It’s not clear to me whether this bloke knew he was missing the point, or simply chose to throw the game out of cowardice.
His conclusion is correct, of course. My company is explicitly pursuing a policy of employing women who are underqualified for senior positions, purely on account of their fetid middle-aged undercarriages. While it’s possible that there are some women in senior roles who have worked hard and proven themselves objectively worthy of their roles, it’s very clearly not universally true, and a raft of vital positions are now held by unpredictable and frequently overwhelmed women who are prone to lashing out and blaming their underlings for the consequences of their lack of leadership.
It’s no wonder that there are so many articles now about ‘impostor syndrome’ when there are so many actual imposters. Of course, the fuckwits writing these “tell her what she wants to hear” articles are full of ludicrous and deluded “you go girl” platitudes, rather than saying “yes, there’s a very good chance you are an impostor and here’s why.”
The reputation of all female academics is tainted by positive discrimination, a Cambridge University philosopher said yesterday.
Women at universities cannot be sure they have their jobs on their own merit because many institutions insist on shoehorning female candidates into shortlists, according to John Marenbon, honorary professor of medieval philosophy at Trinity College.
In a paper published by the Politeia think tank, Marenbon, a fellow of the British Academy, wrote that more women were entering academia naturally and that parity would have been achieved without affirmative action.
He said: “Nothing needs be done except what always should have been done in academic appointments: the best person academically and intellectually for the job . . . should be chosen.
“Why, then, have academics as a group pursued a different, discriminatory policy, instead of patiently awaiting a change that, had it been allowed to happen gradually and of its own accord, could not but have raised standards?
Well since you ask, John, this is why:
This is the truth that dare not speak its name. A graph that has stubbornly survived numerous attempts to debunk it. The higher the IQ, the fewer women there are. This is an objective fact. We can argue about whether IQ represents the totality of intelligence or is simply a vector on two dimensions, which ignores the third. But if IQ is the indicator, the indications are unequivocal. In the high IQ space, women are outnumbered by a significant margin.
Ergo, in academic areas where high intelligence is required for excellence, men are naturally going to outnumber women by a significant margin.
Only in subjects that cherish enthusiastic mediocrity will the women outnumber the men. As a philosopher, therefore, John Marenbon can expect to be naturally outnumbered by women. No scientist worth their salt should be expecting or demanding the same.
That said, as we can see from the graph, now that universities are willing to accommodate any idiot who can pay the fees, we will see the men also outnumbering women in the courses that only absolute dipshits would bother with, such as David Beckham studies, or Town Planning.
The fundamental problem, which this plank seems unable to grasp is that of equity. The idea that, in-spite of the above graph, all should have equal outcomes irrespective of aptitude or effort. It’s a ludicrous delusion that has poisoned the well, simply to placate uppity women for whom the truth is just too unpalatable and must be denied.
This is the collective delusion that is underpinning modern western society. A society can only succeed where excellence is the goal. It can only fail where equity is the goal. Equity is communism. Look for a failed state and 99 times out of 100, communism (or it’s precursor, socialism) is behind it.
For further information on where the policy of equity inevitably leads, read the short story Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut. First published in 1961, it seemed absurd when I first read it thirty years ago, as the Berlin Wall fell, the USSR collapsed and Thatcher’s heroic decade of rebuilding Britain drew to a close.
Today it seems no less absurd than the predictions of economic disaster I made two years ago. Equity is a delusion we can no longer afford to entertain, but as a nation we have insufficient testicular fortitude to do anything about it because the power to stop it has been handed on a plate to the very people who need to be stopped.
AJ