Man Conned With Help of Own Ideas

Tuesday, September 17, 2019

I am way late to this party by Internet standards, but I finally ran across the bizarre story that went viral a couple of months back concerning allegations of sexual misconduct on the part of a Harvard law professor. As a byline in Reason summed it up, a woman and her transexual partner "used sex, activism, and Title IX to scam" him "out of his house, job, and money."

Conservatives have rightly noted, some with a heavy helping of schadenfreude, the role of Bruce Hay's ideological orientation in this bizarre tale: It played a big role in making him a near-perfect mark for these grifters. And its implementation as Title IX is continuing his misery via a complaint lodged against him by his erstwhile trans-activist co-author.

But it seems like just about everyone is not quite getting that part of the story. Ross Douthat of the New York Times gets the closest to seeing the role of ideas in the story when he notices that people of different political orientations react to it differently:

DNA Profiling for Paternity Test (Image by Helixitta, via Wikipedia, license.)
The leftward-leaners were more likely to focus on Hay as a uniquely gullible or lust-addled individual, and to draw strictly personal lessons from his disastrous arc. (For instance, to quote the Atlantic's Adam Serwer, that "men need meaningful and supportive friendships with people they are not married to, especially into middle age.")

The rightward-leaners, on the other hand, read the story politically, as a vivid allegory for the relationship between the old liberalism and the new -- between a well-meaning liberal establishment that's desperate to act enlightened and a woke progressivism that ruthlessly exploits the establishment's ideological subservience. ("Not only did [Hay] trust Shuman," Bolonik writes, but "he felt it would have been insulting for a heterosexual cisgender man to question a professed lesbian as to whether she'd had sex with other men.")

...

By this I mean the heart of polarization is often not a disagreement about the facts of a particular narrative, but about whether that story is somehow representative -- or whether it's just one tale among many in our teeming society, and doesn't stand for anything larger than itself.
It may be true, especially in the early stages of this sordid tale, that Hay was lust-driven, but the fact that others fell for the same ruse (See link at "grifters" above.) tells me that Hay probably isn't especially lust-driven. But is he uniquely gullible? That's a good question. And I similarly question the notion that the duo are, respectively, a typical lesbian and a typical transexual, if there even is such a thing. They're nihilistic criminals.

But ideas do play a role: How on earth would it be insulting to seek a paternity test when a woman one barely knows is claiming to carry your child? Re-read the second parenthetical quote above, and watch altruism -- in the guise of unearned guilt brought on by identity politics -- act as a mental kill-switch. Forget about Title IX and the fact that this man turned out to be dealing with criminals: Isn't the possibility of a pregnancy a big-enough deal to find out what the hell is really going on? And yet here he is, disarmed by the very ideas he is helping propagate through the culture.

The right has a couple of reasons, one bad and one good, to be invested in seeing Maria-Pia Shuman and Mischa Haider as "typical." First, many have mystically-based views of sexual relationships and feel threatened by growing social acceptance of the nontraditional in that realm. Second, identity politics is wrong in many ways, and deserves cultural and political opposition. (It is wrong to confound the two: This story is in no way a vindication of "social conservatism.") Likewise, the left, has a couple of bad reasons to quickly dismiss this story as a one-off. First, there are those who genuinely believe that identity politics (vice individualism) is the path to social and political acceptance. Second, there are the cynical, who wish, say, to oppress heterosexual men or simply want power, and see identity politics as the way to get it. The first see identity politics as above question and the second don't want others questioning it. Both want to see (or have others see) Hay as particularly lusty and gullible, rather than blinded by ideals disconnected from reality or a desire to be seen as morally superior by others.

Whatever the case might be for Hays, ideas played a crucial role in his falling for this long con: He disregarded reality in favor either of those ideas or for the sake of appearing to support them.

-- CAV

7 comments:

Todd Walton said...

I agree that his ideas were used against him, but the possible autism angle struck me. Several things about his behavior are typical -- and even distinctive -- of people with autism/Asperger's. The eye avoidance with the journalist, for example. Being socially disfluent and tending to take things literally, gullibility is also fairly common among people with autism. More common than in the general population, anyway. I'm curious about why he's still with his ex-wife *and* willing to allow her to override his sex life. But regardless of his disposition towards believing things, you're right that it was a certain set of ideas that he was primed to believe that got him into trouble. Good post.

A question: you said the right has one good and one bad reason for seeing the two women as "typical". Which of the two are you saying is the good reason? The "mystically-based views of sexual relationships" or the belief that identity-based politics is wrong?

I noticed that you used the word "transexual" twice, and wondered about your choice of that word. A lot of times it's just a word that older people (including older trans people) use out of habit and familiarity. But sometimes in conservative circles it's used because it's not generally socially acceptable anymore. It's seen as out-of-date and even incorrect by people in trans communities as well as those who study them. Using it therefore serves as a way to subtly signal to the reader and perhaps even to the writer's own self his disagreement or discomfort with transgender topics. If that's the case for you, maybe it's the view of sexual relationships that you think is the good reason.

