A Quick Note
November 26, 2007
Dear Mr. Schwyzer (and snarky commenters contained on your blog),
Although I have never read you (and your entry linking to my blog makes me not want to read you), I will say this to you as cordially as I can.
I ain’t here to teach your classes or to find your books.
Since I’m Old Criticism here #5, and apparently my being a “woman of color” requires quotes, I don’t feel obligated to help you do or change anything about your chosen curriculum. You are an educator, and in your estimation, you’re a good one.
For this reason, I don’t think it’s beyond expectations that by using the women of color feminists you mentioned you’ve “glanced” at (bell hooks, Gloria Anzaldua), you could not use Amazon or some similar website to figure out related books on women of color feminism or the intersection of feminisms to teach your course. You know Brown Femi Power’s name… yet you do not know to look at the many, many essays and resources she provides on her site for the purposes you’re seeking.
Either that, or you feel as such an awesome man you can’t be arsed to look for it. Your “glances” are penetrating enough for you.
I’m sure that Black Amazon’s blog has valuable resources you could consult as well for researching material your classes would be interested in.
But once again, you can’t be arsed to look for it. Instead, you ask everyone in a very exasperated way (aha, i can has tone argumintz?) to bring the work to you to make you more betterer or something. I couldn’t really read the request clearly for all the snipes at Old Criticism heres #1-5. All of whom I commonly refer to as Kai, BFP, Donna, Black Amazon, and The Grand Embodiment of Women of Color (but I prefer Sylvia/M because it’s more modest).
But this is getting lengthy. And I said I’d be quick.
So I’ll only start you here and wish you well.
No Love,
Sylvia/M, a long time non-reader of your Super McAwesome Site o’ Learnin’ and Schwyzercising
P.S. Look at me; I’m not doing your job and not getting paid for it. Aren’t I a swell little minx of a black woman?
P.P.S. That Girl Has Issues brings her perspective on the call to work as a pro bono assistant professor of women’s studies.
lol. wow girl. this is hilarious to me. it’s definitely mean, but the point about labor is really really real. really fucking real. I’ve been thinking about what it takes to get white people to think and how much i resent the luxury that they don’t have to…and somehow it remains the fault of the people of color who…without any authorizing privilege have somehow failed to educate the whole world. anyway…i guess this is contagious and there’s no need for me to rant to the choir, but it’s a toss up.
he might be like…see i this is what i get for “trying to be inclusive”…he might say that the reason he was asking advice from bloggers of color is because we’re brilliant and google is whack. but really it sounds like you’re right. he doesn’t want to do the work. maybe including something that pre-empts that second predictable response would be good. but shoot. if you mad…be mad.
love,
lex
Alexis Pauline Gumbs
November 26, 2007 at 9:09 pm
*agrees with the above*
shannon
November 26, 2007 at 9:12 pm
You are pretty much my hero, just so you know.
Vox
November 26, 2007 at 9:22 pm
Yeah, what las chicas above said.
Not like he’s a trained academic, who like are supposed to be able to do their own research or anything… oh no wait.. he is one. Sheesh.
Also, I really like “The Grand Embodiment of Women of Color” perhaps she could be in the (much languishinging) screenplay.
turtlebella
November 26, 2007 at 9:22 pm
Hehe, to use legal formality, I adopt by reference what you’ve said, Lex. Hopefully he and anyone else will “glance” at the comment thread. :-p And thank you so much. I was just talking to Lisa Harney and Michelle about this in another comment thread, this teaching thing. And I think this situation is one where the teaching idea gets kinda old. Where you work 190% for someone else’s grudge-filled 10%.
Shannon, Vox, Turtlebella, I love all of y’all. And Vox, you are my hero, woman! All of us are gonna be in the screenplay. And we need to generate some big budget filming plans, Turtlebella; our special effects gotta be tiiiiight.
Sylvia
November 26, 2007 at 9:41 pm
So your basiclaly a motherfucking OG is what your saying.
LOVE SIT
Blackamazon
November 26, 2007 at 9:49 pm
You. Are. My. Rock. Woman.
-end-
Sylvia
November 26, 2007 at 9:54 pm
Sometimes you just gotta let them know.
All I know is, I’m just glad we’re all real clear about that now.Yeah that and glad to know there is a link like that one there — I think it’s changed my whole life already. xo
serena
November 26, 2007 at 9:56 pm
Nice one.
You’d imagine that someone who teaches women’s studies would understand this by now, but no, he’s making us re-has arguments had in the 80s because he’s too stuck-up to look things up for himself… Ugh.
