Keith A. Fink, said he was pleased with today's rulings.
``The First Amendment's protection for freedom of speech doesn't give an
employer the right to sexually harass a woman in the workplace,'' Fink said.
``Defense counsel's argument in his motion that a boss can denigrate a woman
with demeaning and degrading sexual comments is one that has no basis in the
law and is an affront to important civil rights principles set forth in anti-
discrimination legislation.''
http://server.finklawfirm.com/content/view/154/57/
this statement was made in regards to labor law. what i find very interesting is the way every one writes themselves theoretical exemptions of every kind for any reason for any thing.
if one thinks of a school as a workplace, and one thinks of the students as clients, is there any reason to assume . . .
well . . . oh yes there are also laws specific to verbal sexual harassment at schools . . . .
check this way---------------->
if eckford and bartelt still are confused about these perhaps they
should take kenneth lanzer's legal research
well lately my brain has been tending towards nihilism and anarchy.
and in that context, i must really give LACC
A+
for disrespecting women.
if that is what they are going for.
actually it might be fun to do a scorecard:
campus: B+ (historic architecture)
food options: D-
hatred of women: A+ (on the curve)
student government: F
technology: C-
tuition: A+
public relations: D+/-
rapes on campus: C+
sheriff's office: b+
likelihood of being called something sexist: A+
counseling services: A+
vending machines:A+
styrofoam: A+ (copious earth-destroying amounts of it)
recycling: C-
library: A+
insensitivity: A-
grade retaliation for reported sexism: A+
che guevara flag: A+
diversity: A+
languages: A+
student body: A+
adversity: A+
graffiti: B+ (keep practicing!!!! take more art classes guys . . .)
economic struggle: A+
i am actually positively homesick for california!!!!!!!
i love you so much!!!!
stay strong my activists!!!!!!
resist!
rise up!
Thursday, 14 October 2010
Tuesday, 12 October 2010
don't ask don't tell---
government sponsored hate dies a slow death
finally don't ask don't tell will pass away
for homophobia everywhere
http://wireupdate.com/wires/11231/california-federal-judge-orders-halt-to-dont-ask-dont-tell-policy/
finally don't ask don't tell will pass away
for homophobia everywhere
http://wireupdate.com/wires/11231/california-federal-judge-orders-halt-to-dont-ask-dont-tell-policy/
reinventing the past with cristy passman
i volunteered for thursday presentation.
when there were too many thursday people i volunteered for tuesday to be especially helpful.
tuesday was the day eckford made a mandatory meeting where he repeated all the epithets at me which i find offensive and discriminatory.
why do you protect this?
why did you protect the other teachers who used sexist words as well?
do you not consider this a betrayal of trust and ethics?
bartelt did not then let me present tuesday.
come thursday he also did not let me present.
it was for extra credit which i was then denied despite my best efforts to obtain it
so recheck those facts. i am not sure if bartelt made up a fable or you misunderstood me.
so not only did i volunteer, i was extremely flexible and was sidelined two days in a row in addition to being called in to hear eckford talk about
asshole
shitty
bitch
bitching
vagina
keith fink was extremely disturbed they called me in for such a coercive "mandatory" and verbally abusive meeting
can i have my graded final exam with its handwritten essay component?
will you get it from bartelt for me.
i want the content of my essay in particular, which i would like to type up as a writing project.
it is my work.
if he has not thrown it away or burned it (as he joked he would) i would like it.
i would like the large binder with my printed project and research as well.
mary eng
my address is
xxxx
if you would like to be reimbursed for postage, i do not mind
i want these asap
From: "Passman, Cristy W" <passmacw@lacitycollege.edu>
To: mary eng
Sent: Tue, October 12, 2010 1:52:14 PM
Subject: RE: anthropology grade
Dear Mary Eng,
Regarding your complaint that you were denied your final presentation, resulting in a lower grade, Dr. Bartelt explained to me that those presentations were elective in nature, not required, and not considered toward a grade. He said he made this change because there wasn’t enough time left in the semester for everyone to make a presentation. When he announced this change in class, he took volunteers to make their presentation and, if I remember correctly, he said you either were not in class when he asked for volunteers. Because of this, the presentation was not considered in anyone’s grade calculations. Finally, your grade in anthropology was based solely on your test grades and had nothing to do with your individual interactions with Dr. Bartelt.
Please let me clarify something regarding your discrimination complaints. Dr. Burnett is only investigating your complaint about me. I am still responsible for investigating the remainder of your LACC discrimination and harassment complaints. Thus, Dr. Burnett’s request for details is asking you to provide details about your complaint that I discriminated against you or harassed you.
Cristy
Cristy Passman, J.D.
Compliance Officer, Ombudsperson
and ADA Coordinator
LACC, AD 208C, Ext. 2249
From: mary eng [mailto:maryeng1@yahoo.com]
Sent: Tuesday, October 12, 2010 1:19 AM
To: Passman, Cristy W
Subject: grade retaliation
Sent: Tuesday, October 12, 2010 1:19 AM
To: Passman, Cristy W
Subject: grade retaliation
dear cristy passman, ombudsman for LACC harassment and discrimination
have you corrected the "C" from my record yet?
where is the paperwork on the grade dispute?
i was given a "c" in anthropology for questioning the use of numerous epithets
this is regarding the sexist words i noted in bartelt's class and in eckford's speech to me
which you can listen to here
this
four months later and i do not know why your school allowed this grade retaliation to occur.
why was i denied my final presentation?
why are you not getting back to me with an explanation?
mary eng
please put it in writing
dr. burnett wrote to me today asking for details again
Thursday, 7 October 2010
ahimsa
Only the ordinary people think that Ahimsa is not to hurt any living being physically. This is but the gross form of Ahimsa. The vow of Ahimsa is broken even by showing contempt towards another man, by entertaining unreasonable dislike for or prejudice towards anybody, by frowning at another man, by hating another man, by abusing another man, by speaking ill of others, by backbiting or vilifying, by harbouring thoughts of hatred, by uttering lies, or by ruining another man in any way whatsoever.
All harsh and rude speech is Himsa (violence or injury). Using harsh words to beggars, servants or inferiors is Himsa. Wounding the feelings of others by gesture, expression, tone of voice and unkind words is also Himsa. Slighting or showing deliberate discourtesy to a person before others is wanton Himsa. To approve of another's harsh actions is indirect Himsa. To fail to relieve another's pain, or even to neglect to go to the person in distress is a sort of Himsa. It is the sin of omission. Avoid strictly all forms of harshness, direct or indirect, positive or negative, immediate or delayed. Practice Ahimsa in its purest form and become divine. Ahimsa and Divinity are one.Friday, 1 October 2010
hate speech suicide connection
got an email about suicides.
people who kill themselves after bullying at school.
in texas.
in california.
that is what i don't understand about professors who let bullying go on at LACC or who engage in trans-hate, sexist epithets, rape jokes.
they don't seem to get the connection between psychological abuse and suicide, or other problems like depression and eating disorders.
so, when i heard so much abuse from my teachers, i have to admit, it really depressed me. i think they might actually be sadists.
http://www.opposingviews.com/i/anti-gay-bullying-tx-boy-kills-self-ca-teen-suicide-attempt
schools are crime scenes these days.
i think bartelt, eckford, passman, lewis, bradford, peters, lanzer should be fired. for being sexist, or protecting harassment.
for collecting federal tax subsidized paychecks, in defiance of the civil rights act.
for not caring about the psychological well-being of women and minority students.
for being so lousy kids drop out.
duffy too, vargas too. for being utterly spineless and protecting abuse and covering up for sexual harassment of a minor.
for a steady belligerent stream of epithets and slurs that humiliate the impoverished women of LACC.
for insulting overweight people.
for protecting facebook harassment too.
for protecting grade retaliation.
for a coercive verbal atmosphere both hostile, and unfair
and for eckford's
mandating a coercive verbal abuse meeting in which
the words
shitty
asshole
vagina
pword
tits
tits and ass were rubbed in my face yet again.
just me, him, and bartelt and a treasure trove of their favorite gutter trash vocab.
eight in the morning.
for retaliating against me by not allowing me to present my paper.
on islamophobia, to be exact.
i was not allowed to present a paper islamaphobia.
was this anti-islam?
or anti-mary?
or anti-woman, or just plain stupid?
to punish me, silence me.
and why did eckford lett bartelt lie about saying he had no sympathy for anorexia and bulimia in the classroom.
why did he say
that transvestites teach real women how to be real women.
why did he call factory farming cowschwitz?
doesn't he get how anti-semitic that sounds?
