The diss in dissertation

All social-media roads lead to "dumb bitch" accusation

A woman got her PhD, and Twitter, X, whatever, lost its whole and entire mind.

To be the main character on Bluesky, you need to have done something. Not necessarily something wrong, but something. I maligned Bluesky in a newspaper, therefore I was “dumb bitch” of the day. (Yes, a direct quote from a reply I got.) I think my op-ed was fine and did not merit that, but I did at least write an op-ed. And “dumb bitch” is nasty but not a threat of violence.

On X, in its current incarnation, to be a “dumb bitch” and get rape threats and all that you need merely to exist. A woman posted a selfie of, she got her PhD in Oxford or Cambridge or something, in English literature, and this was a problem for many on the platform. Why? As in not even why was it a problem but why if you don’t know this woman personally or at least parasocially would you possibly care?

People were mad, let’s be clear, because the woman is pretty. This is not allowed, or rather, it’s allowed if you’re making videos of yourself making dinner for your man, but not if you are Doing Girlboss. People were mad that she was not having babies (for all we know she has kids! not that if I were her I’d be answering either way) and instead getting a doctorate. People were mad because her dissertation is weak science (it’s English literature, a different field). People were mad because she has a rainbow flag emoji in her bio and therefore, I guess, is either maddening because ‘woke’ or maddening because unavailable for tradwifing random men off the internet. People were mad because of what it’s costing the US tax payer for her to do her degree (she’s in the UK).

The gist of all of the above: a woman on the internet revealed herself to have partaken in higher education and not slept with them, personally. This despite being good-looking. Is that allowed?

As with all main character incidents, the degree-getting lady wound up serving as this odd sort of prompt, for all manner of discussions. Someone spelled out that contra the incellish reply-guys, women with doctorates marry Chads (not the exact language used but you get the idea) and do have kids, so there! (Is this befitting a ‘many such cases’?) In that case, fair enough—this was about the trolls, not the woman herself.

Squickier was the deep dive into her dissertation topic. There is a framework for this sort of thing: a storied, decades-long history of conservative critics of higher education mocking the out-of-context research topics (dissertations, paper titles) that strike them as nonsensical, jargony, or, well, ‘woke.’ An academic is addressing a limited audience with a paper called De(con)structing Structure During (De)colonization or whatever (note: something I just made up, not this woman’s actual research area), in conversation with other scholars and scholarship, and then someone looking to discredit the entire academic enterprise will be like, what a ding-dong, this is what passes for scholarship? and go on to complain that universities should just be teaching Great Books or STEM or plumbing or should simply not exist.

I have never liked that style of criticism. It’s not that outside critics aren’t allowed to tell it like it is, but that it always conflates the unfamiliar with the nonsensical. That, and… I’m sorry but what is happening of such tremendous importance in anyone’s so-called email job? It’s meant to be tragedy of tragedies if some prof somewhere in Ohio is making $50k thanks to a dissertation on something insufficiently earth-shattering for the National Review (if they are still on that beat, they were on it circa 2004 and I’ve lost track). I’m not convinced it is! Nor that overpaying researchers let alone grad students is the cause of academic bloat or decadence.

But once that type of criticism gets mixed up with a psychosexual obsession with a random lady who was just happy to be graduating, OH BOY. No no no. Not the moment to explain why you’re mad at her dissertation topic. I couldn’t even get myself to read what it was because I knew if I did so I would form an opinion and I didn’t want to.

All that main-charactering this new PhD achieves is, it makes criticizing academia seem like something you do if you’re one of those people who thinks women shouldn’t have jobs, that women need to be each assigned an incel, the prettier they are the incellier their assignment.