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shamsaddinmegalommatis · 3 months

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Educational-Intellectual De-Westernization for Africa: Rejection of the Colonial, Elitist, Racist and Profane European Concepts of 'University' and 'Academy'

In a previous article published under the title "Beyond Afrocentrism: Prerequisites for Somalia to lead African de-colonization and de-Westernization", I expanded on the diverse misconceptions, oversights, errors and problems that existed in the early discourses of the African Afrocentric intellectuals who wanted to liberate Africa from the colonial yoke but did not assess correctly all the levels of colonial penetration and impact, namely spiritual, religious, intellectual, educational, academic, scientific, cultural, socio-behavioral, economic, military and governmental. You can find the article's contents and links to it at the end of the present, second part of the series.

What matters mostly is not the study and the publication of Assyrian cuneiform texts, but the reestablishment of the Ancient Mesopotamian conceptual approach to Medicine as a spiritual-material scientific discipline; "a large collection of texts from the Assyrian healer Kisir-Ashur's family library forms the basis for Assyriologist Troels Pank Arbøll's new book. In the book entitled Medicine in Ancient Assur - A Microhistorical Study of the Neo-Assyrian Healer Kiṣir-Aššur, Arbøll analyses the 73 texts that the healer, and later his apprentices, scratched into clay tablets around 658 BCE. These manuscripts provide an incredibly detailed picture of the elements, which constituted this specific Mesopotamian healer’s education and practice". https://humanities.ku.dk/news/2020/new-book-provides-rare-insights-into-a-mesopotamian-medical-practitioners-education-2700-years-ago/

Contents

Introduction

I. Centers of education, science and wisdom from Mesopotamia and Egypt to Constantinople and Baghdad: total absence of the Western concept of "university"

II. The Western European concept of "university": inextricably linked to the Crusades, colonialism and totalitarianism

III. De-colonization for Africa: rejection of the colonial, elitist and racist concepts of "university" and "academy"

Introduction

As I stated in my previous article, the most erroneous aspects of the African Afrocentric intellectuals' approach were the following:

a) their underestimation of the extremely profound impact that the colonization has had on all dimensions of life in Africa,

b) their failure to identify the compact nature of the colonial system as first implemented in Western Europe, then exported worldwide via multifaceted types of colonization, and finally imposed locally by the criminal traitors and stooges of their Western masters in a most tyrannical manner, and

c) their disregard of the fact that the multilayered colonization project was carried out indeed by the colonial countries in other continents (Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin America, etc.) as well, being thus not only an African affair.

To the above, I herewith add another, most crucial, element of the worldwide colonial regime that the African Afrocentric intellectuals failed to identify:

- its indivisibility.

In fact, you cannot possibly think that it is possible to reject even one part of the evil system (example: its Eurocentric pseudo-historical dogma, the promotion of incest and pedophilia, the sophisticated diffusion of homosexuality or another part) while accepting others, namely 'high technology', 'sustainable development', 'politics', 'democracy', 'economic stability', 'human rights', etc. Of course, this relates to the element described in the aforementioned aspect b, but it is certainly very important for all Africans not to make general dreams and not to harbor delusions as regards the Western colonial system that they have to reject as the most execrable and the most criminal occurrence that brought disaster to the Black Continent (and to the rest of the world) for several centuries.

In the present article, I will however stay close to the fundamental educational-academic-intellectual aspects of colonization that African academics, intellectuals, mystics, wise elders, erudite scholars, and spiritual masters have to take into account when considering how to reject and ban from their educational and research centers the colonially imposed pseudo-education and the associated historical forgeries, such as Eurocentrism, Hellenism, Greco-Roman world, Judeo-Christian civilization, etc. In part IV of my previous article, I explained why "Afrocentrism had to encompass severe criticism and total rejection of the so-called Western Civilization". Now, I will take this issue to the next stage.

I. Centers of education, science and wisdom from Mesopotamia and Egypt to Constantinople and Baghdad: total absence of the Western concept of "university"

You cannot possibly decolonize your land and de-Westernize your national education by tolerating the existence of 'universities' on African soil or anywhere else across the Earth. Certainly, this word is alien to all Africans, because it is part of the vocabulary or the barbarian invaders (université, university, etc.), who imposed it without revealing to the African students the racist connotation, which is inherent to this word.

Actually, the central measure taken and the principal practice performed by the inhuman Western colonial masters was the materialization of the evil concept of 'university' and the establishment of such unnecessary and heinous institutions in their colonies. This totalitarian notion was devised first in Western Europe in striking contrast to all the educational, academic, scientific systems that had existed in the rest of the world.

Since times immemorial, and noticeably in Mesopotamia and Egypt before the Flood (24th – 23rd c. BCE), institutions were created to record, archive, study, comprehend, represent, preserve and propagate the spiritual or material knowledge and wisdom in all of their aspects. From the Sumerian, Akkadian and Assyrian-Babylonian Eduba (lit. 'the house where the tablets are completed') and from the Ancient Egyptian Per-Ankh (lit. 'the house of life') to the highest sacerdotal institutions accommodated in the uniquely vast temples of Assyria, Babylonia and Egypt, an undividable method of learning, exploring, assessing, and representing the spiritual and material worlds (or universes) has been attested in numerous texts and documented in the archaeological record.

About Education, Wisdom, and Scientific Research in Ancient Mesopotamia:

About Education, Wisdom, and Scientific Research in Ancient Egypt:

There was no utilitarian approach to learning, studying, exploring, comprehending, representing and propagating knowledge and wisdom; in this regard, the human effort had to fit the destination of Mankind, which was -for all civilized nations- the epitome of all eschatological expectations: the ultimate reconstitution of the original perfection of the First Man.

Learning, studying, exploring, assessing or concluding on a topic, and representing it to others were parts of every man's moral tasks and duties to maintain the Good in their lives and to unveil the Wonders of the Creation. The only benefit to be extracted from these activities was of moral and spiritual order – not material. That is why the endless effort to learn, study, explore, assess, conclude and represent had to be all-encompassing.

The same approach, attitude and mentality was attested among Cushites, Hittites, Aramaeans, Iranians, Turanians, Indians, Chinese and many other Asiatic and African nations. It continued so all the way down to Judean, Manichaean, Mazdaean, Christian, and Islamic times as attested in

a) the Iranian schools, centers of learning, research centers, and libraries of Gundishapur (located in today's Khuzestan, SW Iran), Tesifun (Ctesiphon, also known as Mahoze in Syriac Aramaic and as Al-Mada'in in Arabic; located in Central Mesopotamia), and Ras al Ayn (the ancient Assyrian city Resh-ina, which is also known as Resh Aina in Syriac Aramaic; located in North Mesopotamia);

b) the Aramaean scientific centers and schools of Urhoy (today's Urfa in SE Turkey; which is also known as Edessa of Osrhoene), Nasibina (today's Nusaybin in SE Turkey; which is also known as Nisibis), Mahoze (also known as Seleucia-Ctesiphon), and Antioch;

c) the Ptolemaic Egyptian Library of Alexandria, the Coptic school of Alexandria, and the Deir Aba Maqar (Monastery of Saint Macarius the Great) in Wadi el Natrun (west of the Nile Delta);

d) the Imperial school of the Magnaura (lit. 'the Great Hall') at Constantinople (known in Eastern Roman as Πανδιδακτήριον τῆς Μαγναύρας, i.e. 'the all topics teaching center of Magnaura');

e) the Aramaean 'Workshop of Eloquence', which is also known as the 'Rhetorical school of Gaza' (earlier representing the Gentile tradition and later promoting Christian Monophysitism);

f) the Judean Rabbinic and Talmudic schools and Houses of Learning (בי מדרשא/Be Midrash) that flourished in Syria-Palestine (Beit Hillel and Beit Shammai) and in Mesopotamia (Nehardea, Pumbedita, Mahoze, etc.); and

g) the Islamic schools (madrasas), centers of learning, research centers, observatories, and libraries of Baghdad (known as House of Wisdom - Bayt al Hikmah/بيت الحكمة), Harran (in North Mesopotamia, today's SE Turkey), al-Qarawiyyin (جامعة القرويين; in Morocco), Kairouan (جامع القيروان الأكبر; in Tunisia), Sarouyeh (سارویه; near Isfahan in Iran), Maragheh (مراغه; in NW Iran), Samarqand (in Central Asia), and the numerous Nezamiyeh (النظامیة) schools in Iran, Caucasus region, and Central Asia, to name but a few.

About Iranian, Aramaean, Judean, and Christian schools, centers of learning, research centers, and libraries:

About Islamic schools (madrasas), centers of learning, research centers, observatories, and libraries:

All these centers of learning did not develop the absurd distinction between the spiritual and material worlds that characterizes the modern 'universities' which were incepted in Western Europe. Irrespective of land, origin, language, tradition, culture and state, all these temples, schools, madrasas, observatories, and libraries included well-diversified scientific methods, cosmogonies, world perceptions, approaches to life, interpretations of facts, and considerations of data. Sexagesimal and decimal number systems were accepted and used; lunar, solar and lunisolar calendars were studied and evaluated; astronomy and astrology (very different from their modern definition and meaning which is the result of the Western pseudo-scientific trickery) were inseparable, whereas chemistry and alchemy constituted one discipline. These true and human centers of knowledge and wisdom were void of sectarianism and utilitarianism.

Viewed as moral tasks, search, exploration and study, pretty much like learning and teaching constituted inextricably religious endeavors. Furthermore, there was absolute freedom of reflection, topic conceptualization, data contextualization, text interpretation, and conclusion, because there were no diktats of theological or governmental order.

In brief, throughout World History, there were centers of learning, houses of knowledge, libraries, centers of scientific exploration, all-inclusive schools, but no 'universities'.

II. The Western European concept of "university": inextricably linked to the Crusades, colonialism and totalitarianism

Western European and North American historians attempt to expand the use of the term 'university' and cover earlier periods; this fact may have already been attested in some of the links that I included in the previous unit. However, this attempt is entirely false and absolutely propagandistic.

The malefic character of the Western European universities is not revealed only in the deliberate, absurd and fallacious separation of the spiritual sciences from the material sciences and in the subsequently enforced elimination of the spiritual universe from every attempt of exploration undertaken within the material universe. Yet, the inseparability of the two universes was the predominant concept and the guiding principle for all ancient, Judean, Christian, Manichaean, Mazdaean, and Islamic schools of learning.

One has to admit that there appears to be an exception in this rule, which applies to Western universities as regards the distinction between the spiritual and the material research; this situation is attested only in the study of Christian theology in Western European universities. However, this sector is also deprived of every dimension of spiritual exercise, practice and research, as it involves a purely rationalist and nominalist approach, which would be denounced as entirely absurd, devious and heretic by all the Fathers of the Christian Church. As a matter of fact, rationalism, nominalism and materialism are forms of faithlessness.

All the same, the most repugnant trait of the Western European universities is their totalitarian and inhuman nature. In spite of tons of literature written about the so-called 'academic freedom', the word itself, its composition and etymology, fully demonstrate that there is not and there cannot be any freedom in the Western centers of pseudo-learning, which are called 'universities'. The Latin word 'universitas' did not exist at the times of the Roman Republic, the Roman Empire, and the Western Roman Empire. The nonsensical term was not created in the Eastern Roman Empire where the imperial center of education, learning, and scientific research was wisely named 'Pandidakterion', i.e. 'the all topics teaching center'.

The first 'universitas' was incepted long after the anti-Constantinopolitan heretics of Rome managed to get rid of the obligation to accept as pope of Rome the person designated by the Emperor at Constantinople, which was a practice of vital importance which lasted from 537 until 752 CE.

The first 'universitas' was incepted long after the beginning of the systematic opposition that the devious, pseudo-Christian priesthood of Rome launched against the Eastern Roman Empire, by fallaciously attributing the title of Roman Emperor to the incestuous barbarian thug Charlemagne (800 CE).

Last, the first 'universitas' was incepted long after the first (Photian) schism (867 CE) and, quite interestingly, several decades after the Great Schism (1054 CE) between the Eastern Roman Empire and the deviate and evil Roman papacy.

In fact, the University of Bologna ('Universitas Bononiensis'; in Central Italy) was established in 1088 CE, only eight (8) years before the First Crusade was launched in 1096 CE.

It is necessary for all Africans to come to know the historic motto of the terrorist organization that is masqueraded behind the deceitful title "University of Bologna': "Petrus ubique pater legum Bononia mater" (: St. Peter is everywhere the father of the law, Bologna is its mother). This makes clear that these evil institutions (universities) were geared to function worldwide as centers of propagation and imposition of the lawless laws and the inhuman dogmas of the Western European barbarians.