people who kill themselves after bullying at school.
in texas.
in california.
that is what i don't understand about professors who let bullying go on at LACC or who engage in trans-hate, sexist epithets, rape jokes.
they don't seem to get the connection between psychological abuse and suicide, or other problems like depression and eating disorders.
so, when i heard so much abuse from my teachers, i have to admit, it really depressed me. i think they might actually be sadists.
http://www.opposingviews.com/i/anti-gay-bullying-tx-boy-kills-self-ca-teen-suicide-attempt
schools are crime scenes these days.
i think bartelt, eckford, passman, lewis, bradford, peters, lanzer should be fired. for being sexist, or protecting harassment.
for collecting federal tax subsidized paychecks, in defiance of the civil rights act.
for not caring about the psychological well-being of women and minority students.
for being so lousy kids drop out.
duffy too, vargas too. for being utterly spineless and protecting abuse and covering up for sexual harassment of a minor.
for a steady belligerent stream of epithets and slurs that humiliate the impoverished women of LACC.
for insulting overweight people.
for protecting facebook harassment too.
for protecting grade retaliation.
for a coercive verbal atmosphere both hostile, and unfair
and for eckford's
mandating a coercive verbal abuse meeting in which
the words
shitty
asshole
vagina
pword
tits
tits and ass were rubbed in my face yet again.
just me, him, and bartelt and a treasure trove of their favorite gutter trash vocab.
eight in the morning.
for retaliating against me by not allowing me to present my paper.
on islamophobia, to be exact.
i was not allowed to present a paper islamaphobia.
was this anti-islam?
or anti-mary?
or anti-woman, or just plain stupid?
to punish me, silence me.
and why did eckford lett bartelt lie about saying he had no sympathy for anorexia and bulimia in the classroom.
why did he say
that transvestites teach real women how to be real women.
why did he call factory farming cowschwitz?
doesn't he get how anti-semitic that sounds?
Wednesday, 29 September 2010
soundcloud archives 1984 and catalytic letters
my mother and i listen to the soundcloud audio archive
"they're giving me the privilege of their brilliance"
http://bambuser.com/channel/maryeng1/broadcast/1052808
of course i should have had a lawyer present---
sad about how [1984] denied some of the things he said---and which i have record of---that willingness to mis-remember the truth . . .
loudly
in the presence of one's peers
for self validation
i don't like lyingness
sadly a lot of the subtext was doubletalk and tripletalk.
like when i want to delete names to protect my pell grant---and replace them with [orwellian black hole] or [1984]
when i called women "minutiae" i was giving parody to the bizarre way we are treated as such----
and then instead of grasping my polite sarcasm, he plays like see, its minutiae.
like yeah, to you.
i note to mom the chance that the @ might be the problem with the fried brain cells vs. my other theory of @
the main point being
how can people be this stup
COLD SOBER?
maybe its just the LA smog making everyone act so declasse and last century
teachers being a little foolish in portland caused me to give birth to a sister blog.
less than 48 hrs old, it does not index well. yet.
http://therealpsu.blogspot.com/
i hope it doesn't need to get out of hand. there are lots of great teachers---so it won't be necessary to stick around for drivel
i met the bias response team, the affirmative action office, the dean's office and the chair of philosophy, tom seppalainen who called my legalese "pasted rant." he was raising his voice and honestly admitted no knowledge of any civil rights law whatsoever, which in my book makes him a good candidate for former chair of philosophy. it is better to pretend to know the laws that your teachers are breaking, at least.
he said it didn't matter.
he's sure off on the wrong foot with me.
perhaps i should send him link to catch him up to speed.
but then again, he was completely confused by my email. so i don't want to overwhelm him, with the future of equality.
it was funny to see him take his best philosophy wits out for a spin, get totally ostentatious with all his triple syllable words, but then to disavow any knowledge of the law or any harassment training.
and then to say it doesn't matter.
he raised his voice.
he defended the porn-talker and obesity-insulter.
should we wait another 100 years to be treated like humans?
what a bad flashback to hear the audio of wendel eckford calling my email "crazy" . . . in the meeting precipitated by my reaching out to the women of USC anthropology . . .
i was wondering if they were the roll over and play dead type, or whether they cared. i think they are bought off . . .
eckford went thru his litany of epithets and slurs, defending them all
as though i were the recepticle of his epithet knowledge and a perfect victim
it's kind of sadomasochistic to me, to invite someone who feels uncomfortable around yr pottymouth disorder, to come listen to you regurgitate it all over her uncomfortable ears again.
eckford began raising his voice at me, which point i had to gain clearance for the awesome recording.
he chilled a bit, despite saying preposterous things such as: the english language is an ever evolving thing and b*tch is not offensive in the the lingua franca of english (paarphrase. find it. its funny.)
he was recording it too, so he could . . . hear the shift in his tone when my copy commenced ?????
well .....
"they're giving me the privilege of their brilliance"
http://bambuser.com/channel/maryeng1/broadcast/1052808
of course i should have had a lawyer present---
sad about how [1984] denied some of the things he said---and which i have record of---that willingness to mis-remember the truth . . .
loudly
in the presence of one's peers
for self validation
i don't like lyingness
sadly a lot of the subtext was doubletalk and tripletalk.
like when i want to delete names to protect my pell grant---and replace them with [orwellian black hole] or [1984]
when i called women "minutiae" i was giving parody to the bizarre way we are treated as such----
and then instead of grasping my polite sarcasm, he plays like see, its minutiae.
like yeah, to you.
i note to mom the chance that the @ might be the problem with the fried brain cells vs. my other theory of @
the main point being
how can people be this stup
COLD SOBER?
maybe its just the LA smog making everyone act so declasse and last century
teachers being a little foolish in portland caused me to give birth to a sister blog.
less than 48 hrs old, it does not index well. yet.
http://therealpsu.blogspot.com/
i hope it doesn't need to get out of hand. there are lots of great teachers---so it won't be necessary to stick around for drivel
i met the bias response team, the affirmative action office, the dean's office and the chair of philosophy, tom seppalainen who called my legalese "pasted rant." he was raising his voice and honestly admitted no knowledge of any civil rights law whatsoever, which in my book makes him a good candidate for former chair of philosophy. it is better to pretend to know the laws that your teachers are breaking, at least.
he said it didn't matter.
he's sure off on the wrong foot with me.
perhaps i should send him link to catch him up to speed.
but then again, he was completely confused by my email. so i don't want to overwhelm him, with the future of equality.
it was funny to see him take his best philosophy wits out for a spin, get totally ostentatious with all his triple syllable words, but then to disavow any knowledge of the law or any harassment training.
and then to say it doesn't matter.
he raised his voice.
he defended the porn-talker and obesity-insulter.
should we wait another 100 years to be treated like humans?
what a bad flashback to hear the audio of wendel eckford calling my email "crazy" . . . in the meeting precipitated by my reaching out to the women of USC anthropology . . .
i was wondering if they were the roll over and play dead type, or whether they cared. i think they are bought off . . .
eckford went thru his litany of epithets and slurs, defending them all
as though i were the recepticle of his epithet knowledge and a perfect victim
it's kind of sadomasochistic to me, to invite someone who feels uncomfortable around yr pottymouth disorder, to come listen to you regurgitate it all over her uncomfortable ears again.
eckford began raising his voice at me, which point i had to gain clearance for the awesome recording.
he chilled a bit, despite saying preposterous things such as: the english language is an ever evolving thing and b*tch is not offensive in the the lingua franca of english (paarphrase. find it. its funny.)
he was recording it too, so he could . . . hear the shift in his tone when my copy commenced ?????
well .....
janet, so kind of you to write.
the administration does not care and protects the abuse thus far.
when i try to talk to him he raises his voice, and other people too express that they do not feel comfortable talking to him.
i was very initially impressed with his knowledge but feel that his poor use of words detracts from the impact.
i feel so sad and depressed and dismayed, as many other teachers here have similar negative things to say towards women at LACC.
it seems systemic.
i think he is diluting his quality for the community college and in a sense condescending, assuming we are too stupid to notice, or too brown to complain.
a lot of the other ratemyprofessors.com say similar things about his hostile tone, attacks on christians, etc.
i guess i wanted to know if this were a normal standard at USC? and if not, why his sensibility degenerated.
i went to a nice school before where professors were extremely educated and articulate and careful and yet there was full range of possibility for engaged discussion of many things linguistic and otherwise.
it is only now that i realize how lucky i once was to be shown respect. and similarly the lectures i follow online are immune from epithets and curse words.
