> rob you've lectured others on not knowing you. but you know me, you've read
> me for several years and you know i have a much more complicated view than
> you've let on. (i expl'd my snotty remarks at the end of my comments to
> steve: he ought to know better because of what he teaches)
I know your views to be sophisticated on this, Kel. I don't mean to suggest that lotsa the stuff I've been trying to ask questions about here in any way constitute The Kelley Walker Position. And I certainly agree that, even in the best of situations, this fellow is being a king-sized Dork.
> what you initially said was that women and men grad studs are equally
> capable of handling grad student role. you acknowledged that there were
> systematic differences between those with family obligations and those
> without due to the structural factors of the modern capitalist family
> formation. but you seemed resistant to acknowledging women's
> different--systematically different--experiences that make graduate student
> life a little different than men's regardless of whether they have
> dependents to care for. these differences are, in part, why women have a
> higher attrition rate.
Well, maybe I shouldn't generalise too readily (perhaps none of us should), but I couldn't imagine staff in this faculty talking or thinking like this bloke. Nor a grad who who would wear it for one iota. And I'm not suggesting for a minute that we summarily throw structuralist analysis and the notion of systematic difference of experience out. Just wanted to tease out, critique, and suggest possible modifications to the approach exemplified by that grab you posted, with reference to the the class of incident you described and speculations about its context.
> my response was to ask a few questions about whether you'd rec'd the same
> kind of treatment i and other women i know have received: you zeroed in on
> one thing, while ignoring other examples. i could have written about other
> examples, such as the sexist stereotyping i've rec'd from women--even
> feminist women!--or how the school calls me for a sick child, not my ex. i
> worked 50 miles from his school, the ex works 5. this is another bar in the
> system of oppression. i could have talked about how research shows
> systematic differences in student evaluations--another bar in gender
> oppression. i could have show more about gendered tracking in TA and RA
> assignments--another bar. i could have shown how pay for TAs and RAs
> reveals gender differences based on percent female in the
> discipline--another bar. etc.
I don't mean to sound like I'm refuting notions like sexism and patriarchy.
> yes, things are changing. yes indeed they are. but i'm not going to talk
> about all that be/c it's not a space conducive to covering everything.
Yeah, I'm finding e-mail ain't a good medium for this sort of debate ...
> Rob has read me for years, i assumed he knew better than
> to tag me the way he has.
Well, if I tagged you, I didn't mean to.
> i think he knows that we have far more complex understandings of feminisms > and
women's oppression.
I don't deny this.
> but what happened here was a denial that there are systematic differences
> between women grads and men grads.
Well, I was talking about sexual harassment by way of this power-play sexualisation thing - wondering as to its enduring systematicity (is that a word?), wondering about 'appropriateness' across cultures, wondering about how neat we can make our distinctions between sexualisation/being sexual (which I know must matter to you because you often refer to yourself as a 'sex-positive feminist') and appropriateness/inappropriateness, and just generally looking for some theoretical tips that sit better with the world I see about me.
> why deny that women are
> systematically treated differently than men?
See above
> it may not mean
> life is impossible, but that's not what oppression is all about anyway.
> it's about lots of little things that interlock, that add up.
I agree. I speculated they weren't adding up in the ways they used to, and that some stuff that happens just ain't in the sum. It was in this spirit I suggested the Dork's actions might not constitute as simple or as devastating an act as the theory might suggest. That was before what we then got of your history was added to the mix.
> yes, things have changed, are changing, but they have not gone away.
I haven't the imagination to come up with a world without power and sex in it - nor one in which the stuff we're discussing literally goes away. I do think the west is prising open Frye's wires, though, such that what was once a cage might become the odd irksome wire. If I've been clumsily insensitive about it, it's probably because I'm not very experienced at such optimistic declamations.
Much comfier when the thoughts and words murmur along in their miserablist default setting ...
Cheers, Rob.
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