On calling out misogyny

by J J Cohen

Medievalists and non-medievalists alike have been reacting strongly and with passion to the revelation via social media (Twitter and FB) that a senior scholar whose work is highly regarded maintains a website full of anti-feminist vitriol and appallingly misogynist assertions. You can read the website yourself by following this link (I have used the Do Not Link version, so that it will not increase traffic to the website).

What is written on these webpages is appalling. My initial reaction was this declaration on Twitter, but that was not enough. On Facebook I wrote:

"Let's call it the femfog for short, the sour mix of victimization and privilege that makes up modern feminism and that feminists use to intimidate and exploit men ... I refer to men who are shrouded in this fog as FUMs, fogged up men. I think they are also fucked up, but let’s settle for the more analytical term. These may might not be feminists but as they wander through the mist of politics and polemic about women, they feel like they should be feminists. They think feminism is good for everybody and they want to be nice to women ... My aim in this RP essay is to help you clear the fog of feminist propaganda. Grab your balls (GYB) and be the man you want to be." 

Yes, these words come from medievalist Allen J. Frantzen, who now seems to have reinvented himself as an enthusiastic trafficker in misogyny. Maybe it's the femfog I'm shrouded in speaking, but the problem is not feminism (of which we have far too little, rather than too much). The problem is people like Frantzen, who in the guise of reason market hatred. I'm appalled by what he has written. 

As to a "the sour mix of victimization and privilege": physician, heal thyself.

But that still was not enough. Many people were surprised that Frantzen would say such things, and some asked if he is ill, or told stories of him being nice to them. Others pointed out that such feelings were continuous with behaviors they had observed or been at the receiving end of.

I suppose I can kind of get the surprise. In 1994 Frantzen called out J. R. Hall for having used the description "fem-fog" to dismiss the scholarship of Gillian Overing, and now here he was using the same term to dismiss all women living and dead. Many of us are great admirers of his book Desire for Origins, and it is tough to have rethink that relation now in light of his enthusiastic misogyny.

Even as I write an email arrived telling me that I am being "extremely unprofessional" for condemning this writing. I actually think, though, that it is my obligation to condemn publicly misogyny and other forms forms of hate from any scholar in my field. Here's what I wrote on Facebook, and I share it here because I don't want it only in that small media circle. I believe this. I try to live it.

Regarding the energetic social media activity yesterday around the news that Allen Frantzen, a respected medievalist, has published a carefully crafted and hate-filled website that deplores feminism and is hostile to both women and men who believe in equality and refuse to continue a long, invidious history of denigration and violence: I am happy the social media discussion happened, heated as it has been. The issue merits heat.

We should be cautious about public shaming and bandwagonning, of course, but if you as a senior and respected member of my field of study are going to fill a website with hatred against women and inveigh against feminism -- the very movement that has made the field as I know and love it possible -- and if you are going to directly link your website full of verbal violence against women to a list of your scholarship that makes it clear that these are not two separate things, but that you are relying on the cachet of the latter to make the former seem learned or compelling, well then you deserve to be shamed publicly, because you are an embarrassment to the field. Outrage against misogyny is never a bandwagon (as if condemning vitriol against women is ever a quick fad, or fashionable, or lacking in thought!). Yes, it makes us uncomfortable to have to speak not only of the ickiness of scholars and perhaps scholarship we have previously valued. What's even worse is that what has unfolded is a symptom of a much larger problem. Not condemning it, loudly, allows that problem to continue.

Unapologetic misogyny represents a way of being a scholar too long excused and even normalized in the academy. If you read the social media discussion with attention you might have noticed the number of women who were not at all surprised by the news that a senior scholar would be so anti-feminist: they have too many battle scars to be surprised any more. What Frantzen published online and what many others say and do that aligns with his call to eradicate feminism is toxic to everyone, but especially to young female scholars who are that field's best future. They are the ones we need to make room for, and if it means loudly and publicly condemning misogyny and antifeminism whenever it erupts, sign me up for every departing bandwagon.

UPDATE January 21
The Chronicle of Higher Education is doing a piec on #femfog and I spoke at some length with their reporter by telephone, urging him to get the story from women within OE/AS studies. I also sent this note to him as a follow up:

Thanks for looking into all of this. And I just want to re-emphasize that the reason some of us pointed out and condemned Allen Frantzen's misogynistic website is because we want a different future for the field from the one he and some like him would bestow. Yes we could have let the site pass in silence, and perhaps only a few people would have noticed it, but many of us believe that this kind of hatred has no place in medieval studies or anywhere else in the academy -- and that it is not OK to let it pass in silence. We are dedicated to a more inclusive field where feminism (and critical race studies, and queer theory) can flourish, and where no one gets harassed, preyed upon or discriminated against. No one. That's why #femfog -- with its anger mixed with mockery, much of it propelled by young women just entering the field (the memes they created were hilarious, and cutting) -- became a phenomenon so rapidly. Some senior scholars spoke out because they felt it was their obligation. They were outnumbered by the grad students and young PhDs who spoke out because they are actively making that better future -- with creativity, justice and aplomb. It's very important to me that any story you write note that!