according to Prof. Bartow herself. Her evidence: (1) I posted to respond to her criticism of the UCLA Law Review symposium (which I helped organize), and again to her "coincidence" post. (2) "[T]he flurry of private e-mails [I] instigated" — that refers to an e-mail I sent her to mention the post in item 1 above, followed by her e-mail response, my reaction, and so on for several more e-mails. (I can't say much more about that exchange because she was unwilling to agree to my posting the arguments she made in her messages, and my view is that private e-mail generally shouldn't be quoted over the author's objection absent something egregious in that e-mail.) (3) My comment on her blog, responding to her post (the one I criticize here).
Now I would think that there's a simple explanation for each of the items: (1) Prof. Bartow's arguments struck me as unsound, and unsound in a way that is generally worth exposing — plus, as to her first post, I felt a particular reason to defend the symposium she criticized, since I helped invite the participants. (2) I thought that e-mailing Prof. Bartow about my criticism would be seen as a welcome or at least acceptable heads-up, plus I thought she might say something interesting in response. (3) I thought Prof. Bartow's later post was wrong or at least misleading, and I wanted to alert readers of her post to that error.
And yet this sort of behavior — which I would have thought was perfectly normal, and quite acceptable in scholarly society — strikes Prof. Bartow as "very odd," and a sign that I am "so desperate for [her] attention." OK, then.
UPDATE: Oops, fixed a typo of mine ("Desparate") in the post title.
of course, had you ignored her, she would have taken umbrage at that.
While certainly true from a legal standpoint--I think Professor Volokh's policy makes sense both from a politeness standpoint as well as probably making it more likely that people will actually engage you in a candid email conversation (which is presumably the point of most emails).
So is it not more likely that Ann Bartow posted regarding Prof. V's Second Amendment symposium because she craved his attention?
And further, is this projection of her own desires onto Professor V. not a well-known psychological process?
I rest my case: Ann Bartow, Internet attention seeker.
They can still have a public exchange of ideas via their respective blogs and comments on those blogs.
And it ain't just feminist lawyers that are incapable of calculating the % of women legislators, because most lawyers can't do so, I find.
What the comment does do is attempt to grab the last word without having to be accountable. Ms. Barstow attempts to forestall any further criticism by making it appear that any reply will be evidence for her accusation that EV is trying to get her attention. It is a cowardly tactic.
It's hard to figure out the tone of a written comment but it doesn't seem unreasonable to think this was an attempt at friendly banter/teasing.
let's go egg her house.
See it for the nonsense that it is, and move along.
A: That's not funny, and may expose you to liability for illegal gender discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.
But Eugene, as somebody who watches Fox News I have been conditioned to ignore analysis from any female who isn't smoking hot.
Well, they're all smokin' hot, in their own way.
modern society is just too confusing for this neanderthal.
Really? I had no idea!
I have come to assume that occasionally a particular argument strikes a chord within him, arises his muse if you will, and that those chords are most open to being struck (though not exclusively) when the speaker is on the opposite side of what I perceive to be Volokh's end of the political spectrum.
She would hardly be the first blogger to try to distract people from lack of substance in this way.
As a blogger, Prof. Bartow should expect other bloggers to respond with blog posts, comments at her blog, and sometimes email. Blogs are a conversational medium. In principle, the blogger should want to read other people's reactions to their posts. Sometimes, this will include criticism, sometimes praise.
Either way, she should not think it odd that people might respond when she initiates a conversational topic at her blog.
(If you're wondering, "Is he just making a sexist statement because he's a jerk, or is he being ironic in an attempt to tweak the oversensitive sensibilities of the kind of feminist who would make a silly post about how more women would automatically improve government" -- I confess I'm not sure myself. It's probably about 60/40.)
yes. That's what my above post was trying to say.
Others - I don't see why attention-desperation is necessarily sexual in nature, unless you see everything as sexual. Some feminists swing that (Freudian) way --possibly Prof. Bartow included -- but it's far from required.
I do think she badly called herself out for failing to address the a-hole-ish a-hole comment.
Clearly Prof. Bartow is desperate for you to stop drawing attention to the fact that the level of intellectual discourse on her website is shockingly low. Before long, people might start to believe that feminist legal studies consist of banal observations like "Hey, there aren't many women involved in this symposium!" or leaps of logic such as "I'll bet the reason State X has crappy government is because it has relatively few female politicians!"
She's the University of South Carolina's problem--unless UCLA is unwise enough to consider hiring her, I'd suggest that you simply ignore her.
