I really like students who were in the military. They are very polite, courteous, and respond well to authority. All I hear from them is, “Yes, ma’am. Will do, ma’am. I’m on it, ma’am.”
I always get tempted to tell them, “Now drop down and give me 20 verb conjugations in the present perfect!”
They’re also more likely to fasten their auto safety belts 100% of the time, ergo, more likely to arrive in class in one piece.
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My former military students are also the hardest workers, and the ones who seem to “want” their education the most. They’re the ones who come in extra to learn stuff, and they are always present when they’re in the classroom. I think that beyond the politeness, it has to do with their choice to come back to school post-military.
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“it has to do with their choice to come back to school post-military.”
Exactly. At least, they are no longer members of this terrorist organization.
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That’s a good thing but fuck the troops.
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That’s why a more masculine — i.e. hierarchical and formal basis for society — offers better opportunities for women to express genuine authority. But contemporary feminism has taken all of this in the entire wrong direction!
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How is the hierarchical more masculine??
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// How is the hierarchical more masculine??
Some feminist scholars and patriarchy’s supporters publish how women prefer cooperating with others to complete a project (at school, f.e.), while men prefer individual work / “pure” competition.
// That’s why a more masculine — i.e. hierarchical and formal basis for society — offers better opportunities for women to express genuine authority.
If so, it offers the same for men, no?
// But contemporary feminism has taken all of this in the entire wrong direction!
But thinking that cooperation (not zero sum game world view) is better than pure individualism and competition?
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“Some feminist scholars and patriarchy’s supporters”
– This is definitely the comment of the week. 🙂
“But thinking that cooperation (not zero sum game world view) is better than pure individualism and competition?”
– Depending on the circumstances, either can work better. Forgive me for an uncharacterisic sports metaphor: some sports are played in teams and some are played individually.
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You may not have been keeping up to date on your leftwing gender politics, it seems. That is, however, how radical liberals view reality. They state that a flattened society is more egalitarian and feminine, whereas hierarchies are essentially masculine and to be rejected.
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‘You may not have been keeping up to date on your leftwing gender politics, it seems. That is, however, how radical liberals view reality. They state that a flattened society is more egalitarian and feminine, whereas hierarchies are essentially masculine and to be rejected.”
– After this explanation, I’m kind of glad I haven’t been keeping up. 🙂 This honestly sounds like a load of baloney. The flattened feminine sounds kind of disturbing to me.
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As I was implying originally, it leads to the opposite result that people like me, a woman, would find beneficial. You get these flattened sewing circles, all sensitive and backbiting. Nobody has any idea how to act honorably. But this is proclaimed as a return to a true feminine state of things and a success.
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“As I was implying originally, it leads to the opposite result that people like me, a woman, would find beneficial. You get these flattened sewing circles, all sensitive and backbiting. Nobody has any idea how to act honorably. But this is proclaimed as a return to a true feminine state of things and a success.”
– I know what you mean! I hate this kind of thing.
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Which is another reason why I am withdrawing from “liberation” movements. You might have seen that footage I posted, that is now making the mainstream media, where a Nigerian tug ship capsized and almost everyone in it died. A salvage team — not a rescue team — descended on it three days later. To their extreme surprise they found a guy in there who wasn’t a corpse. They got him out and he is fine.
Now they salvage guys have a white Zimbabwean accent and were acting with effective military discipline. I recognised the accent right away.
Some identity politics types on youtube immediately proclaimed that the footage was “racist”, which shows their priorities. As another guy later said to me, “lucky the salvage team bothered to turn up”.
Putting your priority on rescuing hurt feelings rather than rescuing individuals is what is wrong with identity politics today. I make it my new year’s project to crush the infamous thing.
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“Some identity politics types on youtube immediately proclaimed that the footage was “racist”, which shows their priorities. As another guy later said to me, “lucky the salvage team bothered to turn up”.”
– Ridiculous. What’s wrong with people? The guy was saved, that’s cause for celebration, nothing else.
“Putting your priority on rescuing hurt feelings rather than rescuing individuals is what is wrong with identity politics today.”
– Very true.
“I make it my new year’s project to crush the infamous thing.”
– Count me in!
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and now I have gone and made the unfortunate slip of referring to a “slavage” rather than “salvage” team. It is early here still.
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I changed it for you.
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HAHAHA. You don’t like me to be amused. 😉
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“HAHAHA. You don’t like me to be amused”
– Oh, I thought you didn’t mind. I can always change it back. It’s the teacher thing. I can’t keep myself from correcting things.
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No, I was just joking with you. I just thought that my typo, hopefully not a fully blown Freudian slip, would pour oil on the flames of those who thought that white Zimbabweans rescuing a black guy was “racist”. Hence my amusement.
