The Kangaroo Court of Identity Politics

“Let me tell you about my trouble with girls. Three things happen when they are in the lab: you fall in love with them, they fall in love with you, and when you criticize them they cry. Perhaps we should make separate labs for boys and girls? ”

- Sir Tim Hunt

If the rise in the value of the surreptitious currency known as feelings is any indication, we can be sure there is also a rise in people confusing what they are with how they feel—the underlying principle of identity politics. This is all fine and even cute, but when it results in hysteria, stupidity and tyranny, we should tar and feather this monster, if not for justice, then at least for a good old belly laugh at their expense, for this is exactly what they want—attention.

I am ranting due to the nonsense occurring to famed biochemist and Nobel laureate Sir Tim Hunt, whom recently, while espousing his experience, his opinion, his feelings, in regards to women in and around his workplace (his remarks are above)—not even in any nasty way—was stripped of everything he has worked for, all because a vindictive blowhard named Connie St. Louis mistook her overly sensitive feelings for the reality, running immediately to the obscene kangaroo-court known as Twitter to push her agenda (presumably because she didn’t have the wit to do anything else), and rallied her rabid social hate hoi polloi around a very non-issue, a self-deprecating remark, an attempt at a bloody joke, as if it were a crime against humanity.

The University College London, The European Research Council and The Royal society he was a member of immediately distanced themselves from him—no banished him—threw him under the bus and forced him to resign, despite the concrete empirical evidence (this is a scientific society remember) pointing to the exact opposite. He was ostracized as if he committed a crime, which he surely did not.

The point here in this miscarriage of justice—let me rephrase that, this abortion of justice—is that someone’s feelings took precedence to the reality, all due to the blood-thirsty mob of the identity politico, what with their noisemakers and pitchforks and their feelings lying scattered and broken all over the place.

Because of this ironic inversion of existence and reality into some sort of circus and fantasy, a fantasy in which feelings and essentialist identities take precedence over the real beings that have them, everything else is sure to be backwards as well, or at least inside out.

The guilty party in this charade is not a scientist who failed at telling a lame joke, but a journalist with an axe to grind, and grind it she did. You can rest assured that there was no immediate threat to her well-being, no threat to women as a whole, no threat to women in the workplace, nor to her overly progressive sexist and racist politics; the only damage occurred was to her precious ego, or whatever other identity or label she had been advocating for that particular day, all of course at the expense of identities and labels she could not identify with.

And of course, the context, which was so conveniently left out:

“Let me tell you about my trouble with girls. Three things happen when they are in the lab: you fall in love with them, they fall in love with you, and when you criticize them they cry. Perhaps we should make separate labs for boys and girls? Now, seriously, I’m impressed by the economic development of Korea. And women scientists played, without doubt an important role in it. Science needs women, and you should do science, despite all the obstacles, and despite monsters like me.”

- Sir Tim Hunt

These so-called scientific societies and institutions of learning, who concluded before the evidence, before due-process, out of contest, and who rallied around the cult of subjectivity taking note from some social media pseudo-court instead of loyal scientists, out of, who knows, fear or stupidity—take your pick—deserves to be dragged over the searing coals of our scorn and shame.

Beware of identity politics for this very reason. Combat this nonsense at every turn.

a reply to: LesMisanthrope

Well put Sir,
A kangaroo court it is. Has the world become so mentally and emotionally fragile that everyone shatters at the faintest hint of a breeze? And why the feeding frenzy that inevitable ensues? Is everyone so terrified that this spotlight of insanity will be directed at them if they don't cater to every eddy and current of our social media madness?

Things have gotten far out of hand.

a reply to: watchitburn

This is the point where we can actually witness the decline of a society. These offences are so stupid and unfounded, yet so dangerous and influential among those who rise and fall with the crowds.