That interpretation is still compatible with pointing it out politely, of course.
The professor might have been thinking of the "disparate impact" of his symposium topic choice. Next time, pick something that more chicks dig. (Sorry)
Next up: Disparate Housewives.
my goodness I had forgotten about that episode.
I don't know anything about Prof. Bartow's scholarly reputation. My limited exposure to her public correspondence makes her appear bitter and hateful; someone you wouldn't want to stand next to at a party.
One recent article of hers that I read seemed like so much self-affirming claptrap ("men" think X, as shown by "one commentator" who said it, but "many" know better as shown by feminist writings, and other such weak devices); but I thought she could benefit from some of her own advice, namely "Feminists productively promulgate societal changes only by persuading non-feminists of the value of these transformations."
She evidently regards this as no more than a tongue-twister. Most folks do not consider crude insults a method of persuasion.
(Speaking of tongue-twisters she also writes in that article, "Flamboyant assertions about the inordinate destructive capabilities of feminists posit powers outrageously disproportionate to their numbers"; a bad half-sentence even by her standards. She needs to hire a student to highlight and remove 2/3 of her adjectives, you might be able to make some sense out of what she has to say.)
I suspect that sentiment informs her reaction to you. If you didn't check with her and give her what I will call "Blog Process of Law," you are a bully.
It's also possible that merely disagreeing with, and arguing with, certain commentators makes you by definition bully within their ethos. There was a time when I would have dismissed that suggestion as a sexist and crass caricature rather than a fair portrayal.
Perhaps her anger issues are really just a manifestation of the guilt she feels for accepting a salary to write this worthless baloney.
To play devil's advocate, there's a certain responsbility to having a big blog. A large roll of authors and a large readership can be used as a weapon against smaller blogs, sometimes merely by posting a link to the smaller blog that, eye-of-Sauron style, crushes the smaller blog.
(Of course, these are often times the smaller blog can use to capture some readers. But maybe the blog is smaller because there are few people behind it or they have little spare time.)
It could just be that she doesn't like people criticizing her, too.
In a different community (although one I suspect is somewhat familiar to many posters here) this is known as getting "farked." (After Fark.com which is pretty renowned for it's ability to accidentally crush smaller websites merely by linking them on it's main page)
Add to that her last comment pointing out the misspelling, and I think we have some decent insight into her character.
The other thing is, at least during the Crystal Gail Mangum False Rape Allegation Scandal, she kept extremely tight control over all comments to any of her posts. I sometimes wonder why she has comments turned on at all. I just don't think she's much into having a dialogue with people who disagree with her (of course, engaging in so-called "rational" argument is a Western, patriarchical construct). I wonder what the people here who complain about Lindgren shutting off comments or Bernstein having limited comments periods would do if VC went to a similar system.
She's talking about misspelling after her previous post talked about an "addition" of the UCLA law review?
But seriously, this strikes me as yet another classic Internet-based tempest in a teapot that's best ignored by all before it spirals even further out of control. Move Along People, Nothing To See Here...
While she originally posted the rankings and implied that SC's bad ranking was due to its small percentage of women in state government, but after EV's comments she eschews the study and instead claims that SC's has dysfunctional government because of criteria not "properly" taken into account in the ranking.
It may be true that if judged on different criteria the data will show that a low % of women in state gov corresponds with dysfunctional government, but when someone points out a problem with the underlying data you presented to prove your point, it's a poor response to confront the critic, reject the original data/ranking's methodology and provide your own unjustified data in order to continue supporting the original conclusion. That is a strong sign of someone assuming a conclusion, looking for any justification and hoping nobody notices.
I've stopped reading Prof. Lindgren's posts. I get the impression that his posts have lost some intellectual honesty and rigor since disabling comments. I think that the same would happen to Prof. Volokh if comments were content-restricted or disabled. It's just human nature — if we don't listen to our detractors, we can't refine our arguments to make them more solid.
(I applaud Prof. Bernstein for allowing comments — time is content-neutral, so it strikes me as a reasonable restriction)
Bartow and her ilk are not interested in any type of serious discussion, a fact I (re-)learned in the comments section of the previous post. Silly name-calling and childish statements (e.g., that you're desperate for her attention) is what these people do, so attempts to engage them with reason will fail. I'd drop it and not give her a second thought.
I hope you have sharp teeth. And, yes, her picture is on the University of South Carolina Law School's website.
When someone is trying to argue that Prof. V is sexist, making sexist comments on his blog is not the best form of counterargument.
