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From Nancy Fraser’s “Rethinking the Public Sphere.” Social Text, No. 25/26 (1990), p. 62.
[A] revisionist historiography neither undermines nor vindicates ‘the concept of the public sphere’ simpliciter, but that it calls into question four assumptions that are central to a specific—bourgeois masculinist—conception of the public sphere, at least as Habermas describes it. These are:
- the assumption that it is possible for interlocutors in a public sphere to bracket status differentials and to deliberate ‘as if’ they were social equals; the assumption, therefore, that societal equality is not a necessary condition for political democracy;
- the assumption that the proliferation of a multiplicity of competing publics is necessarily a step away from, rather than toward, greater democracy, and that a single, comprehensive public sphere is always preferable to a nexus of multiple publics;
- the assumption that discourse in public spheres should be restricted to deliberation about the common good, and that they appearance of ‘private interests’ and ‘private issues’ is always undesirable;
- the assumption that a functioning democratic public sphere requires a sharp separation between civil society and the state.
permalinkMen and women are misogynistic for different reasons: men to marginalize women, and women to ingratiate themselves with the men trying to marginalize them. Neither one is justifiable, but one is oppressive and the other is a (bad) strategy to deal with that oppression. One thus sees that if the men who are misogynists weren’t, the women who are misogynists wouldn’t have any reason to be. Ergo, exhorting women to stop being misogynists so that men will stop gets it precisely backwards. Melissa McEwan, “Feminism 101”.
(Source: ourawha, via pavelchekovbodypillow)
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once when i was walking back home from hooking up with a guy i got rly distressed bc i thought cum would make my pores clog up and my face break out and i think that says a lot about me
(via barbieprivilege)
permalinkAs a society we are embarrassed by love. We treat it as if it were an obscenity. We reluctantly admit to it. Even saying the word makes us stumble and blush … Love is the most important thing in our lives, a passion for which we would fight or die, and yet we’re reluctant to linger over its names. Diane Ackerman.
(Source: ellesugars)
permalinkI had an auto-repair man once, who, on these intelligence tests, could not possibly have scored more than 80, by my estimate. I always took it for granted that I was far more intelligent than he was. Yet, when anything went wrong with my car I hastened to him with it, watched him anxiously as he explored its vitals, and listened to his pronouncements as though they were divine oracles - and he always fixed my car.
Well, then, suppose my auto-repair man devised questions for an intelligence test. Or suppose a carpenter did, or a farmer, or, indeed, almost anyone but an academician. By every one of those tests, I’d prove myself a moron, and I’d be a moron, too. In a world where I could not use my academic training and my verbal talents but had to do something intricate or hard, working with my hands, I would do poorly. My intelligence, then, is not absolute but is a function of the society I live in and of the fact that a small subsection of that society has managed to foist itself on the rest as an arbiter of such matters.
Consider my auto-repair man, again. He had a habit of telling me jokes whenever he saw me. One time he raised his head from under the automobile hood to say: “Doc, a deaf-and-mute guy went into a hardware store to ask for some nails. He put two fingers together on the counter and made hammering motions with the other hand. The clerk brought him a hammer. He shook his head and pointed to the two fingers he was hammering. The clerk brought him nails. He picked out the sizes he wanted, and left. Well, doc, the next guy who came in was a blind man. He wanted scissors. How do you suppose he asked for them?”
Indulgently, I lifted my right hand and made scissoring motions with my first two fingers. Whereupon my auto-repair man laughed raucously and said, “Why, you dumb jerk, He used his voice and asked for them.” Then he said smugly, “I’ve been trying that on all my customers today.” “Did you catch many?” I asked. “Quite a few,” he said, “but I knew for sure I’d catch you.” “Why is that?” I asked. “Because you’re so goddamned educated, doc, I knew you couldn’t be very smart. Isaac Asimov.
(Source: skinnybaras, via foraminiferae)
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- i just handed in an essay knowing full well that it was complete Shit and i’m having an actual allergic reaction
- i can feel my throat swelling and prickling
- the spaces between my knuckles are itchy
- my nose is starting to run
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- what’s crackin’
- i’m about to eat pancakes bigger than my head and nearly as thick with The Moms
- my shinpads have been on the floor since sunday and actually right beside them is the copy of whitman’s leaves of grass that i was supposed to return a good three months ago
- i’m apparently about that $400 in library fees life
- i just found my other chopstick
- bye
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Always falling into a hole, then saying “ok, this is not your grave, get out of this hole,” getting out of the hole which is not the grave, falling into a hole again, saying “ok, this is also not your grave, get out of this hole,” getting out of that hole, falling into another one; sometimes falling into a hole within a hole, or many holes within holes, getting out of them one after the other, then falling again, saying “this is not your grave, get out of the hole”; sometimes being pushed, saying “you can not push me into this hole, it is not my grave,” and getting out defiantly, then falling into a hole again without any pushing; sometimes falling into a set of holes whose structures are predictable, ideological, and long dug, often falling into this set of structural and impersonal holes; sometimes falling into holes with other people, with other people, saying “this is not our mass grave, get out of this hole,” all together getting out of the hole together, hands and legs and arms and human ladders of each other to get out of the hole that is not the mass grave but that will only be gotten out of together; sometimes the willful-falling into a hole which is not the grave because it is easier than not falling into a hole really, but then once in it, realizing it is not the grave, getting out of the hole eventually; sometimes falling into a hole and languishing there for days, weeks, months, years, because while not the grave very difficult, still, to climb out of and you know after this hole there’s just another and another; sometimes surveying the landscape of holes and wishing for a high quality final hole; sometimes thinking of who has fallen into holes which are not graves but might be better if they were; sometimes too ardently contemplating the final hole while trying to avoid the provisional ones; sometimes dutifully falling and getting out, with perfect fortitude, saying “look at the skill and spirit with which I rise from that which resembles the grave but isn’t!”
