There are really few things quite so entertaining as watching people as ignorant as a box of pig shit offering their opinions on literature. Especially when the people in question are W.F. Price and his gang of misfit boys at The Spearhead, who are back for yet another take on the whole Women’s Lit question.
At this point I’ve run out of jokes on this particular subject, so I’m just going to let Mr. Price dig his own hole here. Here he is, trying to argue that feminism has made terrible lady writers even terribler.*
[I]t appears that since feminism’s triumph, female achievement in the higher arts has deteriorated substantially. When women no longer have to excel to be read and recognized, but simply have to advertise the fact that they are women to be celebrated for dubious achievements, they won’t put as much effort into producing anything of quality. So the sorry state of women today is a direct result of feminist privilege, which absolves them of all responsibility and deflects any criticism. …
Yes, feminism has wrecked Western womanhood, reducing the young women of today to spoiled brats who can’t take a hint of criticism, and immediately turn to authorities to bolster their self-esteem. No woman can be too fat to be beautiful, too dense to be intelligent, or too dull to be creative. They are all equally super-duper goddesses, before whom men must genuflect and heap up mounds of praise.
Price of course gives no examples to back up any of his, er, “arguments,” and somehow I suspect he hasn’t actually read any fiction written by women beyond an odd title or two he might have been assigned in high school. I wonder if Price could even name a half-dozen living woman novelists without having to resort to Google — excluding JK Rowling, Stephanie Meyer and Jackie Collins (who hasn’t heard of them?) and Harper Lee (who wasn’t assigned To Kill a Mockingbird in high school?).
*I am aware that “terribler” is not a real world.
Why default to an older model which breaks down quickly in every other case, instead of simply teaching the generally accepted model at the start?
Simplicity, I guess. I mean, you’re not going to spring density functional theory on a bunch of seventh graders. And even if you can understand the more complex theories perfectly well, the added degree of correctness might not be worth the calculation effort.
That’s why Newtonian mechanics is still used for a lot of applications, rather than quantum mechanics.
But you can use simpler versions of currently accepted models rather than older models that aren’t accurate. 🙂 Or not teach those as the truth, and then say “oh yeah actually it’s not”.. it doesn’t necessarily follow to me that you need to use something incorrect (like the idea of evolution being directed) as a stepping stone. 🙂 There are lots of ways to teach complicated theories in simpler ways, or help kids take that first step to understanding it, w/o using a different theory : cuz also, we have the problem I said before where if you don’t take higher courses or go into that field or etc, you just never learn that what you were taught was off base 😐
I think in general tho we need to stop teaching kids that there is absolute truth, and that parents/teachers/authority are always right, that it matters if you get a check mark or an ex vs exploration and learning :
I think kids can understand a lot more than we give them credit for neways :3 I actually taught what my mom taught me about DNA to my friends at school and they got it too 🙂
If you’re really bitter about not getting a return on your books, why not donate them? Get a receipt and deduct it from your taxes.
Ohh, speaking of children’s authors whose names we remember…. did anyone else notice the google doodle today? Did anyone else totally LOVE Richard Scarry? He was one of my favorites! I actually own a Lowly Worm puppet. Which my mom bought me as a present while I was in college because I was telling her one time that Lowly Worm was my favorite character.
I love the fact that even when it comes to getting rid of old books, NWO is iredeemably bitter and angry about it.
It must be very tiring.
Man, Richard Scary confused the heck out of me as a kid… I just didn’t understand what was going on, so many different characters… I don’t think I ever read very closely though, so most of the context probably passed right over my head. I half-remember watching the cartoons though… hmm…
It is a little odd to me he is upset at buying books as worth it in itself, and not a US hockey team where you buy it as an investm- oh wait xD Plus the “YOU REMEMBERED AUTHORS AS A KID WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU” o_o Something I’ve never seen somebody freak out about or find impossible that other ppl were different as children or had different personalities or interests xD
Sorry about the LGM reference earlier, Ami. I know I read something similar recently, if I figure out where it was I will let you know.
“But you can use simpler versions of currently accepted models rather than older models that aren’t accurate. 🙂 Or not teach those as the truth, and then say “oh yeah actually it’s not”.. it doesn’t necessarily follow to me that you need to use something incorrect (like the idea of evolution being directed) as a stepping stone.”
Precisely! The problem with the orbit model or directed evolution isn’t that it’s simple. It’s that it isn’t right. It doesn’t actually mesh with the way things work. Giving them a simpler version of the model can work just fine. They may still have problems with complex issues later (to your example, I’m sure all my students would just stare at me blankly if I tried teaching DFT), but they would be prepared for it, and it would not be a moment of “Everything you’ve been taught is wrong”.