None of these commenters are law profs as far as I know.
She, however, is one, and her A-Hole comment in the UCLA symposium post is pretty denigrating of the acedemic profession.
Unfortunately, Professor Bartow appears to have set the tone by calling one of her commenters an asshole.
"What is the purpose of the gratuitous insults and denigrating comments toward Professor Bartow?....Don't you denigrate the entire academic profession when you, as law professors, write the comments as you have above?"
The only denigrating comments from a law professor, as far as I know, originally came from Professor Bartow who called a commenter on her blog an asshole (and IMO without merit). The comments that you are referring to here are from commenters who are more than likely lawyers or the general public. You may find some of the comments objectionable or over the line, but don't blame EV or the Conspirators for comments not written by them. Volokh went out of his way to ask for restraint on this very thread. You may feel a need to come to Bartow’s defense, fair enough, but using your logic you should be pointing the finger at Bartow.
... making us, orks?
Cool.
Man, you just lost all your nerd cred. It's "orcs".
Barbara Burke is endearingly earnest. I sense another feminist law professor in the making.
Fascist. In the United States of Amerika, we say "orks."
Here's another learning tool for you: go to this link, search for "Ann Bartow says" and let us know what you think about the quality of dialogue by commenting professors.
Not Uruk-hai?
You mean the mud-bloods who got their asses kicked by shrubbery? I say Middle Earth (and FLP) would be answering to Mordor today if Saruman had just left well enough alone.
Notwithstanding Leo Marvin's snark, Uruk-hai are clearly waaay kewler than mere Orcs. Tho I did have a law professor who bore a striking resemblance to Treebeard.
Arguably off-topic: I really love the "link" function available on this blog. Although it can be badly misused in poor taste, like by linking to THIS. And, although that's clearly on-topic for the thread and suggests the Volokh/Bartow collision has some, eh, "history" behind it, that link (with no pinhead commentary added!) is about as close as I ever want to get to inflammatory Internet Trolling...
Furthermore the tower of mordor is clearly a phalic symbol.
Didn't last too long though.
Either she has a chip on her shoulder or you violated the happy place where she blogs.
I see that this is your first time on the Internet.
and the One Ring....
If you ever wondered when you turned into a caricature, now is an opportune time for introspection Prof. Bartow.
http://www.hotchickswithguns.com
Don't waste your valuable time arguing with or trying to engage feminists. You will get nowhere as they operate with their own logic which always makes them right on anything and everything.
I also think it would be very unwise for you to ever be in alone with her even for a minute, as this kind of person is not adverse to making false charges. Unfortunately even when disproved, false charges linger on through gossip and can damage someone's reputation permanently. Speech is a powerful force, and that's why Lashon Ha-Ra (the evil tongue) is such a serious sin in Judaism.
Reading through her blog reinforces my suspicions. In particular the ominous warning.
"Note to Volokh Conspiracy readers: Threats are not protected speech."
Note only that I can't understand her rebuttal to your analysis. To me it looks like a jumble of disconnected and incoherent thoughts.
Don't encourage this. The word "dorks" springs to mind all to easily.
I'm still working on the concept of EV = Sauron, but have to admit the comic potential is almost limitless... and a heck of a lot more interesting than discussing a hissy-fit by a polemical tier-2 law professor with a (deservedly) under-noticed blog. IMO, it's time to shut down this comment thread and go back to ignoring Bartow like she deserves.
Nope, no sexism or misogyny here.
No stupid arguments from the men, either. In what way did RR indicate that he was even aware of Hinkley's existence? Did he call him out by name on the internet, and criticize him, more than once?
DD and OI: Look at the sentence immediately previous to "I have never read...". She's not talking about the internet. She's talking about FLP. Are y'all stupid, or are you making stuff up to try to make Barbara look stupid?
Yes, the "earnest" thing is snark in the extreme. If you all want to prove how women are being pushed into humorless feminism, you are doing a fantastic job. Really stellar.
There was once a woman in our greater social circle who had a noxious personality. She was hostile to newcomers, she was uninterested in hearing opinions from other members of the group, she manipulated people into painful positions for the sake of her power plays. She was badly overweight, and we made denigrating jokes about it.
I once asked about this, especially in light of the fact that there were other overweight women in the group (who had perfect normal and pleasant personalities) that no one ever made fun of. Another member of the group explained to me that what we're really doing is ostracizing her for being nasty and rude, and because she was overweight, weight jokes just happened to be the form that the ostracizing often took. If she'd been thin, we'd have joked about something else. We didn't actually care about her weight, just her personality.
