Feminist Chickens Coming Home to Roost on Supreme Court
Okay, all you people out there in the real world, you’ve been writing off the whackos in the academy, grinding your teeth through that freshman composition class where you had to write an essay about gender, nodding along as the teacher explained why yellow wallpaper would bother some lady, reading those dreadfully dull essays about “caring” and “empathy” and “feminist theories of justice,” and writing down “phallologocentrism” dutifully and regurgitating it back in a research paper that you were told to write in “a different voice.” Now you are just happy to have escaped the insane asylum called college to finally get into the real world where you design, build, or sell things and count your bottom line at the end of the month.
Whew! You wiped your brow on that day you went to get the sheepskin. The only time you think about those days and maybe mention the crazy teacher is when you share a beer with an old fraternity brother. Then you go on to more important things like stock tips or how your alma mater’s team is doing this season as you grill the shish kebabs in your backyard.
Well, as more than one infamous professor has said, “The chickens are coming home to roost!”
Yes, you are going to get that whacko feminist Latina professor who’d walk her motherly bulk right up to your desk and tell the class how oppression makes one more sympathetic. About “women’s ways of knowing.” About the evils of linear thought (whatever the hell that meant). She’d mix it up with statistics about women’s biological superiority and the “struggle” of her “people.” It made your head hurt. It made you glad you were wearing a baseball cap when she started going on and on about “womb logic” versus “phallic logic.”
And you didn’t want to listen to me when I cornered you at a party and told you about the nonsense I had to go through just to get my Ph.D. I saw you nodding at me in that polite but dismissive way as I prophesized about the end of Western civilization, all due to our educational system. I even named you the four horsepersons: Gilligan, Butler, hooks, and Foucault. I tried to be a witness, but you just said that you needed to take something out of your eye. (But no ash was falling from the sky, yet.) You thought that outside of a few eccentrics in English and sociology, most teachers wore tweed and taught novels with plots, the value of logic, and that 2 + 2 = 4.
I don’t want to say it, but I told you so!
Most people do not attend college to get a genuine liberal arts education. As a matter of fact, this is a distant second on their priority list. They endure the process so that they can cynically obtain the necessary credentials to get a good paying job. To be blunt: these individuals whore it out. The harder sciences, however, are normally an entirely different story. 2+2 still remains 4 and one’s race or gender isn’t a determining factor. It is only the liberal arts where the postmodernist crazies can possibly dominate. Sadly, anyone possessing a soft science higher degree should be teated like a nutcase until proven otherwise. Only a hard science degree can demand instant respect.
I had to take one of those inane Womyn’s Studies classes back in the 80′s. I actually wanted to hand in my woman card if it had anything to do with the sheer insanity and BS being taught in that class. I think I barely got out alive, I spent most of the time asking “Why would I ever think ______?” It was hideous, and I went to school in the South. Cannot imagine what it is like now, especially in the North and the W Coast.
YIKES
I earned an Electrical Engineering degree and I can attest to the fact that the insane “soft” sciences profs hated us much as we hated them.
There’s this old joke. What to know how to drive an engineer crazy? Fold the map wrong.
IMHO, virtually all the studies professors had their maps folded wrong…
It reminds me of my history professor LECTURING us about the evil that is Israel. What was his solution for relocating all the displaced Jews who fled the Nazis? Why we should plop them in the middle of the rain forest in Brazil of course! That way we wouldn’t have to piss off all those nice arabs. Genius! That’s literally what he told us. I can’t even begin to describe how much I hate brainwashed ignorant leftists. Especially when they’re the ones indoctrinating er I mean educating our young people. Would it kill our teachers to shut the hell up about politics and just teach the class? Seriously, academia has gotten out of all control. And all this empathy crap is ridiculous. I don’t have a problem with teaching boys to be nice to girls in school and that they shouldn’t be discriminated against but that’s about it. All this super crazy pyscho-babble that you mentioned like “womb philosophy” needs to go. Or atleast teach it only to girls so I don’t have to hear that crap. Public education has been too centered around the needs of female students for too long. No wonder males are dropping out of highschool left and right more and more each year. They’re being aliented with all this ultra-feminist crap.
