And from the very first session, female academics start with the same exhausted spectacle of self-deprecation.
“I apologize in advance for making a comment that has probably no value.”
“I don’t even know why I’m saying this.”
“I’m probably making no sense.”
The panel, by the way, is on feminism. FEMINISM. We ask our students to moderate their speech patterns every day in foreign language classrooms. How hard can it be to pay some attention to how we speak and end the self-defeating talk?
Nobody is going to do this for us. No prince is coming to rescue distressed damsels with kindly reassurances. Tell yourself every day in front of a mirror, “I’m an intellectual, my work matters, I won’t apologize for existing. And fuck the loser parents who didn’t teach me this decades ago.”
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