allonsymiddleearth:

allonsymiddleearth:

allonsymiddleearth:

For the past 8 weeks (semester is half over, thank god, but at the same time only half over, dear god…) I’ve been taking the worst class I have ever seen or experienced, and that’s actually saying quite a bit because I’ve taken some very poor classes here at the University of Arizona. 

I’ve been debating whether to post this publicly. Because while the chances of it going viral/getting back to my professor or the administration I’ve already talked to about this are VERY slim, and though that might be satisfying for me if it did happen, it also might be terrible for me. Or not, idk? BUT I also feel like I’ll feel better if a little more of the world knows how incredibly terrible both the class and the reaction from the university have been regarding this whole situation. So… idk, signal boost if you want. Or don’t. But if you have any ideas how to find a way that I can help make it so that no poor student ever has to, like me, naively sign up for this class expecting a regular semester and then go through all THIS ever again, please do share that with me. 

So! here goes, this is basically everything gross I’ve collected from the class that can stand by itself and make sense in a screenshot. Which… isn’t everything. But should be enough to give you an idea of how horrible this professor is, re: advocating for eugenics, being ableist, being homophobic, being transphobic, being sexist, being anti-science that she doesn’t like, having terrible logic, using evolutionary theory in the most lazy way that serves only to support her own biases, and last but not least, “teaching” us definitely false information with regards to basic biology let alone psychology. 

The things she says are ridiculous and might be entertaining to me (hopefully they’re entertaining to other people because this post is long enough to fill a book about this trainwreck of a class,) except that I actually wanted to learn about the subject sans ‘isms, and also I paid $4000 for this class and, well, you’ll see how not worth $4000 this class is. 

These are the absolute worst screenshots, which I’ll leave above the cut. Everything else is below. Here’s her REALLY FUN eugenics- now with eco-friendliness!

Keep reading

Finally, here’s the update for you on a surely anticipated Eugenics Scrooge Part 2. The semester ended in December, grades were in in January, but I just could not go back and look at these to make a post. Until today, when we got an alert that we’re about to lose access to old classes so I HAVE to do this now if I want it to be complete. So, here is everything else. I’m not doing a read more because if I had to live through it then sorry, but you have to at least scroll past it. 

Class content definitely did not get better. It actually got way, way worse. 

First week after midterms was about how, evolutionarily speaking, hard it is for stepparents to raise stepkids, because investing in kids that aren’t genetically yours is just biologically wrong. Because NO ONE should invest that kind of energy in a kid that isn’t furthering their genes, nevermind historial and modern contradictions and evidence!

Also, apparently being a bad stepparent is okay and normal because evolution. Like, not just bad, but murderously bad.

Which must be a great comfort for her, because she told us about eight times in the discussion how really hard it is for her to bond with her stepkid!

Oh, and you thought there wasn’t ableism in this unit? HAHA JOKES ON ALL OF US HERE IT IS:

Yep, disabled kids don’t matter, which parents innately know…

(nothing to do with societal problems people like HER cause by being ableist, nope.) 

(this was a real question on the final, jumping ahead, and they worst part is she got it from the book she didn’t even write this question:)

So, that was great. Other similar BS included:

Apparently adopted kids are just doomed.

Oh yeah, and disabled kids just fuck everything up. Sorry? 
(question was about birth order affecting traits, she’s saying that with disabled kids getting more attention (even though we JUST “learned” they get less) that makes them like younger siblings even if they’re not.

Notice how often she uses “anomalous” to describe “disabled.” It’s CONSTANT, unprompted, and also gross.

So, this next bit didn’t directly have to do with this week, but she commented the below during this week, and it actually made me go back and check if I’d missed something in a previous week. Because something seemed off about this comment. Maybe it’s just me, but we were talking about parental involvement so I said both my parents were very involved in my life and volunteered for school and other things I did often. She replied this:

and that struck me as an odd thing to say, “High K,” in quotes, does she mean they sound white? Or maybe affluent? Unclear. But probably one or both. So I went back to  the Life History unit, which I hadn’t paid any more attention to than I had to to get through the quiz, but hoooly shit yes, she did mean white. 

So, back in the Life History unit she had us read a study she co-authored which you may be able to see here. I don’t even think I read it the week it was assigned, but I read it after that comment. 

So, basically r/K Selection theory is a biological theory that explains why some species invest a lot in young and some don’t. For example, many fish lay hundreds of eggs but may eat some of the eggs or young and never parent them, but since they lay and hatch so many eggs young survive anyway. On the opposite end, some moneys will live in groups in which only 1-2 babies are born at a time, and the whole group will contribute to parenting. So the fish would have be r and the monkeys would be K. 

