On Tuesday I am giving a presentation to my class on In A Different Voice, by Carol Gilligan. It's a great book. I find it really helpful for thinking about exclusion and privilege and meaning and truth and so on and so on. And I'm really not that into psychology- it just makes sense to me. But I know in my class there is this one guy, this awful, stupid dickface prick who's going to heckle my presentation and downplay the importance of what I'm saying and he's going to say that when Gilligan focuses on women's voices THAT'S SEXIST and that when she describes relational thinking as equal to hierarchical thinking IT'S ACTUALLY LESS DEVELOPED or we wouldn't see it in children and uneducated people. Fuck this dude for ruining the mental process of presenting a great text. I'm so pissed off that I have to consider his reaction when planning my discussion. And I'm equally pissed off that in the written thingy I have to go with it, I have spent what I consider to be disproportionate time emphasizing that men can think relationally, too. Seriously, can women not have one single fucking thing to themselves? To quote Lizzie Skurnik: "I am quietly outraged at how apparently it is against the law to not talk specifically about boys and what they might need/enjoy/prosper from for five seconds."
Note to reader: I have noticed that you have a particular weakness for Young Adult novels. Particularly the adventures of Nancy Drew and Trixie Belden. You really, really should read Lizzie Skurnik's book Shelf Discovery and the archive of her columns for Jezebel. Ignore how ug-mo Jezebel looks these days. Columns are at the right.
Your cleverness and continued participation in academia makes me feel like i have turned my back on something that might have made me more interesting. I don't even think I am clever enough to read and comprehend this book, and i don't think I would be clever enough to build retorts to a mindless nub into a presentation.
ReplyDeleteLate tonight when I am bored and potentially lonely, i will look into Shelf Discovery - thanks for the tip.
It's really not that hard of a book. I actually thought of you when I read it becuase I remembered how much you liked Mrs Dalloway (becuase it made sense in your head) and I think that specific stream of consciousness novel is a demonstration of the kind of mental process that Carol Gilligan describes.
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