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Jennifer Frances: my father told me he likes reading your comments the most because you are profound. 🙂 I agree.
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Ah, sweet! Thank your father!
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On supposed egalitarianism of a “flattened society”: those same women don’t entirely escape hierarchy. The pushing of a “flattened society” is in some cases is an attempt to shore up a hierarchy that already exists.
And sometimes it feels like a cop-out to avoid respecting the authority of women they would never respect, which often breaks down by class and racial lines. It’s not a coincidence that as more women who aren’t them start getting access to authority they talk about flat structures. They were all fine with hierarchy in their organizations when it was just them at the top being listened to.
More people start getting a bachelor’s? “You need a masters.” More people start getting masters? “You need a certificate. Then a Ph.D.” Then elites emphasize internships with the “right” kind of people and “connections” and tell you in not so many ways that your education is not enough and not worth anything.
You get these flattened sewing circles, all sensitive and backbiting. Nobody has any idea how to act honorably
ROFLMAO. They toss their “good faith” out of the window. I think that was my real sin: I had no bandwidth for remembering 4568^12 pieces of history so I could manage everyone’s emotions by demonstratively flailing in the appropriate manner.
“I’m so sad :((((” *CHOMP* “Sending white healing light” *CHOMP*
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This leads me to another big difference between my experience with school in Canada versus school in the states: When I was attending university in the U.S, there were many, many veteran students, and they were exactly as you describe, polite, well-spoken, respectful, good students. At my university in Canada (Which is in a port town with several military bases) there’s almost no veterans in any of my classes, and in the classes where I did see other students who were veterans, they were rude, disrespectful, and downright aggressive and threatening to the professor and the students sometimes.
I can’t figure out if it’s a Canada/America thing, or something else, but it’s a little disconcerting.
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This is very interesting. I never had any military students back in Canada, so I can’t say if there was a difference.
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I can almost understand the “hierarchies as masculine” concept when it’s applied to social hierarchies, but I have heard people argue (or at least imply) that *all* hierarchies are inherently masculine. I’ve yet to find an explanation as to why,
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Authority per se is deemed to be masculine whereas controlling people with the gift of the gab is deemed to be feminine.
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Which is really quite sick, and you might think this outcome of knitting circles poking each other is not what feminists intended, but many, it seems, do intend it.
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“Authority per se is deemed to be masculine whereas controlling people with the gift of the gab is deemed to be feminine.”
– They should meet my father. Or better yet, my sister’s father-in-law. When those two patriarchs meet, they just talk over each other for hours, while everybody else pisses themselves with laughter.
“I love your mother,” the father-in-law once said. “She never says anything!” 🙂
He is Peruvian, by the way.
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Yeah, I don’t have the ability for gossip at all. I’m quite taciturn. But apparently gender essentialist women believe that they are better off when they can use gossip as a means for political control, rather than them trying to operate within a hierarchy.
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Yes, but what reason is there for associating authority with masculinity?
And how does this apply to hierarchies which do not involve power-dynamics or, indeed, people at all? Is it inherently masculine to assign capital letters a higher significance than lower-case letters? Or to differentiate between fundamental and composite subatomic particles?
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For some reason, women are lumped in with children, who lack authority. The Western metaphysical hierarchy is reason over emotion, man over woman, light over darkness, goodness over evil, so female gender essentialists try to cope with that originally theological symbolism by eliminating hierarchy. Then you only have emotion, woman, darkness and evil.
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” I have heard people argue (or at least imply) that *all* hierarchies are inherently masculine”
– This makes little sense given that female prisons have hierarchies that are just as strict as male prisons. Or girls’ cliques in school.
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The point would be that this is happening under patriarchy.
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I am anti-militarist but military students are my favorite. Show me one and I will show you someone who will work at least to a legit. C if not more, who will in fact learn the concrete facts or skills they are supposed to learn in that class, and who is also willing to take intellectual risks, use their judgment, etc. It is a shame that the army etc. seems to be the only institution left that can teach these skills – prepare students for college in this way, but everything else has been gutted.
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Yes, but what reason is there for associating authority with masculinity?(corvex)
Amazing statement considering how often you ladies rant about the “patriarchy”. If men typically aren’t the authority then your patriarchy theory pretty much goes POOF.
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You seem to have a short attention span. 🙂 Don’t you remember our discussion on the meaning of the word patriarchy to me? https://clarissasblog.com/2012/05/28/what-does-the-term-patriarchy-mean-to-me/
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Interesting, my comment wasn’t directed at you. 🙂
I think maybe we both need some work on our attention span.
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
Clarissa's Blog 
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