“Sonia Sotomayor is like that annoying professor you thought you had gotten away from — but now she’s back in your life.”
This whole gang is made up of the annoyingly unAmerican, childishly self-centered, noisemakers who didn’t want to grow up that we had to listen to in the ’60′s (and their younger siblings)….that we thought we had gotten away from–and now they’ve taken over.
Brilliant piece! And 100 percent correct. Wish I could have stood in for that old fellow in tweed.
You didn’t say anything about Judge Sotomayor, just smeared her by implication. That’s sad.
OK, so we’ve identified the problem very clearly. So now what? We need to retake the intellectual/cultural high ground that is the Academy, with humanities scholars who can speak the postmodern blabber, but who are grounded in reality. Its a dirty job, but our culture depends on it. The humanities used to be a place where scholarship and linear thought reigned. We need a return to that.
This mama is not a cuddly mass of girth, but nonetheless I have been sternly warning about the chickens coming home to roost for quite some time.
In fact, my feminine siren reached its meteoric decibel level when I started paying through the nose for my kiddies educations.Parting with upwards of $ 45,000 per genius a year raises ones antenna.
While their colleges were bastions of free thinking (Caltech & MIT) compared to the oppressive (il)liberal arts schools, they too had to hold their noses every once in a while.
The less than free thinkers in their humanities departments held court in insidious ways. Parents/students must understand that just because one is not in the presence of a liberal, force-feeding female prof does not mean that the suffocation is not as real.
Case in point -on MIT’s campus the students are subjected to the indoctrination, suffocation and idolization of Noam Chomsky, the grandfather of radical politics. I would bet the farm that Sotamayor holds him up as a God, one to be revered and bowed to.
Therefore, while these feministas hold sway over the minds of countless female students, one dare not forget about their male counterparts.They are every bit as insidious,acting as dangerous thought police, mostly posing as all knowing, benign profs.
“Case in point -on MIT’s campus the students are subjected to the indoctrination, suffocation and idolization of Noam Chomsky, the grandfather of radical politics.”
You just pointed out the main reason why I will never get a graduate degree in the Humanities, even though I know I can ace anything they throw at me if I enroll. I refuse to worship at the altar of Chomsky.
David thompson,
you are right about most things, but if you think the sciences haven’t been whored out along with everything else you are as wrong as wrong can be.
I had enough idealistic indoctrination and the self-infatuation contagion in computer information systems at the American University of Communism to make re-learning necessary. One of the most annoying things was having J. Kenneth Galbraith assignments and discussions in almost every class. And I was trying to accept what they were teaching. Then came reality from the application of the theories of the left.
Now we have the federal government in the hands of inexperienced idealist supported by leftist of every stripe who live and work in a world of talk, read, write, and dream of how they are gods and will save the world.
Masterfully done, Mary, as always. I can’t help thinking, though, about the masses who spent few if any years in the halls of higher academia. They may not read, or understand, your message.
I’m reminded of the observation from the famous Alabama philosopher, George Wallace, that one must ” put the hay down where the goats can reach it”.
Glen Allen
Peachtree City
I recall applying for a job a few years back that had a two week window in which qualified candidates could submit applications. I’m a ‘White Male.’
After the two week window closed, I was then set up for an interview. A few days later, I received a call about how one of the candidates had dropped out, and that they had to open the window back up to receive more applications to balance the candidate pool. I then talked with a ‘female’ supervisor and explained my concerns about fairness and how everyone had an equal opportunity to apply for the position within the window.
Much to my surprise the ‘female’ explained that the job was open for a, ‘Black Female,’ and that I could complain all I wanted but that it wouldn’t change the final outcome.
This woman was just another Sonia, in a different position, but with the same basic perspectives.
“Empathy,” has become just another word for reverse discrimination.
Yo’s right. Just look at climatology. Science is the last frontier for the loony takeover, but they’re gaining ground there, too.
And they had to seek out a brilliant crackpot to run Energy. Cho is to practical energy engineering what Shockley was to anthropology. There’s no doubt that he was specifically sought out and chosen precisely because he is a crackpot out of his depth.
I am aghast at the Ricci decision and, if not overturned, have declared my decision to swim to Cuba to live under a more intelligent political system.
