The whole "marriage is between a man and woman" idea is a totally logical, sound argument as long as you don't have to define the words "marriage" "man" or "woman."
My Colby Professor wrote this op-ed in the Times today. Check it out:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/12/opinion/12boylan.html
11 comments:
Josh, what's your take on this? I was talking to my office-mate (a not-gay relationship) Nate, who went to Wesleyan. He said Wesleyan is all about gender studies and people being uppity about gender-neutrality. Apparently some Wesleyans even renounced the use of gender specific pronouns, using here (her/his) and zee (he/she). I guess everyone in the entire fucking world is offensive.
Also, Mike, Can we take Strube off of this blog, it doesn't make sense to have him on the list of contribs. He belongs to LA now.
Yes, there is definitely an uppity faction of Wesleyan about this - in a couple of my classes, I was asked to (and did) use the gender neutral pronouns hir and ze. At least at Wesleyan, the lgbtq community was a very vocal/politically active one but moreso in my first year or two there. I mean, you've got to be loud about this kind of shit if you really don't identify yourself in the binary world that literally (almost) everyone else lives in and no one will listen to you, it must be unimaginably hard living and feeling as marginalized as they rightfully do. But that'll never change, so what can you do? The points in the editorial are completely true and correct notwithstanding, and I think Hootie's teach's approach is a pretty good one for this kind of fight, I'm always a fan of calling out hypocrisy. To an extent its kind of the best you can do with this sort of thing because people just don't want to have this conversation, and not least because they fundamentally can't comprehend it and most of the time they don't want to even TRY understand these "freaks." So it goes. Really a great op-ed anyway you cut it.
And in terms of the gender neutral pronouns themselves, its not an issue that he/she his/hers is offensive - that's off the mark. The issue for the people who take issue with it is that those terms are exclusive - like in the editorial, gender can be a much grayer thing than most everyone realizes - so breaking it along the lines of male and female excludes those "in-between." So it's not like people who use the pronouns are offended by them, they just want to feel like everyone along the gender spectrum is included. Take that for what you will, you can disagree with the exclusivity that they see in the binary of those terms, but that's where that side of the debate is coming from.
I mean, what's weird/tricky about this kind of thing is that to so many people, this is just some kind soapbox squawking coming from a bunch of privileged upper middle class educated elites, which in Wesleyan's case is certainly true (like, fuck, no one here is getting killed and mutilated for being outed as gay like in some parts of the world, or least that's not happening as commonly here...). But still, for the people it affects directly, it isn't some abstract or theoretical debate of academia - it really pertains to how they live their actual lives and their deep personal identities. So yeah, it's a hard conversation to have because no one has really been able to present this as a civil rights issue that demands national attention (gay marriage being called the "new" civil rights issue of our time may be a step on that path, but who knows where that will lead really). No matter how real shit is or may be, people just can't hear it. I'm done now.
One more thing:
GO HAWKS!!!
how fucking sweet was last night? nothing like dropping a touchdown on luongo as a farewell present from lord stanley.
ok, i guess i asked the right person to follow up...
And no ross, i'm not taking strubie off the blog. I took Hovey off though.
ya, gender studies were a big deal at cc too. taking the gender signs off of public b-rooms, etc. i didn't read the 7 minute updates of josh's life story , but i assume i concur. i did see his last one, though. anyone watch the postgame interviews, and see luongo cry and remove himself from reporters? poor guy...
Charlie and I went to that Hawks game and sat next to Rich Harden.
It was pretty funny. Rich tried to make small talk with Char and Char totally blew him off, as if to say, "dude... trying to watch the fucking game here."
It was great.
what, you don't get bored at work and want to talk gender politics to the internet? need i remind you i'm a product of bruce?
There's a lot to hit on in this window, but the Rich Harden slight got some good laughs in this living room.
Beers after work on Thursday, Josh. Well, awright.
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