RE: [Marxism] Re: Academic whoring

["David McDonald" <dbmcdonald@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I'm with Louise and Carrol on this. In particular I endorse Carrol comments
about the list demographics and the dangers therein.

Ian Pace got correctly busted for an insensitive remark that is offensive to
women and to everyone who respects women. Most of us have done this, sadly,
at one time or another, and the best of us try to learn something from it
when such is pointed out to us. Not Ian.

What is intolerable is Ian's refusal to own up to and apologize for his
crudeness and insensitivity and in particular I reject his cutesy-pie
faux-intellectual hiding behind little etymological questions to avoid
making the necessary apology so we can move the fuck on. I take his reply as
an example of wink-wink politics and find it more offensive than the
original remark, let's let the girls gets their feelings out while meanwhile
the fellas can go on to discuss the subtleties of the situation which
identity politicians caught up in the emotion of their own oppression, are
too blinded by to see, or too lacking in dispassion to be intellectually
engaged in.

If Ian Pace is so interested in the etymology of "semen" what stopped him
from consulting the Oxford English Dictionary, written to answer just such
questions? And how did we get from a discussion of whether it's OK to call
people whose morals you disapprove of "whores" by analogy, to the discussion
of Latin roots? What's that got to do with using an offensive term and
dodging the consequences with a fog of vaporized horseshit?

By elevating the word "whore" to a metaphor -- presumably we are not talking
about people engaging in actual sex to achieve academic advancement, but
people who sell their academic skills in a manner similar to a prostitute
renting the use of herself sexually to whomever will pay -- Ian Pace not
only endorses treating women as sexual objects, as beings for whom the part,
the vagina, is the whole, but generalizes and universalizes that approach.
Not only is it a useful way to distinguish among women -- whores or
not-whores -- but it is SO useful a concept that it can be profitably
extended to any group or occupation, like professors. to distinguish among
them, too. It is actually encouragement to everyone to think that way, in
the precise sense that it encourages such thinking by asserting its own
righteousness. Valid for you, why not for me?

Ian is not responsible for the language. He is responsible for his language.

David McDonald



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