Like Audre Lorde says, the oppressors make us waste our time educating them instead of working on what we need to make a difference. And in the process, they stiff other woc!
Fire Fly
November 26, 2007 at 9:56 pm
Hahaha, Serena, when I first saw that link I HOWLED. Especially since its name is one that plays through my mind when someone asks a question and obviously has access to the internets.
And Fire Fly, yes. Exactly. But…apparently there’s trouble in women’s studies paradise.
Sylvia
November 26, 2007 at 10:06 pm
I mean
SERIOUSLY
you kick ass to Pluto and back.
:hands up in the air::
Sudy
November 26, 2007 at 10:23 pm
I learned from the best! {{{Sudy}}}
Sylvia
November 26, 2007 at 10:28 pm
Well, I think part of why he was asking what he asked is I gave him a pretext-reason to do it. It was wrong of me to even go there. To even go NEAR there.
I should have known better than to post that first damn comment of mine that got him going … I get freaked out about teaching and learning and academia and — ugh. I am so sorry. [Note to self: LEARN ALREADY DAMMIT.]
michelle
November 26, 2007 at 10:43 pm
Michelle, you may have gave him a pretext, but what he did with it isn’t your fault. At all. So don’t feel sorry and don’t write angry notes to yourself (caps lock is YELLING and yelling is BAD).
He tried to put a lot of blame and responsibility on a lot of people. But not really on himself. He kinda wriggled out of it by using your words. Kai, BA, BFP, and Donna’s posts. And his position. He’s asking us to show him something that he can easily and readily find if he wants to find it. And I think that was part of your point, too; the evidence is there as well as the resources but he won’t look for them or use them.
Sylvia
November 26, 2007 at 10:50 pm
“(aha, i can has tone argumintz?)”
OK this is a great post, and I have nothing constructive to add, but I just had to say that made me burst out laughing.
whatsername
November 27, 2007 at 1:03 am
Okay, Sylvia (aka Grand Embodiment etc), I won’t yell at myself, because yelling is BAD.
HowEver. I do feel like my actions functioned in a particular role in this fucked up script and that I fed the beast, so to speak, in that way. I feel like I really should have seen it coming but I didn’t. So I’ll think about that, because I would really like not to play this particular function in any sequels, reprises, or other new versions of the Same Old Same Old.
In other news, I was so tempted to respond to his long smarmy comment toward the end with
Hello “Teachable”!
I’m Batman!
But I ended up just being serious. And I am not going back.
michelle
November 27, 2007 at 2:20 am
Continued, a little later
Because it’s like:
I saw that he treated women of color like objects for his use…
I saw the particular tactics he was using for that that I could see at that time…
I felt that a challenge to those specific tactics would be to call on him to shift the power dynamic and collaborate….
But I didn’t take into account the reality (which I know about, it wasn’t ignorance) that there are many other tactics that white people use to objectify people of color in these kinds of situations. Including ones that appear to be about collaboration but of course are just sugar-coated domination…
Including the very tactic I was talking to you about in the other discussion, in pretty much the same time frame, where I quoted Audre Lorde’s actual description of this dynamic….
A dynamic which I actually invoked, opened the door right up into it.
(Yelling doesn’t seem like such a bad idea). But anyway: It reminds me of the “white collective” thing from my old blog, how it’s not about individual white people or what we think we’re doing, it’s about how we function as part of the larger collective to support white supremacy — in this case, in actual practice I totally functioned in concert with him to open this particular can of ugly right up.
michelle
November 27, 2007 at 2:54 am
i’m so glad you’re back…snarkers of the world unite!
belledame222
November 27, 2007 at 3:07 am
I just want to say here that when I came across a reference to the Full Frontal Feminism stuff, I was able to track down the critical posts in question, as well as Piny’s post on Feministe addressing those posts. I mean, like, in only a couple of minutes. They weren’t hard to find (okay, googling anything on Feministe is hard because google thinks feministe = feminist) at all.
Michelle, the frustrating thing about that kind of dynamic is how easily it is to get sucked in when you’re alert to other stuff. Anyway, he certainly exacerbated things with his drowning maestro in response (He’s not David Duke, after all!).
Lisa Harney
November 27, 2007 at 4:18 am
Sylvia, this is the bomb. You need to write a book.
octogalore
November 27, 2007 at 10:06 am
Well, Michelle, I’m glad you’re not going back, for one thing.
