The misogynistic predisposition of the old white “establishment guy” burst into the open this week. On Friday, December 11, 2020, The Wall Street Journal gave over its Op-ed page to “has-been” writer and former The American Scholar magazine editor Joseph Epstein. He published an article urging educator and First Lady-elect Dr. Jill Biden to drop the use of the title “Dr.” in her name.
Yes, that is it. Belying society’s awkward acceptance of women in high places is a misogynistic predisposition that runs deep. It springs from genetic outgrowths and enshrined mimetic cultural transmissions of men in power as the norm. Where women accompany them, she must be pretty or attractive presidential “arm candy,” provincially demurred, accomodating, and where visible, still mostly invisible.
Joseph Epstein’s article was anachronistic in content and tone. It sounded like a 60s-era provincial patriarch in his “Stepford,” Connecticut kitchen lecturing his daughter on the finer points of being to find the right husband. He was patronizing, condescending, and downright indignant towards the first lady-elect (“kiddo”):
“Madame First Lady — Mrs. Biden — Jill — kiddo… Any chance you might drop the ‘Dr.’ before your name? ‘Dr. Jill Biden’ sounds and feels fraudulent, not to say a touch comic… A wise man once said that no one should call himself ‘Dr.’ unless he has delivered a child. Think about it, Dr. Jill, and forthwith drop the doc.”
former The American Scholar magazine editor Joseph Epstein
The ill-guided misogynist Joseph Epstein didn’t miss a beat. He went as far as to disparage the title of Dr. Biden’s dissertation as “unpromising. We can only begin to imagine the insult, heartbreak, and pain the article conveyed to thousands of women holding doctoral degrees, tens of thousands of women in academia like Dr. Jill Biden, and the tens of thousands of young women – those with future aspirations of becoming educators.
The Patriarchy’s First Lady
As First Lady, the patriarchy prefers the imagery of Jackie Kennedy’s innocence, the first Barbara Bush’s grandmotherly figure, or Melania Trump’s “model-esque” looks sans outward displays of education or equality-affirmation. It doesn’t want another Eleanor Roosevelt, Hillary Clinton, or Michelle Obama – all accomplished professional women in their own rights who had careers independent of their husbands’.
Even the independent-spirited Nancy Regan’s influence over her husband was resented by many. Hillary Clinton’s presidential run was doomed not by her days as a senator but from her days as First Lady. Note that Mr. Epstein attacked Dr. Biden’s qualifications – that which makes her an equal to her husband.
The term First Lady is an outdated term with sexist and misogynistic connotations by today’s standards. It emerged in the mid 19th century when print writers around 1838 used it to refer to Martha Washington. Informally and less used, it can also refer to a woman at the top of her profession or discipline. But in today’s society, a starting point for removing some of the inherent misogynistic attitudes to the spouses of our presidents and promote gender equality and gender neutrality might be to change the title to “First Spouses.”
Media’s Mysogonism
The first apparent question was this: Who would write such an opinion piece in the first place and to what objective? Most importantly, why would The Wall Street Journal give a man the space to exhibit such grotesque misogyny? The answer varies depending on the perpetrator.
For sure, some of the men and women over at The Wall Street Journal might have easily seen this article as “tongue-in-cheek” – funny. Many in the editorial page’s upper echelons go home to Greenwich, Connecticut, and other far-flung well-manicured New York City suburbs at night. They are issues of many generations of misogynistic predispositions – the notion of “how a woman should be.” For many, both men and women, it is what their fathers taught them. It is what they saw in their mothers.
Although many professional women working at such levels readily hoist the “Mee Too” banner to advance their own careers, they still impose misogynistic predispositions on other women. Others may yet have been uncomfortable with the article. And who can blame them – men and women? Look at their boss.
