Feminism

[Ninety-Three]

I apologize for my tone, I have realized that I was communicating poorly and coming off as aggressive. I tend to think in terms of "I don't understand your point, this is my contradictory point which seems correct to me, where is my error?" and I've realized that in posting here, I tend to leave off the "where is my error?" as implicit. I can see that part was not coming across, which is entirely my fault. In retrospect I should have been more clear about this and I can see that it was rude and made me seem confrontational.

 

Apologies all around, I'll try to be better in the future.

[Reyturner]

I wasn't originally going to put this in this thread but I think some might find it useful. 
 
This article by Sady Doyle (it's a gut-wrenching read if you haven't seen it) left me feeling extremely ambivalent in a way that I couldn't fully articulate. That's (unfortunately) never prevented me from posting things online before and so I did partially articulate it... simultaneously with another comment that specifically requested that the Feminism thread not be turned into a debate about the rhetorical merits of an article about rape culture: wrong time wrong place. 
 
I respect that, and please hear me out, but I did come across this response by Timothy Burke that did manage to articulate what left me feeling uneasy about the first article and I think it's worth thinking about. In regards to the unintended consequences of art: 
 

The postmodern emphasis on language preceding and shaping thought and thought shaping action is intact in this new activist stance, but not the indeterminacy and multiplicity of meaning. And the Author has been brought forth from his grave, but not entirely to a new life. Doyle, like many, argues that the meaning of culture is often quite determinate, and it should be determined not by an act of discerning interpretation but in relationship to a set of social subjects. E.g., meaning still resides in that sense with the audience and with usage and context, but only some audiences and some contexts. Only two audiences have authority to make meaning, in this view: the people who use expressive culture deliberately as a weapon and the people who are wounded by that weapon. The Author is being forgiven here: the Author does not wound. The Author is only the blacksmith who makes the sword on an anvil. Whether the sword is wielded by the righteous or the wicked, or left above the mantlepiece, is not the Author’s will–unless he deliberately peddles it to the wicked.

Anyone else who claims, however, to see the sword as spit for grilling meat, or as a fashion accessory, or as demonstration of metallurgical skill, or as a symbol of aristocratic nostalgia, or as a visual stimulus for writing fantasy novels, or as one of a class of crafted objects, etc., is being ruled out of bounds. Those other meanings and interpretations are unavailable if there is someone somewhere who has been wounded.

 

Yes. Exactly. This is how I feel.

 

And my feelings are wrong.

 

Timothy Burke's response isn't really a response to Doyle's article at all. Burke is responding to a strawman which claims the "PC" brigade wants to cleanse all expression of the potential of any feeling getting hurt for any reason in any context. It's the same strawman that Patton Oswald and Jerry Sienfeld and Chris Rock are blaming for their discomfort at the backlash they get on college campuses.
 
Doyle's article is not calling for a moratorium on any and all expression which a hidden cabal of wet blanket millennials deem unacceptable. Doyle is focused specifically on rape culture and its contribution to rapes actually occurring. In the context of Doyle's article, the sword Burke describes is "rape jokes", and the two audiences are "rapists" and "victims of rape". How can one refuse to specifically stop telling jokes which light of rape and the victims of rape for the reasons Burke puts forward; I can't think of anything redeemable which society is in danger of losing if we oblige. And thinking it through, it is difficult see a reason to continue to tell jokes about the victims of racism, patriarchy, or any other pervasive oppression that infects society. 
 
At first, Doyle's article triggered a

 reaction in me that Burke helped me identify and writing this post helped me get past it.

 

Now, if you DO want to argue about this, please PM me or do it in the Random Thought thread. I'm game to do so but lets respect the fact that others here are not interested. 

[Apple Cider]

Thank you for posting this, I hadn't read Burke's article and I think he succinctly puts why people arguing about rape joke's "true" efficacy makes my stomach flop over. 

[itsamoose]

I feel like this (article below) shouldn't surprise me given the almost fetishistic way pro life politicians go out of their way to diminish abortion rights. I got into a bit of an argument with a religious friend of mine who was even rationalizing the further restrictions currently being placed on abortion terms, based on a study that fetuses can be essentially placed on life support at 20 or 22 weeks and survive. Frustratingly, And predictably, enough none of the bills placing further limitations on abortion terms have any provisions related to ensuring hospitals have the necessary equipment to actually have such a life support system.

http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/8085692

[Argobot]

Can't remember if the big talk on appropriation was here or elsewhere but putting this in because it's interesting http://www.orchestratedpulse.com/2014/11/cultural-appropriation-is-dead/

[seamus2389]

Can't remember if the big talk on appropriation was here or elsewhere but putting this in because it's interesting http://www.orchestratedpulse.com/2014/11/cultural-appropriation-is-dead/

 

I think it was in the social justice thread.

[Brett E]

I wasn't familiar with this artist but this post got shared into my feed so I had a look and all of their work seems to be rather generic 'attractive' women with almost no difference in their faces. It seems that they received some criticism for this and responded with this: https://www.facebook.com/Stanleyartgermlau/photos/a.420509275158.209926.27756180158/10153695122535159/?type=1&fref=nf

 

Urgh.

