Ambivalence is what I do...
Yes, of course women who have doctorates may quite reasonably be asked to be addressed by their title, and it is neither a sign of arrogance nor of insecurity, it is merely a descriptor indicating that they have put in the time and effort to obtain a higher degree -
But while I think of all the women who had expertise and authority in various fields, paging Molly Crowfoot: 'If you spend twenty-five years working on anything, you become the world expert' (quoted in Georgina Ferry, Dorothy Hodgkin), and were not able to acquite doctorates or any kind of recognised validation for their accomplishments, yes, wave it high, wave it high -
I also think of the knowledge I have which was lately described to me as 'encyclopaedic' and which is not, I think, particularly the result of any formal academic work I have undertaken but the product of a lifetime of very miscellaneous reading and four-plus decades as an archivist.
But anyway, there are people out there who have put in the hours and the effort to acquire the kind of knowledge that conveys a certain authority when discussing matters to which that knowledge pertains, without that accruing any formal accolade.
While one may feel that certain, if not yet quite Dead, Distinguished White Males may come to a stage in their lives when they - regrettably - think that there's no knowledge but they knows it, what they don't know isn't knowledge, and that is tiresome enough, it is a a good deal more tiresome when this attitude is manifested by social media trolls who do not, as far as one can tell, have any record of having made some Great Discovery some decades in the past and are now living off the reputation, and indeed, give every indication of gross ignorance (as in the adjacent Twitter stream mentioning some guy claiming that Gay Sex was Unknown in Classical Times: and not in some sophisticated acts vs identity, questions of definition, theoretically inflected way, but from being the sort of person to whom the name Plato conveys nothing whatsoever). This entry was originally posted at https://oursin.dreamwidth.org/2779039.html. Please comment there using OpenID. View
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