Among the most shocking responses to the backlash the article generated was The Wall Street Journal‘s editorial page editor Paul Gigot’s implied affirmation of Dr. Jill Biden’s inferiority (see below). He referenced a 2009 piece in the Los Angeles Times that made similar assertions and pointed out that 11 years ago, it did not result in the same backlash. The tone-deaf Mr. Gigot failed to realize the implications – that America’s thinking had outpaced Paul Gigot’s.
As long ago as 2009, the Los Angeles Times devoted a story to the subject. From the piece by Robin Abcarian: “Joe Biden, on the campaign trail, explained that his wife’s desire for the highest degree was in response to what she perceived as her second-class status on their mail. She said, ‘I was so sick of the mail coming to Sen. and Mrs. Biden. I wanted to get mail addressed to Dr. and Sen. Biden.’ That’s the real reason she got her doctorate.
Wall Street Journal’s editorial page editor Paul Gigot
As is usual, rather than rejection, indecency finds refuge in politicization in America. Rather than apologize and accept a higher standard from its Op-Ed pages, the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page editor Paul Gigot, defended the article on Sunday in a piece titled “The Biden Team Strikes Back”Ergo! The Wall Street Journal saw no shame in its flight to misogynism.
“Why go to such lengths to highlight a single op-ed on a relatively minor issue? My guess is that the Biden team concluded it was a chance to use the big gun of identity politics to send a message to critics as it prepares to take power.”
Wall Street Journal’s editorial page editor Paul Gigot
In four years of President Donald Trump’s normalization of American misogyny (in addition to many of his other deplorable normalizations), Mr. Gigot minimized the legitimate backlash by politicizing and obfuscating. He claimed that the Biden administration had rallied the press to criticize the editorial. He likened complaints that the editorial was misogynistic to Donald Trump‘s “Stalinesque” tweets – as if they were a standard of excellence against which to measure. Then there was the ultimate false equivocation:
There’s nothing like playing the race or gender card to stifle criticism. It’s the left’s version of Donald Trump’s “enemy of the people” tweets. The difference is that when Mr. Trump rants against the press, the press mobilizes in opposition. In this case, the Biden team was able to mobilize almost all of the press to join in denouncing Mr. Epstein and the Journal. Nearly every publication wrote about the Biden response, reinforcing the Biden-New York Times line: ‘An Opinion Writer Argued Jill Biden Should Drop the “Dr.”
Wall Street Journal’s editorial page editor Paul Gigot
And that was all Mr. Gigot needed to do – make his response was political. He made decency into a Left vs. Right issue and felt satisfied with himself. He saw nothing wrong with the editorial. He thought it did not deserve backlash generated and thought it a fair criticism of Dr. Jill Biden.
Neurology of Misogynistic Predispositions
As for the author, Joseph Epstein, speculation of his motives, beyond the normal misogynistic predisposition, is futile. As the recent caregiver to a relative who suffered Parkinson’s and dementia in his later years, I have my idea, albeit a scientific one.
Neuroscientists define two types of memory – “Explicit” and “Implicit.” Explicit memory is factual or episodic events encoded by the brain’s hippocampus area (the sea-horse looking part of the limbic region) for storage and later recall. Implicit memory is those events that occur every day in life but are not “tagged” and stored by the hippocampus as facts or episodes of the past. Implicit memory is, therefore, occurring in consciousness in realtime.
The same scientists explain the importance of the hippocampus’s role as a separator, integrator, and consolidator of the brain. By tagging/coding explicit memory into the cortex, the hippocampus consolidates our memory in orderly fashions and enables the logical sequence of retrieval. But where it fails to do so, memory that should be coded as explicit and past is untagged and remains implicit memory in our consciousness. This is the case of brain damage, trauma-driven hippocampus breakdown, and disintegration caused by dementia.
This hippocampus breakdown is said to cause Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) – triggered by trauma. It results in flashbacks of past (explicit) memory that remains (implicit), as if they are occurring in realtime.