Or, as Ami said, be explicit that it’s not right! Say “now, this is useful, but isn’t how it actually works”. That is a little more confusing, I grant. But I would say less confusing then being told that the generally understood theory (if TNG is any example) that you’ve been taught for years is a pack of lies.
Also, @Ami: Your mother sounds like a wonderful person 🙂 And I, at least, never think trailing off like that is a bad thing.
Also, Richard Scarry cartoons and stories tended to be very very weird.
Exactly half of the authors that I will buy the latest from, regardless of topic, are female. Sarah Vowell, Mary Roach, Jasper Fforde, and some other male writer who escapes me at the moment.
I’m another one of those with half a dozen overflowing bookcases, and yes, easily half and half by number of books. Granted, the mere fact that I have like every single Agatha Christie significantly alters the ratio, because she wrote so many! And I’ve always been a mystery fanatic, since childhood, and women have been well represented in the bestsellers in that genre ever since Christie – plenty of Sue Grafton and Patricia Cornwell “guilty pleasures” next to the Russian lit (which I read strictly for funsies, and is uniformly male, ok, every other category of lit on my shelf is mixed gender, other than Russian lit – French lit, barely, but not Russian. Huh.)
Since I don’t want to pass up the opportunity to rave about how much I love books, le fiance was bothered that his birthday present to me consisted almost entirely of chemistry books. Then he went to the big Christmas with my family, and easily 2/3 of the total presents were books, or Kindles/book store gift cards. We’re just book people. Ok, our (then) 5 month old niece didn’t give or get any books, but she was the only one with a stack of stuff that wasn’t mostly book-related. I come from that kind of reading stock.
Ok, maybe I mainly read non-fiction these days, but female authors are easily half of what I consider well researched plus well written equals AWESOME.
My favourites:
Marion Zimmer Bradley
Alice Borchardt
Jean Auel
Val Plumwood (she survived three death-rolls from a crocodile, damn it!)
J.K. Rowling
Ursula K. Leguin
Marjane Satrapi
Stephanie MacMillan
Diana L. Paxon
On my list of “to read” is Sheila Watt-Cloutier and Carol Adams.
@Nobby be explicit that it’s not right! Say “now, this is useful, but isn’t how it actually works”. That is a little more confusing, I grant.
Yus, I think that we could/should teach other theories as like a history of chemistry/physics/etc, like how we got where we are now. But what’s the point of teaching one that’s been debunked, and then saying “ignore everything we said a few years ago, this is how it is”? xD
Also I forgot to say, yeah TNG usually tries to at least kinda get things right. Even if they dun always… which is why that one was so egregious -_- The other one that stands out is during Disaster when Beverly and Geordi are about to de-pressurize the cargo bay to suck out the explosive barrels and put out the plasma fire, and Beverly tells Geordi to hold in his breath and resist the urge to exhale.. >_> I’m pretty sure that advice might rupture your lung 😐
But you can use simpler versions of currently accepted models rather than older models that aren’t accurate.
For the most part, the older models are just simpler versions of the current ones (or, to put the same thing a different way, the current models are expanded versions of the older ones). Newtonian mechanics are the best model when you’re dealing with something bigger than an atom and smaller than a galaxy.
@Katz I dun have a problem w/ that b/c they do step into each other 🙂 I think what Nobby and I are talking about are theories that are just incorrect, or may have been something that ppl believed in the past that was a link, but isn’t something that is necessary (and in fact could be counter productive) to believe in order to learn the currently accepted theory 🙂
I remember some authors whose books I read at five, and forget some that I read last year. Of course, I was that Satan child that NWO hates who read LotR at eight and Shakespeare at twelve. I could read at an adult level before I could tie my shoes (though, to be fair, I couldn’t tie my shoes until I was freaking eight).
I always give my old books to the local public library back home. It is a small, rural library, and they have a little fundraiser every spring where they sell extra donations-books, magazines, baked goods, and plants. So, any book they have a duplicate copy of can be sold to help support the awesomeness that is that library.