At this point, we have to analyze the real meaning and the repugnant nature of the monstrous word. Its Latin etymology points to the noun 'universus', which is formed from 'uni-' (root of the Genitive 'unius' of the numeral 'unus', which means 'one') and from 'versus' (past participle of the Latin verb 'verto', which in the infinitive form 'vertere' means 'to turn'). Consequently, 'universus' means forcibly 'turned into one'. It goes without saying that, if the intention is to mentally-intellectually turn all the students into one, there is not and there cannot be any freedom in those malefic institutions.

'Universitas' is therefore the inauspicious location whereby 'all are turned into one', inevitably losing their identity, integrity, originality, singularity and individuality. In other words, 'universitas' was conceived as the proper word for a monstrous factory of mental, intellectual, sentimental and educational uniformity that produces copies of dehumanized beings that happen to have the same, prefabricated world views, ideas, opinions, beliefs and systematized 'knowledge'. In fact, the first 'students' of the University of Bologna were the primary industrial products in the history of mankind. Speaking about 'academic freedom' and charters like the Constitutio Habita were then merely the ramifications of an unmatched hypocrisy.

To establish a useful parallel between medieval times in Western Europe and modern times in North America, while also bridging the malefic education with the malignant governance of the Western states, I would simply point out that the evil, perverse and tyrannical institution of 'universities' definitely suits best any state and any government that would dare invent an inhumane motto like 'E pluribus unum' ('out of many, one). This is actually one of the two main mottos of the United States, and it appears on the US Great Seal. It reflects always the same sickness and the same madness of diabolical uniformity that straightforwardly contradicts every concept of Creation.

One may still wonder why, at the very beginning of the previous unit, I referred to "the racist connotation, which is inherent to" the word 'universitas'; the answer is simple. By explicitly desiring to "turn all (the students) into one", the creators of these calamitous institutions and, subsequently, all the brainless idiots, who willingly accepted to eliminate themselves spiritually and intellectually in order to become uniformed members of those 'universities', denied and rejected the existence of the 'Other', i.e. of every other culture, civilization, world conceptualization, moral system of values, governance, education, and approach to learning, knowledge and wisdom.

The evil Western structures of tyrannical pseudo-learning did not accept even the 11th c. Western European Christians and their culture an faith; they accepted only those among them, who were ready (for the material benefits that they would get instead) to undergo the necessary process of irrevocable self-effacement in order to obtain a filthy piece of paper testifying to their uniformity with the rest. Western universities are the epitome of the most inhuman form of racism that has ever existed on Earth.

As a matter of fact, there is nothing African, Asiatic, Christian, Islamic or human in a 'university'. If this statement was difficult to comprehend a few centuries or decades ago, it is nowadays fully understandable.

III. De-colonization for Africa: rejection of the colonial, elitist and racist concepts of "university" and "academy"

It is therefore crystal clear that every new university, named after the Latin example and conceived after the Western concept, only worsens the conditions of colonial servility among African, Asiatic and Latin American nations. As a matter of fact, more Western-styled 'universities' and 'academies' mean for Africa more compact subordination to, and more comprehensive dependence on, the Western colonial criminals.

It is only the result of pure naivety or compact ignorance to imagine that the severe educational-academic-intellectual damage, which was caused to all African nations by the colonial powers, will or can be remedied with some changes of names, titles, mottos and headlines or due to peremptory modifications of scientific conclusions. If I expanded on the etymology and the hidden, real meaning of the term 'universitas', it is only because I wanted to reveal its perverse nature. But merely a name change would not suffice in an African nation's effort to achieve genuine decolonization and comprehensive de-Westernization.

Universities in all the Arabic-speaking countries have been called 'Jamaet' (or Gamaet; جامعة); the noun originates from the verb 'yajmaC ' (يجمع), which means collecting or gathering (people) together. At this point, it is to be reminded that the word has great affinity with the word 'mosque' (جامع; JamaC) in Arabic. However, one has to take into consideration the fact that the mere change of name did not cause any substantive differentiation in terms of nature, structure, approach to science, methods used, and moral character of the overall educational system.

Other vicious Western terms of educational nature that should be removed from Africa, Asia and Latin America are the word 'academy' and its derivatives; this word denoted initially in Western Europe 'a society of distinguished scholars and artists or scientists'. Later, in the 16th-17th c., those societies were entirely institutionalized. For this reason, since the beginning of the 20th c., the term 'academia' was coined to describe the overall academic environment or a specific independent community active in the different fields of research and education. More recently, 'academy' ended up signifying any simple place of study or training company.

As name, nature, contents, structure and function, 'academy' is definitely profane; in its origin, it had a markedly impious character, as it was used to designate the so-called 'school of philosophy' that was set up by Plato, who vulgarized knowledge and desecrated wisdom. In fact, this philosopher did not only fail to pertinently and comprehensively study in Ancient Egypt where he sojourned (in Iwnw; Heliopolis), but he also proved to be unable to grasp that there is no knowledge and no wisdom outside the temples, which were at the time the de facto high centers of spiritual and material study, learning, research, exploration and comprehension. He therefore thought it possible for him to 'teach' (or discuss with) others despite the fact that he had not proficiently studied and adequately learned the wisdom and the spiritual potency of the Ancient Egyptian Iwnw (Heliopolitan) hierophants and high priests.

Being absolutely incompetent to become a priest of the sanctuary of Athena at the suburb 'Academia' of Athens, he gathered his group of students at a location nearby, and for this reason his 'school' was named after that neighborhood. It is noteworthy that the said suburb's name was due to a legendary figure, Akademos (Ακάδημος; Academus), who was mythologized in relation with the Theseus legends of Ancient Athens. Using the term 'school' for Plato's group of friends and followers is really abusive, because it did not constitute an accredited priestly or public establishment.

In fact, all those, absurdly eulogized, 'Platonic seminars' were informal gatherings of presumptuous, arrogant, wealthy, parasitic and idiotic persons, who thought it possible to become spiritually knowledgeable and portentous by pompously, yet nonsensically, discussing about what they could not possibly know. It goes without saying that this disgusting congregation of immoral beasts found it quite normal to possess numerous slaves (more than their family members), consciously practiced pedophilia and homosexuality, and viewed their wives as 'things' in a deprecatory manner unmatched even by the Afghan Taliban. This nauseating and execrable environment is at the origin of vicious term 'academy'. And this environment is the target of today's Western elites.

Consequently, any use of the term 'academy' constitutes a straightforward rejection of the sacerdotal, religious and spiritual dimension of knowledge and wisdom, in direct opposition to what was worldwide accepted among civilized nations with great temples throughout the history of mankind. In fact, the appearance of what is now called 'Ancient Greek Philosophy' was an exception in World History, which was due to the peripheral and marginal location of Western Anatolia and South Balkans with respect to Egypt, Cush, Syria-Palestine, Mesopotamia, Anatolia, and Iran. In brief, the Ancient Greek philosophers (with the exception of very few who were true mystics and spiritual masters and therefore should not be categorized as 'philosophers') failed to understand that, by exploring the world only mentally and verbally (i.e. by just thinking and talking), no one can sense, describe, and represent (to others) the true nature of the worlds, namely the spiritual and the material universes.

Plato and his pupils (his 'school' or 'academy') were therefore ordinary individuals who attempted to 'prove' orally what cannot be contained in words and cannot be comprehended logically but contemplatively and transcendentally. All the Platonic concepts, notions, ideas, opinions and theories are maladroit and failed efforts to explain the Iwnw (Heliopolitan) religion of Ancient Egypt (also known among the Ancient Greeks as the 'Ennead'). But none of them was able to perform even a minor move of priestly potency or any transcendental act.

Furthermore, I have to point out that the absurd 'significance' that both, the so-called Plato's school and 'Ancient Greek Philosophy', have acquired in the West over the past few centuries is entirely due to the historical phenomenon of Renaissance that characterized 15th-16th c. Western Europe. But this is an exception even within the context of European History. Actually, the Roman ruler Sulla destroyed the Platonic Academy in 86 BCE; this was the end of the 'Academy'. Several centuries later, some intellectuals, who were indulging themselves in repetition, while calling themselves 'successors of Plato', opened (in Athens) another 'Academy', which was erroneously described by modern Western university professors as 'Neo-Platonic'. All the same, the Roman Emperor Justinian I the Great put an irrevocable end to that shame of profanity and nonsensical talking (529 CE).

The revival of the worthless institution that had remained unknown to all Christians started, quite noticeably, little time after the fall of Constantinople (1453); in 1462, the anti-Christian banker, statesman and intellectual Cosimo dei Medici established the Platonic Academy of Florence to propagate all the devilish and racist concepts of the Renaissance and praise the worthless institution that had been forgotten.

I recently explained why the Western European Renaissance and the colonial conquests are an indissoluble phenomenon of extremely racist nature; here you can find the links to my articles:

It becomes therefore crystal clear that Africa does not need any more Western-styled universities and academies; contrarily, there is an urgent need for university-level centers of knowledge and wisdom, which will overwhelmingly apply African moral concepts, values and virtues to the topics studied and explored. Learning was always an inextricably spiritual, religious, and cultural affair in Africa. No de-colonization will be effectuated prior to the reinstallation of African educational values across Africa' s schools.

Consequently, instead of uselessly spending money for the establishment of new 'universities' and 'academies', which only deepen and worsen Africa's colonization, what the Black Continent needs now is a new type of institution that will help prepare African students to study abroad in specifically selected sectors and with pre-arranged determination and approach, comprehend and reject the Western fallacy, and replace the Western-styled universities with new, genuinely African, educational institutions. Concerning this topic, I will offer few suggestions in my forthcoming article.

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Beyond Afrocentrism: Prerequisites for Somalia to lead African de-colonization and de-Westernization

Introduction

I. Decolonization and the failure of the Afrocentric Intelligentsia

II. Afrocentric African scholars should have been taken Egyptology back from the Western Orientalists and Africanists

III. Western Usurpation of African Heritage must be canceled.

IV. Afrocentrism had to encompass severe criticism and total rejection of the so-called Western Civilization

V. Afrocentrism as a form of African Isolationism drawing a line of separation between colonized nations in Africa and Asia

VI. General estimation of the human resources, the time, and the cost needed

VII. Decolonization means above all De-Anglicization and De-Francization

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#EDUCATION #university #universitas #academy #Platonic academy #Western world #Western Europe #colonization #racism #elitism #decolonization #de-Westernization #Judeo-Christian #Greco-Roman #Hellenism #white supremism

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cowboyjen68 · 2 years

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Hi! Just interested to hear your perspective on this! I've noticed there's so many femme4femme lesbians, and i have a butch friend who was saying she's finding it impossible to find a femme who's into butches. I've definitely seen that sentiment online. From what I can tell, there used to much more of a femme4butch interest. But obviously that's all from like lesbian history posts/articles and not lived experience. Do you think that's something that's changed?

I answered this questions brilliantly and with much thought and then the palm of my hand hit a button and "poof!" I lost it all. Tumblr needs a save as I write feature. And also spell check. I will attempt it again.

I can first assure you that there are lots of femmes out there looking for butches. I hear from femmes they can't find butches LOL Ahhh the lesbian condition. We are all looking and can't find each other.

When I was coming out it was the early 90's and most of what I saw were butch/femme and not because there were not butch/butch or femme/femme couples, I just didn't recognize the couples for what they were. Lack of observation skills beyond what I understood and most (unconsciously) connected with. I was spending most of my energy convincing myself that I could be attracted to any woman and ignoring my natural inclination to like women more feminine than I am.

I think both through the (sometimes) harrowing world of on line discourse and lesbians not getting as much intergenerational exposure in real life, what we tend to see is through the eyes of society where Femme4Femme is a more comfortable narrative for the average audience. So that is what general (ie straight) media puts out there. Butch4butch is not something the greater public can wrap their head around as a rule. And Butch Femme comes under fire as “man/woman” roles so it is avoided. What we most often see is actually sort of in the middle. Two women with vague lesbain qualities. That is easier for wider audiences to be “ok” with I guess.

I am horrible about academic ideas and historical perspectives on lesbian culture unless I was a part of it. But I can tell you that as I was coming out in 1993 there seemed to be a slight shift away from butch and femme couples using those words to describe themselves in the larger LGBT world. BUT in lesbians circles, like women’s festval where I learned about butch) I was seeing even old school butches begin to break away from butch requiring femme to be a thing. I was exposed to the idea that butch and femme exist as their own and do not require the presence of one for the other to be recognized.

