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I am womyn, hear me snore
by anna at 06:24 PM on December 28, 2004
No entry found for womyn. Did you mean woman? -response you get on Dictionary.com
Like "postmodern," this is one of those terms rarely seen or heard outside the hallowed halls of academia. It's usually seen in connection with studies as in womyn's studies. Someone devised it so that the perfectly serviceable word "woman" won't seem derived from "womb" and "man," even though it was. This is hooey spouted by women who've either had no experiences or bad experiences at the hands of brutish men.
I don't know that women need their own field of study any more than African-Americans, redneck southerners or trisexuals do. At best it's a waste of time. At worst it is divisive and liable to create acrimony and mistrust where none existed before.
Womyn's studies like to promote tenets such as this: All "inter-gender relations" are tantamount to rape or sexual subjugation. This notion is so alien to the common man's thinking that it's hard to believe anyone would even conceive it let alone buy into that crap. Meanwhile its proponents tout Islam, a religion that routinely subjugates chicks when it isn't stoning them to death. (Wanna see? Google "woman getting stoned to death in Iran." Hold onto your seat for this streaming vid.)
Hence this gaping divide between the intelligentsia and us dolts grows wider by the day. Whereas they're concerned with nuanced theory we're concerned with facts. They wear their frumpishness like a badge of honor. We at least try to look sharp. They fear global warming/cooling while we fear heating/cooling bills. They're into analysis, we're into anal. They mull over the arcane, we go to the arcade. They sip herbal tea, we guzzle beer. They appreciate modern art and densely impenetrable books. We like porn and penetrating others. They loath the commonplace while we yearn for any trace of the familiar.
Join them if you want. But I see it this way: Do you ever want to check someone's oil with your dipstick? Do you want to engage in inter-gender relations while bent over the hood of a car? That and elbow-patched tweed jackets/beards and shrew-like miens are mutually exclusive. Endless seminars or endless sex scenes, those are your choices.
My boss is a devout Mormon. He likes to seek out a secluded spot to read his spiritual books. There is just such a spot on a dead-end road near the office. Nestled in the woods there, he read. He then noticed he wasn't alone. A couple was madly going at it just as described above. He came back all breathless to tell us about it. You should have seen his beet-red face when we told him it's a popular gathering place for gays looking for a nooner. Heh-heh.
comments (15)
Great post. Gimme beers, vaginas, and a locale that feels homey, and I'd happily stop offering opinions on the world at large and its daily events. I’m usually left wondering why I even bother forming them in the first place. Heh. :)
Pigazette: - "No matter what direction it comes from, this Educrap reeks. The only way to resolve this relentless indoctrination - no matter what the flavour - is to abolish government schools and replace them with a market-based system where the education consumer can select a school that meets their specific educational needs."
I wonder where the guy/gal who wrote this was educated? I'm gonna take a wild guess and say a 'government' school. What a heaving pile of MS Word assisted tosh that is. :P
Go with the existentialist reason for our being here… There isn't one… It's just illogical that we are. Mecca Mania indoctrination… heh.
Pigazette: - “The primary problem with compulsory government Educrap is that nobody has the NAD's to stand up and tell the truth. It only takes a second to realize that government Cess-Schools work perfectly, if the desired result is - as the preponderance of the evidence shows - politically-correct, idiots with self-esteem.”
Education, the national curriculum… Generally put down as a sixteen (eighteen) year fast food grey matter enhancer preparing young people for adulthood… Isn’t it? It encompasses and caters to a wide variety of students, from varying backgrounds and cultures. It walks a fine line of what is considered politically correct for fear of excluding a certain strain of people. Once students break away from it they’re free to choose what to read, and what to believe, and, and, and… …They’re not unthinking zombies…
… I’m tired. Your profound post coupled with pigazette tired me out.
