Beautiful: Pranksters Submit a Hoax Paper on "The Conceptual Penis" to Well-Regarded Gender Studies Journal; Get Peer Reviewed By Two Scholars; Then Get the Ridiculous Thing Published

A nice start to a week that will probably be awful:

Abstract: Anatomical penises may exist, but as pre-operative transgendered women also have anatomical penises, the penis vis-à-vis maleness is an incoherent construct.

We argue that the conceptual penis is better understood not as an anatomical organ but as a social construct isomorphic to performative toxic masculinity.

Through detailed poststructuralist discursive criticism and the example of climate
change, this paper will challenge the prevailing and damaging social trope that
penises are best understood as the male sexual organ and reassign it a more fitting
role as a type of masculine performance.

But they cheated slightly -- because their intended hoax paper is no more absurd than the nonsense typically published.

We like to congrat @peterboghossian for the successful hoax, we wouldn't be able to distinguish it from a real gender studies paper either

— New Real Peer Review (@RealPeerReview) May 19, 2017

The full stupid thing is here, but see the first link for choice excerpts, like this:

[T]he conceptual penis is a performative social construct, and it is one that is isomorphic to an especially toxic strain of masculinity.

Still, even as a social construct, the conceptual penis is hopelessly dominated by recalcitrant social constructions that favor hypermasculine interpretations of the penis as a notion unjustly associated with high male value (Schwalbe & Wolkomir, 2001). Many cisgendered hypermasculine males, for instance, seem to identify those aspects of their masculinity upon which they most obviously depend
with the notion that they carry their penis as a symbol of male power, domination, control, capability, desirability, and aggression (The National Coalition for Men "compile[d] a list of synonyms for the word penis [sic]," these include the terms “beaver basher," "cranny axe," "custard launcher,” "dagger," "heat-seeking moisture missile," "mayo shooting hotdog gun," "pork sword," and "yogurt
shotgun" [2011]).

Based upon an appreciable corpus of feminist literature on the penis, this troubling
identification results in an effective isomorphism linking the conceptual penis with toxic hypermasculinity.

And then they go on to suggest that the conceptual penis is responsible for climate change.

posted by Ace at 12:58 PM

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