Gus Van Horn said...

Todd,

Thanks for your question, which allows me to clarify: Identity politics is wrong, and those individualist elements within the conservative movement that oppose it are right to do so. Unfortunately, even some with this good general motivation can, through confusion or sloppiness, end up conflating such opposition with a general prejudice against individuals identity politics is supposed to help. (Here lies the danger of speaking in broad terms of a heterogeneous political movement: You could just as well turn around and ask just how well such people can be said to understand (and so meaningfully support) individualism.) So, as far as that goes, this would be the "good" motivation, but the more I think about it the less I like the way I put it.

That said mystically-based views of sexuality, such as those that motivate the state defining marriage to exclude all but one between a man and a woman, are wrong. (And actually, given their arbitrary, mystical base, it is more accurate to say that they are not even wrong.) A major part of the conservative movement subscribes to this view, and will happily paint such tolerance as our society has for what they regard as deviant lifestyles as part of the primrose path to hell.

RE autism: IIRC, the victim of the scam has considered the possibility that he may be on the autism spectrum. (I do not know whether he explored that possibility enough to conclude one way or another.) That, too would be a factor in how far the scam went, although it would not obviate the role ideas (or the victim's approach to ideas) played.

RE: "Transexual," my use of the term is primarily because I am older and unfamiliar-enough with the newer terminology (much of which seems to be called for by adherents of identity-politics) to be comfortable using it. You make a good point that I might seem out of touch or dismissive -- or even socially conservative (!) -- by using the older term. Thanks for pointing that out.

Gus

Anonymous said...

Hey Gus:

I'm glad you got a chance to read that ridiculous story. I don't think Hollywood could have made something like that. When this was first published, I saw it as a classic "honey trap". You were right to point out how this LAW professor(kinda scary if you ask me), lived by the ideas that made become prey to classic con artists. I also felt he has been in academia too long. I remember Peikoff saying in one of his lectures how those who stay in the academy too long become stupid in a sense; unable to function in reality because they constantly teach that reality does not exist.

Bookish Babe

Gus Van Horn said...

BB,

Yes. This is way too ridiculous for Hollywood. In my almost certainly more limited than average dating experience, I have NEVER seen a woman approach a man like that. (I'm not sure it would work even as erotic fiction, but I have no expertise there.) That is far outside cultural norms, women (generally) are less visual than men, and most important, this kind of approach (to a total stranger!) throws personal safety out the window. Even in my fragile post-divorce days way back in grad school, if a woman approached me this way, it would have confused me or even scared me off -- if I didn't just take it as a joke of some kind.

And that's just for starters. Some conservatives call him a wimp for co-authoring with Haider even while being threatened by the couple. But on the flip-side he was also acting like some big hero to the couple ... AFTER CHEATING WITH ONE OF THEM.

That man has been willfully blind and self-deluded throughout.

Gus

Gus Van Horn said...

Oh, wait. Just realized they were supposedly only co-parenting. So maybe not cheating, but my last sentence certainly stands.

Snedcat said...

Yo, Gus you write, "In my almost certainly more limited than average dating experience, I have NEVER seen a woman approach a man like that...That is far outside cultural norms, women (generally) are less visual than men, and most important, this kind of approach (to a total stranger!) throws personal safety out the window."

I assume you mean this? When he directed her to another part of the store, she changed the subject. “By the way, you’re very attractive,” he remembers her saying. That's the only bit that's outside my personal romantic experience. Being approached by a woman who found me attractive enough to start a conversation and, if it went well, give me the opportunity to ask her out--that was very common in grad school. But you can be sure there was a lot of getting to know me so that if anything serious did happen, we were no longer strangers.

On the other hand, I have witnessed much more blatant moves by women. Probably the most grotesque was the Russian bride who had tired of her husband, so she went around all the men at a departmental party kissing them (I think she was offended when I ducked, but I was engaged at the time and really not interested in any of that) and disappearing with a couple of them before disappearing for the night. Her husband took the hint and disappeared with a Persian grad student in the department. The whole party was off-kilter after that, and a year later at the second such annual party, one of my new-found soon-to-be friends in that department (it wasn't my department, thank goodness; I just took classes in it) said she was almost disappointed--after what she heard about the last year's, she expected horizontal dancing by all and sundry before 10 PM. (This turned out to be a conversational gambit to get to know me, by the way, before we moved on to reciting Middle English poetry at each other [yep, that only works with maybe 0.01% of the female population even in academia, but when it does work...yowza], so I guess I did get some positive benefit from the party.) Hmm, so, I guess there's not too much point to that story, except that it's funny and appalling all at once.

Gus Van Horn said...

Snedcat,

Yes. After "she changed the subject" is beyond what I have seen.

Gus