In class, I’m talking about femicide.
Me: In the area of Ciudad Juarez, hundreds and probably thousands of women have been found murdered. Many of the bodies have been dismembered. There is evidence that many of the victims were tortured and raped before being killed. These horrible crimes rise to the level of genocide against women.
Student: So it isn’t a good thing?
Me: What isn’t?
Student: This is for my notes. Do I put this in the column with negative things or positive things?
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I would have answered: “You choose. But you have to be able to justify where you put it. I like well-crafted arguments”.
But I am just tired today.
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I’m also exhausted. So I just stared back wildly and moved on. Then, I heard a student who is from that area in Mexico explain to her what femicide was all about.
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Wait a minute, HER?????
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Yes, it was a female student. 😦
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Was he jesting or seeking the Malthus Award (there must be one; there is an award for nearly everything else)?
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Even Malthus would not support that kind of shit!
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Probably an overdose of drugs…
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drug overdose, sorry….
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Haha….I don’t know if I should laugh or cry. :)) Where do you find these students?
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Wow. wow wow wow wow. The student must have misunderstood you? Maybe s/he thought femicide was a contraversial kind of industrial insecticide?
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Well Camille Paglia thinks its a good thing and indeed psychologically to be expected.
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How so?
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In Sexual Personae, she states in one of her essays, that males are rightfully fearful of the uterus and killing women and hanging up their uteri in a row, as trophies, is a natural and normal thing to do.
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“In Sexual Personae, she states in one of her essays, that males are rightfully fearful of the uterus and killing women and hanging up their uteri in a row, as trophies, is a natural and normal thing to do.”
-This sounds like the female version of the “penis envy”, Freud’s greatest blunder.
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Could be what she is trying to evoke here. As for Freud and penis envy, can you imagine anything that is more guaranteed to turn you off sex with any kind of male than the following:
1. “You desire to possess my penis because you are castrated.”
2. “You desire to have sex with me because I remind you of a parent.”
Both of these formulas are extremely anti-sex in such a way that it would be harder (impossible) to come up with a stronger anti-erotic formula or one more ignorant of female psychology.
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Stronger than “You are just like your mother!”?
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Putting aside the issue of killing someone based on their gender (or killing someone at all, really), what sense does it make to sort facts heard in class in this manner?!
Are your students expected to write some kind of pro and contra argumentation if the Good Old Times were really that good?
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We were discussing the positive and the negative developments in the Spanish-speaking world as a conclusion to the course.
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There was an story in the student newspaper where I work that there was a shortage of Adderall (for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)). So maybe they are off their meds for the first time. And are slowly trying to think for themself for the first time since age six.
Really columns in a lecture class Tim has it. It works in accounting, but that is with a T for credits and debit. And in some sciences for describing something.
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This is a possibility I never wanted to face: that the students are so listless and indifferent because they are medicated into oblivion.
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@ David
“Yes, it was a female student. :-(”
Unbelievable isn’t it? A FEMALE can come up with a stupid question. Shock horror!
Who’d have thought that women are people?
@ Jennifer:
“Well Camille Paglia thinks its a good thing and indeed psychologically to be expected.”
That’s not how I interpreted her writing. Or would you please care to quote where she suggests that genocide against women was a good thing. Sounds like you’re confusing an explanation with a justification.
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Sounds like you’re an ape!
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“Sounds like you’re an ape!”
Lol. I take from that pathetic attempt at an insult, that you can’t back up your claim that Camille Paglia advocates genocide. Shame on you!
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At Adi: I think that the commenters are surprised that this is a female student because they are working under the (understandable) assumption that a female might be extra sensitive to the issue of femicide.This has nothing to do with thinking that female students can’t say silly or offensive things. I think that you are getting yourself riled up over nothing.
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Yes, precisely. This is what I found so shocking, too.
And I don’t think it has to do with a lack of sensitivity on the student’s part. This just more evidence that students want to record “the right answers”, memorize them, and deliver them during the tests. The actual content of the knowledge gets lost as a result.
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Not to mention the fact that the male/female balance in the world (which has been roughly 50-50 since the dawn of time) is shifting towards the males due to selective abortions in China and India. Is that a good thing?
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That, of course, is a tragedy and those countries will pay the price for this very soon. This kind of an imbalance never leads to anything positive.
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