i reach out to you, because i think a serious lack of professionalism will hurt him eventually.
i am so sorry for the email. surely every one else will ignore me. if you are in touch with him, maybe you can convey the depths of my anguish and sorrow to him. initially, i felt that i could subtly influence him, for his own safety.
instead of politely disagreeing, or taking a word to the wise, he is making a mockery of his post with displays of anger and more cursing.
i want the women of the future to be free to study in a non-restrictive atmosphere.
many of the men in the class have confided how uncomfortable they feel as well.
it is an assault on all of dignity, and the sacrifice we undertake to go to school, despite the economic obstacles.
in my project on shariah, i seek to find ways that the accusational tone towards islam, masks certain repressed misogynies within our culture, and how the chronic objectification of the feminine based on dress, and the material realm, does disservice to the future of human rights.
its a very simple idea, and i sought help from him about how to be more respectful of my interviewees. and he ignored me, and then his classroom anger got so out of control, that i realized, i will learn nothing about respect from someone who can't control his temper and tongue in the classroom.
i have experienced severe anguish and depression in consequence to his screaming tits and ass at me when i asked him to be more respectful, after he kept saying, "you know, mardi gras, show your tits."
i tried to overlook the red flags, and dismissed them all, until this.
and now he is talking about "bitching" at us.
even if the word's merits are arguable i think he could err on the side of safety and respect. to continually push the boundaries of the acceptable seems to serve no purpose than to make him seem less educated than he is.
i am so sorry to bother you. if there is anything that could be done in the name of educating educators to be culturally sensitive to women, maybe we will not face such anxiety attending classes in the near future.
as to what is appropriate, i have exhausted the administrative remedies, and they have proven futile, and i write to you in anguish, looking for strength, and how to go on.
oh the broadcasts were not a big deal, but indeed, he restricted them after i complained about, "tits" and "tits and ass."
thank you so much for writing, i did not expect a response, and apologize for the negativity i express, and for what can seem one-sided hearsay to one not a witness. i am fascinated by notions of equality and freedom from harassment and epithet and slur as expressed in CA and federal law, and fascinated with disregard for the law. and i feel sorry that the academic level is so sub-standard.
blessings, and good luck to you.
i wish i had more positive role models.
i am so sorry to put you on the spot.
what do you think about "i have absolutely no sympathy for anorexia and bulimia."
this hurts.
i have had friends nearly die from this. i think it is extremely insensitive.
bye
mary eng
earlier that day:Sun, May 23, 2010 8:15:53 AM
| ||
4-16-10:
Mary,
With all due respect, you are completely out of line. In no way can my class be described as "vulgar and antiquated." I take offense at this gross misrepresentation. Before you levy such a charge against me, I strongly suggest you think hard about what you are saying. You will see that you have no case.
I take pedagogy seriously. I take accusations like this seriously. In no way do i think this a laughing matter.
Finally, before you make a mountain out of a mole-hill, perhaps you need to revisit the entomology of the word "tit." It derives from teat, meaning nipple, and can be pronounced as tit or teet. Both men and women have them, as do the cows on the farm on which I grew up.
I also do not appreciate your calling me a fascist. These are serious charges/accusations and I will not stand by and let a student throw such accusations my way - especially when they are completely unwarranted. I always welcome questions and discussion. In fact, I go out of my way to facilitate that.
I tried to accommodate you and your desire to video my lectures. However, these base-less accusations have left me with no choice but to forbid all filming and taping of my lectures, as my academic freedom is now at stake. I will make a formal announcement in class next week.
-Dr. Bartelt
With all due respect, you are completely out of line. In no way can my class be described as "vulgar and antiquated." I take offense at this gross misrepresentation. Before you levy such a charge against me, I strongly suggest you think hard about what you are saying. You will see that you have no case.
I take pedagogy seriously. I take accusations like this seriously. In no way do i think this a laughing matter.
Finally, before you make a mountain out of a mole-hill, perhaps you need to revisit the entomology of the word "tit." It derives from teat, meaning nipple, and can be pronounced as tit or teet. Both men and women have them, as do the cows on the farm on which I grew up.
I also do not appreciate your calling me a fascist. These are serious charges/accusations and I will not stand by and let a student throw such accusations my way - especially when they are completely unwarranted. I always welcome questions and discussion. In fact, I go out of my way to facilitate that.
I tried to accommodate you and your desire to video my lectures. However, these base-less accusations have left me with no choice but to forbid all filming and taping of my lectures, as my academic freedom is now at stake. I will make a formal announcement in class next week.
-Dr. Bartelt
a startling lack of sympathy, in my "inappropriate" opinion in my "inappropriate" blog and my "inappropriate" belles lettres:
From: Janet Hoskins <jhoskins@usc.edu>
To: mary eng
Sent: Sun, May 23, 2010 1:41:38 PM
Subject: Re: bartelt terrorizes LACC
Dear Mary,
I am sorry if you have not had a good experience in Brian's class. I was one of his teachers at USC, and found him a very intelligent and hard working anthropologist. It seems from his email to you that there were certain conflicts involving your request to videotape his classes. I cannot speak to that context, since you do not explain it in your letter.
I completely understand why he tried to explain to you that "tit" is not necessarily an offensive word, and its use should not in itself put him into the category of someone who "terrorizes" women. But I think the best thing for you to do would be to meet with him and explain to him if there are things that make you uncomfortable.
Brian was a highly rated teaching assistant at USC and he was not fired. He has also taught at several other institutions. I would need to know the context of the various things you say he said which you found offensive.
I really do not know why you felt the need to send this email to Brian's former professors. These seem to be issues that you should take up with him face to face.
You have my sympathy, since you seem to have had a hard time in his class. But the email that you sent to all of us does not seem to me to be an appropriate response.
Best wishes,
Janet
Janet Hoskins
Professor of Anthropology
University of Southern California
To: mary eng
Sent: Sun, May 23, 2010 1:41:38 PM
Subject: Re: bartelt terrorizes LACC
Dear Mary,
I am sorry if you have not had a good experience in Brian's class. I was one of his teachers at USC, and found him a very intelligent and hard working anthropologist. It seems from his email to you that there were certain conflicts involving your request to videotape his classes. I cannot speak to that context, since you do not explain it in your letter.
I completely understand why he tried to explain to you that "tit" is not necessarily an offensive word, and its use should not in itself put him into the category of someone who "terrorizes" women. But I think the best thing for you to do would be to meet with him and explain to him if there are things that make you uncomfortable.
Brian was a highly rated teaching assistant at USC and he was not fired. He has also taught at several other institutions. I would need to know the context of the various things you say he said which you found offensive.
I really do not know why you felt the need to send this email to Brian's former professors. These seem to be issues that you should take up with him face to face.
You have my sympathy, since you seem to have had a hard time in his class. But the email that you sent to all of us does not seem to me to be an appropriate response.
Best wishes,
Janet
Janet Hoskins
Professor of Anthropology
University of Southern California
wikipedia on paulo freire's pedagogy of the oppressed
In Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970), Freire differentiates between the two positions in an unjust society, the oppressor and the oppressed. He advocates that education allows the oppressed to regain their humanity and overcome their condition; however, he acknowledges that in order for this to take effect, the oppressed have to play a role in their own liberation. As he states:
No pedagogy which is truly liberating can remain distant from the oppressed by treating them as unfortunates and by presenting for their emulation models from among the oppressors. The oppressed must be their own example in the struggle for their redemption (Freire, 1970, p. 54).[4]
Likewise, the oppressors must also be willing to rethink their way of life and to examine their own role in the oppression if true liberation is to occur; “those who authentically commit themselves to the people must re-examine themselves constantly” (Freire, 1970, p. 60).
Freire believed education to be a political act that could not be divorced from pedagogy. Freire defined this as a main tenet of critical pedagogy. Teachers and students must be made aware of the “politics” that surround education. The way students are taught and what they are taught serves a political agenda. Teachers, themselves, have political notions, they bring into the classroom (Kincheloe, 2008).[5] Freire believed that ‘‘education makes sense because women and men learn that through learning they can make and remake themselves, because women and men are able to take responsibility for themselves as beings capable of knowing — of knowing that they know and knowing that they don’t’’ (Freire, 2004, p. 15) [6]
In terms of actual pedagogy, Freire is best-known for his attack on what he called the “banking” concept of education, in which the student was viewed as an empty account to be filled by the teacher. He notes that, “it transforms students into receiving objects. It attempts to control thinking and action, leads men and women to adjust to the world, and inhibits their creative power” (Freire, 1970, p. 77). The basic critique was not new — Rousseau’s conception of the child as an active learner was already a step away from tabula rasa (which is basically the same as the “banking concept”). In addition, thinkers like John Dewey were strongly critical of the transmission of mere facts as the goal of education. Dewey often described education as a mechanism for social change, explaining that “education is a regulation of the process of coming to share in the social consciousness; and that the adjustment of individual activity on the basis of this social consciousness is the only sure method of social reconstruction” (1897, p. 16).[7] Freire’s work, however, updated the concept and placed it in context with current theories and practices of education, laying the foundation for what is now called critical pedagogy.