I don’t see the Ricci case in the context of affirmative action. (the law has become so convoluted in the context of Title this and Title that, it is constantly tripping over itself) I see the decision to disavow the well-vetted promotion examination after no black individual had passed it as a painfully revolting miscarriage of justice.
I really can’t live in a country where such goings on, as that decision and private property seizure in Kelo, are happening.
From your realclearpolitics link…
It was Obama who said in November 2007 that the Supreme Court should, “protect people who may be vulnerable in the political process” and “those who don’t have a lot of clout.”
Does this postmodern president experience any cognitive dissonance between this observation and his abortion mutterings?
He really gets off on pandering to those he needs, for political purposes, to be perceived as “lesser” than he. I hope everyone in Obama’s “lesser” category throws rotten tomatoes at the arrogant poseur.
Feminists have (or have had) some legitimate points, but the diehards strike me as an angry, meanspirited lot.
It can’t be much fun to live with such gigantic chips sitting on both shoulders.
I’m sad that mike #8 is sad.
Everyone one give poor mike a group hug.
This article is hilarious! I remember being derided in my “Women and Philosophy” class at an all-women’s college in the 1970s for refusing to inspect my cervix via speculum in front of my class. I was told that I wasn’t “empowered” enough. In reality, I was just shy. I remember telling the professor that I really didn’t care if I ever saw my cervix and she looked at me with such contempt, I just wanted the floor to swallow me up!
What a great column. I can’t think of a single thing to add.
“To be blunt: these individuals whore it out.”
You are correct, sir. I remember sitting through a required “Intro to Sociology” class taught by an ex-Black Panther. At least, he referred to himself as “ex.” You’d never know it by the amount of Communist Party newspapers and literature that he sold at a little table in in the front corner of his classroom. Anyway, I watched as each student dutifully stood in front of the classroom and gave his/her presentation on how the evil, racist, Western civilization–controlled by the White Man–oppressed the poor, downtrodden, brown people in the Third World. Few of them believed the b.s. they were discussing, but every last one of them did it in order to get an A.
Midway through the quarter, two “angry white male” students–tired being bashed–started heckling the grade whores. The ex-Black Panther just smiled at the two hecklers, telling them that he would give them an A if they turned in a final report and promised never to come back to the classroom. The grade whores were devastated. They had stood up in front of each other, the ex-Black Panther and their God and sold out themselves, their own heritage, and their self-respect for absolutely nothing. The hecklers got an A for staying away, but they never had to whore themselves. The only winner in this situation was the ex-Black Panther Professor: he had the power to make self-abasing whores out of 30 eighteen-year-old Freshman. It taught me a lesson that I will never forget.
Yo and SHB are right. The fact is that even to get a degree in the sciences or engineering, one has to take humanities and social science classes. And because many prospective engineers and scientists don’t have enough knowledge of cultural history or philosophy to resist indoctrination, many of them make easy prey for the radicals who run those programs.
My favorite example is a college roommate of mine who began his college career as a conservative, defending Reagan’s policies in Central America against the charges made by a Mexican Marxist female history professor, but who later ended graduate school as a far-left, collectivist type who complains about greedy capitalists. He has degrees in Computer Science and in Electrical Engineering. And I know many other people like him.
When I went to college, the Philosophy department was in the same group as Chemistry, Physics, Engineering and Math. All else was part of the Liberal Arts group.
While Engineering and Science students were required to take some liberal arts classes, they had their effect on communication rather than thought.
Today everything is political. The 24/7 news is mainly about politics. The only things that are considered news are arts, entertainment and people control.
“The fact is that even to get a degree in the sciences or engineering, one has to take humanities and social science classes.”
A hard science student must spend considerable time on those courses helpful to obtaining a degree. The liberal arts classes are often perceived as a distraction, something to endure. They have little interest in combating the postmodernist crazies. It most assuredly will not fatten their bank account. Also, it cynically doesn’t hurt to get an easy A costing the small price of just keeping their mouth shut. Outside reading? This is very unlikely. They will settle for whatever they get in the classroom—and that probably will be very left wing to say the least.
