On 1/26/02 7:18 AM, "Mike Cole" <mcole@weber.ucsd.edu> wrote:
But jokes are ambiguous by nature
I do
> not know how to, and to not want to exercise prior constraint on
> what can and cannot be written on xmca. If we come to that point,
> Xmca is dead.
I couldn't sleep for hours last night thinking about this "situation". I
could see it theoretically, as a perfect example of how a COP polices
itself. XMCA is, after all, if you just care to count the messages, a
male-dominated discursive space.... A straight white male dominated space.
And we know that matters. And we know that discursively, what is bound to
happen is that "the members" will not permit their identity-affirming
practices to be suppressed. Et voila. You either put up, shut up, or get
out.
There is nothing ambiguous about what was posted. And like Freud wrote,
jokes have nothing to do with nature, and everything to do with culture.
Like I said, replace "the woman" with "the jew" or "the fag" and read a post
sent by someone not a member of that group, and check how "ambiguous you
think it all is.
And just like Kuhn describes, the last members of the tribe aggressively
patrol the borders and insist on their right to maintain outmoded practices
- practices that define their identity.
Meanwhile, the rest of us move on.
I really resent that the price to be a part of XMCA is to put up with sexist
messages that have absolutely no relation to the community's ostensive
academic focus. Look at the numbers, guys. Who really is here, anyway? And
why is it that a majority of the participants - the active participants, are
white men? Do you think that is some kind of accident?
The effects of discrimination only seem ambiguous to the dominant members of
any group - how very convenient. And how very self-serving not to notice
that everyone else quietly slinks away.
Why not just erect a sign, like on a tree-house.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Feb 01 2002 - 01:00:08 PST