Worth mentioning this is a pretty outdated biological theory that has fallen out of favor due to being oversimplifications of what actually happens in most species, but it is a fairly valid theory, as evo psych theories tend to go tbh. 

Anyway, so somewhere along the line people decided to apply r/K to humans, despite humans all being the same species and it not really making sense for people to have evolved “high K” or “low K.” Also, this tends to be applied in SUPER RACIST WAYS. I read this article which makes some very valid points. The article also mentions John Phillipe Rushton, a scientist widely criticised for having a racist agenda in his works, who wrote a whole book applying r/K to humans that was called very racist, and who is cited no less than 10 times in the article this prof co-authored. 

So… yeah. She meant they sound white. She was being racist. I think she has plausible deniability that she’s doing it accidentally, but she’s definitely being racist. This is well evidenced by her other, weird applications of high/low K to white versus not white people:

remember this?

then:

also, she doesn’t innocently think high and low k are equally valid- she definitely thinks we should make “low k” people trend towards the opposite end of the spectrum. everyone just have her ideas of white, affluent, correct morals, okay?

(people who hang out in bars are… bad? because alcohol? or sex? or?)

Next week, “Cooperative Alliances,” this was the worst question. The questions were so bad I just decided not to do the discussions this week and try to save myself some sanity, because I really didn’t need the points to keep my A and GOD I have so little sanity left thanks to this class. 

(and before you give her the benefit of the doubt thinking maybe she’s talking about “free-riders” as the example the book gave, people who COULD pay their friends back for coffee but never do, this whole “running rampant” comment in the lecture makes that seem unlikely. She’s talking about poor people. And we already know she’s opposed to food stamp programs because they cause “upticks in obesity…”)

But then this question and resulting replies from her (more on that in a second) did end up making me so angry that I ended up answering the question.

She’s talking to a permanently disabled person, who will always need to be on welfare in some form, depend on family who may not be able to support me forever, or die, forgetting that people like me exist. Awesome. Great. And by “great” I mean I really wish she’d just drop out of existence.  

Next, nearly everyone did bring up healthcare, and she wasted NO TIME telling us exactly how she feels about people who want free healthcare, complete with Alternative Facts™ about healthcare costs.

FWIW the ACA actually slowed the way costs are rising. Also, of fucking course her healthcare sucks, she’s an adjunct professor in a super red state that decided not to expand healthcare when they could have in a way that might help individuals purchase it affordably. 

But instead of blaming her employer who, while the University never should have hired her specifically, chooses to hire adjuncts in order to save themselves money by having less full-time employees requiring real benefits. Or instead she could be blaming the state of Arizona for the poor options it gives residents with it’s lack of expansion and limited marketplace options. But no, she blames poor people and “free-riders.” 

I would feel sympathy for her for not being able to afford healthcare, but I just can’t muster up sympathy for a person who so admittedly evangelizes against poor people having healthcare and welfare because they don’t care what OTHER people get, especially when they’re inferior, and “free-riders.”

Here’s an answer a student gave which I think the professor liked. It’s kind of sad, because that answer is really objectively terrible, but you can’t blame the student because EVERY SINGLE THING THEY SAID is parroted directly from the bullshit we’ve “learned” in the past couple weeks. 

Another student brought up healthcare in the UK, and her reply is a bit frightening. (Also, this just in, old people hate society.)

below is about people “overusing ERs”

(Also we DO have a database like that, sort of, you can get blacklisted from ERs in some areas in the U.S. if they label you a drug seeker. Like they’ll let you in and see you I think, but they won’t treat you well and they certainly won’t give you controlled substances.)

Ok yeah awesome so what the actual fuck is she talking about here? Like, she wants to bring back harsh punishments like what, death penalty and corporal punishment for… being poor? Or I guess best interpretation, for pretending to be?

Well, we know she’s not talking about wealthy people, so yeah, those damn, entitled poor people who just feel entitled to live in a society with social programs to prevent people in unavoidable situations from literally fucking dying. How dare they. 

And she did NOT like when students disagreed with her premises. She LOVES to try to  “Don’t you think…” NO I DO NOT THINK THAT and personally, I don’t CARE about a few people here and there cheating the system (seriously these numbers are really fucking small) if we can avoid what happened when they tightened welfare in the UK, and 30,000 deaths were linked to those actions!! 

Everything she says these days I just want to reply with that “I don’t know how to tell you to care about other people” headline.

But, she REALLY wants harsh punishment for people who use welfare. 