I take for granted that I will normally talk down to the typical person possessing a liberal arts Ph.D. as if they were a small child. Sometimes I am tempted to pat them on the head and tell them to go to the corner of the room where they can’t hurt themselves. There is little reason to respect them. As I said previously, they should be perceived as idiots until proven otherwise. They do not deserve the benefit of the doubt.
Good article, Mary. Thank goodness, I’m old enough that when I went to school, although I did have some profs I didn’t like, at least they weren’t teaching some of the psycho-babble courses back then that they are now. Just noting some of the course titles you and your posters here have mentioned makes me shudder.
I can’t imagine sitting through a whole mind-numbing semester of something like “Womb Thoughts” or whatever. Thankfully, back when I went to school, they still taught critical thinking in almost all courses.
Our author excepted, of course.
I don’t want to drop any names, but I had the misfortune of suffering through a dinner with one of the “top 100 intellectuals” in America a few months ago. What a pompous ass. I’ve read some of her writing, and as postmodern discourse goes, it’s actually on the sane side, but the alpha-female wouldn’t shut up. What was worse though was the way she’d keep steering the conversation toward her thing, and treated all other topics, particularly anything to do with science and technology, as banal.
I walked away from the experience with the realization that making it in academe isn’t that different from making it in the private sector: you simply need to be a pushy, insufferable alpha personality.
Dilbert lives in the academy, as well. And so does his pointy-haired boss.
“Sonia Sotomayor is like that annoying professor you thought you had gotten away from — but now she’s back in your life.”
You’re defintitely hitting air here with that one. Judging by the reasoning skills I’ve witnessed here, you’d be lucky if a majority of your readers actually finished high school.
“Okay, so now what, Mr. White Guy? Did you have your car dealership closed? Were you fired from your bank? Were you told that you would have a shot at one of the government-funded construction jobs only after every artificially nailed welfare mother was given a chance to demonstrate her abilities?”
I gather you assume that only white men read your rag. Its probably one of the few times you’ve been right about anything.
Another reason to be grateful for being raised in the 60′s and educated at college in the 70′s. We did not have to listen to any of this drivel.Obama and I are about the same age so maybe they were not teaching it in medically oriented fields of study. I think it is crap now and would have 30 years ago too
I find it interesting that in trying to defend the hard science and engineering people by saying that they don’t really pay that much attention to what goes on in their humanities and social science classes, David Thompson implies that many just go along to get along because it’s easier to mouth back whatever they’re expected to say and to get an “A” in the class than it is to try to actively resist it. But that also indirectly supports the point I was getting at.
My point was that the math, hard science, and engineering types are as susceptible to the leftist propaganda that dominates on campus as anyone else on campus. That certainly helps to explain why I know so many Ivy-educated engineers, computer scientists, and medical professionals who hold what I consider to be rather extreme left-wing views and who are vocal and enthusiastic Obama backers.
“…particularly anything to do with science and technology, as banal.”
The odds are overwhelming that this individual couldn’t pass a difficult hard science class if her life depended on it. She therefore feels compelled to attack that which embarrasses her. It’s not her fault she is a dummy—but the white man establishment. After all, her more highly developed feminine way of looking at the world is vastly superior.
“My point was that the math, hard science, and engineering types are as susceptible to the leftist propaganda…”
We are in complete agreement. As matter of fact, it is often the graduates of the hard sciences who become terrorists and join fruit cake cults. I have met a number of these folks who at the age of roughly thirty sounded like an immature teenager. They have sacrificed the development of their soul so that they could become medical doctors or some sort of scientist. Did they actually have to do this? We can have that debate at another time. Whatever, this is the choice they made. And it indeed does make them very susceptible to the silliness of the leftist agenda.
“Michael Steele’s Brother in Law’s Bodyguard”
Are you enraged by what white leftists have done to you? The world has every right to question your soft science credentials because blacks are often awarded unearned degrees. You have to earn your way on the basketball court—but not necessarily in the classroom. Are you embittered by this cruel fact of life?
Given how many of her decisions get reversed by the Supreme Court, someone should recruit Supreme Court Justices to speak at the confirmation hearings.
It’s not about her ethnic background or where she comes from or her gender that makes her a candidate, or at least it shouldn’t be. It must be about her competence or lack thereof. If she or others make it to the Supreme Court and try to use it to make law and ignore our constitution then anarchy will rule.
