FEMINISM.

AHOY!

My brilliant colleague, Adrianne Wadewitz, was featured on Wikipedia last month. In this two-minute video, she talks about how she’s incorporated writing for Wikipedia into her classes and why it’s such a powerful teaching tool.

Wow no wonder Wikipedia is shit.
 Peer reviewed literature by professionals?
NAH BUNCH OF ASSHOLE KIDS TAKING SOC 101.

This article in The New York Times, by Choe Sang-Hun, fascinates me:

    [Jasmine] Lee, 35, who was born Jasmine Bacurnay in the Philippines, made history in April when she became the first naturalized citizen — and the first nonethnic Korean — to win a seat in South Korea’s National Assembly. Her election reflected one of the most significant demographic shifts in the country’s modern history, a change Ms. Lee says “Koreans understand with their brain, but have yet to embrace with their heart.”

    Only a decade ago, school textbooks still urged South Koreans to take pride in being of “one blood” and ethnically homogeneous. Now, the country is facing the prospect of becoming a multiethnic society. While the foreign-born population is still small compared with that of countries with a tradition of immigration, it is enough to challenge how South Koreans see themselves.

Welp.
Guess Korea is going to go to shit now.
Once you bow to the hydra that is pussy sensitivity and multiculturalism you're doomed.
Not that foreigners shouldn't be welcome but you know.
If you're in Korea you should learn Korean and do things the Korean way.
I don't see anything inherently wrong with that.
People say multiculturalism and I say a lack of respect for your host country.

In 1988-89, when I was teaching English in Seoul to the very privileged men and women who came to study at the hagwon where I worked, my students often used the phrase “one blood” when explaining to me why it was so important for Koreans to marry other Koreans–traditionally, as someone quoted in Choe’s article puts it, “someone born to Korean parents in Korea, who speaks Korean and has Korean looks and nationality. Their reasoning, I remember thinking at the time, i.e., that ethnic and cultural unity was the only way successfully to maintain Korean cultural identity and pass their traditions on from one generation to the next, sounded an awful lot like the arguments against interfaith dating and intermarriage that were part of my Jewish education in the United States. 

That's why I never fully understood the Nazi concept of the Jews being impure.
If there are a more puritanical people on earth than the Jewish people I'd like to see them.
It's a guy writing this entry.
Holy shit bro come on.
You'd think the story of a wise man would be interesting but it really isn't.
Come on man step it up.
I never thought I'd see a story of a wise man this lacking in glory.
And posted on a feminist blog.
Guess it just goes to show that you can still travel all the way to Korea, fuck a Korean chick and still not be a wise man.
There's some other inherent quality.
Incidentally this is one of those blogs where multiple people post and as far as I can see it's the last we see from this bro.
I think his main problem was he went for a married chick.
M8.
M8.
Check yourself.
He's a wise man. It doesn't mean he's very smart.

It seems to me that the purpose of the psychological concept of "the feminine" (--I am always wondering what that is--) is to create a definite gestalt (foreground-background outline) for feminine figures. 

Oh yeah that shit takes me back to pussy sensitivity.
This motherfuck is going to need a soundtrack.

The conceptual characteristics of "the feminine" are initially sought for, in the preliminary wandering of the eye over the field. Finally, once they are alighted upon, the outline of a "feminine" character comes into view. This is reassuring, since one has found what one was looking for.

If I'm playing Skyrim I don't care if it's feminine or masculine.
I don't want to see it in my field of vision or I might hit it with a crossbow bolt.

Supposing, however, one sets out in anticipation of discovering a feminine object. One perceives, in the field of vision, certain characteristics that roughly align with denotations of "the feminine". 

If it's a red dot on my compass I'm taking it down.

Yet, ultimately, the outline is not firm, the characteristics keep wavering, the object of vision seems to continue to shift. Would not the failure of the potential "feminine object" to stay within the lines of conceptual demarcation of femininity produce the sense of a "part object" rather than a whole object?

Then it's time to loot the bodies.
3 lockpicks and 5 gold THANKS A LOT BANDIT SCUM.

Is it possible that the inherent structural failure of the concept of "femininity" to return to the perceiver a pure enough feminine object, leading in turn to perscutory anxiety as one is left with only a "part object" (the parts of the object that remain feminine), is the cause of misogyny? The failure of the object to appear consistently with the characteristics expected of it produces a shattering of perception, which is threatening to the would-be perceiver of the complete feminine object. This is starting to sound a lot like castration anxiety, but I believe it is only partly related to that -- since here the mechanism of "castration" is in the faulty conceptualisation of "the feminine" as well as in the faulty anticipation of it.

Anyway, my experiences tell me that I'm onto something here. 

My experience tells me you're a twat that has no clue what the fuck you're even talking about.
Get fucked.

People have an insatiable appetite for violence. They will sit through films that depict murder, rape and torture with vile accuracy. In fact, the percentage of the film going public viewing and gorging on this shit is increasing which means that human beings are dangerously close to losing their sense of the gravity of cruelty as it is dished out to innocent people. How like human beings to sit through  gore and suffering on film, then discuss it for days via social networking sites: “Oh, did you see the new Tarantino movie? It was awesome!” 

Holy shit yeah it was.
Anyway, whining--

To put it simply, dating while feminist, black, queer, polyamorous, broke, and loud means not dating, kind of. I find that people who compliment any one of those traits too well completely fail in regards to the others. Thinking about feminism specifically, I’ve found that it’s cute and sexy to my partners when I’m abstractly theorizing about gender inequities.

Sorry, what?