No pedagogy which is truly liberating can remain distant from the oppressed by treating them as unfortunates and by presenting for their emulation models from among the oppressors. The oppressed must be their own example in the struggle for their redemption (Freire, 1970, p. 54).[4]
Likewise, the oppressors must also be willing to rethink their way of life and to examine their own role in the oppression if true liberation is to occur; “those who authentically commit themselves to the people must re-examine themselves constantly” (Freire, 1970, p. 60).
Freire believed education to be a political act that could not be divorced from pedagogy. Freire defined this as a main tenet of critical pedagogy. Teachers and students must be made aware of the “politics” that surround education. The way students are taught and what they are taught serves a political agenda. Teachers, themselves, have political notions, they bring into the classroom (Kincheloe, 2008).[5] Freire believed that ‘‘education makes sense because women and men learn that through learning they can make and remake themselves, because women and men are able to take responsibility for themselves as beings capable of knowing — of knowing that they know and knowing that they don’t’’ (Freire, 2004, p. 15) [6]
In terms of actual pedagogy, Freire is best-known for his attack on what he called the “banking” concept of education, in which the student was viewed as an empty account to be filled by the teacher. He notes that, “it transforms students into receiving objects. It attempts to control thinking and action, leads men and women to adjust to the world, and inhibits their creative power” (Freire, 1970, p. 77). The basic critique was not new — Rousseau’s conception of the child as an active learner was already a step away from tabula rasa (which is basically the same as the “banking concept”). In addition, thinkers like John Dewey were strongly critical of the transmission of mere facts as the goal of education. Dewey often described education as a mechanism for social change, explaining that “education is a regulation of the process of coming to share in the social consciousness; and that the adjustment of individual activity on the basis of this social consciousness is the only sure method of social reconstruction” (1897, p. 16).[7] Freire’s work, however, updated the concept and placed it in context with current theories and practices of education, laying the foundation for what is now called critical pedagogy.
Sunday, 26 September 2010
american bar association discusses propaganda cyberwarfares
understanding a cyber attack!
how to be hated? sue the goebbells of sexploitation dov charney?
too bad they rely on unintelligent cliches (american apparel)
how to transcend the internet?
in other ways . . .
read up
http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/lawyer_who_sued_company_ceo_is_target_of_claimed_cyber-attack_campaign/
tuesday i received this:
I think you should come speak to my class next quarter about your experience ar LACC.
so awesome fink wrote back---the class is a
"Winter Quarter is my Race Sex and Politics: Free Speech on Campus. It will be a big class. Meets Thusdays 5-8."
how to be hated? sue the goebbells of sexploitation dov charney?
too bad they rely on unintelligent cliches (american apparel)
how to transcend the internet?
in other ways . . .
read up
http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/lawyer_who_sued_company_ceo_is_target_of_claimed_cyber-attack_campaign/
tuesday i received this:
I think you should come speak to my class next quarter about your experience ar LACC.
so awesome fink wrote back---the class is a
"Winter Quarter is my Race Sex and Politics: Free Speech on Campus. It will be a big class. Meets Thusdays 5-8."
dear eckford, please apologize to keith fink! no cursing now!
talked to sheila dharod today about our presentation for keith fink pro-bono defender of LACC students right to blog
or
to be a woman on campus free of harass/discrim.
about being treated like . . .
maybe we can invite the ASO. and bartelt. and lanzer and passman and lewis. and let them listen to us about how
women are human beings toooooooo!!!!
we can explain
w-h-i-s-t-l-e-b-l-o-w-e-r
quid pro quo v. hostile atmosphere
and bring an AV team to videoblog the whole thing!!!!
oh, transparency!
skype party!
giving a rough study of fink's resume.
so much to look up!!!!!
http://server.finklawfirm.com/content/blogsection/1/4/
he must have kept his head in some books in addition to being a genius!
so wonderful, gloria allred had already turned me down, for her busy-ness and fame, and here is fink debating with lisa allred daughter of the famed defender of civil rights!!!
wow!!!
no cursing!!! this is real life, not a mafia movie!
or
to be a woman on campus free of harass/discrim.
about being treated like . . .
maybe we can invite the ASO. and bartelt. and lanzer and passman and lewis. and let them listen to us about how
women are human beings toooooooo!!!!
we can explain
w-h-i-s-t-l-e-b-l-o-w-e-r
quid pro quo v. hostile atmosphere
and bring an AV team to videoblog the whole thing!!!!
oh, transparency!
skype party!
giving a rough study of fink's resume.
so much to look up!!!!!
http://server.finklawfirm.com/content/blogsection/1/4/
he must have kept his head in some books in addition to being a genius!
so wonderful, gloria allred had already turned me down, for her busy-ness and fame, and here is fink debating with lisa allred daughter of the famed defender of civil rights!!!
wow!!!
no cursing!!! this is real life, not a mafia movie!
Thursday, 23 September 2010
vintage youtube: laud jerome robinson for his courage!!!!!
jerome robinson reads cruel "extracted like the cancer she is" email penned by LACC ASO president james butler-zetino.
the collegian today published an expose of zetino's alleged harassment of a minor and attempt to get her drunk on school money.
unbelievably, the ASO president, in addition to supporting the defamation campaign of sheila dharod (who exposed the corruption), has no clue about email as e-evidence. do not say anything in an email you don't want to see in court, or that conveys corruption and such animosity and cruelty. amazing that this comes to light.
LACC feels like a greek tragedy.
with so much hatefulness, i feel fear.
thank you jerome for shining a light on this cruelty!
the collegian today published an expose of zetino's alleged harassment of a minor and attempt to get her drunk on school money.
unbelievably, the ASO president, in addition to supporting the defamation campaign of sheila dharod (who exposed the corruption), has no clue about email as e-evidence. do not say anything in an email you don't want to see in court, or that conveys corruption and such animosity and cruelty. amazing that this comes to light.
LACC feels like a greek tragedy.
with so much hatefulness, i feel fear.
thank you jerome for shining a light on this cruelty!
speaking engagement with free speech and entertainment lawyer keith fink
he was doing a great job!
and the reason why this is so important is i am so thankful for some wonderful things i learned in his classes and from his thesis.
the words: transpersonal and polyphasic---he's a genius! people often are!!! i told him the sexist stuff was stupid, like a friend telling someone they have spinach in their teeth. just clean it up and move on!!!! in the future women will be extremely respected!!!!!!!
as an expert on witchcraft, he might understand blog magic. i felt it was not so strange to use some internet magic to make the world a safer place for women.
richard susskind in a book called the end of lawyers talks of preventative legal risk management as the new wave of legal service. preventative overhauls would prevent scandals.
a law firm overhauls the legal threats and vulnerabilities to make an org more water tight.
this is what this blog, is and was about.
and then i hit so many brick walls.
i wanted an expansion of the future of the ADA.
i want real equality, not obscure laws that no one has ever heard of . . .
regarding women's right to be educated without harassment and slur and epithet.
same for the transgendered, of which i consider myself one.
i met the most amazingly positive people this week from a PR and marketing firm
inos.biz.
they deal with subtleties of branding, PR, and HR.
http://inos.biz/site/
barry goldberg completely understands. so much understanding after so little really consoles me. he understood the whole thing about calling factory farming cowschitz is anti-semitic and gauche and how free speech when it makes you look disrespectful or unrefined can limit your future.
they are like my new best friends for serious real. maybe they can help LACC rebrand! like i told duffy when he asked about the blogosphere, if LACC were smart, they would hire someone to make them look good online, and not let anything happen that would threaten to do otherwise, simply from an advertising angle, not just civil rights, or women's rights . . .
for instance they could here tell me to repress/whitewash it and say . . . lewis is no longer a sex-obsessed perv . . . lanzer has stopped blaming rape victim and saying slut in class . . . bartelt no longer shouts tits ass bitching asshole in class etc.
bartelt is and was the best teacher i had since idit dobbs-weinstein.
which is why the lack of respect and an attentive listening ear hurts all the more!!!!!
but in my dream the future is very optimistic!!!!! women are paid equally, and spoken of fairly. sexism is not tolerated. the epithets and slurs prohibited in the classroom are really not used.
when bartelt screamed t&a he might as well have been screaming the n-word. it hurts that much to be disrespected by 90% of my professors at LACC.