For this purpose, we can drop the outward manifestation of misogynistic predispositions in the explicit memory bank. In 83-year-old Joseph Epstein’s youth and for much of his professional career in academia and the patriarchy’s view of women dominated society. It was par for the course. At 83, though, dementia’s grim reaper may be frequenting Mr. Epstein – the extent to which is unknown. Hippocampus breakdown may be dominating his thinking. He is writing implicit memory when they are explicit that he should have long discarded in shame.
I am neither making excuses for him nor presuming to evaluate him neurologically. But it is something to think about. How many 83-year-olds wake up and decide to write an article telling the about-to-be most prominent woman in the country how to behave?
The Target of Misogyny – Dr. Jill Biden
Dr. Jill Biden, America’s former Second Lady and now First Lady-elect, holds two master’s degrees and a doctorate in education from the University of Delaware – an achievement made even more commendable, given that she earned it at a later stage of life in 2007. Her Obama White House biography describes her dissertation’s focus as “maximizing student retention in community colleges.”
As America’s Second Lady from 2008 to 2016, she famously taught at Northern Virginia Community College. She had since made it clear that she plans to continue teaching after becoming the First Lady. In a 2013 interview with NPR, Dr. Biden explained that she did discuss her political role in the classroom: “I think I have a separate role there as an English teacher, and that’s who I want to be,” she said. “I want to be Dr. B, their English teacher.”
Misogynistic Predisposition – An Uncontrollably Mimetic Virus
Of all the problems facing America and the world (coronavirus anyone?), why would this be the issue of concern for this petty little man and conservates in the right-wing media? The old school chauvinist seems to be offended at men sharing the eponymous doctoral title with a woman – an educator who is not cut of Ivy league cloth. Joseph Epstein anecdotally argued that political correctness and the relaxation of academic standards had diminished the prestige of PhDs and honorary degrees. He concluded all of this without an evaluation of Dr. Biden’s doctoral transcript.
So, Dr. Biden’s degree is not real! The unctuous Mr. Epstein then urged Dr. Biden to “forget the small thrill of being Dr. Jill, and settle for the larger thrill of living for the next four years in the best public housing in the world as First Lady Jill Biden.” No doubt, he threw in the “public housing” references as a denigration to a “welfare recipient.”
Way to go, Monsieur Nicholas Chauvin! Job well done. Tell an accomplished woman how she should be, what she should call herself, and with what she should be happy. Presumably, the political correctness decried by Joseph Epstein kept him from telling Dr. Biden what was really on his mind – that she should prepare herself for baking Oval Office cookies and “standing by her man.”
Joseph Epstein’s article activated the worst misogynistic predispositions of the usual suspects. Over at “American Pravda” (Fox News), where they had a litany of quacks “diagnose” Joe Biden with dementia for many months, host Tucker Carlson, who makes a living off nightly abrogation of decency, did not relent to wade in on the matter. Carlson dedicated nightly segments of his show, debasing the incoming First Lady for using the “doctor” title in her name.
In one segment, he went on to a lengthy decry of Dr. Biden’s Ph.D. dissertation as “our national shame.”
So contrary to what you may have read, Dr. Jill Biden is not a healer. She’s not allowed to write prescriptions. She wouldn’t know what to do with your appendix. Dr. Jill has an education degree from some school in Delaware, and you’re supposed to find that highly impressive. She could be a surgeon general!
Fox News Host Tucker Carlson
Dr. Henry Kissinger and many others must have bowled over on hearing that. Carlson obfuscated to show “strawman” where there was none. Dr. Biden has never claimed to be a medical doctor or a faith healer. But Carlson’s audience would not know the difference. Additionally, no such indignation was ever espoused of the numerous semi-naked pictures online of First Lady Melania Trump.