Basically butch stood on its own as a describtive word that cover the experiences, perceptions and “energy”, for lack of a better word. that certain women have with out effort, just as they exist. Same with femme. This use of the terms meant that those butches attracted to butches or femme attracted to femmes to anything in between was accepted WITHOUT one loosing the use of the words butch or femme.

Basically the words were not dependant soley on the relationship to each other. I do believe that no matter where a lesbians true passionate attraction is there is an undefinable connection that butches and femmes share but it does not have to be under the circumstances of a romantic relationship. It can be friendship or even something as simple as acknowledging we recognize each other in a crowd.

The more relaxed idea that butches and femmes to not need to be attracted to each other for them to exist as butches and femmes have made it much easier for other connections to form (butch4butch or femme4femme or inbetween) and be public and seen. A femme does not have to no longer use femme if she is married to lesbians who is neither butch nor femme etc. Butch/Femme couples and butches and femmes looking for each other are out there but the other pairing are more visible as well.

Remember, the wider social media will promote only what it is comfortable with which tends to be femme4femme and that is NOT a true picture of lesbian reality.

#lesbian #femme #butch #butch4butch #femme4femme #butchfemme

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odinsblog · 3 years

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(1/?) Thank you for posting nuanced views regards NATO. I wish American left understand that when your country is not a nuclear power you learn to appreciate NATO even if it is dominated by the US. The closer one lives to a wild bear the more bear traps become appreciated. People who live nowhere near bears do not understand this. Why do they love bear trappers so much? asks the person who lives inside a giant bear trap, who has never seen a bear and not threatened by one. America you are safe!

Ask continues: “It is a matter of survival not love of the imperialism. Russia has proved repeatedly in history it is a threat to neighbors closest to her. We do not want war! After Ukraine will be Georgia, Moldova, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Putin will not stop until he is stopped. Non-nuclear countries closer to Russia wish only to be threatened no more by Putler’s Czarist ambitions and if it mean accepting NATO? So be it. Good day to you. Glory to Ukraine.”

[re: this post or this one]

Anon, I hope you are safe.

I do not personally know many immigrants from that region irl, and the handful of neighbors who I dO know, we are acquaintances at best. (A French woman and a Russian couple; all of whom still speak with the heavy accents of their native tongues. I’m dying to ask them about the invasion, but unfortunately I don’t think I know them well enough to broach the subject—just like I appreciate them not polling me, whenever the cops kill another Black person).

So this ask is, for me, a glimpse into the head of someone—other than Ukrainian citizens—who quite literally has some skin in the game, and who is directly impacted by NATO and what’s happening in Ukraine.

While I have called out American imperialism , I honestly hadn’t thought much about NATO, so I until very recently, I hadn’t formed or formulated any cogent thoughts about NATO (separate from the U.S.) one way or the other. This ask strikes me as the voice of someone who, living close to Russia, isn’t speaking from a place of privilege and isn’t being “academic” in their reasoning. It’s real for anon in a way that it isn’t for tankies who never seem to want to hold Putin accountable for his “Czarist tendencies.”

I sat on this ask for a minute because I needed to look around and see if it was at all representative of people living in non-NATO, European countries. Twitter isn’t necessarily the best place to go for samples, I know, but here is a little bit of what I found online, when someone asked to hear only from other Europeans on the subject:

I cannot vouch for anyone in the thread above bc they quite literally just popped onto my radar, because I was looking for this specific kind of discourse, but I just think that a few people calling themselves “leftists” (aka tankies) are foolishly misguided and wayyy on the wrong side of this.

I want to be extremely clear here: I am not absolving NATO or America for their unending wars or their imperialism. We can walk and chew gum at the same time, right? We can give fair and honest critiques of American colonialism and warmongering, while simultaneously addressing Putin’s history of aggressive imperialism. We should be adult enough to parse out, “America bad ≠ Russia good,” and yes, I KNOW that citizens of African countries, who are on the receiving end of NATO’s “protection” (aka, wars for oil) feel differently. And that is also a viewpoint which is valid af. We should be able to address both, without ignoring, minimizing or excusing Russia’s repeated aggression.

It’s just that the line about “people who don’t live close to bears don’t understand what it’s like to live so close to bears” really resonated with me.

And I freely admit that if Putin follows through with his threat to use tactical nukes, the increasingly real possibility of a nuclear weapons exchange between Russia and NATO will impact everyone on this planet, in a way that other current wars won’t.

I would be very interested to hear from anyone who lives in Europe, in a non-NATO country, and who has a blog that wasn’t created within the past few days.

And to the anon who sent this ask, I hope you and your loved ones are safe. If you want, please feel free to message me off anon. I fully cosign on the, “Glory to Ukraine,” sentiment. I hope Ukraine kicks Putin’s ass. 🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦

#anon #ask #answered #ukraine #kyiv #stand with ukraine #🇺🇦#nato #putler #vladimir putin #adolph putin

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fandom-oracle · 3 years

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Wait wdym? Do you think fic is bad?

i'm getting canceled tonight i guess.

if you actually did a good a faith interpretation of my post you know it's not really ABOUT fanfiction at all, i actually write fanfiction myself. i'm not sharing here because it's overwhelmingly bad fic that i write exclusively as wish-fulfilment or for self-projection, but at least i'm self-aware about it. i am ALSO one of the people who reads ze Books™️, although most of the academic material i consume are nonfiction, so this whole thing is particularly annoying to me. the crux of the matter is that, if you're a little younger you might've missed it, but this website was a hotbed of scalding takes like 'dante's divine comedy is literally fanfiction', 'something something is literally fanfiction' when the thing in question barely counts as a transformative work and, in fact, it weakens the definition of transformative work in itself to try to apply it to literally anything that exhibits an ounce of intertextuality. plenty of takes that are... true, but require some nuance, focused on the idea of transformative fandom as a place defined by its presence of overwhelmingly female and disproportionately queer (occasionally, though disputedly, nonwhite) content creators and the ways in which transformative fan content could be interpreted as a space of defiance to cisheteropatriarchy in the way it permeates traditional media. a third, less common but still relevant take was the focus on how certain fandoms such as trek and doctor who have a long history of involvement in real-world civil rights issues and progressive politics. so this kind of take has been the dominant view on tumblr and transformative fandom for a good decade now, perhaps longer, and the people with this kind of takes can sometimes be a little... obnoxious. and the majority of people on transformative fandom (regardless of wether or not the fandom is disproportionately composed of nonwhite individuals or not, by sheer virtue of american demographics and this site`s heaily skewed userbase, the majority will still be white) are white, and like any other space dominated by white people, fandom has often been a vehicle for white supremacy. "Stitch Media Mix" talks about this in-depth. the discourse on fandom racism and ways in which transformative fandom as a whole contribute to racialized stereotypes, hierarchies, and deeper problems within online culture has led to a lot of people with grievances with fandom, many of whom are women of color, to develop an entire online identity built around the concept of being "critical of fandom", which is a very weird thing to do with fandom is literally billions of people, not a unified demographic, and that being critical of something can mean a WIDE amount of things; which in turn has led to a lot of people insulating themselves completely from any criticism of fandom as being inherently in bad faith, which a weird thing to do when literally ANY sphere of society should be open to criticism. people taking critiques of media they consume and taking critiques of their own critiques as personal attacks are abound here and make everything worse. so a fairly recent (mid2018ish, definitely post the insanity of reylo discourse but before sarah z blew up in popularity) trend has been that people in these communities isolate more and more and the general discourse has effetively resulted in people with differing takes in fanfiction specifically but fandom as a Whole (which is, again very weird to say because fandom is not 'a Whole' because there's no unifying element to different fandoms) only interacting with each other in hostile ways. and increasingly, in my personal sphere, a lot of people are positioning themselves in the "fandom critical" (AGAIN, WEIRD THING TO SAY, WHAT DOES IT EVEN MEAN, PLEASE USE WORDS WITH PRECISION) sphere, and I tend to take that "side" myself, but i specifically do not think framing this as a team A or team B thing is useful. this culture war was in the buildup.

last week a post by a user i follow recently became popular. the post itself was a critique that i.. do not necessarily agree with. it was ultimately about the idea of easily-consumable popular media being seen as an acceptable form of exclusive media engagement by people in the "pro-fandom" sphere, and how the insidiousness of this line of thinking has to do with how capitalist media production is designed to spread, and how fandom AS A TREND, not specifically any individuals or any fanworks, can empower capitalism. the post specifically did NOT use the kindest possible words, but that was what they were trying to say. howelljenkins also has really good takes on the subject, albeit from a different angle.

anyway because this is a circular culture war, the result was as follows: 1) a bunch of pro-fandom types refuse to actually make a charitable reading of the post and insist the user in question hates fandom and thinks people under capitalism shouldn't have things that are Fun, and should Only Read Theory and keep sending anon hate to several blogs in the opposing sphere, therefore proving the point that fandom sometimes prevent people from being able to engage critically with things; 2) a bunch of anti-fandom types who defined their entire identity on hating fandom being like "haha look at these cringe people" instead of trying to understand why a demographic overwhelmingly composed of marginalized people would feel strongly to posts that use inflammatory language against an interest of theirs, thereby proving the point that most criticism of fandom is divorced from actual fan content and is vaguely defined. the reason this is a culture war that actually deserves attention (unlike most fandom culture wars, which are just really granular ship wars made into social justice issues for clout) is that, for the most part, both of these groups are mostly people with college degrees, many of whom will contirbute to academia in the coming years. fan studies is a relevant field. these discussions have repercussions in wider media criticism trends, and this is why i can't really stand it or just passively ignoring it the way i do with most other inconsequential discourse. like it's genuinely upsetting seeing almost every single tumblr user, most of whom should know better, patting themselves in the back for their inability to read things in a way that doesn't feed into preexisting cultural hostilities in fan spaces.

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woman-loving · 3 years

Text

Lesbian Unintelligibility in Pre-1989 Poland

Selection from ""No one talked about it": The Paradoxes of Lesbian Identity in pre-1989 Poland, by Magdalena Staroszczyk, in Queers in State Socialism: Cruising 1970s Poland, eds. Tomasz Basiuk and Jędrzej Burszta, 2021

The question of lesbian visibility is pertinent today because of the limited number of lesbian-oriented activist events and cultural representations. But it presents a major methodological problem when looking at the past. That problem lies in an almost complete lack of historical sources, something partly mended with oral history interviews, but also in an epistemological dilemma. How can we talk about lesbians when they did not exist as a recognizable category? What did their (supposed) non-existence mean? And should we even call those who (supposedly) did not exist “lesbians”?

To illustrate this problem, let me begin with excerpts from an interview I conducted for the CRUSEV project [a study of queer cultures in the 1970s]. My interlocutor is a lesbian woman born in the 1950s, who lived in Cracow most of her life:

“To this very day I have a problem with my brothers, as I cannot talk to them about this. They just won’t do it, I would like to talk, but. . . . They have this problem, they lace up their mouths when any reference is made to this topic, because they were raised in that reality [when] no one talked about it. It was a taboo. It still is. ... I was so weak, unable to take initiative, lacking a concept of my own life—all this testifies to the oppression of homosexual persons, who do not know how to live, have no support from [others], no information or knowledge learned at school, or from a psychologist. What did I do? I searched in encyclopaedias for the single entry, “homosexuality.” What did I learn? That I was a pervert. What did it do to me? It only hurt me, no? Q: Was the word lesbian in use? Only as a slur. Even my mother used it as an offensive word. When she finally figured out my orientation, she said the word a few times. With hatred. Hissing the word at me.”

The woman offers shocking testimony of intense and persistent hostility towards a family member—sister, daughter—who happens to be a lesbian. The brothers and the mother are so profoundly unable to accept her sexuality that they cannot speak about it at all, least of all rationally. The taboo has remained firmly in place for decades. How was it maintained? And, perhaps more importantly, how do we access the emotional reality that it caused? The quotes all highlight the theme of language, silence, and something unspeakable. Tabooization implies a gap in representation, and the appropriate word cannot be spoken but merely hissed out with hatred.

Popular discourse and academic literature alike address this problem under the rubric of “lesbian invisibility” (Mizielińska 2001). I put forward a different conceptual frame, proposing to address the question of lesbian identity in pre-1989 Poland not in terms of visibility versus invisibility, but instead in terms of cultural intelligibility versus unintelligibility. The former concepts, which have a rich history in discussions of pre-emancipatory lesbian experience, presume an already existing identity that is self-evident to the person in question. They assume the existence of a person who thinks of herself as a lesbian. One then proceeds to ask whether or not this lesbian was visible as such to others, that is, whether others viewed her as the lesbian she knew she was. Another assumption behind this framing is that the woman in question wished to be visible although this desired visibility had been denied her. These are some of the essentializing assumptions inscribed in the concept of (in)visibility. Their limitation is that they only allow us to ask whether or not the lesbian is seen for who she feels she is and wishes to be seen by others.