DR. Luther Guynes who taught me business in summer 2009 was the only respectful teacher there . . . with no sign overt or otherwise of sexism. true vargas is an amazing teacher. but it was truly moronic to spew epithets on women and every minority via a bad film. he knows it.
or joke about rhianna, or protect the harassment of sheila dharod.
lewis can't go 5 minutes without talking about prostitution.
lanzer's brilliant too, but bitter and sexist as a 1950's nightmare.
duffy thinks calling women cheesecake is okay.
maybe he wants us to return the favor.
he protected the harassment of sheila dharod too.
i told him he could have more courage.
and overall he is an amazing law professor to whom i am so grateful. but why must i suffer such degradation for a little knowledge. oh bc i'm too poor/cheap for a better school. why is former DOJ attorney cristy passman so stuck in the 1960's that she makes excuses?
traitor!
$$$$$$$$
true i prize my paralegal training and the anthropology and business and administration of justice class
i also prize the fearlessness of the national lawyers guild and consulted with my hero jim lafferty about this issue.
he was so sad i felt i didn't have the money/debt potential for a better school!
i also received an invite from keith fink 9-21-10 to speak at his class this quarter for issues pertaining to this case: free speech, blogging, cyberlaw, defamation, civil rights, the digital divide, elitism in academia, political inequities, linguistic relativity. no doubt.!!!!! super, super flattered!!!!!
i can't wait.
fink teaches at UCLA and southwestern or loyola i think.
i think all the berkman center lectures and the lessig/zittrain dynamism will infuse my talk.
because this is really the nexus of cyberlaw, free speech, international law norms for women's equality, tax waste, hate speech, civil rights, surrealism, and the environment.
women must be a part of the government of the future.
we must attain equality to fix the oil spill, the WARS, the health crisis, the racist immigration law, the slave pay rates which demean female labor, i.e. the feminization of poverty and the pink collar ghettos (of which the blogosphere is one:chic lit!)
also inspiring for the talk will be
the london school of economics and the economics courses this summer with volkhart vincentz and the conflict resolution class with amanda byron.
plus all the gazillions of books i read long ago, and the way i am situated inbetween generations. that is very beneficial, to culturally translate.
for naomi wolf!!!!! and yale! and zeke hawkins and groton!
while some of the older teachers, i had cruelly written off for hopelessly sexist, i went to bat for women regarding bartelt, because he is an amazing teacher and eventually i think he'd get it.
and then the poisonous info about the ASO's (associated students organization) repression of a sexual harassment episode at the student government trip to sacramento---and the racist witch burning of sheila dharod who whistleblew it, and the systematic repression of progress and reparation by the insidiously corrupt/delusional cristy passman . . .
and wendell eckford's attemped FIREWALL and gag order and cursing at Keith Fink
gauls me . . .
except i am not prone to anger
but rather
satygraha
truth action
of which this writing is one step towards all the beautiful young LACC kids getting the respect they deserve!!!!!
every one of them!!!!
(is this graphic creeping you out yet?)
and their abusers cleaning up their oilspillish nastiness!laughter comes in the face of tragedy, and this is really not very funny.
listening to electro in the car up the coast with travis winn helped put me in touch with my slightly older genxers.
it was okay to be a little sexist back then. but not anymore. not when its going to make you look foolish in the face of the future of equality.
i wrote sheila bc i think she should come to explain the ASO sexism and repression of the sexual harassment scandal as a piece of the puzzle of LACC incompetence.
Wednesday, 8 September 2010
hate speech v. free speech
Conflict Resolution 301 Mary Eng Final Paper 9-8-10
for Amanda Byron
Hate Speech or Free Speech: Contradicting Embedded Marginalizations
International norms of permissible language are affected by a range of factors not least of which is the subtext, context, culture, and the panoply of available expressions. I find this issue so crucial to our ability to navigate conflict, because the propagandas of the many medias inure us to certain linguistic norms. If we were to uncover the duplicity and bias of these norms, we might find a way to make a clear space for more rapid progress towards peace and equality. In the mean time, as the vernaculars are clouded by power paradigms conferring “free speech” to the powerful, and silence to the dehumanized, we might find new ways to employ the laws of our time, or other methods of power towards a goal of conflict transformation which heeds the poisonous effect of a language of degradation on otherwise innocent subjects.
Indeed, among progressive political cultures, the rejection of epithetical naming in growing as a strategy of de-escalation of conflict and power-mongering. The trend is towards self-authorship, self-definition. Genderizing terms might be reserved by the genderizers. If i call myself man, woman, or anything in between, it is my decision so to do. As a certain linguistic respectfulness will allow beings to communicate about their identity to other beings, we can be less limited to a Census Bureau approach to identity politics. And in looking at the stratifications which occur even within our languages,
we might sense that language itself can dehumanize the subject. In this paper, I write with great reverence for ahimsa, a principle of non-violence in word, thought, and deed. It is with the gravity of the quest to theoretize human liberation, that i seek to put into question the blind acceptance for words such as “race” or racializing words, “gender” or
genderizing modalities. If our orientation and identity were more fluidly, or vaporously known, as Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble inaugurated in 1990 http://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Gender_Trouble we might graps more fully the performativity of all social constructs. As I personally reject the words woman, white, vegan, straight, atheist, christian, jewish, gay, bisexual, caucasian----I wish for a world in which we, humans, could be, to each other as humans, and humane. In a world built on definitions I wish we might look more sensitively at the violence of our words, and critique the biases handed down to us from centuries of colonialism and imperialism.
So, as “women” why must we accept the “b****” as doxa? I think words such as this are meant to humiliate and degrade, even they who pretend to find empowerment in their utterance. So that I refuse to utter such a word. I think it injures they who stand in its frequency. It is etymologically rich in hatred, dominance, fear, submission. I would rather die than ever hear it again. It destroys me with its harsh sound. I hear it with pain.
So too, with words of racism, homophobia, hatred of any kind. After the Holocaust, Europe became concerned with the linguistic precursors to genocide. Here in America, we call this free speech. Undocumented workers are not illegal. Sex workers are not criminals. In our languages lie many hidden judgements. How can we begin to speak to each other when our language is full of land mines? No human is illegal. No law made by men, or by racist men, trumps the humanity of a natural law of human dignity. But in power relations, in media control, language is controlled,and language controls us.
Issues of the American justice system as it situates itself within the larger international law community, will reveal the way that American values and systems are particular unto themselves. Hate speech, is a concept which could be described many ways. In this paper I would like to contrast different conceptualizations of free speech with controllable speech, and show how different cultures control speech based on differing value priorities. In Sweden, a Christian minister was removed from the pulpit and taken to jail for hate speech against homosexuals. We have no such law here in the USA to protect against the dissemination of hateful ideologies. I would like to uncover the origin of the phrase “free speech” itself, and then find other synonyms, and discuss
the way our way of speaking about hateful speech affects our ability to regulate it. This matter I see as intrinsically useful to the progress of Conflict Resolution as a discipline and as a function method of de-escalating conflict.
It could be shown that so long as people engage in unmitigated hate speech, the very words themselves are shaping the way we perceive beings and the world. As more companies and jurisdictions become aware of the potential pattern of hatred and escalation that can be spawned with a few mere words, our understanding of the interconnectedness of language and violence will expand. So as Conflict Resolution matures as a discipline, it will not fail to take into consideration the psychologically demoralizing effects of language, and the way epithets and slurs rob the referent of dignity, self-definition, and a positive identity. As words of hate paved the way for dehumanizations, genocides, and crimes of violence, we might begin to give more attention to the way language creates victims and inflames aggressors. A linguistics of degradation humiliates its referent, while denying them control of the economy of language, and denying the significance of the linguistic debasement. And then, when a hate crime occurs, the chain of culpability is broken from the provocative language and ideology of hatred. This is insidious.
