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A propos

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A propos the previous post:

May I also note that it irritates me slightly that the married faculty couples (both in the department) bring one dish, prepared by the female partner. The married men in my department seem largely incapable of turning on a stove or oven; the ones who are married to non-department members always seem to note that their wives made their dish, unless they’ve chosen to bring cheese on a platter, in which case they may have made the purchase.

Is anybody still surprised that students are noticing?

34 responses to “A propos”

  1. cliff arroyo Avatar
    cliff arroyo

    Plunging into sidewalk cultural analysis, isn’t a lot of this compensation? I mean, that feminism in the US has traditionally been about women gaining access to traditionally male dominated fields*.

    So… some women, not all but some, maybe a lot, are less secure in their femininity at work and so exaggerate old stereotypes to compensate for the more masculine environment they find themselves in?

    The note and the linked entry (which I stopped reading out of self-preservation after two sentences) seem positively 1950s (fetished sexual opposition version that lives in people’s cultural memory, not necessarily the real thing).

    *in some countries it was also about men taking on more traditionally feminine habits but that has never played well in the US

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      “So… some women, not all but some, maybe a lot, are less secure in their femininity at work and so exaggerate old stereotypes to compensate for the more masculine environment they find themselves in?”

      – English Departments are really not a masculine environment. Plus, it isn’t like this hypercompensation leads to any really good cooking. 😉

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      1. cliff arroyo Avatar
        cliff arroyo

        But university teaching in the US is historically more masculine (even English) than not.

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        1. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          If this is a scary, masculine profession, gosh, then the female police officers, soldiers, pilots, surgeons, and fire fighters should just all go die in terror.

          As I said, yes, it used to be hard for everybody. We all come from the same shitty tradition of turning people into invalids on the basis of their genitals. But isn’t it time to stop stating this very well-known fact and start doing something about its consequences? All I’m proposing is: let’s do something.

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          1. Clarissa Avatar
            Clarissa

            Now this is a woman who has no such petty qualms:

            According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, she has a series of rules that are clear to everyone. These include: 1) Only she is authorized to set the temperature in conference rooms; 2) Cabinet members all rise when she enters the room; 3) If food is served at a meeting, vice presidents clear her plate; and 4) She is always to be publicly introduced as “The Honorable Shirley Ann Jackson.”
            http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lawrence-wittner/the-7-million-university-_b_6323188.html

            I like-y.

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      2. Stille (@aperfectbalance) Avatar
        Stille (@aperfectbalance)

        Truer words were rarely spoken, Clarissa. To go off on a tangent, I m getting rather tired with that brand of feminism that says “it’s ok to act in stereotypically feminine ways” like it was ever revolutionary or even unaccepted for a cis woman to act in stereotypically feminine ways. I don’t understand how we’re ever to achieve liberation if we’re to replace social fetters with internal ones, rather than adopting the patterns of behaviour that we’ve felt were denied to us because of our gender until they no longer have any associations with gender for us. Then and not before we can start mixing and matching based on what we feel truly suits us.

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      3. musteryou Avatar
        musteryou

        Wtf does it mean to be secure in one’s femininity? Ist that the same as being secure in one’s whiteness or secure in one’s animality or secure in one’s humanity?

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        1. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          “Wtf does it mean to be secure in one’s femininity”

          – Being comfortable with being a woman, having female physiology.

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          1. musteryou Avatar
            musteryou

            Oh. Having female physiology? Things get weirder every day.

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            1. Clarissa Avatar
              Clarissa

              Nothing weird. Thousands of women starve themselves into illness or even death because tgey can’t accept that they have female bodies with hips, breasts and butts. The entire industry of high fashion is about extreme hatred for female bodies.

              And this is just one example.

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              1. musteryou Avatar
                musteryou

                Oh. But that has to do with advertising and not to do with operating within a male environment. In any case it makes little sense to talk about accepting (I forgot the original terminology used by cliff…)

                You can’t gain anything by accepting something that is a social construct. The only thing that has any merit is to accept your self.

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              2. Clarissa Avatar
                Clarissa

                What advertising? Female bodily mutilation has existed forever: foot binding, FGM, neck stretching, etc. The idea that female bodies need to be modified to be avceptable predates advertising by millenia. Today, there is endless medication geared specifically to modifying female bodies. Hormone replacement, midol, etc. The goal is to produce an android who looks like a boy and never experiences her specifically female physiological processes.

