Inside Higher Ed ran a piece on the PLANET walk-out. The comments are irritating because it’s the usual dudes saying dumbtwat dudely things like “geeeeee can’t take a jeeeeooooke” rationalizing. “DurrrrGee I thought it was funny.”
Lemme explain this again:
The gentleman posting this stuff is a human being who makes contributions to the field. We respect him and do appreciate all the work he’s done.
But, honestly: had he sent that joke to one of his female graduate students, and she had taken it to her university sexual harassment officer, he would have to sit through eleventy million hours of sexual harassment training. But I guess if he sends it to 2 trillion of his female colleagues via a listserv, it’s all good. Because THEY ASKED TO JOIN THE LIST, yah, that’s the ticket.
It really would be both wise and nice if he would stop it.
And it would be even nicer if when asked that it stop, it actually…stops. Instead of that request resulting in: “YOU BITCHES SHUT YER CAKEHOLES OR LEAVE.”

This is one reason why I need to clap back at Bill Page, who is another wonderful person we all appreciate, but who is wrong in the IHE, as is the person he quotes, if we are supposed to assume that Bill agrees with this person. (GOD THERE I GO AGAIN TELLING PEEPS THEY ARE WRONG).
To wit:
Page, the founder and coordinator of the Listserv, responded to an email request for comment by sending what he sees as “a representative response of what is being said on PLANET about the statement of the 118 that you reference.”
The response: “I am disappointed that 118 of the best voices on PLANET have chosen to leave rather than to stay and help to make this online community a better one. By my count there are approximately 1,400 subscribers. Several of them behaved badly this week. Most of them did not. Most of us would be pleased to hear what many of the 118 have to say about this matter, and, more importantly, what they would have to say about many significant planning-related issues in the future. I am sorry that many of our valued colleagues have chosen not to participate in this large and unique international community of planning scholars, and, should any of them read this, I hope many of them decide to come back.”
No.
Now, I know this was meant to be polite, and it was very civil, and this person is trying to be nice. But no. This is concern trolling and needs an answer.
What happened here wasn’t a bunch of short-fused firebrands walking off and slamming the door before anybody had a chance to deliberate the points with them. Women tried to contribute and were told to shut up and leave and that they “wouldn’t be missed.”
And “I’m sorry they have chosen to leave.” How about being sorry that women were treated badly in the first place? How about starting there? See, that’s where you should have started.
Beyond that, spare us the “some have behaved badly, but most people didn’t.” Bergh. #NotAllMen. 2014 called and wants its lame rationalizing hashtag back.
I’ve had one senior male faculty member after another make excuses for some of the people writing “Bite me, bitches” emails to PLANET, like “So and so is actually a really sweet guy.” Uh-huh. Scratch the surface gently on any number of guys, who face-to-face wear a respectable mask, and you can, and often do, find hatred towards women who fail to please. Decent men and often very nice men, men who very much want to be good men, live in a world where they are told, all the time and in every way possible, they are entitled to degrade women who fail to please.
The mask slipped, and there were the uuuuuuuugly bits that remind us that even very, very nice men can hate women. As a dedicated blamer of the patriarchy, I must blame where blame is due. That there is the patriarchy, doing its thing inside the head of a “nice man.”
Scratch the surface of a lot of women who have achieved status in the hierarchy and blam–there is a good dose of internalized hate, too. They have made it, didn’t they, and they need to believe that they did so because they are awesome, not that they complied and internalized injustice.
And while “the vast majority” of you “want those 118 to do this or that” then the “vast majority” of the community should have used your vast majority power to show young women that you cared about them and what they think when you had the chance.
You didn’t. And you got the nerve to call for unity NOW?

Let me explain something, which is my #1, Never-Fail, Go-To advice for all scholars from the margins, and that is:
The community/institution/whatever does not get to use your human capital if people therein are disrespectful to you.
Let me repeat:
The community/institution/whatever does not get to use your human capital if people therein are disrespectful to you.
Again:
The community/institution/whatever does not get to use your human capital if people therein are disrespectful to you.
And, in case you missed it:
The community/institution/whatever does not get to use your human capital if people therein are disrespectful to you.
The idea that “the collective/community/we” are entitled to oppressed people’s work, time and talent, no matter how badly “the collective/community/we” treat folks, is the freaky deaky sine qua non of oppression.
The idea that oppressed people have to “be civil” when eating crap they don’t deserve is the sine qua non of bourgeois academic virtues.
My senior male faculty for a bit had a baaaaaaad habit when I started, and that was: they’d demand my presence on committees and meetings and then talk over me, dismiss my ideas, and treat me not as well as I deserved.
For awhile, I sat there and seethed, on the margin, where I was supposed to be.
Then I got tenure.
And then when they indulged in that nonsense, I started getting up and leaving in the middle of whatever it was. You wanna treat me badly? Ok, then, you don’t get. I got gardens to plant, books to read, articles to write, and students to torment.
And if you don’t appreciate me taking time from those things, done for me, to do for you, then you don’t get. Nor do your students, nor do your projects. You don’t get from me when you don’t respect me.
Is that clear? Which is why, no, lots of people do not feel the need to stick around PLANET to educate people on why it’s not okay to tell jokes about women that frame them as gossips and a baby factory. Women are a wee bit prickly about those humiliating tropes because they were historically an excuse to treat women badly. That history has lingered.
So yeah, gee, why not stay around and educate people on why this is a problem? Well, here’s why:
We are, collectively, as women, people of color, and LGBT, people who have, over the years, on PLANET and ASCP, asked and asked and asked and asked and asked and asked and asked and asked and asked and asked and asked and asked and asked and asked and asked and asked and asked and asked and asked and asked and asked and asked and asked and asked and asked and asked and asked and asked and asked and asked and asked and asked and asked and asked and asked and asked and asked and asked and asked and asked and asked and asked and asked and asked and asked and asked and asked and asked and asked and asked and asked and asked and asked and asked and asked and asked and asked and asked and
BLOODY
FREAKING
ASKED
TIME
AND
TIME
AGAIN
for PLANET and planning educators to knock it off with the “we’re just da boyz here in the da boyz club snapping towels at each other” tone.
I suppose people could ‘stick around and let people know what we think’ because so many people would “be pleased to hear” (yah, boy, I get up in the morning to please people, yessireeebob, it’s right up there with making sure I’m pretty when my husband comes home and all those church suppers I prepare) but you know, the first 100 times women let people know what they thought on PLANET, they’ve either been ignored or treated like crap. How many tries women got to make before they get to give up on y’all and your “community”, and you admit that the “community” is the problem and not the people who just can’t with this nonsense anymore? 101? 1,000,001? Or is there really no upper limit to the “community” entitlement?
Why, exactly, are women and their allies here supposed to stick around and share their thoughts with you when some of y’all have made it 100 percent clear you’d rather read jokes about *dead* women than read about what women think about these jokes, and the “vast majority” of you kept your heads down instead demanding Bill step up?