As we proceed into a future of equality and justice, it will be necessary to examine the effects of language and the realities it constructs. If gendered declensions reinforce gender stereotyping as French feminist Luce Irigaray uncovered, we might begin to transcend the languages that oppress us and confine us to simplistic binaries. http:/ /www.iep.utm.edu/irigaray/ What is essential to note internationally is the priority the American colonies endowed to freedom of speech. While our freedom protects Nazi speech, Europe, as tortured by WWII, restricts Holocaust-denying, Nazi memorabilia, and speech inciting potentially genocidal hatred. Beneath the restricted speech is there less racism? More? Or does political repression fuel radical fringe ideologies? As international companies appear on the stage they restrict internet speech as was shown in the Nazi memorabilia case with Ebay in 2003. http://www.internetnews.com/ec-news/article.php/758221/eBay-Bans-Nazi-Hate-Group-
Memorabilia.htm
And here in the states, internet speech runs rampant under the notion of free speech.
http://techcrunch.com/2009/05/10/jew-haters-welcome-at-facebook-as-long-as-they- arent-lactating/ Unless it pertains to the newly demonized “eco-terrorism” as restricted by Patriot Act era Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, or the literal annihilation of eco- activists by government assassinations. But overall, libertarianism has clouded the possible discourse, making way for a future where both burka and islamophobia are protected as “free speech.” http://hijabniqab.blogspot.com/ In what way can we conquer the banality of evil and understand ahimsa, non-violence in thought, word, and deed? http://www.dlshq.org/teachings/ahimsa.htm Could we universalize its principles? Gandhi wrote of experiments with truth. Might we write for peace? What is the role
of groups like ACLU to persuade towards free speech? They controversially defend across the spectrum . . . the speech of the KKK and that of gay rights. Is there a middle way? Speech for Human Rights? Could we fight to establish a correlation between violent speech and violent acts? What is a hate-free zone and by what rules might it be made????
In Hannah Arendt’s epilogue to Eichmann in Jerusalem, she explains her two years of research during Eichmann’s confinement prior to his execution. She refers to her reading of Eichmann’s then unpublished 70 page manuscript dealing with the “Jewish Question” and the “solution” of which he was a part. The very linguistic nuance of tone undermines the existence of a people by dehumanizing them by referring to their very existence as a a question, as if a very people were a problem, or universally perplexing. The framing linguistic device both accuses and tries and condemns within a word.
The history of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis details the linguistic relativity which can shape the minds of a culture by the hidden biases within a working vocabulary. Our words shape our world view. If we are interjected into a culture which operates with certain linguistic currencies which deprive subjects of meaning, value, or validity, or furthermore implicates them ethically, our minds become poisoned by the lack of objectivity in the discourse. http://www.angelfire.com/journal/worldtour99/ sapirwhorf.html
What will be our way of integrating this amount of knowledge in our day-to-day attempts to operate fairly? If we are bound by terms of conflict resolution, or if we attempt to mediiate conflict, might we learn to pick our words carefully? Might we realize, that words have linguistic force of persuasion? By engaging a linguistics of oppression, be it racist, sexist, or homophobic, are we harming the cause of equality or conversely do we perhaps give power to a vicitmization which has occurred, creating a rupture in which the placidity of the polite submission to inequality is shaken?
It was all the rage in the eighties and nineties to reinvigorate words of oppression and subvert them, take them back. Hiphop music was replete with the n-word and plenty of thinking feminists had taken the b-word and other words back and tried to give them a new image of empowerment. See B**** magazine. In 2006, I frankly asked the founder, if she took into consideration the effects that sexual abuse survivors might feel upon hearing a word that often accompanies or precedes acts of brutality. The very association can evoke bitter scenes of rape, incarceration, or jobplace sexual harassment. I understood the common subversion rhetoric, that we had taken the word back yadayada. But overall, I felt that leaving the dialectic within the fighting ring of the oppression, gave away more power than it conferred. She did not seem to care for my question.
So too I have found, that some empowered gay men within their social groups refer to each other as “f*****s,” a word I find distasteful. While clearly the term “queer” was a reappropriated term of disparagement, as were pansies, fairies, pretty boys, etc. the word f***** seems to me to confer the most hateful, negative abasement possible. Much as does the c-word referring to female material body. Can it be reconquered? What bitterness, or linguistic and spiritual impoverishment finds power in such epithetical terms? What I wonder about American libertarian notions of free speech, is that the speech is not so much free, as enslaved to a rhetoric of debasement, created by oppressing classes, to enforce second-class citizenship.
What is interesting is that the re-utilization, in a playful manner, serves as an indirect accusation of persisting civic inequity. The words themselves stop time. They shock.
The create powerful emotions. They reignite conflicts that have been pushed under the rug by oppressive culture’s attempts to narcotize us or create amnesiac bubbles in time. They might reinvigorate a chronology of abuse, but do they do more damage to they who have already been so civicly dismembered?
The very concept of conflict implies a degree of suffering and emotionality that might be triggered from innumerable sources. When I heard a white male teacher repeatedly using terms of disparagement for women, my sense of passion was ignited. Why had he become a parrot of a sexism that he was born into? Why could he not see such ideologies as iron cuffs, to be rejected as ideological enslavement? Not easily prone to anger, I felt pushed to a limit. My heart raced. It seemed so obviously unfair. Why would he use terms of abuse in the classroom? What did he have to gain from slurring women, or carelessly tossing around words which turned women into things? The unspoken rule of this transaction was that I would silently submit, in deference to his authority as a PHD and teacher. The immunity he expected was disrupted as I began to question the validity or elegance of his word choice.
There is a kind of peer pressure of complicity. I am still traumatized enough to remember the way I felt with horror. When he repeatedly used the word “b****in” i felt that he was marginalizing the civic issues of the day which affect women: underpay, domestic violence, rape, military sexual trauma, sexual harassment, marital rape immunity. When I asked the teacher why he used the word “tits” in class, instead of a more innocuous (though equally irrelevant) term like “breasts” he became angered and shouted about his “academic freedom.” Obviously he was unaware of the federal and state statutes prohibiting epithets and slurs of a sexual nature. To him, these words conveyed and conferred freedom. But as a (tentatively self-defined semi-) female in the class, I perceived an alternate reality. Girls I spoke with said they were afraid to speak in class. Other students missed classes to avoid the spiritual effects of an aggressive bad energy. Men felt uncomfortable too. They said so. Some women would speak up, and their words would be treated dismissively. This is what happened to me.
In the sense of my struggle for conflict resolution, I found it helpful to write. I
considered it a ghettoization. I was not permitted to dominate the discourse. Squelched were my attempts to question the fundamental brainwashing inherent in the linguistics of degradation. I always have written diaries, letters, poems. This time I wrote a blog, with factual descriptions of these unsavory moments in class. Several teachers at the school had said sexist things, and even defended rape. The administration protected and defended the abuse. Now it was only fair that the world should know what humiliation women had to undergo for their state-funded college education in Los Angeles. For writing, I was threatened with suspension from the class, by the department head. The total irony of hauling me in to be censored in front of his huge Che Guevera flag was not lost on me.
On surface, these teachers were progressives, radicals, socialists. I felt we had a lot in common. The main problem was that I took issue with sexist words in the classroom. They vociferously defended them, repeating them in a closed meeting in which they attempted to censor me, my letters, and my blog. It was interesting to be subject to Orwellian censorship strategies in such a “progressive” atmosphere with my pro-ganja anthropology teacher, and an expert in African American studies, the head of the department. I felt confused as to why they were progressive in some categories, but repressive of free speech, internet, and blogging, and fought so vehemently against equality for women in the classroom. I felt confused that they didn’t seem to understand the concept of “slur” or “epithet” and yet wanted me to hide their mis-statements and delete my blog to save-face for the sake of the monetization of their careers. I saw a higher value: EQUALITY. Fairness, the future.
What seemed clear to me, is that by choosing a language of war you ignite war. Women could not be spoken of in such a second-class way in my presence. Besides it being illegal, which they didn’t seem to comprehend, it made them look bad. It was bad PR. It wouldn’t look good on your LinkedIn: “proud defender of the right to slur against women in the classroom.” That is why they wanted me to delete my blog. But that just made things seem worse. I had just read about the bloggers and journalists in Russia who had their fingers smashed and were beaten to the point of brain damage. http://
www.nytimes.com/2010/05/18/world/europe/18impunity.html Censoring things which actually happened, and for which they were paid tax dollars, seemed outrageous to me. I was constantly thinking of Theo Van Gogh who was assassinated for his film about women, Submission. At the time, I remember feeling very clearly that if my blogging wasn’t getting me killed, I wasn’t doing enough for true equality. So nothing was really scaring me. I found it amazing that Naomi Wolf had repressed her story of harassment at Yale for twenty years. I fell in love with the instantaneous publishing online. A friend told me to stop burning bridges. Easy for him to say, from his position of white male affluence.