By contrast, (un)intelligibility looks first to the social construction of identity, especially to the constitutive role of language. To think in those terms is to ask under what conditions same-sex desire between women is culturally legible as constitutive of an identity. So, instead of asking if people saw lesbians for who they really were, we will try to understand the specific epistemic conditions which made some women socially recognizable to others, and also to themselves, as “lesbians.” This use of the concept “intelligibility” is analogous to its use by Judith Butler in Gender Trouble, as she explains why gender conformity is key to successful personhood[...].

For Butler, cultural intelligibility is thus an aspect of the social norm, as it corresponds to “a normative ideal.” It is one of the conditions of coherence and continuity requisite for successful personhood. In a similar vein, to say that lesbians in the People’s Republic of Poland were not culturally intelligible is of course not to claim that there were no women engaged in same-sex romantic and erotic relationships—such a conclusion would be absurd, as well as untrue. It is, rather, to suggest that “lesbian” was not a category of personhood available or, for that matter, desirable to many nonheteronormative women. The word was not in common use and it did not signify to them the sort of person they felt they were. Nor was another word readily available, as interlocutors’ frequent periphrases strongly suggest, for example, “I cannot talk to them about this. ... They ... lace up their mouths when any reference is made to this topic” (my emphases).

Interviews conducted with women for the CRUSEV project are filled with pain due to rejection. So are the interviews conducted by Anna Laszuk, whose Dziewczyny, wyjdźcie z szafy (Come Out of the Closet, Girls! 2006 ) was a pioneering collection of herstories which gave voice to non-heteronormative Polish women of different ages, including those who remember the pre-1989 era. Lesbian unintelligibility is arguably a major theme in the collection. The pain caused by the sense of not belonging expressed by many illustrates that being unintelligible can be harmful. At the same time, unintelligibility had some practical advantages. The main among them was relative safety in a profoundly heteronormative society. As long as things went unnamed, a women-loving woman was not in danger of stigmatization or social ostracism.

Basia, born in 1939 and thus the oldest among Laszuk’s interviewees, offers a reassuring narrative in which unintelligibility has a positive valence:

“I cannot say a bad word about my parents. They knew but they did not comment. . . . My parents never asked me personal questions, never exerted any kind of pressure on me to get married. They were people of great culture, very understanding, and they quite simply loved me. They would meet my various girlfriends, but these were never referred to as anything but “friends” (przyjaciółki). Girls had it much easier than boys because intimacy between girls was generally accepted. Nobody was surprised that I showed up with a woman, invited her home, held her hand, or that we went on trips together.” (Laszuk 2006, 27)

The gap between visceral knowing and the impossibility of naming is especially striking in this passage. The parents “knew” and Basia knew that they knew, but they did not comment, ask questions, or make demands, and Basia clearly appreciates their silence as a favour. To her, it was a form of politeness, discreetness, perhaps even protectiveness. The silence was, in fact, a form of affectionate communication: “they quite simply loved me.”

Another of Laszuk’s interviewees is Nina, born around 1945 and 60 years old at the time of the interview. With a certain nostalgia, Nina recalls the days when certain things were left unnamed, suggesting that there is erotic potential in the unintelligibility of women’s desire. Laszuk summarizes her views:

“Nina claims that those times certainly carried a certain charm: erotic relationships between women, veiled with understatement and secrecy, had a lot of beauty to them. Clandestine looks were exchanged above the heads of people who remained unaware of their meaning, as women understood each other with half a gesture, between words. Nowadays, everything has a name, everything is direct.” (Laszuk 2006, 33)

A similar equation between secrecy and eroticism is drawn by the much younger Izabela Filipiak, trailblazing author of Polish feminist fiction in the 1990s and the very first woman in Poland to publicly come out as lesbian, in an interview for the Polish edition of Cosmopolitan in 1998. Six years later, Filipiak suggested a link between things remaining unnamed and erotic pleasure, and admitted to a certain nostalgia for this pre-emancipatory formula of lesbian (non)identity. Her avowed motivation was not the fear of stigmatization but a desire for erotic intensity:

“When love becomes passion in which I lose myself, I stop calculating, stop comparing, no longer anchor it in social relations, or some norm. I simply immerse myself in passion. My feelings condition and justify everything that happens from that point on. I do not reflect upon myself nor dwell on stigma because my feeling is so pure that it burns through and clears away everything that might attach to me as a woman who loves women.” (Kulpa and Warkocki 2004)

Filipiak acknowledges the contemporary, “postmodern” (her word) lesbian identity which requires activism and entails enumerating various kinds of discrimination. But paradoxically—considering that she is the first public lesbian in Poland—she speaks with much more enthusiasm about the “modernist lesbians” described by Baudelaire:

“They chose the path of passion. Secrecy and passion. Of course, their passion becomes a form of consent to remain secret, to stay invisible to others, but this is not unambivalent. I once talked to such an “oldtimer” who lived her entire life in just that way and she protested very strongly when I made a remark about hiding. Because, she says, she did not hide anything, she drove all around the city with her beloved and, of course, everyone knew. Yes, everyone knew, but nobody remembers it now, there is no trace of all that.” (Kulpa and Warkocki 2004)

Cultural unintelligibility causes the gap between “everyone knew” and “nobody remembers” but it is also the source of excitement and pleasure. For Filipiak’s “old-timer” and her predecessors, Baudelaire’s modernist lesbians, the evasion, or rejection, of identity and the maintaining of secrecy is the path of passion. Crucially, these disavowals of identity mobilize a discourse of freedom rather than hiding, entrapment, or staying in the closet. The lack of a name is interpreted as an unmooring from language and a liberation from its norms.

Needless to say, cultural unintelligibility may also lead to profound torment and self-hatred. In the concept of nationhood generated by nationalists and by the Catholic Church in Poland, lesbians (seen stereotypically) are double outsiders whose exclusion from language is vital.[1] A repentant homosexual woman named Katarzyna offers her testimony in a Catholic self-help manual addressing those who wish to be cured of homosexuality. (It is irrelevant for my purpose whether the testimony is authentic; my interest is in the discursive construction of lesbian identity as literally impossible and nonexistent.) Katarzyna speaks about her search for love, her profound sense of guilt and her disgust with herself. The word “lesbian” is never used; her homosexuality is framed as confusion and as straying from her true desire for God. The origin of the pain is the woman’s unintelligibility to herself:

“Only I knew how much despair there was in my life on account of being different. First, there was the sense of being torn apart when I realized how different my desires were from the appearance of my body. Despite the storm of homosexual desire, I was still a woman. Then, the question: What to do with myself? How to live?” (Huk 1996, 121)

A woman cannot love other women—the subject knows this. We can speculate that her knowledge is due to her Catholic upbringing; she has internalized the teaching that homosexuality is a sin, and thus untrue and not real. The logic of the confession is overdetermined: the only way for her to become intelligible to herself is to abandon same-sex desire and turn to God, and through him to men. Church language thus frames homosexuality as chaos: it is a disordered space where no appropriate language can obtain. Within this frame, unintelligibility is anything but erotic. It is rather an instrument of shaming and, once internalized, a symptom of shame.

For many, the experience of unintelligibility is moored in intense heteronormativity, without regard to Church teachings or the language of national belonging. Struggling with the choice between social intelligibility available to straights and leading an authentic life outside the realm of intelligibility, one CRUSEV interlocutor, aged 67, describes her youth in 1960s and 1970s:

“I always knew I was a lesbian ... and if I am one, then I will be one. Yes, in that sense. And not to live the life of a married woman, mother and so on. This life wasn’t my life at all. However, as I said, it was fine in an external sense. So calm and well-ordered: a husband, nice children, everything, everything. But it was external, and my life was not my life at all, it wasn’t me.”

She thus underscores her internal sense of dissonance, a felt incompatibility with the social role she was playing. The role model of a wife and mother was available to her, but a lesbian role model was not.

The discomfort felt at the unavailability of a role model may have had different consequences. Another CRUSEV interviewee, aged 62, describes her impulse to change her life so as to authentically experience her feelings for another woman, in contrast to that woman’s ex:

“She visited me a few times, and it was enough that I wrote something, anything ... [and] she would get on the train and travel across the country. There were no telephones then, during martial law. Regardless of anything, she would be there. And at one point I realized that I ... damn, I loved her. ... She broke up with her previous girlfriend very violently—this may interest you—because it turned out that the girl was so terribly afraid of being exposed and of some unimaginable consequences that she simply ran away.”

The fear of exposure, critically addressed by the interlocutor, was nonetheless something she, too, experienced. She goes on to speak of “hiding a secret” and “stifling” her emotions.

A concern with leading an inauthentic life resurfaces in the account of the afore-quoted woman, aged 67:

“I couldn’t reveal my secret to anyone. The only person who knew was my friend in Cracow. I led such a double life, I mean. ... It is difficult to say if this was a life, because it was as if I had my inner spirituality and my inner world, entirely secret, but outside I behaved like all the other girls, so I went out with some boys. ... It was always deeply suppressed by me and I was always fighting with myself. I mean, I fell in love [with women] and did everything to fall out of love [laughter]. On and on again.”

Her anxiety translates into self-pathologizing behaviour:

“In 1971 I received my high school diploma and I was already . . . in a relationship of some years with my high school girlfriend. . . . But because we both thought we were abnormal, perverted or something, somehow we wanted to be cured, and so she was going to college to Cracow, and I to Poznań. We engaged in geographic therapy, so to speak.”

The desire to “be cured” from homosexuality recurs in a number of interviews. Sometimes it has a factual dimension, as interlocutors describe having undergone psychotherapy and even reparative therapy—of course, to no avail.

Others decide to have a relationship with a woman after years spent in relationships with men. Referring to her female partner of 25 years, who had previously been married to a man, one of my interlocutors suggests that her partner had been disavowing her homosexual desires for many years before the two women’s relationship began: “the truth is that H. had struggled with it for more than 20 years and she was probably not sure what was going on.” Despite this presumed initial confusion, the women’s relationship had already lasted for more than 25 years at the time I conducted the interview.

Recognizing one’s homosexual desires did not necessarily have to be difficult or shocking. It was not for this woman, aged 66 at the time of the interview:

“It was obvious to me. I didn’t, no, no, I didn’t suppress it, I knew that [I was going], “Oh, such a nice girl, I like this one, with this one I want to be close, with that one I want to talk longer, with that one I want to spend time, with that one I want, for example, to embrace her neck or grab her hand”.”

Rather, what came as a shock was the unavailability of any social role or language corresponding to this felt desire that came as a shock. The woman continues:

“It turned out that I couldn’t talk to anyone about it, that I couldn’t tell anyone. I realized this when I grew up and watched my surroundings, family, friends, society. I saw that this topic was not there! If it’s not there, how can I get it out of myself? I wasn’t so brave.”

The tabooization of homosexuality—its unintelligibility—is a recurring thread in these accounts; what varies is the extent to which it marred the subjects’ self-perception.

#lgbtq history #poland #lesbian history #unintelligibility #lesbian unintelligibility #this might be deleted in the future so read it while you can

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coochiequeens · 4 years

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The University of Rhode Island is distancing itself from an endowed professor of gender and women’s studies who recently wrote about what she calls the “trans-sex fantasy.” “The ‘gender identity’ movement is canceling people’s free speech and academic freedom for anyone who doesn’t fall in line, speaks out in opposition, or even calls for the right to debate,” the professor, Donna Hughes, wrote in a recent essay for 4W, a “fourth-wave” feminist website. “People are losing social media accounts or being fired for ‘misgendering’ someone or not ‘affirming’ a person’s’ claimed ‘gender identity.’”In the meantime, Hughes said, “an increasing number of teens are signing-up for harmful treatments with no one, not even parents, being allowed to intervene.” Responding to criticism of the essay, URI this week released a statement saying that it “does not support statements and publications by Professor Donna Hughes that espouse anti-transgender perspectives and recognize that such discourse can cause pain and discomfort for many transgender individuals. The university is committed to transgender rights and the need to eliminate all forms of discrimination and violence aimed at transgender individuals and the LGBTQIA+ community.”At the same time, URI said, faculty members have the “same rights, obligations, and responsibilities as other American citizens. The university honors and respects the right to freedom of speech under the First Amendment for all citizens, including our faculty, without censorship or retaliation.”

