"until relatively recently?" He can't possibly be serious. Does he just say stuff like this to get attention? Is this a typical BYU faculty opinion? What an embarrassment he must be in a University setting. Even a religious school like BYU surely has moved beyond such uneducated tripe. I am understanding more and more the Maxwell Institute's decision to remove him.

On a related note, Peterson's "masculine preserve" that is ostensibly peer reviewing the Interpreter articles is failing miserably. The last several articles I read all had inexcusable statistical errors. He may think he is not able to attract competent female academics, but clearly the pertinent issue his journal has is in attracting competency, not a particular gender.

Has he not watched Survivor, or, I dunno, spent two seconds with a woman who feels free to speak her mind in a professional environment? Anecdotally, women have been far more competitive than men in my workplace experience, and have a keen mind to exploit weakness.

Whatever the case may be, why would Peterson want to share the 'ziggurat', as it were, with a woman? They're total buzkills. Can you imagine it's Donut Friday at the home office, and the apologists are schoolhousing around, talking over the latest tidbits offered up across the Mormosphere, taking cheap shots at their enemies, and in walks Sister Apologist? She takes a seat at the laminate foldout table, grabs a Boston Cream, and clumsily asks, "What are we talking about, brethren?"

Ugh.

Why do they always ruin everything?

- Doc

It does sound as though this is the problem.

Peterson said that none of the qualified women whom he invited agreed to join his organization because they were all already overburdened with other work. That's a real issue, all right, in academic departments in which women are badly under-represented. Departments are tempted to make a few women faculty look like more by getting the few to do more than their share of holding large lectures, giving public talks, and chairing committees.

Those high-profile things are all work, though—and not usually interesting work. As one of my colleagues remarked, when I was trying to get her to chair a search committee, "I went into science to do science, not to open up science for women." Of course she was right. She's not a professor of getting-women-into-physics. She's a professor of physics.

Female faculty may rightly refuse to do more than their share of drudge work but you can always get a professor to take on another interesting project, because if nothing else it will be a great excuse for procrastinating on something less interesting. So if being part of Interpreter were seen as important and interesting then some of those BYU women would surely have joined. The fact that all who were asked declined implies that working on Interpreter is seen as a dull and pointless task.

I work in a law firm of 17 lawyers - a profession historically aggressively male. Though the managing partner and founder is a man, 11 of our 17 lawyers (including one of his two partners) are female. Not because he is looking to hire primarily female lawyers, but because he has honestly been able to shed the masculine bias so inherent in the profession.

And it's not because it's a low-key, gentle environment. The managing partner is as aggressive and high-strung as they come. F-bombs are common, yelling is common, and expectations are extremely high. I guarantee DCP and his apologists would wither in this environment. It just happens that when historical masculine biases are put aside, we've discovered that gender has no bearing on whether someone can be a good, aggressive, capable attorney. Our female trial attorneys are no less capable, no less aggressive, and no less intelligent than our male attorneys.

To say that female scholars may not be able to thrive in the crucible of Mormon apologetics is a delusion borne of irrational masculine bigotry.

Interesting. I'm curious, if someone made the following statements, how would you characterize them? Would these statements also be considered "chauvenistic" and "bias confirming"?






Would you agree with those statements?

What a bombshell revelation! Yet another member of the apologetic community has defected to the community of "apostates"! Welcome to Jenny T(onks?)! I hope you choose to drop by MormonDiscussions.com to share your insights with us, if you have not already!

Feel free to bring your cousin Nymphadora Tonks as well. We welcome all who seek refuge from the Dementors. Apologium Obliviosa!

Whoever wrote this one certainly has a predisposition to describe women's thinking in a more 'quotation-marked' way. Yeesh.

If the writer of this sentence was a man, then the sentence is anecdotal evidence against itself. If a woman, for.

I’m pretty sure those statements are intent on explaining some behavioural differences between men and women and how they might operate differently within the same discipline. As opposed to making a blanket statement about why women aren’t as good as men at apologetics, or competing in sports.

