I wasn't looking for them. They just made themselves known:
1) David Horowitz, for his new attack on women's studies, One Party Classroom. From what the report in Inside Higher Education indicates, Horowitz rejects gender as a tool of analysis, and argues that women's studies classes are tools of indoctrination into Marxism (and one can presume "the she-woman boy-haters club" where we all learn cunnilingus and burn our bras -- at least that's the straw man I make out of the straw woman created by similar opponents of the whole field of women's studies).
How does he know the last? Well, he read 150 course descriptions, syllabi, and reading lists. He doesn't read the books, he doesn't sit in a sampling of the classes, not even the one that is taught by the "villain" of his book, Bettina Aptheker, that she has made available to the public. He does not enquire into the contexts of the readings and syllabi. So, he's a lazy researcher, too.
Why didn't he sit in on classes? Seems he didn't have the time or money. Welcome to the world of actual academic research, in which you have limited resources and still have to produce intellectually viable work.
Women's studies has been around for -- what? -- thirty years now, and it continues to develop. It has altered every field that it touches and public policy by addressing the fact that women, because they have two X chromosomes, are treated differently and have different experiences of the world. Those differences exist within different and intersecting hierarchies of power. To reject that is to reject the experience of half of the population and to be, at a very profound level, sexist.
2) Wow! I was never a big fan of Jerry Lewis. Something always seemed off about his appeals every Labor Day. Now I am seeing critique from disabled people who protested his Academy Award. He would have garnered some sympathy from me if he had responded to the critique with something to the effect of, "oh, really? I hadn't considered my approach from that point of view. Maybe I should rethink it." After all, he is of a certain generation that hid its disabilities and disabled people. Instead, he chastises the disabled for refusing pity. He, in essence, said that their lived experience was not the proper experience. Now, that is the behavior of an asshole.
3) Whoever is in charge of the music volume at the gym. Good god, whoever you are! We are not in a nightclub. The volume doesn't have to shake the walls.
4) While we are at it, whoever is in charge of allowing storefront plastic surgeons to place advertising fliers in prominent places in the gym. You guys should be promoting health, not slicing and dicing to meet some pre-approved notion of beauty.
5) All of the Republicans who are charging Obama and the Democrats -- oh, who are we kidding, anyone who supports any sort of government stimulus plan -- of "socialism." (We on the left only wish it were so!) Like Andre the Giant said in Princess Bride, "I don't think that word means what you think it means." Socialism and Stalinism are not the same thing. I also am constantly, naively amazed that, according to the right wing, "government spending" means "socialism" when it involves domestic issues, but "patriotism" when it means foreign intervention and wars.
6) The Morpheus of my subconscious, for giving me disturbing dreams. Yeah, I know, Morpheus of the subconscious, I'll thank you later in therapy. Right now, you are messing with my day.
Sunday, March 01, 2009
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4 comments:
Megadittos, Clio B.!
I wonder if Horowitz has targeted Bettina Aptheker because he is angry about her expose of her father for sexually abusing her? Horowitz used to be a Stalinist Leftist before he became a Stalinist fascist right-winger, and Herbert Aptheker was probably someone for whom he had a lot of admiration.
Horowitz is a sad, sad, little man. I've always had the feeling that rather than hating academia and academics, instead he's deeply envious of us and wishes he could be admitted to the guild. Going after women's studies departments and programs may have a boomerang effect--no one, not even his putative allies, thinks Horowitz is a serious person. Everyone knows the guy is a joke. What better enemy to have these days?
Historiann.com
Haha. Andre the Giant reference. To debunk the mudslinging republicans.
Love it.
Hear, hear. Ditto to all of the above. I saw a major news magazine the other day with the headline 'we are all now socialists' and was appalled. It did add that it was European-style socialism (I wish) vs Stalinism, but didn't clarify. And judging by the people I hear, those essential differences aren't at all understood in this country. So it's still irresponsible fear-mongering.
May we never sink to Horowitz levels.
Historiann: I didn't know that Horowitz was such a fan of Aptheker the father. That puts his attack on the daughter in perspective. This makes him so much more pathetic.
I remember Bettina Aptheker's revelation about her father. The defense of him fit very much into your post about "nice guys": "He was a great historian, he was such a great man, he could NEVER have done what she said."
Bittersweet Girl: I can't help it! I just keep hearing Andre the Giant whenever I hear "socialism" used as a dirty word by the Republicans.
Belle: I confess that, as I stood in a 30 minute long checkout line at the grocery store because they have cut down on the number of checkers, I thought, "damn, this is like Soviet Russia." But I was exagerrating, and knew it. I'm not sure that the Republicans are.
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