URI said it also recognizes that its professors “have the general right to ‘academic freedom’ in their teaching and scholarship.” These rights are “not boundless, however,” the university said, “and should be exercised responsibly with due regard for the faculty member’s other obligations, including their obligations to the university’s students and the university community.”Hughes said via email that the university’s statement is an “egregious affront to my free speech and academic freedom rights.” It’s “clearly established that a public employee has the right to speak as a private citizen on matters of public concern, which is precisely what I have done.”

Samantha Harris, Hughes’s lawyer, said that “like faculty around the country who express views that are out of step with the prevailing orthodoxy on campus, Professor Hughes has become the target of an online pressure campaign.” This involves an effort to get students to file complaints about her with the university and “take her down,” Harris explained, quoting one Twitter user.URI said its administration, College of Arts and Sciences and department of gender and women’s studies are now "working to support our students and the community as we move through -- and learn from -- this situation.”

Hughes, the Eleanor M. and Oscar M. Carlson Endowed Chair of Gender and Women’s Studies at URI, has long written about controversial issues such as prostitution and taken at times controversial stances on them: whereas some gender studies experts believe that sex work is legitimate labor that women can freely choose, Hughes believes there’s a fine line between sex work and sex trafficking and that legalizing prostitution helps only pimps and johns, not sex workers.Though divisive, most of Hughes’s arguments have fallen within the accepted realms of academic debate. This foray into gender identity discourse is more fraught, as many trans activists, allies and gender studies scholars say that questioning to what degree trans women are women is transphobic and bigoted. Other scholars have pushed back on that notion as censorship.The most contentious academic arguments tend to center on trans women, not trans men, as women and trans people -- but not cisgender men -- have been historically marginalized. Critics such as Hughes, who are sometimes derided as trans-exclusionary radical feminists, or TERFs, worry that the biological category of woman is being erased, while trans women worry about further marginalization via exclusion from female spaces.

A ‘Dystopia’Hughes wrote in her essay, for instance, that the “biological category of sex, particularly women’s sex, is being smashed. Women and girls are expected to give up their places of privacy such as restrooms, locker rooms, and even prison cells. When biological males identify as trans-women, they can compete in women’s and girls’ sports.”In this “dystopia,” Hughes continued, “basic biological words like breast and vagina are replacedby misogynistic, trans-sex/trans-gender language so that a female has a ‘front hole’ instead of a vagina; females ‘chest feed’ instead of breastfeed. All references to women disappear into terms such: ‘people who menstruate,’ ‘people with uteruses,’ ‘a pregnant person,’ or ‘a birthing parent.’”These “redefinitions are hatred targeted at women’s bodies and their rights,” Hughes said, noting that there’s no comparable push to rename men’s body parts.

Perhaps most controversially, Hughes wrote that young people are now “guided into hormonal and surgical horrors that de-sex them.” Through these interventions, “girls’ female bodies are permanently scarred and destroyed.” On Twitter, Hughes has retweeted content about women regretting getting "top" surgery to affirm a male gender identity from which they'd since detransitioned.Scholars in Britain have arguably been even more engaged in these topics in recent years, with the government there considering a gender self-recognition plan. Some feminist academics in Britain, including Kathleen Stock, opposed the plan on the grounds that it would inflict unintended harm. One of these commonly cited unintended harms is that abandoning sex-exclusive spaces would expose women to male violence. Trans activists point out that trans people face disproportionate levels of violence.The British government recently abandoned the self-recognition plan. President Biden, meanwhile, has already signed an executive order on preventing and combating discrimination on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation. Many applauded this action. But Hughes wrote that it means the “trans-sex fantasy has imagined -- and is enacting -- a world in which how a man feels is more real than his actual reality.”This makes the political left not so different from conspiracy and disinformation junkies on the far right, she said.

On Twitter, Hughes has also shared criticism of the proposed federal Equality Act, which would redefine sex to include gender identity and sexual orientation.Via email, Hughes said it’s “just sad that we have reached a point in society where difficult issues cannot be freely and openly discussed without resort to personal attacks and calls for censorship.”The marketplace of ideas, she added, “has broken down and increasingly, university faculty are terrified to speak out on a wide range of important issues for fear that -- as seems to be happening here -- they will draw criticism from their students and their institution will throw them under the bus.”Hughes is a founding member of the Academic Freedom Alliance, which launched recently to defend professors’ academic freedom from attacks from the political left and right. Her case, she said, demonstrators “precisely why the AFA was founded and is so necessary.”

Harris, Hughes’s lawyer, said that URI is “obviously within its rights to criticize” Hughes’s views, but that the university’s statement seems to imply that the article may not be protected by the First Amendment “because she somehow failed to show appropriate restraint in the expression of her opinion. This simply is not the case.”The article is indeed protected speech, “quite apart from questions of academic freedom,” because Hughes was expressing her views as a citizen on a matter of public concern, Harris said. Hughes’s article didn’t note her affiliation to URI, and the fact that she may be “well-versed in the subject by virtue of her work does not transform this into speech made within the context of her employment.”

Trans History Month admits they include stories from Trans Nazis but a woman speaking up for women’s rights must be censored.

#Professor Donna Hughes #University of Rhode Island #Trans-sex fantasy #Censorship #trans ideology

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arcticdementor · 3 years

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When the idea that a woman could have a penis was no longer a privileged insight of the academic elite but had gone mainstream, I remarked to my friend, “How long before we have to affirm the furries?” At the time I was joking, but after reading Kathy Rudy’s article “LGBTQ…Z?” in Hypatia in which she claims to “draw the discourses around bestiality/zoophilia into the realm of queer theory” I’m starting to wonder if my joke isn’t that far off. After all, there was a time when the idea of a man becoming a woman was a joke—as in this clip from Monty Python’s comedy The Life of Brian.

What Duke University professor Kathy Rudy seems to realize by arguing we should add “Z” (zoophilia) to the queer alphabet soup is that a great way to have a successful career in academia is to bring postmodern gobbledygook into absurd combinations with anything and everything.

…

I will hand it to Rudy, her article is at least comprehensible, even if it’s just as insane. Rudy begins by noting that humans who “kill animals, force them to breed with each other, eat them, surround them, train them, hunt them, nail them down and cut them open for science” are considered “normal, functioning members of society. Yet having sex with animals remains an almost unspeakable anathema.”

…

While some might conclude that, since we wouldn’t shag a pig, we also shouldn’t confine one to a gestation crate, Rudy’s reasoning seems to be that if we already force terrible things on animals, then why not also screw them? If you’re a cow, having a human copulate with you can’t be as bad as going to the slaughterhouse, right? Besides, Fido already humps my leg so why don’t I hump him?

Technically, Rudy claims “my argument is not for or against humans having sex with animals, but is a meditation on both the elusive nature of sex itself and the subjectivities of human versus nonhuman animals.” She never explicitly promotes sex with animals, but considering that the entire point of the article is to call into question the taboo against having sex with animals, well…

It’s as if I said I’m not advocating for pedophilia but then proceed to undermine all the reasons for being against pedophilia. “Why not?” might not be as strong as “you must” but it leads to the same outcome, namely, radical permission.

As is often the case with academic postmodernism, the claims being made become less clear the more the author writes:

“Put differently, queer theory teaches us that it's not really a question of whether we have ‘sex’ with animals; rather it's about recognizing and honoring the affective bonds many of us share with other creatures. Those intense connections between humans and animals could be seen as revolutionary, in a queer frame. But instead, pet love is sanitized and rendered harmless by the presence of the interdict against bestiality. The discourses of bestiality and zoophilia form the identity boundary that we cannot pass through if we want our love of animals to be seen as acceptable.”

Rudy’s elusive, wishy-washy prose is a common rhetorical tactic. The goal is to avoid clearly committing to an argument so that one can simultaneously promote radical nuttiness while removing oneself from the burden of defending it. After all, if the claim really were as basic as “we love our pets but not in a sexual way” then the article wouldn’t be, as Rudy puts it, “revolutionary.”

The only way the article can be truly “transgressive” is for her to argue that our love for animals is already sexual or should become sexual. After all, Rudy seems uncertain as to whether she is sexually attracted to her own dogs:

“I know I love my dogs with all my heart, but I can’t figure out if that love is sexually motivated.”

For some reason, I’ve never grappled with this problem, but then again, I’m not versed in Queer theory.

…

Indeed, what is the difference between inserting a piece of bread into a toaster and penetrative sex? According to postmodernism, nothing at all! As Rudy explains:

“The widespread social ban on bestiality rests on a solid notion of what sex is, and queer theory persuasively argues we simply don't have such a thing. The interdict against bestiality can only be maintained if we think we always/already know what sex is. And, according to queer theory, we don’t.”

Despite earlier claiming that she is not advocating for sex with animals, Rudy has just provided us with an indirect argument for it. She states that we can only maintain a ban on sex with animals if we know what sex is. She next states that queer theory has proven that we don’t know what sex is. Therefore, we cannot ban sex with animals. She suggests her indirect argument again at the end of the article by masking it in the form of a question:

“But without a coherent and agreed upon definition of sex (which queer theory persuasively argues is impossible), the line between ‘animal lover’ and zoophile is not only thin, it is nonexistent. How do we know beforehand whether loving them constitutes ‘sex,’ and how can such sex be so dangerous if it so nebulous and undefined?”

Not only is it false that we have no idea what sex is, but it is also false to say that we require a taxonomy of every kind of sexual feeling before we can forbid certain acts (such as coitus) with animals (or children and the cognitively disabled, such as Chris Chan’s mother with dementia).

I may not be able to verbally capture the feeling of sexual desire or pleasure any more than I can define pain or joy or sadness. It’s something I know from experience. What I can say for sure is that what I felt kissing my grandma’s cheek is definitely not in the same category as what I felt kissing my boyfriend. Rudy may be unclear as to whether she is turned on by a slurp from her dog, but I personally have never felt confusion on the matter.

…

Yet, the true perversion, according to Rudy, is not to lust after camels, dogs, parakeets or naked mole rats but to set up the sexual boundary between humans and animals in the first place:

“Put differently, both animal rights (3) and psychosocial perspectives [which view desire for animals as mental illness] (4) do not believe that borders can be crossed. Queer theory, on the other hand, tells us that few of us have stable identities anymore, that borders are always crossed. We're all changing, shifting, splitting ourselves up this way and that. It labels these processes ‘hailing,’ ‘suturing,’ and ‘interpolation’; where once we saw ourselves affiliated in one way, a new interpretive community emerges to capture our passions and move us differently. I am asking the reader to entertain the possibility that the same kinds of shifts and disruptions happen with categories like ‘human,’ ‘rabbit,’ ‘ape,’ or ‘dog.’”

And no woke paper would be complete without the accusation of violence:

“Both positions [animal rights activists and bestialists] oppose sex with animals, and in doing so they perform a kind of violence on animals by lumping them all together into one seamless identity.”

That’s right. Physically violating an animal does not constitute violence. Words do. Especially when those words reject postmodern queer theory.

…

Unlike the many women who have been cancelled for claiming that males aren’t women, Rudy’s August 2012 article (republished March 2020) for Hypatia did not result in her being fired, censored, or otherwise deplatformed.

It’s not as if no one came across her article either. According to Altmetric, Rudy’s article is in the “top 5% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric” and is “One of the highest-scoring outputs from this source (#1 of 704)” and has an Altmetrics attention score in the 99th percentile.

When Rebecca Tuvel wrote a paper for Hypatia suggesting that the same assumptions that ground transgenderism could be used to support transracialism, scholars demanded Hypatia retract the article and the journal's Facebook page posted an apology on behalf of the associate editors. Rudy, on the other hand, was invited to deliver the commencement speech for North Carolina Service Dogs in December 2012.

We must remember that the word “transgressive” has relative, not absolute, meaning. What is considered “normal” defines what is considered “transgressive.” If queer theory articles on bestiality result in publication and validation, then is Rudy truly, in her words, “transgressive”? Or is Hypatia, rather, representative of a new establishment norm that is just as desirous of punishing transgressors—now in the form of TERFs and other enemies of the postmodern left—as the old establishment was eager to fire and ostracize homosexuals? As The Who sang, “Meet the new boss / Same as the old boss.”

#devin jane buckley #42.pub #kathy rudy #lgbtq…z?