[BusbyBerkeley]

I wasn't familiar with this artist but this post got shared into my feed so I had a look and all of their work seems to be rather generic 'attractive' women with almost no difference in their faces. It seems that they received some criticism for this and responded with this: https://www.facebook.com/Stanleyartgermlau/photos/a.420509275158.209926.27756180158/10153695122535159/?type=1&fref=nf

Urgh.

Hah, that's like the dragon's crown artist who responded to the "holy fuck these characters are ridiculous" with essentially "maybe you are all homosexuals."

[Bjorn]

So these two articles just ran yesterday in the Lawrence Journal World (my local paper)

 

Two different groups of men from fraternities were stopped by police taking women back to their frat houses who were so drunk and unconscious that the police felt compelled to call an ambulance and have them taken to the emergency room to be checked for alcohol poisoning.  The men did not know the names of the women, where they lived or provide any evidence that they knew them in any way. 

 

The university will not be adopting any of the recommendations from a Sexual Assault Task Force that would have any impact on fraternities or sororities.  Because obviously if you're trying to stop sexual assaults at universities, you wouldn't want to change anything about the frat system at all. 

[Apple Cider]

I honestly feel that frat houses, and this is probably an anecdotal feeling, normalize the kinds of really rape-prone attitudes towards women's bodies that most men don't receive as much every day at that age. It's one thing that a lot of college guys have no issues with drunk women but having a physical location that you share with other men who ALSO feel like that and reinforce it with parties and such increases that tenfold. 

[Dewar]

To be fair to KU...

 

KU announced on Monday that the university was implementing, or already had implemented, 22 of the 27 recommendations the task force suggested after being created in September 2014 and meeting throughout the academic year.

 

Still, I'm really glad I went to a university where the Greek system was against the rules.

[Bjorn]

To be fair to KU...

 

 

 

Still, I'm really glad I went to a university where the Greek system was against the rules.

 

The consensus around here basically seems to be to doubt the seriousness with which the university is actually handling this issue, and that the task force at least partially represents a PR bandaid to provide cover for the federal investigation into KU's handling of rape and sexual assault cases.  If you look at the specific ones they ARE implementing, they basically come down to 1) Should have already been fucking doing this, 2) take few or no resources to implement and 3) this sounds lovely, we'll definitely try to get around to doing this at some indeterminate point in the future, even as budgets are being slashed and the state is in the worst financial crisis it has faced in decades. 

 

I sympathize with the college that budgets are a fucking disaster right now, but on that same hand, it's not like this issue hasn't been building for years. 

[thefncrow]

I went to a school that had the Greek system but also didn't have actual frat houses. That seemed to at least keep things moderately in check, so there might be something to the idea of having frats minus the shared housing.

Of course, that university also had their own problems with rape. The on-campus housing consisted of apartments managed by a third-party that had big problems of their own. They had poor security that led to more rapes reported in student housing than other universities that had 2-3 times as many students in housing and a university administration that thought they didn't need to issue crime alerts unless the perpetrator was unknown or at large. So, for instance, a rape would be reported, someone would be arrested, bail out within 24 hours and go right back to being in housing without any warning to the residents that any of this had happened.

I lived in those apartments for a year, and while I didn't find out about that whole angle until a few years later, sadly none of it surprised me.

[Apple Cider]

Yeah, my college didn't support on-campus frat houses either, all frats and sororities had meetings on-campus via the campus center. While there were definitely house parties, the fact that the organization had to operate under the auspices of the campus in a professional way helped a lot to keep them service/networking orgs and not sleazy.

[Deadpan]

I'm still kind of weirded out when people talk about this kind of thing because of how different university culture is in my neck of the woods. Like, from what I've gathered talking to friends studying in other places, our curricula are much more modular, meaning you might see a different group of people in every course you do and never really get to know the people who started at the same time as you, or indeed never form the kind of bonds you see in movies and sitcoms at all. Dorms exist, and apparently so do wild parties, but most students get a flat or flatshare around town and don't spend that much time on campus itself. And since fraternities played an unsavory part in the proliferation of fascist politics in academia during the 30s and 40s (right up to hunting down jewish students) they're a completely niche phenomenon around here, kept alive by a bunch of neonazi trash under the guise of "tradition".

 

So I'm never completely sure if things I take for granted about being a student look completely weird to other people. Apparently nobody outside of the German-speaking world does that "drum your knuckles on the table at the end of a lecture instead of applauding" thing either?

[Bjorn]

I'm still kind of weirded out when people talk about this kind of thing because of how different university culture is in my neck of the woods. Like, from what I've gathered talking to friends studying in other places, our curricula are much more modular, meaning you might see a different group of people in every course you do and never really get to know the people who started at the same time as you, or indeed never form the kind of bonds you see in movies and sitcoms at all. Dorms exist, and apparently so do wild parties, but most students get a flat or flatshare around town and don't spend that much time on campus itself. And since fraternities played an unsavory part in the proliferation of fascist politics in academia during the 30s and 40s (right up to hunting down jewish students) they're a completely niche phenomenon around here, kept alive by a bunch of neonazi trash under the guise of "tradition".

