I was at this DEI shindig where people had to declare their “intersectional positioning.” Everybody had to come up with statements like, “I’m a heterosexual, cisgender, able-bodied, married, white person. This gives me racial, sexual, etc etc privilege.”
When my turn came, I said the following:
I’m trained to be a foreign language teacher, literary critic, and translator. No other part of my personality is for sale. I do not choose to enter my private life, health history, sexuality or anything else into the monetary exchange that my presence here constitutes. I am here to sell my labor for money and do nothing beyond that. Work has pushed its tentacles deep into our lives, infringing on our private time. I will not cede even more of myself to it.
People loved it. Feel free to use this text if you are forced to participate in this kind of event.
Clarissa's Blog 
I hope you got a standing ovation!
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No, but I saw badly suppressed joy on people’s faces. That’s something.
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You still deserve a standing ovation.
https://bluebirdofbitterness.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/applause.gif
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Thank you! I’m really proud of it myself.
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“Now, tell us all your perversions so we can rank you against your coworkers and see if we have enough points to beat the philosophy department…”
Academics have the *weirdest* parlor games.
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One person said, “I’m a heterosexual married cisgender woman who identifies as queer.” Even I’m unable to decipher this one. How is a straight, married suburban mom “queer”?
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Not “is,” just “identifies as.” No one can question her statement without violating the current wokeness vibe, so she gets intersectional points and safety from accusations of privilege.
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Right… What does that mean, though? It’s got to mean something.
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“It’s got to mean something”
Besides thinking of Martha while her husband goes through his paces?
Sorry, I’m not over that yet….
sent from mmy Iphone
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Funny. 🙂
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Perversions like being disabled, married, and whatever ethnicity you are?
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Please remember that nobody has the right to ask you about your health conditions, sexuality and marital status in the workplace. It’s positioned as volunteering information but you have a legal right to refuse. This right you actually do have.
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I’m not talking about that at all. I’m talking about equating these things to perversions.
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Talk about missing the forest for the trees. People are being publicly humiliated at a state university and you are trying to bicker over absolutely nothing.
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“I’m talking about equating these things to perversions”
Being expected to reveal personal details about yourself for the edification of the crowd is the perversion. Whether those details are biological, cultural or what breakfast cereal you like is immaterial the process is the perversion.
Have you ever seen the movie “La Chinoise”? You need to see “La Chinoise”, everybody needs to see “La Chinoise”.
In 1967 five French students lock themselves into an apartment in Paris and try to carry out a Chinese communist revolution. Later one of them dabbles in terrorism as the “first timid step in a long march”.
One of the most amazing movies every made and I can’t think of anything that the modern US left reminds me of more.
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Do you really think people get equal woke points for health conditions?
Were I presented with this question, I would be sore tempted to answer that I’m a straight married white woman with urinary incontinence, IBS-C, severe dysmenorrhea, intractable toenail fungus, psoriasis, inguinal hernia, testicular torsion, intermittent uterine prolapse, sciatica, vulvodynia, …(name any other unmentionable/unverifiable health condition here). Nobody could reasonably ask for verification and absolutely nobody wants to know more.
How many social points are those worth? What? Zero? I’m confused. Why is an *embarrassing* debility worth less than a hot sexy debility?
What if I just *identify* as someone with vulvodynia? No? Also no points for being a *married* or a *single* woman with vulvodynia. Which means whatever it is that counts in that mix, it isn’t all disability, and it isn’t marital status.
Race? Well, sorta. But I don’t think a successful conservative Christian hetero married black man with five upstanding children would get any points at all, so it’s probably not race either.
So if you get right down to the real meat-and-potatoes of this point system, what really scores is niche sexual preferences. Those are the only things that are really being asked about here. You’re allowed to couch it in a bunch of other terms, but when someone asks about your intersectionality, your sexuality is what they’re asking about. It’s the only thing that really matters.
And just like your vulvodynia or your testicular torsion, that’s nobody’s business in your workplace! If anybody came right out at the water cooler and was like “Oh, hey, Brian, I like to suck toes. What’s your favorite fetish?” or like “Yo, Kesha, let’s talk about who you’d f**k– the rest of the office has a pool on whether you’re into men, women, or both.” That would be sexual harrassment. But if you create a faux-cozy workplace “bonding exercise” environment, where you pressure everybody to state their sexual preferences, now it’s somehow magically not sexual harrassment. Because why? Because they asked politely? Because it was an indirect rather than a direct question, hidden among other value-less signifiers?
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Oh, I forgot rectocele. If anybody ever wants to know health data from you that they have no business asking, DEFINITELY tell them about your rectocele. In excruciating detail. Make them sorry they asked.
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It’s now fashionable to have “an invisible disability” without ever naming it, and then pout that people aren’t aware that you are disabled. It’s very convenient because it’s invisible and nameless so you can make any sort of demand and nobody can object.
It’s especially onerous when we are asked to provide detailed accounts of how we will accommodate students with such disabilities but we aren’t allowed to know even the approximate nature of disability.
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How many points is an invisible disability worth in this game?
I’m still trying to suss out the rules, but the “I can claim to be disabled without revealing the nature of the disability to anyone” is intriguing, from a scoring perspective.
Does it count double if it’s a sexual disability, like anorgasmia or impotence? Or do those not count because they aren’t “orientations”?
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Beautifully put Clarissa. We need more people like you to stand up to this tyranny.
I still cannot believe they are making people do this. It just seems so weird.
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It gets worse. People are also coerced into loudly accusing themselves of being racist. It’s totally Soviet.
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I also love how you framed it as a matter of privacy. Why do you need to shout all these private things? What if someone is homosexual and does not want it known?
Seriously, good for you. Hope more of your co-workers start waking up and do some disobedience.
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And the part about able-bodied and disabled is equally cringe. Can we at least keep our medical issues private?
Even “married” is not always an easy thing to discuss in public. One colleague is getting separated. It’s very antagonistic. He probably doesn’t know if he is married or not at this point. Why should we rub it in?
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Very nice! You think a junior prof without tenure could get away with saying this? I feel they would have a target on their back. You saying this does send a huge signal for all to see, though. Which is great.
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Junior profs aren’t forced to do it. It’s only for the administration. But I said harsher things before I had tenure. And it’s all fine because with my record of publication nobody can deny me tenure without getting sued.
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