is really loving a book, only to have a male professor (our friend, Dorfman) lecture you on why you shouldn't love the book because it is sexist. (If revolution is masculine and nature is feminine.)
However, if I am not supposed to love any book that expresses some kind of hatred of women, I am left with very few books to love! Almost none. Male professors are going to come and take them away from me ("Oh, you shouldn't love that!") because I am a woman.
School makes me so angry.
Also: it has been suggested to me that grad students never say anything coherent or meaningful, and it works because everyone in class is too insecure about their own intellectual capital to admit that they don't have a clue what everyone else is saying. Kind of like the emperor's new clothes. "The grad student's new ideas." No one wants to be the first to admit that gibberish is not language.<--I'm pretty sure that's what happens.
Anyway, check out this really awesome sexist, classist book: La montana es algo mas que una inmensa estepa verde, by Omar Cabezas (Fire from the Mountain: The Making of a Sandinista). Unless you really hate Fanon (because he's classist) or want to say that the university-intellectual really CAN'T create an alternate political sphere (because you are a totally apathetic grad student) or really can't stand woman-mountain metaphors (because you're a male professor).
I'm going to ask him if I can write my midterm on this book so that I can share something with you all that sounds a little less choleric, but I think he is going to say no. (We are supposed to write on Poniatowska.)
Anyway, miss you a lot.
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6 comments:
Ok, so I know that the line beginning with "male professors" and ending with "woman" is really ridiculous, but I was feeling so mad. Sorry about that.
Also, I know that a man has to be able to say a book is sexist as much as a woman is able. That gender construction is about the construction of men, too. I am just not prepared to hear a man tell me that I am a bad feminist for not picking up on the sexism in the book. [It's not that I didn't pick up on it--it just doesn't dramatically limit the radical potential of the book's idea.]
Anyway, i am going to stop complaining about being here and actually try being here. Ok.
isn't marx a classist?
:P
: )
Don't apologize. I find this situation most frustrating. It seems to follow a major theme which started to bother me college- how some fail to recognize the complexity of ideas/books/art etc. and then completely discount them. UGH! what a simply easy and stupid thing to do.
He said no. And he couldn't have said it in a meaner way. (No, that is an EASY book. I want you to try to deal with a MORE DIFFICULT book.) [If it's so easy, why did he misread it? This is really about us not liking each other so much.] I may or may not finish the semester.
ugh this sounds super frustrating. i don't have any really wise words of support...i feel very distanced from the land of academia currently and lacking in useful ideas/perspective...but elsie, i heart you. good luck.
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