Submitted for your consideration:
Should David’s glossary include entries on the blog’s prominent trolls? The down side is that that’s just the sort of attention they crave. The up side is that the trolls are a frequent presence and form part of the collective lore, and a rogue’s gallery of them would aid the understanding of newbies. F’rex, Slavey’s entry would go:
NWOslave: aka NWO, NWOaf, Slavey. An obtuse, ignorant Texas-based right-wing conspiracy theorist who has admitted that his sole purpose in visitiing Man Boobz is to mock DF and the commentariat. Known for his canned rants, his lack of reading comprehension, and his aggressive ignorance of anything beyond his conspiratorial obsessions.
@Katz Yeah, though I would argue the relativity should be taught earlier. The thing is, newton’s equations work, and he didn’t give a solid reason to why it works, so it’s not like his theories are wrong, just simplified versions. The Electron orbit model or directed evolution model are actually wrong, though. They describe a mechanism of action that doesn’t exist (at least, that we know of). That’s the issue. If newton said “Gravity works because of stellar wind!” and it was still taught to high schoolers, I would have issue.
And I feel like someone did try to make that argument, but it wasn’t newton.
@Nobby yus, exactly 🙂 I mean we dun teach that the world is flat, or that the Sun orbits the Earth even tho those were things ppl once believed too before we believed what we do now 😐 Just b/c these were things we were taught only a generation ago doesn’t mean it’s something we need to teach the next generation.
NWO just has a misguided view of literature altogether. He sees it as a consumable, like food. You buy it, you read it, you get rid of it. There’s no reason to reread it because you’ve already consumed it, and no reason to talk about it, think about it, or learn from it, because the reading is the pertinent act and then it’s over.
He doesn’t seek out particular stuff or pay attention to what exactly he’s reading beyond verifying that it’s probably consumable. The only distinctions in quality he can determine are if it’s “edible” (in which case he continues reading) or “inedible” (in which case he throws it away).
Come to think of it, that would be a pretty sad way to view food, too.
I meant stuff like directed evolution or the electron orbit model as things we were taught, not the Earth being flat xD I mean we’re taught that ppl USED to believe these things… I think that’s another thing about things we “know” : That it’s easy for us to believe and teach that things were wrong or ppl were off base in the far past, but not in the relative present 😐 Like how ppl believe that various -isms are remnants of the past. They can believe they existed before, but not now! B/c we seem to teach a lot that ppl were stupid or unevolved or something in the past rather than learning, or had less information, or etc… at least that’s a narrative I think a lot of kids get the way we’re taught, and I think it adds to the idea that we should be confident in everything we grew up “knowing” as kids, b/c we’re in the smart enlightened modern age >_>
@Ami Yes! Perfect examples, thank you. History is very important to learn, but as history.
Ami, Nobby: Certainly, directed evolution is a heinous misconception. Of course theories like that should not be taught when the more accurate model is perfectly easy to explain.
Not that anything I say will convince NWO that I’m not a lying lying bitch, but what the hell, I nearly outed myself by giving my first name, and if you google the two together, you’ll see posts on where I was outed years before, so what the fuck.
No, NWO, I did not go online and look for names.
I am a professor of English.
http://web.tamu-commerce.edu/academics/cvSyllabi/cv/ReidRobin.pdf
I learned to read when I was three. I’ve been reading fantasy since age five (Oz), and sf since age six (Space Cat went to Mars). I have two MA’s in English (one in creative writing, one in literature, because I liked going to school and couldn’t get a job anywhere else), and then I did a Ph.D. (University of Washington, 1992). I started teaching at a university in Texas in 1993–and I can rattle off a shitload more authors and plots and titles and histories of criticism than you can shake a stick out because that’s what I DO. I’m not all that unique in my profession. Just THINK of the English teachers you have known, blahahahaha.
And anybody who thinks books are either good or they suck is a very basic reader.
As I said, I get paid to teach about women writers.
And creative writing.
And science fiction and fantasy.
I love my job, and I love what I do, and I not only have read a shitload of women authors of all ethnic groups and time periods, but I’ve also read a shitload of male authors ditto.
People who aren’t English teachers or stone (not stoned, note) fans read differently, and that’s fine. I’m not here to tell anybody what they have to read or what they have to like–the reason I started reading women writers is all the male faculty in my undergraduate program in the 1970s telling me women writers suck, women students suck, and oh yeah, science fiction sucks.
I have a Ph.D. so I can tell people ahahahah sf ROCKS AND ROLLS.
You remind of the the shitass librarians when I was eight who refused to believe I read all those books over the summer despite the fact I could recite plot chapter and verse.
You deserve to have to live as you.
@Katz to be clear, I agree w/ you about the models that are simplifications being taught 🙂 Like Newtonian physics. I think we were kinda on two different tracks ]