(y’know, the Good ol’ Days when gave people the death penalty and just hung them for stealing a loaf of bread.)

and all this need for punishment is because we’re not living as designed- in groups of 30-40 closely genetically related individuals who have the death penalty for crime and just let disabled/genetically inferior/”anomalous” people die off. That’s her Super Awesome Evo Bullshit Utopia.

She likes bees more than disabled people. Also, “bees never sting!” Does she think beekeepers just wear the suits for the aesthetic I’m genuinely really curious. 
(Also, that’s rich when we’re in Arizona where you’re not unlikely to come across Africanized Honeybees, aka “killer bees,” which look exactly like regular honeybees except that their definition of “provoked” includes innocently coming within a rather large radius of their hive, and they’re basically real life tracker jackers from the Hunger Games… but okay, back to worse things she’s dense about.)

Onto the next week, in which we learned that Democrats and Republicans should just get along, because everyone’s right! Or something. God I despise this woman.

We had to watch this obnoxious TED talk. Then answer this fun question.

Nothing really stood out, just that she’s definitely one of those “why can’t we all get along!! I’m just trying to take away your literal right and/or ability to exist!! It’s not a big DEAL!” people. 

My favorite question this week was this one, 

because “for some weird reason,” matriarchies don’t ACTUALLY exist in the world, right? There’s no way we could just… find the answer based on evidence from other societies! Nope, Evo Psych ONLY can rely on guesswork! 

And it does, because everyone said we would be less aggressive, and she agreed, I think.

(fwiw, which is apparently nothing, evidence doesn’t support this.)

I don’t know a TON, because I’ve taken this shitty excuse for a class instead of a real one, but that doesn’t…quite….seem historically accurate?

She also said this which is not how recycling works, really:

and I’d refer her to this except she hates facts:
Just 90 companies caused two-thirds of man-made global warming emissions

Dear Humans: Industry is Causing Global Warming, Not Your Activities

(Like, please do recycle, it helps, but that is not how any of this works and thinking you’re saving the world singlehandedly is a well documented individualistic culture fallacy.)

There was this really weird bit in a lecture:

What the hell? Does she think I’m going to go beat up my friends because I read about violence for like 15 minutes? Not that murdering HER after some of her comments doesn’t have it’s appeal, but that’s not why…

Well, anyway, that was all nothing, really. Just about nothing could be worse than the last two weeks of the class were. The second to last week was called “conflict between the sexes.” Evolutionary psychology is notorious for the idea that “rape is an adaptation,” so I was worried that she’d make this week into “rape is excusable because it’s an adaptation!” Surprisingly she did that less than I thought, but the gist she gave was the somehow much, much worse, “men may have evolved rape as an adaptation, but women evolved to ask for it.” 

Questions, for context:

This student had a lovely response and Eugenic’s Scrooge’s answer was FUCKING DISGUSTING. Victim blaming, anyone?

“I’m not blaming them, I’m just saying they’re to blame!!!”

WE ARE IN TUCSON IT IS LITERALLY 120+ HERE IN THE SUMMER!!! But men are allowed to walk around shirtless, that’s okay evolutionarily, right? I hate her so fucking much.

idk if that last one is just regular gross or her Weird 1800s Imperialistic Brand of Racism gross too. (”older” cultures… like, UK vs US? China vs US? Or “primitive” societies vs “socialized” societies?) 

Just… I can’t even comment anymore. I can’t. Here’s the rest:

(fun fact: she said this the week Roy Moore and Al Franken and I feel like a bunch of others were IMPOSSIBLE to miss in the news, for sexual scandals. I don’t know what conservative rock she’s been living under but they obviously only get Fox news and maybe not even that.)

(I bet she failed that quiz)

Lecture:

quick question what the fuck??

“Other parts of the world” there she goes again with her weirdly imperialistic anti-primitive racism again. Also just…. living under a conservative rock again, probably.

Can’t wait to show those direct, blatant victim blaming quotes from her to school admins and advocacy groups so they can not care!

Finally, the last week. We’re back to ableism everywhere.

Funny, that article wasn’t very anti “intervening” with “quick fixes” to “mess with mother nature” and that quote wasn’t AT ALL. Her reading comprehension skills are probably at about a 3rd grade level. But that’s why she fits in with most evo psych people, I think.

okay please, please, PLEASE tell me she’s illustrating her issues with the DSM, not ACTUALLY saying we should reclassify homosexuality as a mental disorder, or that it is as much/not as much of a mental disorder as actual mental disorders… please?

Sexism doesn’t exist so clearly men are just better at this, which is not sexist:

I’ll take Subtle Victim Blaming, again, for 500… (if you didn’t avoid your abuse it makes it your fault!)

