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Did you read the book? Some of those are distortions. Regarding the negging incident, she left out important context in her summary of this part of the book.

Did you read the book? Some of those are distortions. Regarding the negging incident, she left out important context in her summary of this part of the book. Feynman went to a bar where it was clear that some of the women at that bar were intending to use men to get free drinks and food. In the incident he described, a woman asked him to buy three sandwiches and a drink at a diner and then says she has to run to go meet up with a lieutenant (taking the sandwiches with her). His negging, was to ask for her to pay for the sandwiches if she had no intention of staying and eating with him. Basically, not being a pushover. Secondly, he states right after that in the book, "But no matter how effective the lesson was, I never really used it after that. I didn't enjoy doing that." I also think the incident about lying about whether he was a student while at Cornell was exaggerated. Feynman was 26 at the time and his wife had just died. In the anecdote about the dance, he mentions that some girls asked him if he was a student, and after getting rejected by others at the dance, he says "I don't want to say" and two girls go with him back to his place. But later he confesses, "I didn't want the situation to get so distorted and misunderstood, so I let them know I was a professor". Overall, I don't find strong evidence of the claims that he was a misogynist or abusive to women in the book outside of his frequenting of a strip club, which may be enough for some people, but, I think people don't realize how different people's attitudes were to things like nudity and sex in the 70s and early 80s before AIDs was a thing.

speff 2y ago
I hadn't read the book fully, but I did coincidentally read that chapter a long time ago. Given the context you provide, I agree that he does not seem to be worse than anyone else given the time period. The problem is when people read about him and try to adopt mid-1900s values in the 2000s - and that's really what the video above about his legacy is about. (also I'm fairly pro people-visiting-the-strip-club even though I've never been)
gitremote 2y ago
It's misogynistic, because the ghost writer of Surely You're Joking Mr. Feyman!, Ralph Leighton, ultimately put into print narratives that encouraged men to see "ordinary" women as "worthless bitches". In the character of "Feynman": Well, someone only has to give me the principle, and I get the idea. All during the next day I built up my psychology differently: I adopted the attitude that those bar girls are all bitches, that they aren't worth anything, and all they're in there for is to get you to buy them a drink, and they're not going to give you a goddamn thing; I'm not going to be a gentleman to such worthless bitches, and so on. I learned it till it was automatic. ... On the way to the bar I was working up nerve to try the master's lesson on an ordinary girl. After all, you don't feel so bad disrespecting a bar girl who's trying to get you to buy her drinks but a nice, ordinary, Southern girl? We went into the bar, and before I sat down, I said, "Listen, before I buy you a drink, I want to know one thing: Will you sleep with me tonight?" "Yes." So it worked even with an ordinary girl! The story about direct consensual sex with one "ordinary girl" doesn't validate that men should have misogynist attitudes towards ordinary women. It's just confirmation bias. It matters, because training your mind to be misogynist until it's automatic would spill over into other aspects of your life, like how you treat female coworkers.

speff 2y ago

I hadn't read the book fully, but I did coincidentally read that chapter a long time ago. Given the context you provide, I agree that he does not seem to be worse than anyone else given the time period. The problem is when people read about him and try to adopt mid-1900s values in the 2000s - and that's really what the video above about his legacy is about. (also I'm fairly pro people-visiting-the-strip-club even though I've never been)

gitremote 2y ago

It's misogynistic, because the ghost writer of Surely You're Joking Mr. Feyman!, Ralph Leighton, ultimately put into print narratives that encouraged men to see "ordinary" women as "worthless bitches". In the character of "Feynman": Well, someone only has to give me the principle, and I get the idea. All during the next day I built up my psychology differently: I adopted the attitude that those bar girls are all bitches, that they aren't worth anything, and all they're in there for is to get you to buy them a drink, and they're not going to give you a goddamn thing; I'm not going to be a gentleman to such worthless bitches, and so on. I learned it till it was automatic. ... On the way to the bar I was working up nerve to try the master's lesson on an ordinary girl. After all, you don't feel so bad disrespecting a bar girl who's trying to get you to buy her drinks but a nice, ordinary, Southern girl? We went into the bar, and before I sat down, I said, "Listen, before I buy you a drink, I want to know one thing: Will you sleep with me tonight?" "Yes." So it worked even with an ordinary girl! The story about direct consensual sex with one "ordinary girl" doesn't validate that men should have misogynist attitudes towards ordinary women. It's just confirmation bias. It matters, because training your mind to be misogynist until it's automatic would spill over into other aspects of your life, like how you treat female coworkers.