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              3. musteryou Avatar
                musteryou

                For some reason I need to point out that it is barking up the wrong tree, and barking mad, to treat me as someone who has swallowed an ideology, perhaps leftoid. I just notice that in American, the Yanks swallow a lot of ideology through television. That is part of the reason why gender is so fucked up there. Of course Aussies also swallow a fair bit but not as much. I’m just getting a bit tired of these arguments that address me in a way that is beside the point. I do draw my own conclusions about things but I also do not really give a shit about what Americans get up to.

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              4. Clarissa Avatar
                Clarissa

                Foot-binding, FGM, and neck stretching are not very American. And were invented long before television.

                I dont know what you are getting upset about. I’m explaining what an acceptance of femininity means. The problem of women not accepting their own bodies is ubiquitous abd has existed forever. It deserves to be discussed.

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              5. musteryou Avatar
                musteryou

                I’m not getting upset about anything. My language indicates exhaustion and boredom. Perhaps I am also bored with many things.

                In any case, these terms of reference you choose to use are not those I can relate to, at least not in the context of the issue I thought I was addressing.

                If women these days are not happy in the female bodies, I don’t think we can blame it on FGM. Perhaps it is caused by monkeys? in any case, I assume they are idiots who watch too much TV.

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  2. N G Avatar
    N G

    Late to the conversation but…

    Having been to Eastern Europe and Israel, I know exactly where you’re coming from but in America gender differentiation is greater than other places. I had a long correspondence with Cynthia Mercati, the well known American playwright and novelist. She changed her middle name from Joan to Scarlett after the Scarlett O’Hara character in “Gone with the Wind.” I think that the secret role model for American women is a southern plantation belle sipping mint juleps. Guys are the same. The latest male live style roles are lumbersexuals and their less extreme brethren, the metrojacks – hairy ammosexuals with plait shirts, jeans and working boots. The new sex symbol is Duck Commander. Have you noticed that many of the latest TV shows have a well turned out male lead with a British accent and a female side kick with an American accent (Forever, Elementary, Sleepy Hallow and Constantine)? I think that this is a reaction to the previous style.

    I’m the product of a trans-Atlantic union. My father was in the Canadian air force and my mother was in the British air force. They met during the Battle of Britain – classic WW2 story. During part of my youth, I lived on my uncle’s farm on the Yorkshire Dales not far from Haworth where the Bronte parsonage is located. My mother had bought me on this side of the pond cowboy boots. Can you imagine me stomping around the Yorkshire Moors in them? Charlotte Bronte would not approve. Not the way to blend into the rural English countryside! I learned about the appropriate dress code and soon looked like proper little English boy although as soon as I opened my mouth I got the “cousin from the colonies” stuff.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      I’m extremely compassionate to this great hardship but any hardship is there for us to overcome. Scarlett O’Hara, by the way, didn’t manage to content herself with the julep-sipping role and I’m yet to find anybody who would prefer the damsel-in-distress Melanie to Scarlett.

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      1. cliff arroyo Avatar
        cliff arroyo

        Ashley? Did he really love Scarlett or was that in her mind?

        When most American women now try for assertiveness they come off more like Scarlett’s insufferable little sister (forget her name).

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        1. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          Ashley had incredibly low self-esteem and was incapable of loving anybody. He wanted attention to feed his narcissism. Bleh, what a nasty little prick.

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      2. el Avatar
        el

        \\ I’m yet to find anybody who would prefer the damsel-in-distress Melanie to Scarlett.

        I loved Melanie. She shot or helped Scarlett to hide a body of an attacker / wandering soldier. She stood against society by publicly supporting Scarlett after the latter was found with Ashley. Melanie wasn’t afraid to stand against other women by saying she would continue to take care of graves of other side’s soldiers. Much, much more of a (wo)man than her husband. I also have support of Rett who respected Melanie, partly because of her strength, and said so to his wife.

        I think there are several kinds of strength. Scarlett’s lies in being able to do anything, take on different roles to survive. Melanie doesn’t always have the ability to adjust to changing circumstances. She may sink rather than swim Scarlett-like, but she will sink remaining true to her own soul, with personal integrity. Melanie will not lose herself, unlike Scarlett who isn’t sure who she is except “survive at all costs”.

        Melanie has a form of courage too, imo, and it’s probably quite rare to find. Ashley didn’t have Melanie’s strength, imo.

        Scarlett is more entertaining to read about, but Melanie is a person I like better.

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        1. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          “I loved Melanie.”

          – I’m going to ascribe this strange preference to your Jewish need to be contrarian. 🙂

          “Melanie doesn’t always have the ability to adjust to changing circumstances. She may sink rather than swim Scarlett-like, but she will sink remaining true to her own soul, with personal integrity.”

          – The only possibility for these “true ladies” to inscribe themselves into their patriarchal order is to give up any claim to either soul or body of their own. She can’t lose herself because there is no self to lose. Instead of a self, she has a list of prescribed behaviors.