I guess allergies aren’t natural now? Like, I’m pretty sure dust and mold and pollen still existed in allergenic, non-exotic forms in prehistory. 

This seems SO ABLEIST I’m not neuroatypical so I don’t feel qualified to break it down but GOD.

Someone said this during the last week and tbh their mother is right:

Evolution isn’t a religion, but these bigoted evolutionary psychologists are always on about “the only reason people don’t believe us is because they can’t accept our truths!” and “we’re just misunderstood but trying to spread our message!” and arguable interpretations of texts/theories that they accept as 100% given truth is entirely evolutionary psychology all the way. Evo psych theorists just tell you they’re more ENLIGHTENED than you! That’s why they have to evangelize their “scientific” biases to you!! Side note, for my current favorite anti-evo psych articles, see: Psychology Today, Slate, Rational Wiki, and please let me know if you have any more because well-worded hate on evo psych is incredibly therapeutic right now. 

This professor embodies all the worst of the -isms in evo psych, but also how incredibly unworthy it is of being called a science in the first place. It’s basically just a group of scientists sitting around with sexist, eugenic theories and making explanatory fictions that somehow get into peer reviewed academic journals sometimes. 

The whole discipline is basically just a biased spins wheel meme tbh. Everything is caused by female/female competition, desire to reproduce, paternity certainty, kinship, or environmental/biological mechanisms that trigger maladaptive behavior that USED to be helpful but no longer is (except it was never really helpful they make it up.) 

So every study is like, “Hmmm, queer people are caused by *spins wheel* female/female competition, *throws dart* not enough kinship, and *pulls paper out of a hat* desire to reproduce caused by faulty biology!” 

Anyway, back on track, these were the questions for this last week: 

I think that she even asked DQ4 is quite telling on its own, honestly. “Were you convinced by this class?” is not a normal question, really. It’s not like at the end of a a chemistry class you get asked whether you were convinced by the periodic table, or in a math class your professor has to be like, “hey, did you agree with that whole addition concept?”

My grades were set. I give zero fucks anymore, so, here’s the exchange we had about that question:

MY biases?! Evo Psych being nothing but bias is the whole REASON I will never come near the subject with a 10,000 ft pole again no matter how long it delays my graduation! Also fuck her whole, “You’re just not advanced enough yet to appreciate the subject, it’s better than your tiny mind can learn so far,” and fuck her again for not addressing any of the -ims and bigotry I mentioned. 

Also is it just me (and my “bias”) or are my posts at least 10x more cogent and accurate than her responses?

Two was just me calling her out for not teaching us the difference between adaptations and other reasons traits arise, and also calling her out on her anti-treatment bullshit, which she did not back down on:

It’s not a tough one! Treat people who need treatment and don’t deny disabled people medication because you hate them! Super easy!! Also maybe don’t comment on medical ethics when you a) aren’t a patient b) aren’t trained in the field in any way whatsoever!!! Cool! Thanks!! 

Anyway, question three was the really great one. I said Social Darwinism was bad, she started advocating aspects of it, I said “hey maybe disabled people don’t need to die?” and she advocated for the mass murder/suicide of a million people, though you know, “it doesn’t matter WHO dies (*cough people who think it should be disabled people are probably right cough*) just SOMEONE has to go!”

Well she still did not say that she doesn’t think disabled people should die! When confronted directly with her past failure to give an answer she…. doesn’t give an answer!! shocker!!

Also she’s just gaslighting me? “I can’t believe you’d think I think that, I only JUST said someone needs to die and it should probably be disabled people!”

Well, that’s the end, basically, except that my TCE responses are wonderfully scathing and I didn’t get screenshots due to shitty formatting but they’re copypasta here, and you can see my (misformatted) rate my professor rating and grievance with RMP for not letting me say “racist” or “sexist” here. That’s basically the end of the story. I got an A, I did not have the mental or physical or emotional energy to put this together until months into the new semester, the department head did randomly email me this week to let me know that he realized he didn’t follow policy with my complaint last semester (though he offered no real help,) and I still plan to take these screenshots in a slightly more professional formatting to groups on campus and if all else fails, to the media.

