So I just came back from a talk on modesty given by Wendy Shalit, and I'm not sure if I have anything more to say than:
1) It's reassuring to know that you can spin two entire books out of shaky statistics and a methodology that is weaker than the one in my (still unfinished, mind you) senior thesis
2) My opinion of Williams just dropped to the negatives for letting someone who can't even make a logical statement graduate (and I'm not saying this because I disagree with her points. She would literally say something incredibly disputable and trail off with "yeah" or start with "We all know (insert something that no, we don't all know/believe)" and then somehow forget to show the logical route that took her to this conclusion)
3) See title. I think that when I'm on my deathbed, I'm going to be really bitter about this lost time
I mean honestly, I might have appreciated the kernel of what she was saying (we should create a space for women who don't want to be empowered solely through sexuality) except that she took it to this extreme degree where value judgments were being tossed around (she called it "allowing women to have 'higher' standards. Yes, as if women who want to be sexual somehow have 'lower' standards), marriage was the be-all-end-all conclusion (we should save ourselves for the "right person" and a solid marriage is the indicator of a successful life), and feminism was represented as this malignant force that somehow pathologizes women for not wanting to be overtly sexual (I mean for godssakes, which feminists was she reading? The white, middle-class ones preaching sexual liberation in the fucking 60s? Thanks for reducing feminism to ONE PART of the fucking SECOND WAVE!).
It was seriously a shitshow, and I wish there was a nicer way to say it, but there isn't. While Shalit seemed like a friendly and personally engaging (though not on a group level) person, the reality is that her talk was ill-prepared and disorganized, there was nothing intellectually deep (or even intellectual period; I think the talk as it was is better geared towards a middle-school audience) about her points, and honestly, it wasn't even worth going to because there was nothing thought-provoking or stimulating about it. Just an hour and a half of poor logic, awkward analogies, bad statistics, and overblown and oftentimes offensive conclusions.
Showing posts with label wendy shalit. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wendy shalit. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
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