But maybe they are statements making the case for why women shouldn’t be participating in certain things - if that’s the case, feel free to demonstrate.

I found out that my spouse knew a Jenny Tonks at the MTC. The two had been Facebook friends, but it seems that I cannot locate her among my spouse's Facebook friends now. In any case, if this is the same person, this is more anecdotal evidence of how small the Mormon world is.

Let me be the first to announce that the Interpreter Foundation recently rearranged the executive deck desk chairs. It seems that the Foundation has split its Executive Board into a Board of Trustees and a new Board of Advisors and created a new Management level. Starting from the top, the Foundation has a five-member Board of Trustees. All five are male. Three have PhDs and one has a J.D.

"Management" consists of two women, one a manager of peer review and one a manager of editorial services.

Eight men currently sit on the new Board of Advisors.

Nine men currently sit on the Board of Editors.

There are nine Contributing Editors (six men and three women).

Some notable names that have left Foundation leadership somewhat recently: William Hamblin, Ralph Hancock, John Butler, James Faulconer, and Donald Parry. Their service was greatly appreciated.

Some thoughts: Dr. Peterson states that she "apparently volunteered for a time to copyedit some of the manuscripts submitted to us." Why the lack of certainty? He goes on to say that "[s]he was, I'm told, a very good editor." Here he manifests no personal familiarity with her work. He then reports that "[a]pparently, though, she backed away from volunteering for us, a few months ago, on the grounds that she was just too busy." Again, the distance is evident. (Given these statements, Dr. Peterson’s subsequent disclaimer that he doesn’t “know her and have never met or, to the best of my knowledge, interacted with her” does not surprise me.)

I might suggest that Dr. Peterson, as President of the Interpreter Foundation, make a stronger effort to establish and maintain relationships with those who do the real work at the Foundation. Going forward, he could, for example, call Mr. Wyatt more frequently than "every once in a while" to check how he's doing as Interpreter's editor. Or perhaps he, during a spare moment while enjoying a four-night deluxe Nile cruise, could pen a note to a volunteer editor to thank her for her excellent work. (On a personal note, I must confess that Dr. Peterson never reached out to me while I was serving as a volunteer copyeditor for Interpreter from 2012-2016.) Simple gestures such as these would go a long way in building staff morale and limiting attrition and defections.

Tom, Danny paster boy doesn't have time. Too many trips on the tithe payers dime. He doesn't even have time to write an original speech for his fan club. He is so short of time he doesn't have time for an original thought so he has become a serial plagiarizer. Is it lack of time or is he just lazy? Maybe both.

One man doing the work of ten.

Tom, it's too bad that while you were serving as a volunteer copyeditor Peterson never once expressed his gratitude or gave you a single kind word of encouragement.

I bet you put in thousands of hours of thankless, menial hard work for the Interpreter. Peterson sounds like the worst boss in the entire world.

Do you think if Peterson would have treated you like you mattered or were part of the team would you still be there today?

It was tens of thousands of hours, but no matter.


That's a really difficult, even painful, question to answer, Everybody Wang Chung, but I suspect so. My needs are quite small. Truth be told, if Dr. Peterson had returned from a trip to Egypt with a present of a wearable papier-mâché Anubis mask or a clod of authentic camel dung (روث الإبل) collected from Syalt Badran in Luxor, I'd likely be working for Interpreter today. واحسرتاه

Tom,

I'm sorry to hear about your experience working with Peterson. I've heard many similar stories from people who have had the misfortune of working for and/or with Peterson.

You leaving the Interpreter was definitely their loss.

Yes, this is the Jennifer Easton Tonks that is being speculated about. I personally emailed her and you can see the exchange and the updates here. Lemmie found a post of hers recently on Reddit ExMormon, and I followed up by emailing her.

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=52235&p=1195547#p1195547

Tom, I didn't realize you were an editor at Interpreter also. Things get past me all too often. I am grateful you can share insights into it all. I always hasten to your posts when I see them.