Here’s actual footage of me, at the end of the semester:

Thank you for suffering with me through this endlessly long and emotionally draining post, but on the plus side, we killed it at evolutionary psychology bingo? (x) 

So, in conclusion, this professor is a disgusting person who is a eugenicist, is sexist, racist, ableist, victim blaming, and can’t even handle telling a disabled student that she shouldn’t die because she’s disabled. This woman deserves to be fired (too bad punishments for being a eugenicist aren’t as bad as she wishes they were for people on welfare, amiright,) so now that the class is over PLEASE feel free to make this go viral so my university can have to deal with the PR consequences of not dealing with this shit when I first let them know what was going on. Eugenics Scrooge is still employed by the University of Arizona and is teaching this semester online at the UA South, and informed us that she is already confirmed to teach Evolutionary Psychology again next semester. This is not okay.

So, sorry to put this on your dash again, but I wanted to add this to the original post.

Recently it’s come out that an evolutionary psychology professor here at the University of Arizona took over $450K from a eugenics fund called the Pioneer fund.

So like, that’s bad. That’s really bad. But everything I read about it, it just keeps getting worse. Of course, Eugenics Scrooge cited this guy (Figureredo) multiple times in our lectures, has co-authored papers with him, probably worked with him since she got her degree here and is an adjunct prof in psych here. 

Also, not only did this guy take these funds, he is the SOLE REMAINING RECIPIENT of funds from the Pioneer Fund, which readily admits that it still supports eugenics. He’s also used these funds in part to attend a conference that is often criticized for being eugenicist leaning.

The Pioneer Fund, according to Wikipedia anyway (they no longer have their own website) is unusual in it’s academic funding (and ethics of) in that it doesn’t have a formal application process, among other things, like also not including peer review, no requirements for reports or acknowledgement that the Pioneer Fund funded the research. 

The University’s response is basically, “idgaf, money is money and Figureredo could be using it for good, I’m sure it’s all fine.” The UA Psych department head said that research has the potential to be misused, but defends that it isn’t inherently eugenic to be supported by eugenicists. Figureredo himself says he “hasn’t decided” whether he’s going to keep taking Pioneer Fund money because he’s not convinced it’s “doing harm.” (Also, apparently eugenics died with WWII. So good news everyone, eugenics is dead! Apparently I time traveled for this class and didn’t even know it!) (x)

Also, the Pioneer Fund has DEFINITELY been harmful, historically, having been run by known white supremacists, it was established by some of the worst of the American Eugenics movement. It’s done research that’s been used in studies that are now considered bad and/or harmfully inaccurate, and according to the SPLC is listed as a hate group (fun fact! they were first listed in 2003, the same year Figureredo started taking funds from them at U of A.) The Pioneer Fund also was active in WWII, including spreading a film in America that was later used as propaganda for Aktion T4 in Nazi Germany.

I’ve been contacting reporters who have been reporting on this stuff to see if they’re interested in hearing about how not only is it apparently okay for professors here to take eugenist funds, but also eugenicist ideals are taught in classes and the administration doesn’t seem to care, but unfortunately none of the reporters have emailed me back yet and tumblr is the only place I have to share my extreme WTFing that any of this is real life at an accredited, reasonably prestigious, R1 University in 2018.

tl;dr: the U of A is super gross and the psychology professors here are especially gross. Fuck eugenics, fuck academia. I’m very bitter, and should be.

Literally, humans have cared for their disabled and chronically ill since pre-history, as shown in bone analysis of early humans (as well as close relatives of humans). Her analysis is demonstrably false anthropologically speaking (especially since she’s claiming that evolution is behind all of this when our evolutionary ancestors took care of their vulnerable and disabled members of society). Literally, when wolves travel as a pack, the strongest take the front, the next in the hierarchy of ability and strength go in back, while the elderly, sick, and pups stay in the middle. Animal behavioralists have found that the reason is so that the strongest can lead the way and assess oncoming obstacles while staying alert to danger, the next strongest can make sure there is no one left behind and defend the rear, and the most vulnerable members get protection and can travel at a more appropriate pace for them. The vulnerable’s survival is put ahead of the ability of the strongest members to go at a more efficient pace for them, whether that means not being able to track prey as quickly or avoiding threats more easily. If humans were truly evolutionarily “designed” to discard disabled and otherwise vulnerable members of society, why is empathy (in Franz DeWaal’s definition of empathy) and altruism such an innate drive? Other animals also show varying levels of empathy and altruism. Why do species with more complex empathy not simply abandon their sick and disabled? Why do they help give those members food and water that they are otherwise unable to access? Why do members of these species have example after example of doing their best, without the advantages of human medicine, to support their sick and disabled as long as they can? Obviously there are also instances of the opposite, but there are also tons of cases of humans not wanting to reproduce at all, of rejecting their perfectly healthy offspring (which other species also do), etc. These generalizations are not only not based in reality and science, they contribute to really harmful societal narratives about gender roles, race, and ability. Grossssssssss