i know i should just let this all go, i'm just setting myself up, again,
as the mythic man-hating monster... but what the heck? i'm no man-hating
monster, but i'm
not really sure that the ideas that have been expressed here
by the women, and a few men, have been really grasped for their
significance.
so i'll be the mule, here:
xmca@weber.ucsd.edu writes:
>But then it occurs to me that it's curious that this little process
>(didn't
>someone euphemistically call it "self-policing") occurs and re-occurs on
>xmca. In addition to the standard COP ideas, I think people should very
>seriously consider the role of ritual victimization and its usefulness,
>especially in the destabilization of counter-hegemonic ideas in the
>maintenance or control of community self-identiy -- Is there a hegemonic,
>political correctness on xmca? GO FIGURE.
well i'm reckoning you think political correctness is "bad?"
it's a perspective that has been mightily bashed, that's for sure, but as
a perspective,
it is really just about thinking differently towards our unexamined
assumptions about
self/other relations. if we can think differently about systemic
inequalities, i mean,
might that produce a different way of dealing with the differences in any
community?
it's political, yep, because it is about power and privilege. as for it
being "correct" - that word
refers more to each of our efforts, to think about what we write, say,
mean,
and to self-edit as a gesture towards an understanding of difference, and
ways we might better understand how difference is also a function of
gender, race,
sexuality, and so on.
>
>
>How about some verse from Bob Dylan?
>
>Now Ophelia, she's neath the window.
>For her I feel so afraid
>On her twenty-second birthday
>She already is an old maid.
>To her death is quite romantic
>She wears an iron vest.
>Her profession's her religion.
>Her sin is her lifelessness.
>And though her eyes are fixed uipon
>Noah's great rainbow.
>She spends her time peeking
>Into Desolation Row.
>
>Is this verse offensive to some feminist sensibility or can one see it as
>a
>valid depiction of a PERSON in which the gender is not a factor.
HM. When is gender not a factor? If we are thinking about some sort of
ubiquitous Uber-person, what relevance does this have to the actual
persons who
can't really not be gendered, or raced, or sexualized? how is it
productive to
pretend that persons are not gendered?
>Could the
>verse have a male subject, (Othello for Opehelia/eye to meter not
>metonymic
>association) and all changed pronouns and still give one the feeling: i've
>know someone like that before? In other words are there characteristic
>behaviors that do tend to be associated with one or the other sex other
>than
>the obvious like our toilet-seat-position-preference or is even the
>mention
>of this offensive too???
well in contexts of sex, it's hard to say, because most sex is gendered.
males and boys/men
and females are girls/women. so, do you mean are there gendered
behaviours?
well sure. we've been discussing quite a few of them. Elizabeth pointed
out that historically
men have favoured Socratic dialectics, for example.
jokes about "the wife" are particular to men, yes?
the Dylan verse COULD have a male subject, but it doesn't. and that's the
point: it doesn't have
a male subject, it's a man singing about a woman. i don't see how ignoring
that improves
our understandings of gender, difference, power, and so on.
> If something is true most of the time (even if we
>don't actually quantify formally) are we justified in taking it as a
>characteristic?
characteristic? i think it's more a question of behaviours. if something is
apparent most of the time, we are justified in discussing this as a
particular behaviour that is
not specific to an individual, but widely distributed in a social history.
> And
>does it matter if the characteristic is funny in its own right and
>doesn't
>depend on some additional stereotype of its subject??
nothing, of course, is funny in its own right - all humour is related to
an assumption of agreed understandings. jokes about "the wife" are funny
because there is an assumption there about "the wife" as an identifiable
women who
is known by her relation to a husband.
>I don't think the dylan verse can be modified since there is no way that a
>man can be an "old maid" something that must be part of many women's
>consciousness at least with respect to the possibilities of being a
>mother,
>as witness the centrality of this them in Ally McBeal. Yes this is all
>popular culture but where else does culture change happen???
in counter-culture. Rage Against the Machine.
>
>
>Does the very notion that only members of a group (Poles, Irish, women,
>Italians, people who play the viola, etc.) can tell a joke about
>characteristics of that group, mean that only members of that group
>should
>be the ones to hear it? Why???
why do we have to keep telling jokes about "group characteristics?"
why is that all we have that is funny?
>I can't but think of Umberto Eco's "The Name of the Rose" and his theory
>about the fate of the last book of Aristotle's aesthetics, the one on
>comedy: destroyed by men whose profession was their religion and their sin
>was their Lifelessnes (or maybe fear of life is better) according to Eco.
>Eco seemed to suggest that Aristotle explored why it's funny to lampoon
>people's shortcomings. But then hey! Big A is a dead white man too!! (are
>Greeks white now? I know WASPs don't think so and Mediterranean Ave
>(along
>with Baltic) are the cheapest properties on the Monopoly Board but then I
>haven't talked to a real live WASP since I lived in . . (FADE TO GREY)
>
>Paul H. Dillon, in name only
well, this is a ranting i've heard too often.
(SIGH). i don't think any of this really has to be white male hysteria.
or rather, i'm not really qualified to speak about it.
diane
************************************************************************************
"Things do not change: people change."
Henry David Thoreau
*************************************************************************************
diane celia hodges
university of british columbia, centre for the study of curriculum and
instruction
vancouver, bc
mailing address: 46 broadview avenue, pointe claire, qc, H9R 3Z2
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