*slump*
I do love the best and brightest with their lil terms and phrases though… They’re like the code words of freemasons. Dilligaf!
by Ex Crimson Guard NCO at December 28, 2004 7:12 PM
In response to Pigazette: - “The primary problem with compulsory government Educrap is that nobody has the NAD's to stand up and tell the truth...." I'd respond by saying, "It's the Postermodernism, stupid." For a while there Western society was continuing it's trend evolving self-realization and had begun to embrace the idea that an objective truth shared by all may actually be quite elusive (not because it doesn't exist, but because our methods for defining it may be insufficient). For those who have a hard time fathoming more than warm holes and alcohol, here's the short bus version: there is no one truth. However, I recently read a conservative column which seemed to highlight a different trend in our society by explaining to me that there actually was one truth, it was obvious to all but only conservatives seemed to accept and follow it, and of course it was founded in Christianity. In terms of trying to understand humanity one might ask which of these two trends proves more useful? One of these trends ignores the majority of human consciousness that has existed on this planet (pity for all those people who never had a chance to know the truth). The other trend is more encompassing and tries to make sense of things by taking all views into account. Hmmm, I can't decide.
The term political correctness is unfortunate (it's always struck me as a contradiction in terms, and a term that the meaning of the term would try to exclude, i.e. someone who's trying to be politically correct would be offended by the term politically correct), perhaps politically sensitive would be better. However, the choice of a bad term is no reason to throw out what's behind the term. One of the trends above is more aligned with the term than the other. And so begins the relevance to your post. I completely disagree that the best we can expect from women's studies is that it's a waste of time. To say that it likes to promote tenets such as "All inter-gender relations are tantamount to rape or sexual subjugation" is like saying science promotes the idea that HIV is not the cause of AIDS so we should abolish safe sex programs. One bad apple doesn't spoil this barrel. Rather, the whole point is to understand: why does a society accept the stoning of a woman to death? Or pay women less than men?
Not to mention most of your dichotomies are false: they're into anal and analysis. They fear global warming and their heating/cooling bills. They study the arcane then kick ass in the arcade or on the x-box. They drink tea while studying and guzzle beer afterwards. They like looking at art and porn. And they like hard books and hard fucking.
Sadly, pigazette doesn't seem to understand it's own mission statement. PC is not the threat to individual liberty, pigazette itself is. It's the Postmodernism, stupid.
by chris at December 29, 2004 4:39 AM
two words: SAUSAGE FEST!
by Eviltom at December 29, 2004 10:48 AM
Yep.
by Ezy at December 29, 2004 11:55 AM
Jerry Orbach has expired... The one show I would actually watch on occasion. Law and Order.
by LOCKHEED at December 29, 2004 2:52 PM
Well those are some varied responses. But in all seriousness I do think the education system needs a major overhaul. It's not so much "political correctness" (just a clever way to put others that you disagree with down) as dumbness. Our children go out into the world knowing all about the politics of ancient Rome and what gender/race they are, but they can't fix a flat tire or jumpstart a battery.
And Chris, it is clear you can't generalize accurately about any group of persons. But it is necessary sometimes for satire to be even vaguely efffective. Having read so much of what you have to say, I know you know that the paragraph you referenced isn't my actual point of view. Or then again, maybe it is. I don't know from one day to the next.
Could they stop upping the tsunami death toll and just stipulate that we will never know? The saddest thing is that some indiginous hunter-gatherer tribes are no more, as in extinct. No survivors.
by anna at December 29, 2004 6:05 PM
Chris, I was wondering what postmodernism really means. I've seen the dictionary definition but it never seems to work in the context in which it's used.
by anna at December 29, 2004 6:10 PM
In a coconut shell: Socrates was put to death a couple of centuries BC for asking too many questions - it annoyed those in power and he was accused of "corrupting the youth" by teaching them to ask questions (he taught Plato, who in turn taught Aristotle). Nonetheless the damage was done. Powerful thinkers had been set in motion. But then we got religion and the next thousand or so years were dominated by a system of thought in which truth and power came from above - somewhere other than the subservient individuals who made up the majority of earth's inhabitants. But in 1215 the magna carta was signed, giving rights which served as a protection against the seemingly "capricious" power of the king. And then slowly, the ideas of the ancient greeks came back into vogue, and people began to question. Perhaps the absolute truth dictated to the church by God wasn't so absolute. Reason, it turned out, was very powerful, and it was something that was available to everyone who had a willingness to ask questions. A healthy sense of doubt propels humankind forward and gives us the enlightenment in which we ponder the idea that perhaps all people are created equal, and the aristocracy and the church are more things of cutlural habit than icons and sources of absoute truth.
