Freaks of Nature?

Something to be in awe of, or to be offended by?

I wish this column was about the freaks of nature that I like to think about, like the mysterious energy of empty space dominating the expansion of the universe, or the new giant galaxy size globs of radio emitting material just discovered in distant space, or the amazing Romanesco Cauliflower, pictured above . It isn’t, alas, because there seems to be a need to explain that the term isn’t, on its own, racist or sexist. Indeed, it can be a compliment.

A colleague sent me a recent New York Times piece that I first thought was a satirical piece written for The Onion. Alas, it is not satire, it is real life tragedy.

The chair of psychiatry at Columbia University, Jeffrey Lieberman, was just suspended for producing the following tweet responding to a tweeted photograph of a model, provocatively clad and sitting on a bed: “Whether a work of art or a freak of nature, she’s a beautiful sight to behold.”

One might argue that such a comment objectifies her as a woman and is thus sexist. Even here, however, one can debate that. Let us remember that this individual is a model. Photographs taken of models generally objectify them, treating them either as beautiful clothes hangers and thus using them to sell products, or, in a nobler vein, to capture human beauty for artistic purposes.

Less obvious, at least as I have framed it here, is how this comment could be racist. But of course, the model in question is dark-skinned. So dark skinned in fact that her fans apparently refer to her as “Queen of the Dark.”

I am bewildered about why that reference is not viewed as racist while Dr. Lieberman’s attempt at waxing poetic was. The former makes specific reference to the color of her skin. Dr. Lieberman’s did not. Even if Dr. Lieberman were referring to the darkness of her skin as part of her beauty, which is not clear from his tweet, at worst he would be agreeing with the rest of her legion of fans.

To be clear, being a freak of nature can be a good thing. Many models can be considered freaks of nature because they personify beauty in a way that average people do not. They are on the tail of some distribution. Just as basketball players are freaks of nature. Not because many of them are black, but because on the whole they are far taller than the rest of us, and endowed with physical characteristics that allow them to do what the rest of us cannot. So too are Olympic swimmers. Or mountain climbers.

If Dr. Lieberman had called Paulina Porizkova—one of the more famous of the models on the provocative Sports Illustrated Swimsuit covers—a freak of nature I suspect that while some would have agreed and others would have thought it was crass, no one would have called it racist. That is because she is white. Why can one not use the same aphorism for a black model?

The tone of Dr. Lieberman’s was certainly not derogatory, even if fawning over a provocative photo of a model might not be the wisest use of Dr. Lieberman’s Twitter account. It appears to have been meant as a compliment. There are two ways of accepting such a compliment, with grace, or with offense. Alas, we seem to live in a society where the latter is quickly becoming the norm.

Indeed, the problem with Dr. Lieberman’s tweet, according to the Times story, is that it drew negative attention from some, mostly black, medical professionals. In other words, it induced a twitter reaction calling for his head, which at universities now usually results in just that.

One of the negative respondents, an MD candidate in medicine who has a focus on “health equity,” “transgender advocacy” and “studying the health effects of systemic racism.” was quoted as saying: “To not understand how racist language like that is harmful when your profession is supposed to care for the mental health of people makes you unqualified to be a psychiatrist at all, let alone the chief of the top program.” In an article responding further to the tweet, this individual wrote that because there was a history of “hypersexualizing” or “otherizing” Black women in the media and “even in textbooks.” for Dr. Lieberman to respond to a clearly sexualized photo of a model as he did disqualified him to hold his professional position.

Department leaders at Columbia called for an immediate faculty meeting and announced Dr. Lieberman’s replacement with an interim chair. Lieberman, one of the nation’s leading psychiatrists specializing in schizophrenia, was also immediately removed from his position as psychiatrist-in-chief at Columbia University Irving Medical Center/New York-Presbyterian Hospital.

As so often happens now for people who are publicly shamed because of language that offends, Dr Lieberman issued a heartfelt Soviet-style apology where he renounced his tweet as “racist and sexist,” noted that he was deeply ashamed of his “prejudices and stereotypical assumptions” and added “An apology from me to the Black community, to women, and to all of you is not enough. I’ve hurt many, and I am beginning to understand the work ahead to make needed personal changes.”

Those who were hurt by his tweet own their reactions and their responses. As I have described elsewhere, they have every right to be offended, but they are not owed special rights over the lives, careers, and freedom of speech of others simply because they were offended. A silly tweet responding to another tweet fawning over some model may be crass, but neither does it seem that it should be job disqualifying.

One wonders, in the end, who will be more hurt by this episode. Those who objected to or were hurt by Dr. Lieberman’s tweet, or all of those psychiatric patients who will no longer be able to benefit from his knowledge and experience.

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