If it is true that a Hispanic Female with her background would make better decisions than a white male, THEN IT IS TIME TO REPLACE ALL THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY HOUSE and SENATE and PRESIDENTIAL members with Hispanic females.
Kurt # 30 – In response to your comment that you know many Ivy educated hard science grads who are also leftists-be that as it may, I doubt you came in close contact with as many Caltech & MIT grads as I have.
While the traditional Ivies also include majors in the hard sciences, they are nowhere in the same league as ‘Techers’. An MIT or Caltech grad can sleepwalk through a Harvard engineering course load. Really.
Simply put, ‘Techers’ (Caltech & MIT grads) do not suffer fools, most especially left wing nutters. While a few may fall between the cracks, the majority are NOT like the typical Ivy grads- humanities or science majors.
Firstly, it takes incredible stamina and out-of-the box thinking to survive, let alone graduate from 4 yrs at these two powerhouses. These students have little time to sleep, let alone pay attention to loony leftist profs. (at times they are held hostage by ‘superstars’ on campus ala Chomsky)
In fact, they view the resident leftists as little more than annoyances, like swatting at flies. You see, there IS a definite hierarchy on these campuses, and the humanities are considered a joke, at least the way they are being taught.They are the lowest on the totem pole of serious scholarship.
These little progeny can veritably sleepwalk through the Ivies, therefore, the likes of a Harvard humanities degree is barely recognized, while their degrees in science/engineering are NO competition.
I know this sounds harsh, but them’s the facts.
My sons graduated from both schools, one in 2006, the other in 2007. I know so many Techers I feel as if I can crawl inside their heads.
This is why they mostly scoff at the likes of The One and his smug Ivy educated pack of leftists.They have zero patience for those who pontificate, and certainly not for those who indoctrinate.
Give them the facts, just the hard facts……
David, glad to see we agree about the fate of many of the Ivy science and medical grads.
That is an interesting observation, Adina. I only know a few folks from MIT, and I have met Caltech grads, but don’t know them very well. But the two I know best from MIT would seem to fit your description pretty well in that in terms of their core character and beliefs, they seem to have changed little from what I remember of them before they went to MIT. (I wish I could say that of the Ivy grads!)
So in a nutshell, we’re faced with a Latino Gloria Steinham on the Supreme Court? God help us all.
#34 Adina – Gotta contradict you. My brother is an MIT grad and tenured professor in a “hard” science, well-known and respected and honored in his field. He is also a die-hard Marxist who only votes for Democrats. He is a demagogue who bullies and berates less-educated family members and acquaintances into agreeing with (or paying lip service to) his political positions. One of his biggest laments is that he cannot discuss politics in the courses he teaches… because, of course, it is not relevant to the subject matter. Although he did manage to find ways during Bush 43′s term to vent his frustrations over the perceived lack of funding for the sciences.
BTW, I work at a major university known for the number of faculty/grads who’ve won Nobel prizes in science. I have yet to meet one that is not a liberal, although they are not as likely to discuss their beliefs except in social settings.
27, I know you are, but what am I…I know you are, but what am I…I know you are, but what am I…
WTF does it take to get banned around here, anyway?
I have no problem with teachers sympathizing with left wing ideology as long as they keep it out of the classroom. I may hate with a passion what they believe in, but I cannot complain about their right to think; I only ask that they keep their politics out of the classroom. I’m a nuclear engineer; doubtless, many of my professors believe in anthropogenic global warming, but I don’t need to believe in global warming to get a good grade, nor do I find any need to agree with the idea that CO2 is killing the planet in order to be a good nuclear engineer, or even believe that nuclear power is a good idea. There are plenty of ways in which nuclear power is superior to coal that don’t involve the weather.
I was a university student from 1977-1982. Majored in economics and minored in philosophy, so I never, ever had that kind of horrid experience. I did not have to take freshman English because I SAT’d out of it. I did take a more advanced composition course and aced it. No political correctness foisted on us in those days. Not in my history courses and not in my philosophy courses.