If these words were not illegal discrimination contributing to a hostile atmosphere as I maintained in the blog http://thereallacc.blogspot.com/ in citation of CA education code 201 A-C and Title IX of The Civil Rights Act of 1964, they were surely embarrassing in a Google search index. But these professors were not students of the law in the sense that they did not understand the distinction between quid pro quo harassment and an unequal hostile atmosphere. Tireless activism produced these laws and legal theory. It is tireless activism that might make way for an even better future.
I have been thinking a lot about language since around 2006 when I noticed every young person saying b**** every other word. I thought a lot about what is considered a manifestation of Tourette’s Syndrome. It is almost as if pop culture is the syndrome. We can’t stop cursing at each other. What is being accomplished?
I am isolating. I do not like to be around it. In a sense, my immediate social needs as a social animal are getting subordinated to my larger philosophical desire for respect. That respect is absent from so many spheres of society. Pay inequity abounds. The USA after thirty years refuses to sign the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. And my California anthropology teacher talks “sh*tty” “a**hole” “b****ing” “tits” and slams bulimia and transvestitism with callousness of a bull in a china shop. A woman is raped every six minutes, meanwhile pop culture would infect the mouths of so many poor women that we ourselves might say the word “b****” a hundred times a day. Meanwhile I struggle through Post
Traumatic Stress Disorder symptoms from a rape and near homicide in which the rapist chanted “b****” like a mantra. And then people say its just a word. I say its hate speech. Hate ideology. The word infects the minds of the young. They deserve better. They deserve silence, if not beautiful, musical words. Could we be called most honored human being? Simply? Could we revere each other? Bow, even? Could we permit words from our mouths which only heal?
In the discussion of ahimsa and satyagraha, it became clear to me, that the ahimsic value of speaking and thinking no ill towards a being, was in direct contrast to the way of justice. How can you fight for justice, if you must live???? How can you diagnose the disease? What if you were wronged? To accuse, to name, to disclose the crime, whether of hate speech or something more violent, might have a violent effect on the accused? But what if everything were from love? Love for future victims? Love for the future of equality? Love for peace? Love for future growth? If I were dehumanized by these words, might I not call it out so that my sisters not undergo such an assault? I became aware then of Paulo Freire’s pedagogy of the oppressed. The language of oppression might be blindly accepted, propounded, inculcated as the most insidious
way of stacking the cards against human liberation. When indoctrination into any
field occurs, it is important to find a unity of vision. The controlling jargon of disciplines dissolve in the face of interdisciplinary approaches and interdisciplinary people. We disrupt the closed circuits of sexist anthropology, or sexist prosecution manual guidelines, or homophobic male-dominated religious structures. These structures have embedded conflict so thick as to be catastrophic. We must take arms, blogs, words, court cases, technologies against the methodologies of oppression. We must disrupt the circuitry of hatred and the genocides it propagandizes into the realm of possibility and the real.
I upload the audio file to link into the blog and make this paper a multimedia affair: http://soundcloud.com/maryeng1/bartelt-and-eckford-defend-sexist-language-at-lacc-5- 25-10 the caption reads:
I began recording in hopes Eckford wouldn't raise his voice as much. he toned it down, but then gets pretty condescending. tag: censorship, sexism, blog, the reallacc, civil rights act, cursing, free speech This mandatory meeting I attended without representation. I then consulted with attorney Keith Fink who Eckford told to “jump in a stream.” He said "I'm going to hang up on your dumb ass" as Fink attempted to defend my free speech rights. I went to this meeting, honored that Bartelt and Eckford cared what I had to say about the future of equality. By blogging, I had gained forum and standing, whereas as an ordinary student, my words were shot down. the problem began with questioning a sexist rhetoric in the classroom. As Betty Hung of the Lawyers Guild Los Angeles points out, just because we admire the platform of a radical group, for instance the Black Panthers, it doesn't mean we should accept sexism within the progressive movement. We should question it, defy it, and correct it.
Be free, speak freely, but do no harm.
for Amanda Byron
Hate Speech or Free Speech: Contradicting Embedded Marginalizations
International norms of permissible language are affected by a range of factors not least of which is the subtext, context, culture, and the panoply of available expressions. I find this issue so crucial to our ability to navigate conflict, because the propagandas of the many medias inure us to certain linguistic norms. If we were to uncover the duplicity and bias of these norms, we might find a way to make a clear space for more rapid progress towards peace and equality. In the mean time, as the vernaculars are clouded by power paradigms conferring “free speech” to the powerful, and silence to the dehumanized, we might find new ways to employ the laws of our time, or other methods of power towards a goal of conflict transformation which heeds the poisonous effect of a language of degradation on otherwise innocent subjects.
Indeed, among progressive political cultures, the rejection of epithetical naming in growing as a strategy of de-escalation of conflict and power-mongering. The trend is towards self-authorship, self-definition. Genderizing terms might be reserved by the genderizers. If i call myself man, woman, or anything in between, it is my decision so to do. As a certain linguistic respectfulness will allow beings to communicate about their identity to other beings, we can be less limited to a Census Bureau approach to identity politics. And in looking at the stratifications which occur even within our languages,
we might sense that language itself can dehumanize the subject. In this paper, I write with great reverence for ahimsa, a principle of non-violence in word, thought, and deed. It is with the gravity of the quest to theoretize human liberation, that i seek to put into question the blind acceptance for words such as “race” or racializing words, “gender” or
genderizing modalities. If our orientation and identity were more fluidly, or vaporously known, as Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble inaugurated in 1990 http://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Gender_Trouble we might graps more fully the performativity of all social constructs. As I personally reject the words woman, white, vegan, straight, atheist, christian, jewish, gay, bisexual, caucasian----I wish for a world in which we, humans, could be, to each other as humans, and humane. In a world built on definitions I wish we might look more sensitively at the violence of our words, and critique the biases handed down to us from centuries of colonialism and imperialism.
So, as “women” why must we accept the “b****” as doxa? I think words such as this are meant to humiliate and degrade, even they who pretend to find empowerment in their utterance. So that I refuse to utter such a word. I think it injures they who stand in its frequency. It is etymologically rich in hatred, dominance, fear, submission. I would rather die than ever hear it again. It destroys me with its harsh sound. I hear it with pain.
So too, with words of racism, homophobia, hatred of any kind. After the Holocaust, Europe became concerned with the linguistic precursors to genocide. Here in America, we call this free speech. Undocumented workers are not illegal. Sex workers are not criminals. In our languages lie many hidden judgements. How can we begin to speak to each other when our language is full of land mines? No human is illegal. No law made by men, or by racist men, trumps the humanity of a natural law of human dignity. But in power relations, in media control, language is controlled,and language controls us.
Issues of the American justice system as it situates itself within the larger international law community, will reveal the way that American values and systems are particular unto themselves. Hate speech, is a concept which could be described many ways. In this paper I would like to contrast different conceptualizations of free speech with controllable speech, and show how different cultures control speech based on differing value priorities. In Sweden, a Christian minister was removed from the pulpit and taken to jail for hate speech against homosexuals. We have no such law here in the USA to protect against the dissemination of hateful ideologies. I would like to uncover the origin of the phrase “free speech” itself, and then find other synonyms, and discuss
the way our way of speaking about hateful speech affects our ability to regulate it. This matter I see as intrinsically useful to the progress of Conflict Resolution as a discipline and as a function method of de-escalating conflict.
It could be shown that so long as people engage in unmitigated hate speech, the very words themselves are shaping the way we perceive beings and the world. As more companies and jurisdictions become aware of the potential pattern of hatred and escalation that can be spawned with a few mere words, our understanding of the interconnectedness of language and violence will expand. So as Conflict Resolution matures as a discipline, it will not fail to take into consideration the psychologically demoralizing effects of language, and the way epithets and slurs rob the referent of dignity, self-definition, and a positive identity. As words of hate paved the way for dehumanizations, genocides, and crimes of violence, we might begin to give more attention to the way language creates victims and inflames aggressors. A linguistics of degradation humiliates its referent, while denying them control of the economy of language, and denying the significance of the linguistic debasement. And then, when a hate crime occurs, the chain of culpability is broken from the provocative language and ideology of hatred. This is insidious.