 

Fraternities have far more power, visibility and influence than their respective population size would generally allow for (which, I guess, pretty much matches how the real world works here as well).  Technically, the percentage of the population at KU that is considered part of the greek system is 18 percent.  But realistically, you're talking about probably closer to 10-12 percent of the population once you factor out the frats and sororities that are service oriented, professional organizations or exist to support specific groups (usually ones focused on supporting specific ethnic or cultural backgrounds).  Those organizations are almost never the ones people mean when they say frat or sorority. 

 

All of the college friends I have stayed in touch with are ones that came out of a specific project, which ended up being a 6 month hell project in which everything that could go wrong did.  But ultimately it was definitely one of those trial-by-fire type situations that made us all damn good friends. 

 

So I'm never completely sure if things I take for granted about being a student look completely weird to other people. Apparently nobody outside of the German-speaking world does that "drum your knuckles on the table at the end of a lecture instead of applauding" thing either?

 

I have never heard of this.

[Deadpan]

What about student politics? I've gathered from my media consumption that the only representatives students get to vote on are for a department or university level, but is this actually correct?

[SuperBiasedMan]

Oh wow. Neither of these was my experience. People clap at the end of lectures?

We had no dorms at all but we still had a clear cohesive group because I studied a degree where I was one of 30 people specifically just studying our classes. So for every single class I'd see the same full group of people for all four years (aside from new additions, drop outs and repeats). My college experience was even more insular of a group than my secondary school.

For reference this is an Irish college but I was studying animation in a relatively small college so I had a weirder experience.

[Deadpan]

People clap at the end of lectures?

 

Well not around here they don't. Except in lecture halls that don't have wooden desks, where clapping is a thing.

[tberton]

I've only ever heard people clap for lectures at conferences or events. Clapping at a regular, scheduled lecture would be super weird.

 

For student politics, in Canada at least, you usually have a student association that students vote for, and those associations have some representation with the administration of the university. At my school (Carleton, in Ottawa), we have an undergraduate association and a graduate association. The President of the Graduate Student's Association sits on the Board of Directors of the university, and the Council of the association also elects some other poeple to sit on the board and Senate and stuff. In my department, we also elect students to attend faculty meetings and stuff. None of that necessarily means that students are ever actually listened to, but they're represented.

[Gerretic]

At my college, people would clap, but for lectures given by a certain professor only - he was a Nobel laureate, one of very few people of that stature who taught freshmen students.

[Jutranjo]

I'm still kind of weirded out when people talk about this kind of thing because of how different university culture is in my neck of the woods. Like, from what I've gathered talking to friends studying in other places, our curricula are much more modular, meaning you might see a different group of people in every course you do and never really get to know the people who started at the same time as you, or indeed never form the kind of bonds you see in movies and sitcoms at all. Dorms exist, and apparently so do wild parties, but most students get a flat or flatshare around town and don't spend that much time on campus itself. And since fraternities played an unsavory part in the proliferation of fascist politics in academia during the 30s and 40s (right up to hunting down jewish students) they're a completely niche phenomenon around here, kept alive by a bunch of neonazi trash under the guise of "tradition".

 

So I'm never completely sure if things I take for granted about being a student look completely weird to other people. Apparently nobody outside of the German-speaking world does that "drum your knuckles on the table at the end of a lecture instead of applauding" thing either?

 

 

I've seen the knuckle drumming happen but not at regular lectures. Yeah, applauding at the end of lectures wasn't common either.

 

Students mostly know people from their study department, there's little contact between students of engineering and medicine. If you live in a student dorm you'll meet a lot of people outside of those, so that's great. There's no fraternities or similar, dorms have wild parties sometimes but those parties happen in 6-12 person apartments' kitchens, not some club house. 

[Brett E]

Some people clap at the cinema so in a lecture doesn't seem that odd in comparison

[SuperBiasedMan]

People clap at the cinema!?

[Brett E]

Well I've been led to believe that it happens in places. It happened in my local cinema once but that was a group of French students I think, also it was WWZ so clapping seemed especially odd

Also I think some people clapped in a cinema in Denmark but the Danes I was with seemed to think that was a bit odd too so perhaps it's not normal there.

 

Slightly more on topic, we don't have frats here in Britain and I'm very glad about that. I think the closest we have are societies which don't have their own buildings or anything like that. We have halls of residence which are basically dorms and we were aware that in ours it was all guys on the ground floor for the specific reason that if someone is gonna break in then it'll be that floor so this was a precaution to avoid sexual assault. Not a particularly comforting thought but we didn't dwell on it, we also had bars on the windows and a concierge plus campus security would patrol. I think the security was more because it was a bit of a rough city and you were more likely to be burgled that assaulted though.