This sets the stage for modernism, in which we begin to think that there is such a thing as objective reality. If there is objective reality, then every human being, every culture, should be able to have access to the same experience, to the same truth. Ah! what a relief! We're not alone and humanity is united by a single reality. However, what is this reality? If we look at another culture, can we really understand their reality? Even if we ask a gazzilion quastions, can we ever really get it? Can women and men really understand each other? Are their realities identical? Postmodernists step in and realize that what we take for reality - each one of us - is actually a construct that we put together from the tools that we are familiar with. Such things as language, culture, and tradition. It is very difficult for us to have truly objective knowledge. Thus no matter how much history you read, your impression of some moment from the past will be colored in some unique way, that is different than someone else who studies and reads just as much, and niether of you will actually be able to "know" what it was really like. When you read a book, you don't just open it up and pour the contents into your head, you don't do a mind meld with the author so that you know precisely everything they meant to impart to you. Rather, you pull things out of the book, and using your own tools and experience you construct a reality in your head of what you think the book means. The same is true if we go and try to impose our reality on another country (gee, let's take Iraq for example). We begin by assuming that we can reach common ground by rallying around an objective reality. But our objective reality is actually a construct in our heads, just like theirs is. Again, this is not to give up, or to say that objective reality doesn't exist. Rather it is simply useful to explore the limitations and pitfalls of our ideas.
Gosh, in recanting that explanation the blue state/red state parallels are eerie. (creepy if you ask me)
By the way, political correctness is NOT a way to put down people with whom you disagree. It's a way of pointing out that referring to someone of Mexican heritage as a "wetback" is not a very nice thing to do. That's how it started, though the slope has become a little slipery for some. As a response to anything which is offensive to anyone in anyway can become someone's PC battle cry, thus provoking the response of many to want to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
by chris at December 30, 2004 3:38 AM
Chris, thanks. That term has been plaguing me for a long time. Most of the time I can muddle through words I don't know by looking at the context. But not with this. It deserves explanation and there it is. Touche.
by Anna at December 30, 2004 7:42 AM
And I think you might have misconstrued what I said about political correctness. I think to call someone's words or deeds politically correct is just a clever way to put them down. I didn't mean that being PC is a putdown of others. Mostly it's just an outgrowth of politeness.
Yeah ol Jerry is gone. And now it will be just as creepy when his mug pops up on L&O reruns. Like John Ritter on 8 Simple Rules.
by Anna at December 30, 2004 7:47 AM
Really, I'm being serious now... If ever I manage to construct a profound comment... Somebody let me know eh? I was nearly applauding Chris's. Heh... All hail King John. After misinterpreting Chris's comment I'm gonna assume he meant it's okay to go war with folk, and it's alright for them to fight back, we’re all just walking around making giant mistakes the same as those laid down erroneously in text by our forebears. Hey, this taking what you want stuff is pretty cool. ;)
Shouldn't the reality you're describing really be subjective? If we're free interpret what we will. Not objective?
by Ex Crimson Guard NCO at December 30, 2004 5:38 PM
Chris is just smart is all. Anyone can offer an opinion but he has facts to back it up. I think he's a he. We went through that a while back.
by Anna at December 30, 2004 6:06 PM
Who is forced to work at these hours? LOCKHEED! I quit. it's 515am.... Dec 30th... I'm in NYC staring at a fucking screen of numbers and shitcharst. How am I to celebrate the Gregorian Calendar?
CRIMSON: You will like my blog: www.tradinganddrugs.blogspot.com
As will Chris I think...
The FTSE is dipping on shit volume and they expect me to throw my punches in this putrid mix?
I'm going for a cigarette.
by LOCKHEED at December 31, 2004 5:18 AM
political correctness is NOT a way to put down people with whom you disagree. It's a way of pointing out that referring to someone of Mexican heritage as a "wetback" is not a very nice thing to do.
I'd say that is just common decency. But that's just me. Political correctness has become nothing more than petty bulllying. If it wasn't for the PC movement we wouldn't have had Nipplegate and Michael Powel. Pretty soon, between the left and the right, we wont be able to say anything. Who knows what someone will think is offensive next. Gt usd t nt spkng ny wrds wth vwls n thm.
by mg at January 4, 2005 12:10 AM
N fckng vwls? I m nt dggng ths. Rmnds m f whn m sn rggd kbrd s tht e= trnng ff cmptr.
by Anna at January 4, 2005 7:27 PM