Unlike Joseph Epstein though, Tucker Carlson claimed that he and his staff had read Dr. Biden’s college dissertation:
And what did we discover when we did that? We’re going to give it to you in a diagnosis: Dr. Jill needs reading classes. Either that or she’s borderline illiterate. There are typos everywhere, including in the first graf of the introduction. Dr. Jill can’t write. She can’t really think clearly either. Parts of the dissertation seem to be written in a foreign language using English words. They’re essentially pure nonsense like pig latin or dogs barking.
Fox News Host Tucker Carlson
But a few essential points are notable here. In defense of a defamation claim against him, Tucker Carlson successfully claimed that he is “entertainment,” that no one in their right mind should believe. And the court accepted his defense. So entertainer, former bowtied “political hack,” meandering lothario to losers, make of Carlson what you may. He is a nightly purveyor of the incendiary and outlandish. So while the issue of credibility is inherent with Tucker Carlson, we must ask ourselves how many entertainers and their staff are qualified to examine college transcripts and doctoral dissertations.
Equally important is that unlike “Fox fav,” President Donald Trump, who has embargoed his college transcripts on pain of litigation, the Bidens obviously have nothing to hide by not blocking their college transcripts and dissertations from the public. First Lady Melania Trump doesn’t even have a college transcript to produce. So, in throwing a strawman in the room, Trucker Carlson left an elephant standing. Let us see Trump’s and Melania’s transcripts so we can have a reasonable discussion about qualifications.
Rank Hypocrisy
It’s hard not to see the rank hypocrisy. As I mentioned above, we’re coming off a First Lady, Melania Trump, who cannot even produce a college degree. Yet neither Joseph Epstein, The Wall Street Journal, or Fox News has ever criticized her on educational grounds because she posed no threat to the traditional patriarchial preferences, thereby not activating its misogynistic predispositions.
Mr. Epstein and The Wall Street Journal have rightfully come under fire for his misogynistic perspectives. The backlash was swift and intense. Northwestern University, where Epstein wrote that he had taught for 30 years, issued a statement saying it “strongly disagrees with his misogynistic views” – also noting he has not been a lecturer there since 2003. The university’s English department said in a separate statement that it rejects the opinion piece “as well as the diminishment of anyone’s duly-earned degrees in any field, from any university.”
Propelled by misogynistic predispositions, Joseph Epstein uselessly shot himself in the foot and enshrined his name and legacy in the misogynist hall of shame for posterity. And The Wall Street Journal let him do it. Why did he do it? Why did The Journal indulge him? Predispositions, whether misogynistic or authoritarian are hard to explain beyond the obvious: they operate from the same place and propel us to manifest – good, bad, or indifferently.
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Backlash Responses
Kate Bedingfield, the president-elect’s communications director tweeted, “What patronizing, sexist, elitist drivel. Dr. B earned a doctorate in education, so we call her Doctor. The title Mr. Epstein has earned here is perhaps not fit for mixed company.”
In a tweet that addressed The Wall Street Journal editors directly, Dr. Biden’s spokesperson called the piece a “disgusting and sexist attack,” adding, “If you had any respect for women at all you would remove this repugnant display of chauvinism from your paper and apologize to her.”
Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg’s, husband Chasten Buttigieg, wrote in a tweet that, “The author could’ve used fewer words to just say “ya know in my day we didn’t have to respect women.”
Dr. Biden earned her degrees through hard work and pure grit. She is an inspiration to me, to her students, and to Americans across this country. This story would never have been written about a man. pic.twitter.com/mverJiOsxC
Second Gentleman-elect Douglas Emhoff praised Biden’s “hard work and pure grit” in a tweet on Saturday, adding, “This story would have never been written about a man.”
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s daughter, Bernice King, reminded Biden in a tweet that her father was a nonmedical doctor. “And his work benefited humanity greatly,” King wrote. “Yours does, too.”
Even Merriam-Webster got into the discussion, noting in a tweet Saturday that the word “doctor” comes from the Latin word for “teacher,” which the dictionary also noted, was first used to describe theologians.
