More heat than light
Huh. I saw this one by accident, following a trail via Jesse Singal.
But we don’t “seek to cancel THE VERY EXISTENCE” of anyone. That would be murder. We’re not murderers and we don’t advocate murder.
Ah the community of right-minded people. Ok, I’ll shelve the plans to do whatever that was meant to be, then.
“The book declares itself as what it is”: The title says it is a book about gender-critical feminism. Have you ANY knowledge about that that means, what that viewpoint claims and advocates and emphasizes?
“We can read.”: But apparently you have no desire to do so. You also wish to prevent other people from reading something you haven’t bothered to read.
As Kathleen Stock recently has said, there’s so much bad-faith grandstanding by academics now, and not only about the subjects of sex and gender. It really is so much kayfabe that doesn’t even reach the standards of pro wrestling where opponents at least have a physical go at each other that requires some actual effort on their part.
“Sorry, Kyla, but your dad and I told you that if your grades didn’t improve this year we were erasing your World of Warcraft account and pulling the plug on the computer. You KNEW those were the consequences. If you can raise up those D’s and at least pass English, we’ll let you back on next semester and I’m sure you can make some new characters. It’s a GAME, Kyla.”
I know I’m right because I’m a member of the community of right-minded people. I know they’re right-minded because they believe the same thing I do, and I know I’m right.
An academic who can’t tell the difference between someone saying they’re wrong, and someone saying they shouldn’t exist, probably shouldn’t be an academic.
An academic who can’t say anything without stupid jargon like “your hateful and violent commitments” and “cancel the very existence” definitely shouldn’t be an academic.
Bad enough that they have posts where they have a say in what happens to students in their charge; imagine someone like that in a position with more power over more people than they have in academia.
Were any ideas of gender critical people ever actually refuted by this Tompkins person? Or was it the usual drama and fury with no substance?
Not that I’ve seen, but I didn’t go looking for her wisdom, because she doesn’t strike me as having any.
#8 I had the same thought. ‘Having their ideas refuted’ implies some sort of logical analysis and breakdown. ‘You’re a meanie and I won’t listen to you’ isn’t refutation.
Maybe they think – and this is about the most charitable interpretation I can come up with – that someone else made the refutation. They didn’t see the refutation themselves, but they know it exists because everyone in their circle says it.
1. “.. cancel THE VERY EXISTENCE …”
You lying libelous liars.
“We can read.”
No, evidently you can’t. You cannot possibly have read any actual words written by any gender-rejecting writers. What about,
“Dress however you please.
Call yourself whatever you like.
Sleep with any consenting adult who’ll have you.
Live your best life in peace and security,”
do you not understand?
That harms no one, cancels no one, does nothing to affect “the very existence” of anyone.
2. “… whine about having their ideas refuted …”
Refuted how? Where? By whom? By what reasoned argument? All you have is name-calling and threats.
3. “… taken to task for your hateful and violent commitments …”
Another lying libelous lie. WHAT f*ing “hate”? WHAT f*ing “violence”? There isn’t any! None! You can’t point to any. Stating biological, scientific facts is neither hate, nor violence. Women saying, “live in peace and love,” is the exact opposite of “hate” or “violence.” What the gender ideologists heap on women — name-calling, cancellation, deplatforming, siccing the police on them for truthful free speech, doxxing, trying to get women fired from their jobs, mobbing, rape threats, death threats, physical assault and intimidation — is actual hate and violence. You purposely misuse words in your DARVO jiu jitsu. It’s pure projection. You are what you accuse others of being.
This academic has a great interest in gelatin:
“Gelatin is exquisitely relational in that it is a kind of matter that absorbs energy from its environment- sound waves for instance – and then makes that energy visible and material in real time. Gelatin is also a food whose history is closely intertwined with class, poverty, haute cuisine and the creation of metabolic biopolitics during the nineteenth century in Europe and the United States.”
And:
“The history and aesthetics of gelatin, as a form, as a material governed by non-Newtonian physics and as a poor person’s foodstuff linked to the re-purposing of slaughterhouse waste in the nineteenth century is the subject of one of the chapters of So Moved.”
“So Moved” is Dr. Tompkins’s latest work, which she describes thusly: “In So Moved I map the recategorization of microbiopolitical life, criminality and the citizenship form across two historical shifts in the United States: the history of Pasteurian science and the failure of Radical Reconstruction that led to the consequent rise of federal Progressivism. A history of lively matter (and thus a critical and historical engagement with new materialist philosophy) as well as a meditation on interdisciplinary methodologies, my central argument in this book is that we can map the production of racial categories and affective forms onto the history of matter and vice versa.”
I took the time to read a fair amount of what Dr. Tompkins has available on her website. She is, unsurprisingly, a great fan of Judith Butler, and of the Butlerian school of obscurantist bullshit. In one essay, she links to a NYT piece Butler published in 1999, defending her penchant for writing unintelligible doggerel. What I appreciate about Butler’s whining screed of so long ago is that she, and Tompkins, were and are completely unable to understand the critique being leveled at them.
So she’s a jello scholar. Awesome.
It’s only natural that Tompkins would gravitate towards gender ideology, given its sharing jello’s legendary inability to be nailed to a wall.
YNNB, unfair, I was drinking coffee when I read #15, and it was mere luck that it didn’t end up all over my computer screen.
“as a material governed by non-Newtonian physics”
It sounds like Tompkins has confused “non-Newtonian fluid” with “non-Newtonian physics”
lol
Just what the world needs: A Jello scholar. I wonder how much Jello scholars get paid?
Good grief, I rolled my eyes so hard reading that I nearly passed out.
@15, 16 – Yeah very unfair. I had just swallowed my coffee fortunately, because I did actually for real laugh out loud.
@17, well, that’s what happens when pretentious, obscuritist academics try to be too clever with subjects they know nothing about (while being utterly confident they understand perfectly). It’s one of the reasons physical scientists tend to look at social scientists askance and mutter about it not actually being science.
As someone who has loved science and learning all my life it infuriates me when people intentionally speak and write in an obscure manner to appear more knowledgeable. More often than not it’s to cover up just how shallow their work actually is. My daily mission for the last 30 mumble years has been to write about highly technical subjects as succinctly and accurately as possible in a way that at least most lay people will understand with a little effort, and that experts will say “but that’s obvious”.
Obviously I proof read in that part of my life, not like the slapped out missives you lot get ;-).
on a similar timeline:
R.N. Amy Hamm Is Being Investigated by the British Columbia College of Nurses Because She Believe Biological Sex Is Real
https://quillette.com/2022/04/08/im-being-investigated-by-the-british-columbia-college-of-nurses-because-i-believe-biological-sex-is-real/
Power corrupts. And a little bit of power is all that is needed for a shitload of corruption.