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eretzyisrael · 3 years

Link

Letter to U of T President Meric Gertler

Meric Gertler June 30, 2021

President

Kelly Hannah-Moffat

Vice President

Human Resources and Equity

University of Toronto

The purpose of this letter is to request appropriate responses to an act of bigotry from a member of the University of Toronto faculty. As explained below, speed of reaction matters. As also elaborated below, the situation is a matter of some gravity.

Before the particular act is addressed, a few general remarks are in order. Prejudicial slurs often occur in the form of a noun and an adjective. The noun refers to the group under attack. The adjective asserts a stereotype about the group.

These prejudicial slurs may occur generally. They may also occur in response to a particular incident which, abstracted from the prejudicial slur, may itself be objectionable. The problem here is not criticism of the incident but rather the attribution to all members of the target group the blame for an incident for which they are not responsible.

Bigotry can occur against a group in whole or in part. When it occurs in part, the bigoted would say that there are good members of the group and bad members. The good are those whose behaviour contradicts the stereotype. The bad are those who conform to the stereotype. For the bigoted, what they would characterize as the good are exceptions.

Bigotry often engages in victim inversion. The bigoted often claim that they are the victims and that their targets are the victimizers. The bigotry here takes the form of claimed defense against the target group.

The bigoted often uses double entendres, words that have both an innocent meaning and a coded meaning to their bigoted cohort. They use dog whistles, sounds with the intent that only their bigoted cohort will appreciate.

The particular remarks we wish to draw to your attention is a statement of University of Toronto Faculty Association president Terezia Zorić made from the floor after a panel discussion at York University Osgoode Hall, June 15, 2021. A link to the video of her remarks can be found at the link below at the 1:58:50 mark.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiJ8cRpyzW8&t=3163s

The transcript of her remarks, in their entirety, is this:

“Very, very quickly many thanks to the organizers of this wonderful event on the censure [by the Canadian Association of University of Teachers (CAUT) of the University of Toronto] of u of t [the University of Toronto] and all the activists who’ve made it possible for those of us doing institutional work to have some room to maneuver.

I wanted to offer that, as an early leader who defended the folks at the law school and the principles of academic freedom and collegial governance, there was nothing short of unending harassment and psychological warfare where those of us were supportive of the principles at stake at the heart of the censure. [We] experienced horrible backlash by an entitled powerful Zionist minority that felt that any criticisms of Cromwell [the author of a review report] or anyone else could be met with accusations of antisemitism. And it took an enormous amount of work to get us to a point where we could have even have a conversation about what went on why it went on and so on.

Many graduate students with whom I’ve worked ‑ I teach in the Department of Social Justice Education ‑ have complained that any time they want to talk about a boycott [and] divestment [against Israel in support of] Palestine or anything like that, they feel targeted in similar ways. If you don’t think faculty themselves, including those of us in senior positions, can be intimidated by the powerful response you don’t understand what’s at stake and we continue to be in that position.”

The sentence from the quote above which encapsulates the problematic nature of the remarks of Ms. Zorić is this:

“[We] experienced horrible backlash by an entitled powerful Zionist minority that felt that any criticisms of Cromwell or anyone else could be met with accusations of antisemitism.”

To be even more specific, a phrase and an attitude which imbues her remarks throughout, is this: “an entitled powerful Zionist minority”. This phrase is an antisemitic slur.

The form of her statement is

“We experienced horrible backlash by a group of [insert here a prejudicial slur against the group] who felt that any criticisms of their views could be answered with accusations of prejudice against the group.”

The very form of discourse is an exercise in bigotry. The form of discourse is ridiculous because, on the one hand, it rejects the accusation of prejudice and, on other hand, manifests it. The discourse is internally self-contradictory. It establishes the charge of bigotry against which it claims to defend. Ms. Zorić, on the one hand, uses an antisemitic stereotype “an entitled powerful Zionist minority” and, on the other hand, defends herself against the charge of antisemitism.

Robert Wistrich, in 2004, then Professor of European and Jewish history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and director of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism, described antisemitism as including attributing “to Jews excessive power and influence”. He observed that “‘anti-Zionist’ attacks on Jewish … targets show that we are talking about a distinction without a difference.”[1]

Martin Luther King stated:

“When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews. You’re talking antisemitism.”[2]

That is what is going on here. When Ms. Zorić criticizes “an entitled powerful Zionist minority”, she means “an entitled powerful Jewish minority”.

The antisemitic stereotype Ms. Zorić uses is the classic, the original, antisemitism, the very source of the term. Antisemitism, literally, means opposition to semitism and semitism according to Wilhelm Marr, who coined the term, was self‑interested Jewish power. Antisemitism was opposition to this fantasized power. Marr opposed “the Jewish spirit and Jewish consciousness [which] have overpowered the world”[3]. He founded an organization titled – “The League of Anti-Semites”.

Until the defeat of Nazi Germany, antisemites commonly identified as such. Before the end of World War II, there was a proliferation of self-identified antisemitic organizations – for instance the Anti-Semitic Union of the Diet of Lower Austria or the Universal Anti-Semitic Alliance of Romania. The Nazis themselves self-identified as antisemitic.

All of these self-identified antisemitic individuals and organizations espoused the very ideology Ms. Zorić telegraphs with the phrase “an entitled powerful Zionist minority”. As Holocaust scholar Yehuda Bauer observed, the term “antisemitism” has now gone out of fashion, even among antisemites. Even the most virulent antisemites today do not self-identify as antisemites. Ms. Zorić fits within this pattern, both asserting antisemitic ideology and denying that it is antisemitism.

Zionism may seem objectively to be an innocent or positive term, a national liberation movement for the Jewish people, a short hand for the existence of Israel as the expression of the right to self-determination of the Jewish people. Yet, it is used by antisemites as, at least among themselves, an acceptable form of antisemitism.

Ms. Zorić uses a dog whistle or double entendre with the term “Zionist”. To her, there are good Jews and bad. The bad are the Zionists.

Ms. Zorić uses victim inversion. She both attacks Jews (Zionists) and claims that she is the victim of the group she attacks.

Adding to the weight of concern is the fact that Ms. Zorić made her remarks publicly as head of the University of Toronto Faculty Association (UTFA). She was introduced as representing UTFA. In her remarks, she referred to herself as the “leader” of UTFA.

By making her remarks in a public forum as president of UTFA, she misrepresents UTFA as itself antisemitic. Her remarks do not just discredit herself. They discredit the University Faculty Association.

By doing and saying nothing about these remarks, UTFA and the University put themselves in a compromising position. Silence speaks. UTFA and the University need to react. Silence in the face of these remarks becomes complicity, tacit consent, an authorization to continue these sorts of remarks.

Any human rights violation, unless stopped, spreads. This is particularly true of bigoted discourse, which spreads easily and quickly if not contradicted. The reaction to bigoted discourse should be swift.

Both UTFA and the University need publicly to disassociate themselves from the remarks of Ms. Zorić. UTFA should call on Ms. Zorić to resign her position.

The problem that the remarks of Ms. Zorić present go beyond the University of Toronto. What makes them even more alarming is that they appear to be a driving force behind the CAUT censure of the University of Toronto.

Ms. Zorić refers to her views as “the principles at stake at the heart of the censure” by CAUT of the University of Toronto. CAUT needs to reconsider its censure in light of the fact that a driving force behind the movement for censure was antisemitism.

We make these recommendations:

1) Ms. Zorić should resign as president of the University of Toronto Faculty Association. She holds publicly expressed views which are incompatible with that position. The Faculty Association should request her resignation.

2) The University of Toronto should disassociate themselves from the remarks of Ms. Zorić. The University should state publicly that her views do not represent the views of the University.

3) CAUT should reconsider its censure of the University of Toronto in light of the publicly expressed views of Ms. Zorić. The impact that those views may have had on the decision to censure justifies the reconsideration.

Sincerely

David Matas

Senior Honorary Counsel

B’nai Brith Canada

602-225 Vaughan Street Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada R3C 1T7 Tel: 1 204 944 1831 Fax: 1 204 942 1494 E-mail: [email protected]

Cc: Terezia Zorić

University of Toronto Faculty Association

David Robinson

Canadian Association of University Teachers

[1] “Anti‑Zionism and Anti‑semitism” Jewish Political Studies Review 16:3‑4 (Fall 2004) page 27 on JSTOR

https://www.jstor.org/stable/25834602?read‑now=1&seq=2#page_scan_tab_contents 3/4

#university of toronto #u of t #b'nai brith canada #teresia zoric #bigotry #antisemitism

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sweetfirebird · 4 years

Text

AO3 discourse is so fucking exhausting. I love AO3, I have given money to AO3, it has helped me with distractions when my life was garbage. But it is fucking exhausting to watch over and over again as some people try to explain why AO3 as it was originally set up has some flaws and then for other people to be like BUT WE WERE PERSECUTED AND AO3 SAVED US! And then other people are like, but it was never meant to be set in stone, we are supposed to be able to adapt and change it as our needs evolve, and then other people are like, BUT IT'S AN ARCHIVE! Except that isn't even an argument because archives, like anything else, do not exist or operate in a vacuum, but okay. And then fans of color ask for some protections or even some consideration and AO3 does not respond for years, and whenever those same fans talk about feeling ignored or alone or excluded or unsafe, someone in the comments will be like 'actually we at the OTW are dealing with it, progress is just slow and also we never told anyone about it for some reason.' And then someone else on AO3 will act in bad faith because that is what humans do--this ain't a utopia because those are not real--and everyone will get mad at each other or AO3 and set off another round of discourse. Someone will start screaming about 'antis' and 'fandom cops' only it feels like those terms mean different things to different people, and while slippery slope arguments are good and we should have them, it might also be worth examining what is at the heart of all those varied 'anti' arguments because they don't seem to be going anywhere. Absolutely art for art's sake and freedom of the imagination and all that, but also respect for your fellow human beings??? Art does not rank higher than your humanity?? And yes, if you create or contribute to an archive that wins awards and you claim that fanfiction compares to high literature and it offers feminist or queer liberation than you have to also accept that it will be studied and critiqued as an art form, as a political and cultural statement. You cannot have one without the other. Yes your work is free but it is public and it cultural and it is political, because that is life, and as such, some nerds are going to want to talk about it and discuss trends and tropes and meaning. That's what happens when work matters. But then someone else will be like BUT PURITY CULTURE!!! and/or FANS SHOULD SET THE TONE, NOT THE ARCHIVE!!! and, like, I don't see that happening anywhere because even off AO3 discussions seem to lack nuance or anything resembling nuance to the point where I have to assume some of it is deliberate but by then the screaming has started again.

And anyway. Archives are run by people, and people are flawed and make choices and have biases whether they know it or not. Institutions, even helpful and revolutionary ones, should not be worshipped. Fans DO need to start making racism obviously unwelcome in their fandoms but that means taking long, uncomfortable looks at themselves first. If you say your fanfiction or fanart has personal or cultural value as art enough for you to defend dark themes or whatever, then it will also be judged on those same values.

Also, academic criticism and individual critique of an individual story are different things. Criticism of tropes and trends is not censorship.

#don't reblog i am just tired #some fandom people need to grow up and or learn to comprehend words #some other people need to realize that we are not all using the same cultural dictionary #AND STOP WORSHIPING INSTITUTIONS!#THEY ARE RUN BY PEOPLE!#AND PEOPLE ARE FLAWED!