          “I also have support of Rett who respected Melanie, partly because of her strength, and said so to his wife.”

          – Rhett is a rapist, and his vision of “the perfect woman” is suspect on that basis. 🙂

          “Scarlett is more entertaining to read about, but Melanie is a person I like better.”

          – This is so interesting because this kind of vapid, subservient non-entity just drives me mad.

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      3. Shakti Avatar
        Shakti

        If the narrator wasn’t third person, I’d call it unreliable. :p
        Everyone else is mysterious cardboard who either persecutes or supports Scarlett, nothing in between. Everyone else is so very stupid. It’s hardly real.
        Readers prefer Scarlett to Melanie because Scarlett is the main character and moves the plot. Nobody in the book prefers Scarlett to Melanie though, not even the town whore.

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        1. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          “Everyone else is mysterious cardboard who either persecutes or supports Scarlett, nothing in between. Everyone else is so very stupid. It’s hardly real.”

          – Yes, this is not a great work of literature. But it’s great entertainment. Plus, it really helps to understand the mythology surrounding the Civil War if one is an immigrant.

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      4. Shakti Avatar
        Shakti

        Plus, it really helps to understand the mythology surrounding the Civil War if one is an immigrant.
        I agree. One piece which never seems to make sense and is never explained is how people can call themselves loyal U.S. citizens while displaying the Stars and Bars. My mother loved Gone With the Wind but she finds this deeply bizarre.

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        1. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          Is there a similarly famous fictional account of the Civil War but from the side of the good guys? I’m trying to remember but nothing on this scale comes to mind.

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      5. Shakti Avatar
        Shakti

        Is there a similarly famous fictional account of the Civil War but from the side of the good guys? I’m trying to remember but nothing on this scale comes to mind.

        The Red Badge of Courage but it’s not nearly as well loved because it’s terrifying and impersonal. Little Women doesn’t really deal with the Civil War even though one of girls sells her hair so their mother can visit their father who is sick and serving as a Union chaplain. Nothing has pages and pages of justifying text

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  3. el Avatar
    el

    \\ – I’m going to ascribe this strange preference to your Jewish need to be contrarian.

    My Jewishness is not connected to any need to be contrarian. 🙂

    The latter is your own family’s version, not mine. My grandmother was a communist, and now I am a Jew who lives in a Jewish nation state. We are “backward” like that.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      “My grandmother was a communist”

      – So was my great-grandmother. That’s a very Jewish way to be.

      “and now I am a Jew who lives in a Jewish nation state. We are “backward” like that.”

      – It will be a sad time when Jews lose their contrarianism. The good news is that it will never happen. 🙂

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  4. el Avatar
    el

    \\ She can’t lose herself because there is no self to lose. Instead of a self, she has a list of prescribed behaviors.

    I disagree. Unlike numerous “true ladies,” Melanie wasn’t afraid to stand against society, when her consciousness told her so. She is very loyal and loving person. Have all “ladies” being like that?

    I think Melanie could be seen as a perfect Christian character in the book: loving, forgiving, but internally strong when needed.

    Of course, I read the book a long, long time ago. That’s the impression I had then, but I remember some things which made me think that.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      “She is very loyal and loving person.”

      – “In order to be able to say “I love”, you first need to be able to say “I” (c). 🙂 Do you remember how she dies? She knows she will die if she attempts another pregnancy. And she still does – for no reason whatsoever other than her patriarchal belief that if she can’t be a human incubator, she deserves to die. That’s pretty horrifying.

      “I think Melanie could be seen as a perfect Christian character in the book: loving, forgiving, but internally strong when needed.”

      – Let’s not insult the feelings of the Christians present. 🙂 🙂 Jesus was a violent, angry, contrarian, and passionate individual. And his most famous female disciple led a very sexually rich life. 🙂

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      1. el Avatar
        el

        \\ And his most famous female disciple led a very sexually rich life. 🙂

        The key was repenting it and becoming celibate, no?

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  5. Stringer Bell Avatar
    Stringer Bell

    “I like-y.”

    From your link:

    “RPI’s adjuncts once had a voice on campus, as some of them served on RPI’s Faculty Senate. But that came to an end in 2007, when Jackson abolished that entity. From the administration’s standpoint, the abolition of the Senate had the welcome effect of not only depriving adjuncts of their minimal influence, but of crippling the power of regular faculty, as well.”

    What exactly is there to like about this piece of shit?

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      I was obviously being facetious. When was the last time I liked an administrator?

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  6. Jones Avatar
    Jones

    Students notice things?

    Shocking.

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A conservative literary critic and college professor

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