I understand this, but at the same time I think you’re placing too much responsibility on yourself for Hugo’s response. There were a lot of things you said to him, and that was one small door you presented to him. He exploited the opening. But I understand what you’re saying, and I won’t pressure you into how I think you should feel about it or read it. (Though I will outlaw ANGRY CAPITAL LETTERS.
Whatsername, I really couldn’t resist. I love lolcats and all those things so much; they crack me up. Thank you!
Lisa, case in point. And the same goes for women of color literature. There are resources like Google Scholar, he can look for publishing companies that have shared women of color feminist works before…I mean, damn. Why is he calling on everyone else to do his job?
Hehe, Octogalore, thank you!
Sylvia
November 27, 2007 at 11:21 am
Seriously… I hope you look into it. There really aren’t many people out there who have something to say, a fluid way with words, and are genuinely funny (now, self-consciously, forced-hip funny, is out there).
octogalore
November 27, 2007 at 1:10 pm
I can’t believe he’s asking for help on how to teach something he is quite capable of doing the work on himself. Like his “reaching out” and leaving the work to others, meaning WOC, will be what makes it all okay again? You’re a professor Mr. S. I’m sure you’ve got enough teaching books and discussion techniques that will help you if and when you decide to teach FFF again.
I mean, shouldn’t he know that we do enough work for free? I’m not doing his homework for him.
Daomadan
November 27, 2007 at 3:12 pm
Octogalore, that’s really flattering, but…well, I’m not that great of a writer, for one thing, and I have no clue what craziness I’d fill a book with.
And Daomadan, the funniest part about it is he thinks he’s coming out and asking this out of grace and goodwill because he wants to get to the truth goshdarnit. The post completely misses the point. It flies 300,000 miles away from the point.
Sylvia
November 27, 2007 at 4:10 pm
And I’m so glad you pointed out the “women of color” in quotes. That just killed me.
Also, you are that great a writer. Seriously.
Daomadan
November 27, 2007 at 4:34 pm
Okay separate from the buffoonery in question, I want to start by saying that I feel, on the emotional front, like Lenny from Of Mice and Men where I’m so full of excitement and love about this blog being up that I’m afraid I’m going to paw it too hard in my enthusiasm. Verbally. And there’s enough unseemly-ness afoot. But I did try to wait until I could calm down, and it’s not happening, and so that is why I am talking *around* the subject of my happiness instead of expressing it directly. Maybe I will make another go of it when the coast is clear, in my brain and heart.
On to the buffoonery in question – you and BFP and BA and Donna and PP and Kai and others write fantastic stuff all the time that has nothing to do with telling jackasses off.
But I do so love the way you all tell jackasses off.
Lastly – I am angry at him for insinuating that it’s not enough in the first place to give students links to you all’s posts on the subject, as if there are higher quality critiques out there in some more official world of words. I have officially taken umbrage. And I want those students’ money refunded. College ain’t cheap.
Joan Kelly
November 27, 2007 at 4:40 pm
*blush* Thank you, Daomadan.
And Joan, you’re right. Gah, the more I think about it, the more irritating it is. (And
to the earlier part of your comment!!)
Sylvia
November 28, 2007 at 9:41 am
“Octogalore, that’s really flattering, but…well, I’m not that great of a writer, for one thing, and I have no clue what craziness I’d fill a book with. ”
Well, many lawyers write books in their spare time (such as it is) that aren’t as worthwhile or well written as what you could produce — I do know that. So someday, if the urge to put the craziness in print strikes, I think there’ll be a market out there. In the meantime, I know you have many balls up in the air.
octogalore
November 28, 2007 at 1:05 pm
Sylvia, no one loves their own writing. I know this, because I am a writer. Every time I send in a manuscript, I know for a fact it sucks beyond belief.
Your writing is quite good, and I would think worth publishing at some point. You may not feel you have enough to say now, but you might – and you almost certainly will in time.
Lisa Harney
November 28, 2007 at 5:52 pm
It’s just really sad that this guy is a women’s studies prof and doesn’t even understand the term “white supremacy” and thinks “so and so liked this text, so there” is in any way an intelligent response to the critical analyses offered by woc in the blogosphere.
B
November 29, 2007 at 2:25 pm
Friday Blogwhoring
by matttbastard
Have been out of the loop, so this is largely a catch-up edition. Anyone who has any recommendations (whether of their own work or someone elses) feel free to join in the orgy via comments. As always, much love (and respect) to all….
bastard.logic
November 30, 2007 at 8:49 pm