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soulvomit · 4 years

Text

This conversation in a major mainstream celeb culture group on FB, about the author of “Love, Simon,” is really making me despair that a majority of younger people may not really believe that authors should be allowed to be private citizens, because they weren’t alive at any point when those authors *were.* And I really feel like this is a case where the young people are going to get their way just by numbers, and older LGBTQ people and younger ones will just end up talking past each other. *Most* people in that thread (huge number, and in a group with huge membership) seemed to believe that anyone not willing to be “out” as an LGBTQ person, shouldn’t profit from anything pertaining to LGBTQ culture. And I have a problem with this! So... only very deeply privileged people from liberal families, who either can afford to not have a day job or who work for companies that aren’t going to fire them for being LGBTQ, get to write LGBTQ material?? Only people under 30, for that matter, get to write LGBTQ material? (Because I really feel like something most people don’t understand and most fucking zoomers don’t care about, is that older people in the same marginalized categories as them *may move predominantly in older circles* and may not experience as much broad acceptance as they take for granted. It being more accepted for a 20 year old to be gay, doesn’t make things automatically better for a gay 50 year old.) This is useful representation HOW?? How does it represent a lot of actual LGBTQ people if the only works they get to read are written by the LGBTQ equivalent of Lena Dunham?? And how are we going to vet people for belonging to the right group, having the right representative experience, before they are qualified to write LGBTQ material... is there some kind of Gay Police or something that’s going to check this out? At what point are you Gay Enough? This is actually a generational issue for me because of the degree to which LGBTQ writing, when I was younger, was underground, and the degree to which even mainstream authors were still private citizens. A huge majority of the material you formed your identity to, when I was younger, would’ve been authors who at the time were only well known within the very, VERY subcultural spaces of LGBTQ community. Even fanfic was an underground space. Many authors were pseudonymous, there were small imprint niche publishers, there was stuff that was only published in underground mags and zines. (Alison Bechdel is from *my time* but... if you’re outside of LGBTQ culture or you’re under 40, then you may not have even begun hear about her until the 2010s. There were lots of authors well known within LGBTQ spaces who weren’t well known outside of those spaces. And there were also lots of pseudonymous authors.). Basically there seems to be this attitude where you should only be able to write LGBTQ material if you are a Very Online, 20something “professional queer” who is willing to be totally transparent about your life on social media. Or to even write LGBTQ characters at all. Will we at some point stop even seeing works that have diverse ensembles? Do all books have to be written by committee now so that you have the proper representation, unless you’re willing/able to write a totally monoculture book? Who gets to be on those committees? Do you have to go to a specific university to qualify? Do you have to have the right degree and belong to the professional-managerial class or the academic elite to acceptably write material pertaining to any kind of marginalized identity? And are we seeing the end of individual authorship outside of the self-publishing market and/or the individual authors who were already grandfathered in? Don’t you see how this just feeds into EVERYTHING BEING CORPORATE FRANCHISES and just makes writing MORE privileged and elitist? Then there were generational assumptions wherein somebody who’s been in LGBTQ culture for a long time wouldn’t know about anyone who’s not the same letter of the LGBTQ. I know it’s generational because of having been in LGBTQ culture in the 90s. As if there is absolutely no history of adjacence between communities. As if there aren’t trans people who formerly identified as gay and were part of the male or female gay communities, as if there aren’t bi people who’ve been in the community and involved with gay people, as if all trans people or gay people or bi people came out in high school or college, and as if members of the LGBTQ don’t ever, ever socialize with each other or share the same spaces. (Which is some ahistorical bullshit.) And all of this has led me to believe, with this preciousness around narratives and there being ~The LGBTQ Experience~ vs ~the Cis Het Experience~, what do they think *straight* people live like? If you’re hetero, you necessarily live in the suburbs and have 2.5 kids, or something, and don’t EVER know LGBTQ people and have zero experience with that community whatsoever? How far are we going to take this, should we just go full horseshoe and say that LGBTQ people aren’t qualified to write cis het characters (and thus LGBTQ people excluded from most writing except for the heavily elitism-based token positions we’ll be allowed?) Plus, are you assuming that every person who presents the optics of being in a hetero relationship, is a heterosexual, and or is cis and or their partner is? These assumptions about how social worlds work, don’t actually describe even one social space I’m in, or have EVER been in. Maybe they describe your social world if you grew up in a totally homogenous, utterly heteronormative (and probably religious) social space and then came out into LGBTQ culture on an upscale college campus in a college town, then managed to socially bubble up with the other cool queer kids in either your upper middle class hipstertopia town, or some corner of fandom culture, or you bubble up so hard that you only interact with a handful of handpicked people online in your specific handpicked spaces that only, only ever match you, and match you 100%. But they don’t describe the experiences of even most LGBTQ people. Like... the discourse I grew up with, was, “you have the right to write this, but damn, maybe I’m not going to read it.” But now we’re in a space of... who has the right to write at all? And I’m sorry but that’s just fucking dystopian.

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qqueenofhades · 5 years

Note

There are some interpretations going around about whether or not "the rape of Persephone" was a literal rape, regarding translations and what was considered acceptable at the time. I trust your historical knowledge and would appreciate your input. Thanks!

Oh Jesus Christ. Alas, I am aware of the inadvertent and depressing hilarity that results when the amateur historians of Tumblr decide to start The Discourse ™, as they do periodically, and the interpretations, as you put it, that result. I obviously also do support the practice of tackling mythology, reworking it, considering it in context, and trying to understand the culture, moral values, and ideas of society that it was supposed to represent, and whether and how that has changed for our own times (and if we should accept it if it hasn’t). The problem is that, to put it kindly, a lot of people on Tumblr are… not really qualified to do this, or at least should acknowledge their own limitations when doing so, rather than presenting their shallow and ideologically militant versions as Ineffable Fact. The academics have been arguing about all these things, since we argue about everything, and if you’re going to dip your toe into these discussions, you’ll have to recognize when, well, you are wrong. And as I have noted in recent political posts, Tumblr is historically Not Great at that.

As to the subject of Hades and Persephone specifically, I can myself do no better than point you to this excellent post by tumblr user @cthonisprincess, which I reblogged a while ago. It discusses many versions of the Hades and Persephone story in detail, treats the “problematic” aspects systematically, and quotes from a number of primary sources in terms of how their relationship was conceptualized by the culture to which it belonged, the power that Persephone has/had, and how Greek women themselves – rather than looking to Hera, the ostensible goddess of marriage, and her unhappy union with the chronically unfaithful Zeus – considered Persephone as the avatar of a powerful woman in a happy and faithful marriage. It also discusses the stories of how Persephone came to the Underworld, whether and if that should be understood as “rape” in a contemporary sense of the word, and if we, as modern feminists, should be comfortable with referring to/enjoying something still known as the “Rape of Proserpina” in most references. I get it. It’s… not entirely something you do with just a shrug and moving on.

However, there is ample evidence to demonstrate that to the culture in which Hades and Persephone were constructed and venerated, their relationship was loving, faithful, and considered worthy of emulation, and that Persephone was the actual scary one between the two of them. I was also just reading Emily Wilson’s translation of The Odyssey recently and was struck by the sheer agency of women in the plot; they’re basically the only reason that anything happens as they cart Odysseus’ prevaricating ass from place to place. Books 10 and 11 are largely concerned with Odysseus’ visit to the Underworld, where:

“First [Odysseus] must complete another journey,Go to the house of Hades and the dreadful Persephone, and ask the Theban prophet,the blind Tiresias, for advice.Persephone has given him alonefull understanding, even in death.”

When Odysseus actually gets to the Underworld, the first spirit he encounters is that of Elpenor, one of his crew members who has recently died. But after that, instead of the actual famous Greek warriors or mighty legends (although he meets Agamemnon, Achilles, etc later on), the next people he sees are his mother, Anticleia, and the wives and daughters of warriors:

Then in my heart I wanted to embracethe spirit of my mother. She was dead, and I did not know how. Three times I tried,longing to touch her. But three times her ghostflew from my arms, like shadows or like dreams.Sharp pain pierced deeper in me as I cried,

‘No, Mother! Why do you not stay for me?and let me hold you, even in Hades?[… ] But is this really you? Or has the Queensent me a phantom, to increase my grief?’

She answered, ‘Oh, my child. You are the mostunlucky man alive. Persephoneis not deceiving you. This is the rulefor mortals when we die.’

[…]

As we were talking,some women came, sent by Persephone –the daughters and wives of warriors.They thronged and clustered round the blood. I wantedto speak to each of them, and made a plan.

I’m not sure that Homer actually refers to Hades himself as having any part in this throughout the whole section, except geographically (as in Hades as a place/environment). Persephone is later on referred to as dispersing the ghosts of the women, after Odysseus has spoken to them all individually before he gets to any of the now-dead heroes of the Iliad. Which I think is… interesting, given the fact that the Odyssey is obviously one of the most famous of the Greek narratives/epic poems and everybody knew it long before it was ever preserved in a written form (see the long-running “is Homer actually one guy or just a dozen random Greeks in a trenchcoat” argument). So yes.

I obviously love Hades and Persephone a whole lot, my URL references them, most of my OTPs fall into a similar archetype, and I would love them no matter what the shrill hordes on Tumblr said. But in this case, frankly, their interpretations are bad, and they should feel bad. Make of it what thou shalt.

#hades and persephone #tw rape #tangentially #anonymous #ask

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paninibrot · 4 years

Text

Week 2: Augmented Technologies

The Ultimate Display, Ivan Sutherland, Proceedings of IFIP congress, 1965

To think about the computer as a “mathematical wonderland” (1) and the display as a looking glass into such is a concept that opens unending possibilities to the way one thinks about the constraints of the physical world.

It is interesting that Sutherland remarks on the lack of multi-interactive means of looking through this metaphorical looking glass that is a computer. So, whilst there seems to be increasing interest and research into the application of additional sensory experiences (taste, smell, etc.) I agree that there is still little beyond the experience of the computer through audio, visuals, and haptics available to the larger majority of the public.

If indeed there was a way in which one could create a world, or indeed start with a room, where the “computer can control the existence of matter” (2) and the digital world materializes in the physical world, then there would be little to no limits to what people could create. But that makes me question just how much longer it would take to reach such a point? In fact, would we even want to reach that point? What rules would have to be imposed to prevent the abuse and misuse of such power? I think that when opening the gate to this boundless “wonderland” there are a lot of things to be wary of.

Man-Computer Symbiosis, J. C. R. Licklider, IRE Transactions on Human Factors in Electronics, volume HFE-1, 1960

Licklider’s paper was an interesting extension of the other papers (as I read this paper last) despite having been written in 1960, thus very much ahead of its time. I enjoyed Licklider’s explanation of the Man-Computer Symbiosis that he evaluates, especially in contrast to the concept of the “mechanically extended man” where mechanics were only there to help man and man is the singular organism.

Licklider’s paper centers around “the nonsymbiotic present and the anticipated symbiotic future” (7), as he discusses the dissimilarities and similarities in the capabilities of humans and computed machines, which he thinks could greatly enhance humans’ thinking and problem-solving. In doing so he evaluates the differences “in speed and in language” between both man and computed machines, which he calls “The language problem” and claims is the “most serious obstacle to true symbiosis” (8). I found it very interesting that Licklider focused on the language discrepancy between humans and computers, especially since he never could have predicted how rapidly programming languages has advanced now and how sophisticated speech user interfaces have become.

Licklider even predicts advancements, such as a ‘“thinking center” that will incorporate the functions of present-day libraries together with anticipated advances in information storage and retrieval” (7), scratching the very surface of what technological advancements in the processing power and storage capabilities of computers nowadays allow for. Thus, I agree that the improvements in efficiency and performance of computed machines have freed humans from more mechanical, repetitive work, allowing us more flexibility and creativity. With continued research into AI and HCI computers will soon be able to learn by themselves, and I think that like Licklider predicts machines will outdo the human brain in most functions.

A Survey of Augmented Reality, Rick van Krevelen and Ronald Poelman, Delft University, 2010

In contrast to the other readings, Krevelen and Poelman’s paper is an in-depth and up to date overview of AR developments and applications. To me it is interesting to see the gradual development, not only in AR technologies but also in the way that academic research and discourse surrounding such technologies shifts as we begin to open windows into “the looking glass” and reality and virtuality become intermeshed.

Some points that I found particularly interesting was the mention of the lack of development or even existence of olfactory and gustatory displays in terms of “modalities in human sensory input,” (2) which builds upon Sutherlands point and remains true to this day even.

Also, Krevelen and Poelman’s mention of the three basic ways to visually present an augmented reality stood out to me, as video see-through remains the most popular and widely used form of AR today (10 years after the paper was published) most likely due to the cheapness and easiness of implementation. Additionally, head-worn and hand-held projectors remain the most prominent uses of AR technology with the greater public within this decade and the increasing use of smartphones and interest in smart-glasses. Thus, I question whether projective or alternative AR forms, free from additional user accessories, are anywhere in the near foreseeable future.

The lack of diversity in AR forms, the difficulty in accessibility for all, and an increasing concern for privacy amongst an ever-digitalizing world makes me agree with Krevelen and Poelman’s conclusion, in which they state that “AR has come a long way but still has some distance to go before industries, the military and the general public will accept it as a familiar user interface” (10).

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laranjatoranjalaranja · 5 years

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Aesthetics and History of Art: what is their role under fully-automated luxury communism?

Aesthetics has become unpopular among the left. Today, it is commonly associated with fascism and right-wing manipulative propaganda tactics. Walter Benjamin’s famous text about the modern reproduction of artworks can be credited with laying out a great part of the structure and terms of this discussion. In his work, what he calls the “aestheticisation of politics” is famously associated with fascism, while art, understood as a kind of aesthetics that has been politicised, is contrarily and positively associated with communism.

