college sucks -- the extended edition
The absolute futility of everything that I'm studying is started to get to me. It isn't that I have no energy; it's that I don't want to waste the energy I do have on these things.
Philosophy of any type is already a hard subject -- not in that it is hard to understand, but in that it is hard to apply. Of the humanities, it is one of the most abstract. Even something like ethics becomes somewhat tangential in modern political discourse. That said, even something like metaphysics holds a certain charm for me, for all its abstraction.
But you know what, Merleau-Ponty? There comes a time where I do not fucking care and that time is when I have to read you. I'm getting the whole image as not just a reflection but a thing-in-itself shtick. I understand the perception as active rather than passive thing. Your writing is beautiful, even! Still, I've read some 20 pages and I've managed to pick three or four ideas and this all seems so painfully irrelevant that I want to claw my eyes out.
I think part of this is academic exhaustion. Earlier in the semester I truly enjoyed a lot of my reading, but now I've read so much, and been frustrated so much, that I want to throw my hands up in the air and quit. I think this reading broke me. I think it started when I had to choke down Kawabata's House of the Sleeping Beauties which, aside from being very boring, had so much suppressed violence I started feeling a little ill.
I'm also becoming tired of feeling like a raving feminist. It's not insane to ask why we're not studying any women writers in a lit class when there are, indeed, many women in the canon the lit class is focusing on, or to correct a professor who says "X had sex with Y" when in fact X raped Y. The second isn't even a feminist issue! Rape happens to all genders by all genders. It's not a feminist issue, it's a fucking human rights issue and in this case Y just happens to be a woman and X just happens to be a man.
Also, I am sick of the fact that I keep hearing people saying "God, men shouldn't have to be feminists". Depending on how you're defining feminism (I am working from a very lose, all-encompassing definition, i.e. women deserve the same respect and rights and opportunities that men get) I think it's a viewpoint everyone should take up. I don't care if you have a cock, I think you should care about/notice how women are treated and do something about it if you're in a position to effect change. Same way I feel like I should care about and notice the conditions, rights and treatment of people of color even though I'm white.
I'm also tired of playing the oppression Olympics with people. Yes. We're both women. I'm white, you're black. That's great. I'm bisexual and you're heterosexual. That's awesome. I'm cool talking about the issues there are with being a black woman in 21st century mid-west America. What I'm not cool with is you claiming that you have somehow suffered more than any other minority ever. No. You can't do that. You can't quantify that and compare that. Really? Sure, black women had to go through not just slavery, but a rather extensive pattern of spousal abuse by black men. Is that better or worse than every act of oppression the Jewish people have ever gone through, including the Holocaust? Is that the argument you want to make? That black slavery was somehow worse than the holocaust? Do you really want to compare the two? Not everything in the world can be reduced to numbers. It's a moot point and you're a tool for even bringing it up.
And don't claim it's just your opinion. Your opinion is insulting, unsubstantiated and totally counter-productive towards producing any kind of meaningful dialogue towards the wrongs in the world. Your opinion is not immune to criticism. If you don't want people to attack you for being a twat, keep your opinion to yourself.
A lot of this is stored up aggression combined with exhaustion. I'm tired of living with abstracts and hypotheticals and individuals who are interested in only spouting off their opinions. I'm frankly embarrassed at the inability of my peers to understand that "not saying no" =/= consent. I, honestly, want to do some kind of art, whether it be writing or painting or drawing of making icons. And yet I'm stuck writing papers about binaries and self/world and the metaphysics of Yukio Mishima as they relate to Platonic metaphysics and whatever. It's not that I hate this stuff, it's just that I feel like I'm losing my own words under all of it.
Also, I have another sinus infection and my checking account was hijacked. So yeah.
Philosophy of any type is already a hard subject -- not in that it is hard to understand, but in that it is hard to apply. Of the humanities, it is one of the most abstract. Even something like ethics becomes somewhat tangential in modern political discourse. That said, even something like metaphysics holds a certain charm for me, for all its abstraction.
But you know what, Merleau-Ponty? There comes a time where I do not fucking care and that time is when I have to read you. I'm getting the whole image as not just a reflection but a thing-in-itself shtick. I understand the perception as active rather than passive thing. Your writing is beautiful, even! Still, I've read some 20 pages and I've managed to pick three or four ideas and this all seems so painfully irrelevant that I want to claw my eyes out.
I think part of this is academic exhaustion. Earlier in the semester I truly enjoyed a lot of my reading, but now I've read so much, and been frustrated so much, that I want to throw my hands up in the air and quit. I think this reading broke me. I think it started when I had to choke down Kawabata's House of the Sleeping Beauties which, aside from being very boring, had so much suppressed violence I started feeling a little ill.
I'm also becoming tired of feeling like a raving feminist. It's not insane to ask why we're not studying any women writers in a lit class when there are, indeed, many women in the canon the lit class is focusing on, or to correct a professor who says "X had sex with Y" when in fact X raped Y. The second isn't even a feminist issue! Rape happens to all genders by all genders. It's not a feminist issue, it's a fucking human rights issue and in this case Y just happens to be a woman and X just happens to be a man.
Also, I am sick of the fact that I keep hearing people saying "God, men shouldn't have to be feminists". Depending on how you're defining feminism (I am working from a very lose, all-encompassing definition, i.e. women deserve the same respect and rights and opportunities that men get) I think it's a viewpoint everyone should take up. I don't care if you have a cock, I think you should care about/notice how women are treated and do something about it if you're in a position to effect change. Same way I feel like I should care about and notice the conditions, rights and treatment of people of color even though I'm white.
I'm also tired of playing the oppression Olympics with people. Yes. We're both women. I'm white, you're black. That's great. I'm bisexual and you're heterosexual. That's awesome. I'm cool talking about the issues there are with being a black woman in 21st century mid-west America. What I'm not cool with is you claiming that you have somehow suffered more than any other minority ever. No. You can't do that. You can't quantify that and compare that. Really? Sure, black women had to go through not just slavery, but a rather extensive pattern of spousal abuse by black men. Is that better or worse than every act of oppression the Jewish people have ever gone through, including the Holocaust? Is that the argument you want to make? That black slavery was somehow worse than the holocaust? Do you really want to compare the two? Not everything in the world can be reduced to numbers. It's a moot point and you're a tool for even bringing it up.
And don't claim it's just your opinion. Your opinion is insulting, unsubstantiated and totally counter-productive towards producing any kind of meaningful dialogue towards the wrongs in the world. Your opinion is not immune to criticism. If you don't want people to attack you for being a twat, keep your opinion to yourself.
A lot of this is stored up aggression combined with exhaustion. I'm tired of living with abstracts and hypotheticals and individuals who are interested in only spouting off their opinions. I'm frankly embarrassed at the inability of my peers to understand that "not saying no" =/= consent. I, honestly, want to do some kind of art, whether it be writing or painting or drawing of making icons. And yet I'm stuck writing papers about binaries and self/world and the metaphysics of Yukio Mishima as they relate to Platonic metaphysics and whatever. It's not that I hate this stuff, it's just that I feel like I'm losing my own words under all of it.
Also, I have another sinus infection and my checking account was hijacked. So yeah.