrong, said Justin Weinberg, a philosophy professor at the University of South Carolina and the editor of Daily Nous, a popular philosophy news website.
Controversies surround Dr. Kershnar frequently enough that Dr. Weinberg coined a term for them: “Kershnar Cycles.” Like hurricanes, he wrote, they come in varying strengths, but are usually limited to the academic discipline of philosophy.
With that said, here is the thought experiment that put Dr. Kershnar on the radar of the right-wing TikTokers, Libs of TikTok:
"“Imagine that an adult male wants to have sex with a 12-year-old girl; imagine that she’s a willing participant,” he said. “A very standard, a very widely held view is there’s something deeply wrong about this. And it’s wrong independent of it being criminalized. It’s not obvious to me that is, in fact, wrong. I think this is a mistake. And I think that exploring why it’s a mistake will tell us not only things about adult child sex and statutory rape, but also about fundamental principles of morality.”"
Importantly, it seems that Dr. Kershnar has written about this subject in an academic context. And given the thought experiment was proposed on a podcast hosted by professional philosophers for professional philosophers, and not in the classroom, it seems to me that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with the question that Dr. Kershnar asked. There are several reasons for this, some of which has to do with how philosophers talk about their research problems, and others which have to do with the question itself.
Was interesting to me is that this thought experiment is phrased in exactly the way that a philosopher would phrase the thought experiment. That is, there is a central problem that a philosopher wishes to get to, or to understand. When a philosopher talks about that problem, they generally do so by trying to find ways in which a seemingly obvious solution might be wrong. They will frequently use a turn of phrase that comes goes like this: ‘It’s not obvious to me that X because Y’ where X is a commonly held solution or explanation of a particular problem, and Y is a possible reason why X might be wrong.
When a philosopher uses the line ‘It’s not obvious to me that X, because Y’ it should never be read as any kind of *moral endorsement* of Y, unless clearly stated as such. Instead it should be read merely *as a proposed reason* subject to further discussion.
I have not listened to the podcast episode in question, and I have not read any of Dr. Kershnar’s work, but given that the format of the show is that the guest brings a thought experiment for discussion amongst other professional philosophers, it seems entirely reasonable that a philosopher who does research on the morality of pedophilia would bring a question to the table that is relevant to their research, no matter how much of an ‘ick’ factor there might be for people outside the profession.
No doubt there are probably better ways to frame the question asked by Kershnar - perhaps the podcast was the wrong medium for the conversation. But the question that Dr. Kershnar asked is a live question in discussions of sexual ethics, personal autonomy, and moral culpability, with practical consequences for how we treat, manage, and rehabilitate sex offenders.
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