Several of Bartow's comments have been unnecessarily aggressive, condescending, and inflammatory. VC posters are projecting their upset at this into a more tangible form, and her gender (which she herself seems to be using like a heavy-handed weapon) was the most obvious target available. Do Conspirators make comments like these about every woman, or even frequently? No. They're just responding to what they see.
But if we can get beyond the issue of whether people should be mean on the internet, can you address the original issue, perhaps? Do you believe Ms. Bartow's comment accusing Professor Volokh of being desperate for her attention was reasonable, or a clear reference to stalking designed to silence him, or somewhere in between? And do you understand why men might be offended by it, and how that could lead to unkind comments?
Even better, she could have posted links to those scholars' websites or relevant articles they had written with regard to the Second Amendment.
Your desire to engage Laura is commendable, but I'm afraid you're wasting your time. I found out the hard way the other day that Laura isn't here to have a meaningful dialogue. She's here to make accusations and throw bombs, so my friendly advice is to just ignore her.
http://michellemalkin.com/2006/07/08/a-blogger-under-siege/
I remember finding out about it during the early days and following it quite closely for a few weeks. What a loon she was.
"Do you believe Ms. Bartow's comment accusing Professor Volokh of being desperate for her attention was reasonable, or a clear reference to stalking designed to silence him, or somewhere in between? And do you understand why men might be offended by it, and how that could lead to unkind comments?"
I don't know Bartow and I don't have a feel for how she communicates. Sometimes people have a heavy-handed humor that comes across in face-to-face communications but doesn't translate in writing. Without seeing the context, I can't say whether or not she was joking. If she wasn't joking, then it probably was a bit much. But if you're going to complain about somebody else's speech, IMO you lose your right to complain if you immediately engage in ugliness, yourself. Then we're all in the mud together.
Justin_thr, if I had been the one to point out the gender disparity I would have had all of my ducks lined up. With the list, as you say, of scholars that could have been invited, or if there weren't any, a paragraph or two about the puzzling lack of female 2nd Amendment scholars. Bartow isn't me, and she is under no obligation to act like I would.
May I point out that if the kind of comments that I copied above is what she's encountered all of her professional life, then I don't know why anybody would be surprised if she's a bit testy.
And I'd like to ask, too, for those who deny sexism among lawyerly people - if you heard comments like those I copied in the workplace or at school, would you have identified them as something women would find offensive and off-putting, or would you assume that since they didn't bother you, they shouldn't bother the women either?
It doesn't matter why we're assholes, whether we're also feminists, lawyers or otherwise. We're just assholes. Deal with it.
We're not mocking Bartow because she's a feminist, although that's a convenient touchstone. We're mocking her because she's a fellow asshole, and doesn't seem to know it.
Do you really think she doesn't know it? Or do you think that she accepts that she and you and everyone are that way, and doesn't see calling uclastudent an a-hole is particularly egregious?
If she'd been a man, would you have reacted to her using that term in that way?
I'm sincerely asking.
Do you honestly think this is untrue? Do you believe that men are not challenged for being jerks on the internet? Or at this site? Sincerely asking.
Has she, though? We don't know this. So far, we've seen professional and scholarly replies to her professional and scholarly blog posts, and crude humor in response to her self-centered martyr-complex. This is actually pretty consistent. I have no idea what her personal history may be, but from the posts of hers we've discussed, we've seen her repeatedly looking for persecution zebras every time she hears hoofbeats. Carrying a massive chip on your shoulder to every judgment you make is not a successful path to impartial judgment and assessment of whether or not a comment is sexist.
If you blame your current boyfriend for the fact that your ex-boyfriend used to mistreat you, regardless of how your current boyfriend behaves, don't be upset when he gets offended. I'm sure Bartow has experienced sexism in her life, but assuming that EV's comments and interest in her blog are automatically sexist because he's a man, and responding with snark instead of reasoned discourse, strikes me as ... kinda rude. She's flinging mud and then acting offended when she gets spattered. Responding to non-insults with insults will, predictably, earn you insults.
(With the woman in my anecdote, we originally extended her every possible courtesy and tried to compromise with her viewpoints, and she was consistently hostile and rejecting of us. After a while of this, we became rejecting of her, which only confirmed the bias she'd brought with her in the beginning. Thus the circle continues.)
Laura:
Absolutely yes. It is utterly inappropriate for a teacher to swear at a student. The student's post was snarky, and replying with a similar level of snark might not have been out of line, but swearing at him outright was inappropriate and uncalled-for. This has nothing to do with gender.