Alex Williams at the Times is concerned. Very. Concerned. Alex is concerned that courtship may be over — young ladies don’t get asked on dates any more, they just receive 5am texts from nightclub bouncers saying, “sup.” 

Whatashame.

Unsurprisingly, the announcement of the relaunched title has already drawn protest from the sorts of people who think “fake geek girls” are destroying nerdom.

Well they are.
Being a huge faggot nerd is now reduced to watching  Big Bang Theory and having played a video game one time maybe but you were kinda drunk so you don't remember it too well.
Imagine if I wandered into your feminist whining session and said
I LISTENED TO A WOMAN WHINE ONCE I'M A FEMINIST LET ME SIT WITH YOU.
What would you say?
You'd say I wasn't a feminist.
There you go.
Same logic.
It's okay. You don't have to be a nerd.
Nerds don't have a monopoly on intelligence. You can be a non-nerd and still be smart.
You don't have to self identify as being a nerd to seem smart.
In fact anymore you'd probably look smarter if you didn't.

The first day of class in my literature course didn’t go well, and that’s putting it mildly. Students looked uncomfortable and terrified, refused to answer even the simplest questions, offered no reaction to my jokes, and stayed on the edge of their seats prepared to take off at any moment.

Really?
My first day went phenomenally.
Charmed the little bastards then one started giving me shit so I just looked him square in the eye and I said "you will learn by example or I will make you an example."
End of problems the rest of the day.
I find  "I'm going to throw the rules at you" works far better when framed as a threat.

We, the professors, are to blame for this sorry state of affairs. We are so scared of our own area of expertise, so embarrassed by it, so apologetic about having chosen it, that this attitude always contaminates our own students. We are on our way to becoming a glorified language school and all we do brings this prospect closer to us. Like a person who believes s/he is ugly or stupid and communicates this belief to others, we transmit our doubts over whether learning literature is a worthy pursuit to our students.

Not me. If you have a problem with stories the ancients thought were important enough to invent writing to tell your stupid ass then you can kindly remove yourself from my fucking class.
They didn't have computers to type this shit, either. Some guy had to chop a tree down and grind it into paper then squeeze ink out of an oyster or something and then he had to kill a bird to turn its feathers into a pen so he could tell you this.
It probably took half his life to assemble this shit.
Oh, the language is too confusing for you to figure it out?
Tough shit. The same guy that wrote this shit down considers a rock the latest invention of his day. There's no way he's more sophisticated than you are.
You're just fucking lazy.

I am done with this, people. I spent my childhood being embarrassed about loving books and hating athletics. I did not get 5 degrees in literary studies and publish 11 scholarly articles in respected, peer-reviewed literary journals only to find myself feeling embarrassed about loving to read once again. I am now declaring a battle against the belief that literature has no place at a university. I was part of the problem and now I will be part of the solution. If nobody wants to join me, I will be the solution.

I think your problem is you have five degrees.
Seriously what the fuck?
Do you need that much education to read a book?
You know I've had a lot of success with explaining to people that books are really just a stand in for the spoken word.
Which is what they are.

And don’t think I’m just saying this. I have a top-secret plan that I have already started to put into effect whose goal is simply to teach literature and vindicate this pursuit. The plan is top secret because I don’t have the energy for yet another round of discussions (in person, by email, on Skype, on the phone) about how the students are not prepared and they will hate literature anyway so why undermine my career and spoil my life trying. My career is fine, my life is fine. Stop being so worried about the imaginary horrors that await me if I actually practice my profession.

I can't tell you how often this conversation has occurred in my life:
"this is boring?"
"how can you say it's boring? It has a guy putting a cyclopes' eye out with a fiery poker."
"I don't get it."
"DID YOU TRY FUCKING READING IT?"
"Well no I gave up."
"WELL I CAN'T HELP YOU IF YOU JUST QUIT AFTER TWO SECONDS LEARN SOME FUCKING PATIENCE."
I can't tell you how powerful a tool "you're being lazy and learn some patience" is.
Kids can handle not knowing something.
They'll be fine never learning anything again.
For some reason a lot can't seem to abide the notion that they're lazy.

To my colleagues everywhere I want to say this: stop feeling apologetic for what you do. Do whatever you need to convince yourself that you are not selfishly practicing a self-indulgent hobby but are doing something important. Do it now before you have apologized us all out of a field of learning and a career. You don’t need to prettify the teaching of literature or convince anybody it is useful. Just convince yourself already.

Next time I apologize for teaching these ungrateful bastards something will be a first.

A beautiful defense of idealism: “Idealism is the only mindset which produces change. Without the determination to achieve a higher goal, and the courage to affirm that goal in the face of what exists, no one has ever achieved anything of value. The wet noodle mindset of “good enough” has never produced any value for anyone except exploiters and rulers. The willful acceptance and tolerance of evil generates more evil, and has never generated anything but more evil.” People keep accusing me of being an idealist as if it were something bad. This is a great response to them.

Fucking stupid idea filled with non sequiturs.
Implying what, change is inherently good?
That the concept of "good enough" is what allows the ruling class to rule?
Having courage or goals isn't inherent to being an idealist, either.
I'm possibly the most cynical person alive and I still have both things.

As my imaginary boyfriend Neil Degrasse Tyson said, “Boy, I wonder what profession all of these senators and congressmen have? Law, law, law, law, businessman, law, law. And I said, you know, where are the scientists? Where are the engineers? Where’s the rest of life represented here?”

Neil Degrasse Tyson is pretty much one of the best Americans alive now.

Thank goddess it’s Friday. 

God of time is Chronos.
He's not a woman.
Prepare to be purged, heretic.
Anyway time for SOMETHING ELSE.
FUCK BLOGS.