A modest proposal

Eric Schliesser and Mark Lance have made what they call a ‘modest proposal’:

We propose a campaign in which we publicly identify keynote presenters at conferences with all or almost all male invitees who through their inaction, complacency, and indifference contribute to the sexist status quo. This involves few epistemic risks (there is no need to rely on hearsay, testimony, etc); it is also likely to be an effective way of promoting change.
We hereby commit ourselves not to accept invitations to male-only events. We call on others to join us.

As soon as I saw this, I knew it would be controversial. But I didn’t know that there would be almost instant disagreement from one of their own co-bloggers.

What do I think about this? I think (unsurprisingly) that the GCC is the right approach. But I may well be wrong. I do go a bit overboard with the Good Cop routine, I suspect.

Activists talk about disability pride

In this fantastic video, disability rights activists – including philosopher Joe Stramondo – discuss disability pride. Topics include “What does ‘disability pride’ mean to you?’ and “Why is disability pride important?” If you have your own take on the answers to these questions, please tell us about it in the comments!

Check out more great videos from the Michigan Disability Rights Coalition on their youtube channel.

[Apology and warning: once again, the video is unfortunately not captioned. Okay, it looks like this video is captioned, but you may need to fiddle with your browser settings or try viewing it using Internet Explorer, Firefox, or Chrome. (See the comment from Rebecca, and our subsequent discussion.)]