I feel badly for those who were in school from the late Eighties onward. I know more than a few of them. They hated the PC profs, the post modernists, and the cultural Marxists. Some of these younger kids who were in school back then even knew it was bullshit. But a lot of the younger ones from the early Nineties on to the present have not had much in the way of the background in the history of ideas and were quite well-indoctrinated in high school. Those are Obonga’s minions.
I went to RPI (Rensselaer in upstate NY) a 2nd tier engineering college behind the 2 Techs, in the mid 80s, and while perhaps not the majority, the left-winger had the loudest voice on campus.
The ridiculous thing was how *trendy* the idiots were, following the fads sweeping the Ivy’s as wannabe’s — one year its was Nuke Freeze, then Divest Now, then ‘the homeless’. Pathetic.
I just spent a year back in industry after taking a break a few years to teach computer science as an instructor at a state university. The CS & IS faculty were mostly left-leaning. OTOH, the large majority of the students I got to teach from engineering were right-leaning.
Perhaps the engineers have a more concrete focus on the real world than even the scientists.
Also, perhaps software in general may be more susceptible to liberal dogma, because the focus on symbol manipulation makes it not as different as you’d think at first glance from the noise of much of the humanities bunch.
I managed to get through MIT without running into Chomsky even once. And that was a few decades ago, back when he got around more. Of course my majors were in the School of Science and the School of Engineering, neither of which were anywhere near his territory, thank Gawd.
Wonderfully done article and with SO much supporting documentation! I took a long time to read it along with almost all of the links. But I lose heart when I think of how few people will take the time to read through something as intellectually in depth as this. I agree with Glenn Alen’s comment…. How do we get this message to the masses? You’ve got to be pretty above average in intelligence to even get what Mary is saying. If you don’t take the time to study it, and don’t have pretty good powers of logical deduction, you’re never going to get it. We’ve got to figure out a way to market these ideas to the average Joe.
Regarding : 27. Michael Steele’s Brother in Law’s Bodyguard:
“You’re definitely hitting air here with that one. Judging by the reasoning skills I’ve witnessed here, you’d be lucky if a majority of your readers actually finished high school.”
Now that is an odd way of supporting the point that schools no longer educate people in how to reason but rather, train people to agree with the professor. Were schools doing anything like the job they are intended to do they would be training people who have actually finished both high school and college to reason in a way that rose to your no doubt high standards.
Thank you for the subtle agreement with the article and for pointing out that the failings of the public when it comes to reasoning are in fact the fault of a biased and elitist educator class that feel no responsibility to those they teach. It’s high time that educators have raising the abilities of their students as their primary goal rather than the brainwashing of their students as their major goal.
Have a nice day
Mary… seems to me you are projecting alot of your suppressed anger and rage at Ms. Sotomayor, for which she may or may not be deserving of…but we REALLY don’t know for now.
My guess is that while she may well be that voice of “humanitarianism” you so profoundly despise, in the end, I wouldn’t be surprised to see her voting with Scalia and Roberts for reasons entirely her own. After all, the Constitution, if interpreted “correctly”, is at it’s core a “humanitarian” document. The question is, will her “feelings” allow her to do that, or will she cater and compromise to the point of inane posturing to make her point, come what may…
I’m not convinced she will, but then like you, I’m quite aware of the worst happening…
Home school your kids. Have them finish high school level work at about 16, then study humanities so that they can ace AP or CLEP exams and go into college as sophomores in a hard science program.
Damn, with all these horror stories about the indoctrination of the gullible, mushy headed little kiddies by the intellectual elites, I’m glad I didn’t waste my time with college!!
I am pretty sure kids might just be better off now to take a couple of courses at tech schools and get a job. There’s nothing that will make a person a capitalist quite as quickly as having a job and having to pay your own way in life. Then maybe after growing up a little they can go back and hit the Unis.
Great article. It’s interesting that you posted this, because ever since Sotomayor has been on the scene, she has reminded me of one particular English professor I had. Demeanor, voice, ideology, everything.
I found the comments as informative and entertaining as the article. Thanks to all.
Its like you read my mind! You seem to know so much approximately this, like you wrote the ebook in it or something. I think that you just can do with a few percent to force the message home a little bit, however instead of that, this is great blog. An excellent read. I will certainly be back.