Re: [Marxism] Re: Academic whoring

["Ian Pace" <ian@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

From: "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.

I would like to draw your attention to the fact that it was not myself who
used the term whoring in the first place. It is not a term I use, before you
start talking about my being 'busted'.
> What is intolerable is Ian's refusal to own up to

Own up to what? Take up the term with Louis if you like.

> 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 have nothing personally to apologise for, in terms of using the term.

> 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.

That is total BS. I'm actually concerned about the appropriation of the
politics of identity as a mode of repackaging capitalist interests - is that
not a legitimate concern. A distinct issue, yes, hence why changing the
thread title.
> 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?

Calm down. The term 'seminal' was brought up (not by me). I was asking
whether it is so necessarily linked to English 'semen' rather than Latin
'semen'.
> 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.

All language is metaphorical. And some metaphors are more offensive than
others. And in no sense does anything I say endorse treating women as sexual
objects. Actually, I think prostitution is a reasonable metaphor for the
plight of all non-ruling class people under capitalism, with the situation
of women forced to sell their bodies in order to survive as the starkest
example of such.

> 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.
Yes, and please check who you phrases were attributed to before flying off
the handle.

Solidarity,
Ian



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