Hahaha, thanks everyone for your support in dealing with Wretched Tim. Characteristically I have heard nothing from him since his unwelcome appearance at work, but when I do...
Perhaps Feminist Sarah will put in a few words. She's relaxed a lot since the end of the patriarchal domination of thought at Grove City, but this incident has her pissed off and rallying. Although what I think she'll say is more along the lines of, "Go to your house tonight? No thanks. We seem to have different expectations. You're busy and want what's convenient. I'm busy and expect sacrifices in return for the ones I make. Clearly this isn't going anywhere. In the future, if you're interested in a girl, call her once in awhile, even when you're not home. You might hold onto her longer. Good luck with work and there's no need to call me again. Bye."
After which I will mail him back the scarf he lent me. But I think I'll keep the Chinese fans. Those were a gift. You know, way back near Thanksgiving.
So today is witnessing the finalization of all the stuff I have to put together for my Notre Dame application. Leave it to me to leave it all to the last minute. Well, it always gets done.
I've been mulling over the phrase "the winter of my discontent." (Bonus points if you can name the author and work.) A song on the Muzak Ann Taylor soundtrack for the month of January had that line in it, and I appreciated the artist's literary taste. What a brilliant phrase. And entirely applicable right now, as I search for a replacement to my Gymboree job that will pay me by the year and give me enough to save a lot of it. Also the winter of being outside the academic world where I feel most secure and at-home. (But, please God, not for long.)
5 comments:
I couldn't remember where that quote was from, so I had to look it up. Then I banged my head on my desk for not knowing.
On another note, as I male, I believe I was oblivious to this patriarchal domination of thought at Grove City. I believe that it was there, but I never noticed it. I'd like to know what exactly was going on that I couldn't see. You've instilled in me this fear that I might have, without my awareness, been indocrinated into a certain patriarchal mindset, a mindset I would be likely to perpetuate in my own teaching unless it is brought to my attention. Was it the professors, the administration, or both?
I believe the patriarchal domination of thought was pretty run-of-the-mill. I don't think you have too much to worry about if you did a study of Djuna Barnes. Plus you're Matt Holman; you're incapable of being a chauvinist. But here are some of the basics...
1. Certain professors tended to treat their female students patronizingly. Not many, but one or two. I remember a particular class where I had to support my comments from the text much more than the key male in the class did. Everything I said I had to prove. Now, this isn't necessarily a bad thing, if only the male were kept to the same rigorous standards. Especially because his opinions were often idiotic.
2. A reverence of the traditional lore that presents female characters in a bad light. Which girls often, to my dismay, supported. I refer specifically to classical works such as Agamemnon and Medea. Granted, Clytemnestra killed her husband and that was bad. Granted, Medea murdered her children and that was bad too. But it's easy to say that and neglect examination of why they did.
For example, a girl in our classical lit class presented a paper on why it was okay for Agamemnon to kill his daughter Iphigeneia (because the gods said so) but why it was not okay for Clytemnestra to kill Agamemnon (the blood cycle was not supported by the gods). Not only is this infantile reasoning, it blandly swallows exactly what the patriarchy says it should. Furthermore, it reveals a sad lack of mythological knowledge, since the gods weren't the first supernatural beings, or even the most powerful; and especially because even the gods are subject to fate, and fate plays a key part in Clytemnestra's life. But this girl only read the text of the play and put no thought into elements behind it. And she was applauded for it.
Those were my biggest problems. I don't feel like getting all that mad again, so I won't even bother to go into the administration right now. I might devote a full blog to it one of these days, highlighting some of the gross double standards I noticed while attending our school. These ones were more academic.
Ahh, THERE you are, Feminist Sarah.
Are we talking Shakespeare's Richard III? The winter of MY (not our) discontent is throwing me off and making me wonder if I'm ignorant of some (no doubt incredibly clever) takeoff on the original. Like... "The Winter of My Discontent:" a new film starring... oh, I don't know... Hugh Grant?
PS: Oops... I was just trying to see if I could edit my comment and repost it. I didn't realize it would get stamped with that guilty-looking "This post has been removed by the author" thing.
Hahaha, I WAS wondering what you had put that was so damning you had to remove it.
It is Richard III. I'm guessing the clever "my" was added by the songwriter I was talking about and I forgot the tendency of nobility to speak of themselves in the plural.
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