Negging of Law Professors

For those of you unfamiliar with the concept, negging (according to the urban dictionary) is when a man relies on low-grade insults meant to undermine the self-confidence of an attractive woman so she might be more vulnerable to his advances.  It is a way for a man to attract a woman more beautiful than he would normally be able to attract. 

Try this classic example of negging: “Hey, I really like your dress.”

 **pause for her response**

Yeah, my (mother/aunt/grandmother) has one just like it." 

Or another one:  “It is so cute how your nose moves up-and-down when you laugh.”

**point and chuckle**

“So cute.” 

Negging is insulting—but in a subtle back-handed way—so that the woman is not angry that a man has insulted her but her self-confidence is damaged just enough that the woman becomes insecure (and in need of the man’s approval) so that he may now have a chance with her.

 So, what does negging have to do with law professors?  Well, I think in general law professors have the temptation to become like beautiful women: arrogant, self-important, and with a belief that the world and all things revolve around them.  I remember having this thought for the first time when I had a student come into my office to ask my opinion on an issue.  After about 15 minutes of talking on and on about a certain topic, I realized that this student was going to smile and nod to everything I said and write it all down as if it was Truth (with a capital T).  It can be dangerous to be in a profession where we have a weekly pulpit to discuss our views on issues (with little opposition), where we are often called “experts” on a wide-variety of topics, where we are surrounded by flattery from students and colleagues (with a notable exception discussed in Mike Madison, Michael Risch, and Jeff Lipshaw’s posts on “tough love” at faculty workshops), and where we generally get paid to write, think, and speak about whatever we find interesting.

Generally speaking, as law professors our egos get flattered more often than other lawyers.  Maybe this is why we tend to like our jobs better than other lawyers.  I can think of two exceptions to this that occur at four different times of year: law review submission periods and student evaluations.  This is where the negging comes into our profession, allowing our egos not to get unmanageable such that they explode or allow us to become unbearable to be around.  With every separate rejection we get from law reviews who do not want our amazingly innovative law review article, we are negged.  Our egos are kept in check.  Our first response to law review negging may be: “clearly they didn’t read the article” or “well, I didn’t want to publish in that journal anyway,” but as other rejections come in (regardless of who they are from), we realize, “well, maybe my article *isn’t* objectively the best article ever written.”  This is good for us.  And even when we eventually place our article in an acceptable law journal, we have still gone through this process that allows us to feel the rejection and pain of negging.

Negging with women and law reviews isn’t a perfect analogy, of course, because the law review editor has no devious plan to eventually date the professor.  But the effect of the person being negged is similar with both examples; and that is what I want to highlight.  In sum, negging of law professors and beautiful women may both be positive developments.  Less attractive men are able to end up with more beautiful women.  Law professors are able to keep from dispelling all friends and family who used to be able to tolerate us.  And so on.  At least this is what I am telling myself as the rejections pile in on my latest submission...