The main reason why this text acquired the cult status it has today, within the artworld, is because of the way in which it defines contemporary art as inherently revolutionary. Benjamin believes that, thanks to recent advances in its technological reproducibility, truly contemporary artworks were finally freed from old hierarchical ideas of originality, and thus acquired a new and enhanced political potential, particularly suitable for the communist political project.

Aesthetics, on the other hand, without the politisation that would turn it into art, becomes simply the domain of appearances, simulation, and spectacle in the Debordian sense. And this is where this theory starts to show its fragility.

A closer look at Benjamin’s theory reveals it to be susceptible to the same criticism as Debord’s Society of the Spectacle. As Jacques Rancière has pointed out in The Emancipated Spectator, the separation between the simulated appearances that seduce the masses, and the true reality only accessible to some, is unfounded and misleading, despite being commonly understood to be a fact of life.

The legitimacy of this separation depends on a thriving platonic idealism that often affects both right and left of the political spectrum and which is particularly prevalent in the Western world. According to this ideology, the mind and the body are hierarchically separated. While the mind is our reliable means of accessing the truth, the body is the deceiving realm of flawed sensorial perception which is completely unreliable unless previously subjected to correction by reason.

If we understand aesthetics in its broadest possible form, as simply that which relates to the senses, it inevitably falls into the suspicious second half of this division. But art can still be saved if it is not understood in aesthetic terms but as politicised aesthetics. The politicisation of aesthetics entails fighting ‘the spectacle’, by subjecting the ‘simulations’ our body perceives to the political ‘corrections’ of our intellectual reason.**

To further clarify why this kind of framework is flawed, it becomes useful to make a quick detour to the work of another author. In Pedagogy of The Oppressed, Paulo Freire defines praxis as a dialectical union between theory and practice. This means that, while our theory can, and should, inform our practice, this same practice also needs to inform our theory, thus making sure it matches our actual, lived reality. This means that the relationship between mind and body, theory and practice, reason and senses, is better understood as one of cooperation and mutual dependency than one of hierarchy and antagonism. It also means that aesthetics, broadly understood, plays an essential role in this dialectical process.

But, going back to Benjamin, I have said that the main reason his theory got so popular within the artworld is because of the revolutionary character he assigned to art. But this is not the only reason. Complementing this idea, we have a second one which relates to the phenomenon of demonization of aesthetics I mentioned in the very beginning.

It is becoming increasingly hard to ignore the fact that the art faces serious, and inherent, issues and contradictions. The complementing aspect of what makes Benjamin’s argument appealing is that it allows us to keep our faith in art, while also feeling like we are targeting the problems that ‘threaten its purity and integrity’. These problems are thus presented as non-inherent, originating from external sources, and a great deal of what made this ‘outsourcing’ possible has been the use of aesthetics as a scapegoat for the issues affecting art in general.

Aesthetics has proven to be a particularly good fit for this. This is because if, on the one hand, some people felt suspicious towards art because they thought it was shallow, futile and even deceiving, we could argue, like Benjamin, that this was a problem of aesthetics and not art. Although this ‘futility’ argument is relatively common, it is not a very strong one (as I have tried to show when I mentioned Ranciere’s critique). A strong argument that can be directed against art, on the other hand, would be that it is a historical invention of the modern West, which means it has not always existed and, therefore, the usefulness of its continued existence becomes open for debate. But this critique too can be diverted towards aesthetics.

In fact, aesthetics much more that art, was accused of being something made up in the 18th century by Western white males unaware of their privilege, to create rules that would validate what they thought of as beautiful and worthy of attention. Aesthetics, as a discipline, deserved all the criticism it got. More recently, the art market and the ‘artworld’, where also targets of a similar critique which, was also perfectly valid but, for some reason, continued to assume that all these things can be separated from art itself. As if art could ever have come to existence, and continue to exist, without them.

This criticism of aesthetics as an academic discipline, the art market or the artworld, is usually done using a leftist discourse. But critiques that extend to the notion of art itself are rare.

Occasionally, more radical leftists will become interested in topics like art. And many of them do end up realising, half way through their own research, courses or degrees, that all these accusations often thrown at ‘aesthetics’ are just as applicable to our notion of art. Frequently, these people end up being the ones who are more dismissive and suspicious of our contemporary cultural institutions in general. They often believe that art, like most of our contemporary culture, can be categorised as ‘capitalist spectacle’, and therefore should be understood as a distraction to be ignored.

These people can be easily convinced that art is a capitalist invention of the modern West. But the conclusion they draw from this is that the best thing to do is to dismiss all the things presented as art by our artistic institutions as capitalist distraction tactics, meant to divert our attention from the ‘real’ issues. What they fail to recognise, on the one hand, is that art is not a distraction to be ignored, but a weapon to be fought. And, on the other hand, they make the mistake of accepting the terms in which the capitalist artworld defines what aesthetics can be.

Capitalism knows well how to use aesthetics to its advantage. It has developed things like marketing and branding, as well as art, which are complex and highly effective techniques designed to work specifically to its own advantage. It knows how to tell the seductive and persuasive story of its own triumph and legitimacy.

This left, on the other hand, has little more than outdated ideas of communist propaganda, which are literally from the last century. And this is because, today, the left often conceives of aesthetics as either evil or merely secondary. We haven’t taken any time to develop an alternative way to understand this other part of us, the one that is more connected to the senses and which is equally essential to understanding the world around us.

While part of what I will do here is question the validity of, and politics behind, our modern notion of art, I also want to argue that aesthetics is, actually, not necessarily susceptible to the same criticism. Unlike art, the artworld and the art market, the word aesthetics can have an older, broader meaning. Aesthetics, as that which simply relates to the senses, is not susceptible to the same criticism as its modern academic homonym, or as art, because it is not to be understood as a Human creation. It is not connected to any idea of ‘what it means to be Human’ or any ‘essence’ of Humanity. So, in this specific sense, aesthetics can be said to be an a-historical concept.

The prevailing platonic idealism I mentioned previously, leads people to prefer thinking in terms of Art and Humanity, rather than in terms of aesthetics, which would imply the recognition of a common ground, shared among us and all the other animals.

Aesthetic sensibility, understood in this way, is possessed by anyone and anything that simply possesses senses. From humans, to animals and maybe even other kinds of beings. While we can say that not all cultures have art because the concept of art is an invention of the West, we cannot say the same of things like aesthetics in this broad sense.***

Rather than dismissing aesthetics as a product of capitalism or a more or less futile thing to be dealt with ‘later’, we need to recognise that capitalism will thrive as long as it continues presenting itself as the best, or even the only, materially realistic, viable, alternative. No matter how many theories and manifestos the left has, as long we are not capable of presenting aesthetic alternatives to what capitalism has been imposing, none of it will feel, or even be, translatable to real life.

The left cannot go on pretending like aesthetics is a dispensable, secondary issue. Aesthetics is not a distraction, it is an essential part of how we experience our lives and therefore it too deserves a pride of place in our political agenda. Ignoring it will not make it irrelevant.

At this point, I have been studying History of Art in academia for 5 years, and it strikes me how, despite appearances, truly revolutionary History of Art barely exists. Despite the overwhelming number of so-called radical journals and other kinds of left-wing publications, most of it is actually liberal. What I mean by this is that most of the people who write for these publications seem to share a common goal: to free art from the elites’ domination (much like Benjamin). This is a liberal goal because it aims at reforming rather than revolutionising the existing system. It aims at saving art at all cost and it rules of even considering that its obvious and persisting problems might be inherent and that a possible solution would be to replace it with something radically different. Related to this, is another striking problem which is the prevailing assumption that art and the elites are separable to begin with.

I want to make it clear here that art cannot be understood (especially within academic contexts) as a human constant. Studying the history of art implies that art has a history and, therefore, a historical origin. Humans were not ‘artistic’ by nature, since the beginning of time. Art is a concept created by the modern West. There were no actual synonyms to the word Art in non-Western cultures and no one in Europe was even talking about such a thing until the 18th century (see Kristeller’s The Modern System of The Arts (pt. I and pt. II) and Shiner’s The Invention of Art*).

It is irresponsible and anachronistic for Art historians to say or imply that art is something that humans have always done. This is an imperialistic tendency that we need to, not only distance ourselves from, but also actively fight against. And I stress actively fight against because these things I am writing about here have already been mentioned in academic publications from decades ago (Kristeller’s first article was published in 1951).

Since its creation, Art has existed to serve the capitalist elites (see Taylor’s Art, An Enemy of The People*). It was created by them, for them. To both serve and represent their interests.

I say capitalist elites, specifically, because the works commissioned by the traditional nobility did not fit with our modern idea of art in their original contexts. The treasures of the French monarchy only became Art when the bourgeoisie took over and made them what they are today - the collection of an Art museum. These objects were stripped of their original meanings and functions and became targets of ‘disinterested contemplation’ and those who see this as a revolutionary triumph over an oppressive regime conveniently forget that the reality is more complex and the same thing was also done with foreign objects stolen by the French colonisers, shortly after.

Today, many people are still wondering why is Duchamp’s Fountain Art. The answer is, mainly, because this is what the elites behind our art institutions decided is art. The line between Art and non-Art is merely an institutional one. Art is an institutional system. And this is a system whose tables cannot simply be turned because, in order for Art to exist, it needs to distinguish itself from other modern categories like crafts and popular culture. The category of Art depends on this hierarchical distinction because, simply put, Art is High Culture.

This means that as long as art, as we understand it today, exists, there must also exist a privileged group that gets to draw the line between High and low culture. The cultural identity of these elites might change overtime, but their status as oppressors will always remain, within this structure. This is why the quest to ‘democratise’ art is merely reformist rather than revolutionary.

I am not advocating for the burning of museums, Futurism style. I do think museums are important sources of information that should be free especially when they are public. What I am saying is that when these museums exhibit things that were not originally intended to be art as if they have always and unquestionably been so, they are making a serious mistake. They are silencing alternative narratives and disrespecting the people who created the objects they claim to be spreading knowledge about. They are suppressing aesthetic diversity, not promoting it.

Regarding contemporary Art museums and galleries, I think it would be fair to say that they are mostly bullshit. I make intentional efforts not to give any of my money to them (this also applies to academic Art Schools). I sometimes visit them, when they are free, because I want my opinions to be informed. I don’t usually pay for any tickets (they are usually even more expensive than regular museums anyway) nor do I let myself be troubled by those who believe I cannot be an expert on Art with a proper opinion, if I don’t go to all the ‘landmark’ cultural events. I try not to let art snobs like Jonathan Jones dictate which cultural events are or aren’t worthy of attention.

To conclude, History of Art as an academic discipline still has serious issues. Real History of Art should recognise that Art has a specific historical origin, and not treat it like a mysterious (mythical) part of ‘Human Nature’.

To do leftist History of Art, nevertheless, we need to take this even one step further and study the consequences of the capitalist origins of this phenomenon and how it developed from there. The impacts of its structure, the way it works, how it legitimises itself, its weaknesses, all these should be analysed in ways that will allow this phenomenon to be coherently perceived through a left-wing lens, subsequently enabling us to imagine viable alternatives to the current Art system (Richard Sennett does something like this in his book The Craftsman. If you don’t feel like reading, he also explains it beautifully in his lectures on craftsmanship available on youtube).

Also, I feel like I should mention that the mythical treatment Art historians give their subject, either emphatically and intentionally or through the passive and implicit acceptance of this mythical definition, is probably one of the things that mostly contributes to the much criticised workings of our contemporary art market. Surely, one of the reasons why artworks are sold at such exorbitant prices is because what these people are buying is not just good looking paintings. These objects are being sold as the latest, most recent pieces in the important puzzle that is Human History. Once gathered all in the correct order, these pieces are thought to reveal what it means to be Human. The ‘History’ of Art I’ve been criticising here is largely responsible for the maintenance of this profitable myth, that has been giving the powerful disproportionate control over the narratives of our collective existences.

Notes:

* If you don’t have access to these texts via your public libraries, genesis online library should have it for free download, just click here and try following the links presented (they are forced to keep changing domains because certain people don’t like it when information is too accessible).

** I do believe there is something more to be said about this politicisation of aesthetics. I think it can be a very useful and interesting terminology, but it needs to be conceptualised outside of this limited ‘reality versus simulation’ framework.

*** Or, for example, of something like venal blood. All people and animals with venal blood can be said to have venal blood, despite understanding or not what this means. A culture which does not understand what we mean by ‘art’ today, cannot be said to have it (they will have other things, which they will understand in different terms, and which, I want to emphasise, are not of lesser value just because they won’t fit our ‘artistic model’).

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