<div>On 4/27/05, Wojtek Sokolowski <<a href="mailto:sokol@jhu.edu">sokol@jhu.edu</a>> wrote:<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> > > A real live feminist who's not in academia, but is a > > businesswoman. Interesting.  Business = the "real world."  Academia = unreal (read: bunch of stuffed shirt liberal idlers who know nothing about 'everyday life'). Why do I need a feminist movement telling me that?  The right wing mouthpieces do it better and more explicitly. Wojtek </blockquote></div> This is pick on Wojitek day. But the particular nonesense you pulled is not that uncommon on this, so I hope people will take it as a more general comment and not simply as piling on Woj. A comment was made that could be interperted two ways; that business people were real live people unlike the academic world that this was a real live (as opposed to fake) feminist in the business rather than academic world - implying that genuine feminism is not all that common in the business world. The latter interpetation is I think the more reasonable reading of  what was said, and also happens to be true. (Yeah, I know - I'm engaging in problematic behavior by labeling corporate feminism as less "real" than other types of feminism.  I don't have time to defend that view, though I hold it, so make of that part what you will.) Why choose the most offensive way to read the statement you replied to. If I wanted to simply engage in personal attack I would say you were looking for an excuse to sneer - but I think you were engaging in something that is a flaw in much of academia - a refusal to read texts in good faith, and I think a lack of understanding that it is important to try to do so. An academic of my acquaintence recently told her students; you are responsible for your words; expect to have to defend what you said; don't use "I mean't to say this" as an excuse. If that is what you meant to say, it is what you should have said. This is not completely unreasonable; I don't think people should be able to get with nasty or illogical claims by saying "I did not mean it this way; I was just kidding." or "I really intended the opposite of what my statement actually says". And I know that outside of academia those are pretty common ways of weasling away from your words.  "It is not that I said something stupid or offensive; you simply misinterpeted it'> But in avoiding it, people do go to the  other extreme. Most people, including most academics, do not have actual legal training. They cannot draft every sentence to exclude ambiguity and defend against deliberate misreadings. If someone has made a sentence with mulitple possible meanings, I think there is an obligation on the part of the reader to try and determine the most reasonable one. In the example we are discussing, for instance, "real" is used (along with "live") to modify the word feminist. Gratuitously inserting the word "world' which is nowhere it the actual message, and assuming the word "real" modifies that is  not a good faith reading. Also if there are two equally likely ways to read the message (in this case there are not; but I'm really not aiming this only at Woj) I think if one is illogical and unreasonable, and the other sensiible or at least more common in the social context in which the text exists, I don't think it is asking to much of the reader to pick the more sensible and reasonable or common interpetation. -- Please note:  Personal  messages  should be sent to [garlpublic] followed by the [at] sign with isp of  [comcast], then [dot] and then an  extension of net