With All Due Respect, Fuck You, Mr. Epstein
By: Gb Rogut
Tags: Dr Jill Biden, Feminism, Misogyny, Education, Women

I was doing my early doom scrolling on Twitter, with small breaks to check out my favorite dog-related accounts. After scoring some smiles, I noticed the following tweet by Jessica Valenti.

In this tweet, she added the screenshot of the introductory lines to a piece published in The Wall Street Journal — which you can read here, shall you feel the need. The paragraph, which I sense has become instantly “iconic,” reads as follows:

Madame First Lady — Mrs. Biden — Jill — kiddo: a bit of advice on what may seem like a small but I think is a not unimportant matter. Any chance you might drop the “Dr.” before your name? “Dr. Jill Biden” sounds and feels fraudulent, not to say a touch comic. Your degree is, I believe, an Ed.D., a doctor of education, earned at the University of Delaware through a dissertation with the unpromising title “Student Retention at the Community College Level: Meeting Students’ Needs.” A wise man once said that no one should call himself “Dr.” unless he has delivered a child. Think about it, Dr. Jill, and forthwith drop the doc.

I confess I was instantly angry. The nerve! The audacity! The patronizing! Yes, my first instinct was to shout at the screen a huge, “Fuck you!”

However, then I collected myself and realized that, as inflammatory as that first paragraph was, it would be unprofessional of me to pass judgment without reading the whole thing. So I went and forced myself to digest that…

Here are my findings.

What’s this piece really about?

The author, Joseph Epstein, after mocking Dr. Biden’s degree, explains he knows doctorates are not important because he never got one. In fact, he taught “at Northwestern University for 30 years without a doctorate or any advanced degree.” By the way, nothing wrong with that; I truly believe a person can be a good teacher even if they don’t have a Ph. D.

Then, he adds that he eventually got an honorary doctorate, which furthers his belief that getting an academic degree is a mockery or, to quote Dr. Biden’s spouse, “a bunch of malarkey.” He provides examples of famous people who also got honorary doctorates, which I suppose he did to further prove his point.

This got me thinking…what’s this piece really about? Is he complaining because too many people have honorary doctorates? Is he showing off the fact that he doesn’t understand the effort a person has to invest in getting a Ph. D.? He talks about how it used to be harder; by his account, people actually fainted during their examinations. It seems that, to his taste, Dr. Biden got her degree only after those arduous days were over, which, obviously, deems her degree completely worthless.

Pity…

In the end, I couldn’t grasp his intention. If his point was to criticize the excessive number of celebrities with honorary doctorates, why drag into the conversation a person who actually wrote a dissertation? Furthermore, why does he think it is “unpromising” to discuss the importance of “Meeting Students’ Needs,” which is the topic Dr. Biden addressed?

Was this supposed to be funny?

It occurred to me then that maybe this whole thing was, somehow, supposed to be funny.

Ha-ha, celebrities get doctorates! Ha-ha, people with a Ph. D. think they are actually doctors but they aren’t! Ha-ha, here’s an accomplished woman but I’m going to use her career to write a punchline for my joke!

It feels like a waste to use so many words to tell a woman, once again, just to smile, be nice and behave the way he likes.

As a woman who has been a teacher for almost 18 years now, it makes my blood boil whenever a man who has been a teacher for about five minutes starts calling me sweetie, or, as Mr. Epstein did in this piece, kiddo. It bothers me when men complain because I claim my space in the room. It bothers me when I’m told I shouldn’t speak that much or be too loud. It bothers me when I’m told I shouldn’t boast about my accomplishments.

You don’t want to be unladylike, right?

So, reading that paragraph was triggering as fuck. The fact that such a patronizing pile of shit got to be printed in a major newspaper (and published on their website) is infuriating.

I know there will be someone who will tell me to calm down and turn the other cheek. To not be an angry woman.

And they will be right, of course, but not because that article wasn’t that offensive, but because it is just not worth it. However, just for a little while, and because it will be extremely cathartic, I will open my mouth and, as loudly as I can, say, once again, “Fuck you, Mr. Epstein.”