This blog officially has 16 authors, 6 of whom are women. A quick glance to the category cloud will show you that one of the most prolific authors is a woman. So then why does a commentator at Philosophy MetaBlog characterize the blog as run by men? This is the comment linked to by Brian Leiter:
“Anonymous May 4, 2014 at 8:48 AM
I can't speak for others' use of the term, but in my case the behavior over the last few years of Protevi, Schliesser, Matthen, Lance, Kazarian, et al. is what makes the term 'Nudechapps' so fitting. The boys have made a habit of prancing around in condescending moral superiority over so many things that one is reminded of a person engaging in a shameless display of self-aggrandizement. What's worse, the Nudechapps consistently treat dissenters with derision and disgust. So the echochamber these nincompoops have created for themselves has allowed them to spread a view within their little clique that is grotesque in many of its details.
And the handful of hangers-on that support their shenanigans are like nothing so much as the stupefied populace trying so hard to convince themselves that the emperor is wearing the glorious raiment of moral superiority. But of course the emperor is wearing no clothes, and he is shameless about how good he looks. Thus, Nudechapps.”
This description, and others in the comments at Philosophers’ Anonymous, seems to me an ignoble attempt to take down individuals without recourse to evidence or argument. For the most part, I do not find such expressions worthy of consideration. But this one is interesting, I think, because of what is left out. Is it the case that the commentator thinks that none of the women at NewAPPS fit the description he or she finds so apt for its men? I doubt it. A more reasonable reading of this comment is that the author has simply forgotten the women of NewAPPS, or finds them relatively unimportant. Such forgetting, together with so much vitriol about feminism in the comment stream at that blog is striking, if not all that surprising. As one recent study found, "hostile sexists and feminists were more and less likely, respectively, to show implicit prejudice against female authorities." In this case, gender bias serves to spare our blushes, but not without reminding us that we have to work harder to be heard, especially by those who start from further away.
Update: I added text above to distance the gender bias claim for the comment in question from the claim about vitriol toward feminism found in the overall comment stream.
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