That's an important distinction. I don't think anyone would notice or care if a female professor used the occasional vulgar word in her casual discourse. Similarly, if a professor (male or female) swore frequently, the students would take notice and feel uncomfortable.
That's it. We don't know. Those comments are there, though. Can't pretend they're not. No reason to think that they're here, but she's never encountered anything like them. And what type of attitude do you think Barbara is developing? Is she being set up to be the humorless scold that her male peers "mock" in 30 years or so?
You probably beat me to it, but I made a similar post on the other Bartow thread here, where I symbolically reduced the discussion between Eugene and Bartow (and included my hypothetical response).
From the "About this Blog" page:
She probably let EV's comment in precisely because she wanted to write her response.
I can't tell if the "academic freedom" paragraph means the site was started because they thought the feminist viewpoint was stifled or not, but it seems like the "freedom" there is a one way street. Therefore, I would guess that your criticism is not welcome because it doesn't fit into forwarding her preferred view.
If she'd been a man, would you have reacted to her using that term in that way?
I'm sincerely asking.
Like you, Laura, I can't be sure what Bartow knows and doesn't know, and the basis or lack of for her comments. That's for her only to know, as always.
I'll say this, she's in a different situation than you and I on this blogsite. We can let fly in comments anonymously. I just backhandedly called Bartow an asshole, for example, even if I called myself an asshole as well (I am, but I can't be sure she is, you know, I'm just assigning probabilities.).
However, she can't really get away with that laxity. Volokh was typically and insufferably polite above in this discussion, and told us to chill on our assholish stuff. He's right about us, or at least me, and likely right about a faculty member, imo, but you're right, she's gotta make the final call as to whether such conduct is appropriate in her case.
If it was a man? Oh yeah, fuqq him. He'd get the gate, and unmercifully, as only we assholes can git-er-done. You dismiss an argument with that sorta stuff, coming from a position of "authority", you're gonna get the full treatment. He ain't no anonymous internet commenter, and you plays the game and you takes your chances.
But again, she's gotta make the final call.
I guess it's good she moved the blog off the University's (at least limited public forum) server earlier this year. Maybe I'm just a pinhead, but somebody will have to 'splain why [since the policy existed before February 2009 when the blog was on a sc.edu server, with a some wording differences] this wasn't the electronic First Amendment equivalent of letting outsiders leaflet on campus in direct response to professors' public positions, but only some outsiders, some of the time, depending what they're saying.
I dissociate myself from the comments about physical appearance. I agree with EV that they're beyond the pale. With that qualification, I'm flattered you found my comment worthy of your albeit lengthy dishonor roll. I can't speak for EV on this one, but I am desperate for your attention.
[Non-snark translation: Discriminate. Throwing every baby in the neighborhood out with one bath full of water undermines anything legitimate in your argument.]
Thanks for the laugh. Seriously. I needed that. Point taken.
The strange thing about those sexist remarks is that there are so many legitimate criticisms of Prof. Bartow to make - from her lack of a scholarly analysis in the beginning, to her strange replies to EV, and her snark about VC commenters.
Sadly, the latter becomes almost deserved, given the behaviour of some of the people here. I do wish that people here would understand that their comments reflect not just upon them, but upon EV as well. After all, he's now the guy who writes the blog with the commenters who snark about a professor's looks. We've all seen and read otherwise delightful blogs with comment sections that come straight from a sewer, and we owe it to Prof. Volokh to at least try to be a bit better - especially when the subject of the snark is not a regular commenter, but someone who just happened to say something that caught Prof. Volokh's attention.
/humourless feminist rant
My next trick: just to amaze Leo, I'll be collapsing the whole blogsphere (if not the whole intertubes thingie) into singularity...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQJ2SegGWyc
Obviously, it's all your fault, Theo. Personally, I think anybody who's dastardly and underhanded enough to deliberately sidetrack a perfectly good flame-thread with a comment like THIS should be banned from these Intertubes thingies forever:
;-)
Actually, if memory serves, the upshot of that thread was how one dogged commenter sniffed out the trail of tainted kibble theo scattered (like all criminals begging to be caught) between her purported love for puppies and her real canicidal agenda.
On a semi-unrelated note, I heard on the radio (WROR, I think) that 2.5 million years ago, childbirth was a lot easier. Between an increase in the side of the human head (more brainpower), a change in the alignment of the pelvic bones (to help us walk upright), and smaller female anatomy, birth has changed a lot for humans.
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