As we proceed into a future of equality and justice, it will be necessary to examine the effects of language and the realities it constructs. If gendered declensions reinforce gender stereotyping as French feminist Luce Irigaray uncovered, we might begin to transcend the languages that oppress us and confine us to simplistic binaries. http:/ /www.iep.utm.edu/irigaray/ What is essential to note internationally is the priority the American colonies endowed to freedom of speech. While our freedom protects Nazi speech, Europe, as tortured by WWII, restricts Holocaust-denying, Nazi memorabilia, and speech inciting potentially genocidal hatred. Beneath the restricted speech is there less racism? More? Or does political repression fuel radical fringe ideologies? As international companies appear on the stage they restrict internet speech as was shown in the Nazi memorabilia case with Ebay in 2003. http://www.internetnews.com/ec-news/article.php/758221/eBay-Bans-Nazi-Hate-Group-
Memorabilia.htm
And here in the states, internet speech runs rampant under the notion of free speech.
http://techcrunch.com/2009/05/10/jew-haters-welcome-at-facebook-as-long-as-they- arent-lactating/ Unless it pertains to the newly demonized “eco-terrorism” as restricted by Patriot Act era Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, or the literal annihilation of eco- activists by government assassinations. But overall, libertarianism has clouded the possible discourse, making way for a future where both burka and islamophobia are protected as “free speech.” http://hijabniqab.blogspot.com/ In what way can we conquer the banality of evil and understand ahimsa, non-violence in thought, word, and deed? http://www.dlshq.org/teachings/ahimsa.htm Could we universalize its principles? Gandhi wrote of experiments with truth. Might we write for peace? What is the role
of groups like ACLU to persuade towards free speech? They controversially defend across the spectrum . . . the speech of the KKK and that of gay rights. Is there a middle way? Speech for Human Rights? Could we fight to establish a correlation between violent speech and violent acts? What is a hate-free zone and by what rules might it be made????
In Hannah Arendt’s epilogue to Eichmann in Jerusalem, she explains her two years of research during Eichmann’s confinement prior to his execution. She refers to her reading of Eichmann’s then unpublished 70 page manuscript dealing with the “Jewish Question” and the “solution” of which he was a part. The very linguistic nuance of tone undermines the existence of a people by dehumanizing them by referring to their very existence as a a question, as if a very people were a problem, or universally perplexing. The framing linguistic device both accuses and tries and condemns within a word.
The history of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis details the linguistic relativity which can shape the minds of a culture by the hidden biases within a working vocabulary. Our words shape our world view. If we are interjected into a culture which operates with certain linguistic currencies which deprive subjects of meaning, value, or validity, or furthermore implicates them ethically, our minds become poisoned by the lack of objectivity in the discourse. http://www.angelfire.com/journal/worldtour99/ sapirwhorf.html
What will be our way of integrating this amount of knowledge in our day-to-day attempts to operate fairly? If we are bound by terms of conflict resolution, or if we attempt to mediiate conflict, might we learn to pick our words carefully? Might we realize, that words have linguistic force of persuasion? By engaging a linguistics of oppression, be it racist, sexist, or homophobic, are we harming the cause of equality or conversely do we perhaps give power to a vicitmization which has occurred, creating a rupture in which the placidity of the polite submission to inequality is shaken?
It was all the rage in the eighties and nineties to reinvigorate words of oppression and subvert them, take them back. Hiphop music was replete with the n-word and plenty of thinking feminists had taken the b-word and other words back and tried to give them a new image of empowerment. See B**** magazine. In 2006, I frankly asked the founder, if she took into consideration the effects that sexual abuse survivors might feel upon hearing a word that often accompanies or precedes acts of brutality. The very association can evoke bitter scenes of rape, incarceration, or jobplace sexual harassment. I understood the common subversion rhetoric, that we had taken the word back yadayada. But overall, I felt that leaving the dialectic within the fighting ring of the oppression, gave away more power than it conferred. She did not seem to care for my question.
So too I have found, that some empowered gay men within their social groups refer to each other as “f*****s,” a word I find distasteful. While clearly the term “queer” was a reappropriated term of disparagement, as were pansies, fairies, pretty boys, etc. the word f***** seems to me to confer the most hateful, negative abasement possible. Much as does the c-word referring to female material body. Can it be reconquered? What bitterness, or linguistic and spiritual impoverishment finds power in such epithetical terms? What I wonder about American libertarian notions of free speech, is that the speech is not so much free, as enslaved to a rhetoric of debasement, created by oppressing classes, to enforce second-class citizenship.
What is interesting is that the re-utilization, in a playful manner, serves as an indirect accusation of persisting civic inequity. The words themselves stop time. They shock.
The create powerful emotions. They reignite conflicts that have been pushed under the rug by oppressive culture’s attempts to narcotize us or create amnesiac bubbles in time. They might reinvigorate a chronology of abuse, but do they do more damage to they who have already been so civicly dismembered?
The very concept of conflict implies a degree of suffering and emotionality that might be triggered from innumerable sources. When I heard a white male teacher repeatedly using terms of disparagement for women, my sense of passion was ignited. Why had he become a parrot of a sexism that he was born into? Why could he not see such ideologies as iron cuffs, to be rejected as ideological enslavement? Not easily prone to anger, I felt pushed to a limit. My heart raced. It seemed so obviously unfair. Why would he use terms of abuse in the classroom? What did he have to gain from slurring women, or carelessly tossing around words which turned women into things? The unspoken rule of this transaction was that I would silently submit, in deference to his authority as a PHD and teacher. The immunity he expected was disrupted as I began to question the validity or elegance of his word choice.
There is a kind of peer pressure of complicity. I am still traumatized enough to remember the way I felt with horror. When he repeatedly used the word “b****in” i felt that he was marginalizing the civic issues of the day which affect women: underpay, domestic violence, rape, military sexual trauma, sexual harassment, marital rape immunity. When I asked the teacher why he used the word “tits” in class, instead of a more innocuous (though equally irrelevant) term like “breasts” he became angered and shouted about his “academic freedom.” Obviously he was unaware of the federal and state statutes prohibiting epithets and slurs of a sexual nature. To him, these words conveyed and conferred freedom. But as a (tentatively self-defined semi-) female in the class, I perceived an alternate reality. Girls I spoke with said they were afraid to speak in class. Other students missed classes to avoid the spiritual effects of an aggressive bad energy. Men felt uncomfortable too. They said so. Some women would speak up, and their words would be treated dismissively. This is what happened to me.
In the sense of my struggle for conflict resolution, I found it helpful to write. I
considered it a ghettoization. I was not permitted to dominate the discourse. Squelched were my attempts to question the fundamental brainwashing inherent in the linguistics of degradation. I always have written diaries, letters, poems. This time I wrote a blog, with factual descriptions of these unsavory moments in class. Several teachers at the school had said sexist things, and even defended rape. The administration protected and defended the abuse. Now it was only fair that the world should know what humiliation women had to undergo for their state-funded college education in Los Angeles. For writing, I was threatened with suspension from the class, by the department head. The total irony of hauling me in to be censored in front of his huge Che Guevera flag was not lost on me.
On surface, these teachers were progressives, radicals, socialists. I felt we had a lot in common. The main problem was that I took issue with sexist words in the classroom. They vociferously defended them, repeating them in a closed meeting in which they attempted to censor me, my letters, and my blog. It was interesting to be subject to Orwellian censorship strategies in such a “progressive” atmosphere with my pro-ganja anthropology teacher, and an expert in African American studies, the head of the department. I felt confused as to why they were progressive in some categories, but repressive of free speech, internet, and blogging, and fought so vehemently against equality for women in the classroom. I felt confused that they didn’t seem to understand the concept of “slur” or “epithet” and yet wanted me to hide their mis-statements and delete my blog to save-face for the sake of the monetization of their careers. I saw a higher value: EQUALITY. Fairness, the future.
What seemed clear to me, is that by choosing a language of war you ignite war. Women could not be spoken of in such a second-class way in my presence. Besides it being illegal, which they didn’t seem to comprehend, it made them look bad. It was bad PR. It wouldn’t look good on your LinkedIn: “proud defender of the right to slur against women in the classroom.” That is why they wanted me to delete my blog. But that just made things seem worse. I had just read about the bloggers and journalists in Russia who had their fingers smashed and were beaten to the point of brain damage. http://
www.nytimes.com/2010/05/18/world/europe/18impunity.html Censoring things which actually happened, and for which they were paid tax dollars, seemed outrageous to me. I was constantly thinking of Theo Van Gogh who was assassinated for his film about women, Submission. At the time, I remember feeling very clearly that if my blogging wasn’t getting me killed, I wasn’t doing enough for true equality. So nothing was really scaring me. I found it amazing that Naomi Wolf had repressed her story of harassment at Yale for twenty years. I fell in love with the instantaneous publishing online. A friend told me to stop burning bridges. Easy for him to say, from his position of white male affluence.
If these words were not illegal discrimination contributing to a hostile atmosphere as I maintained in the blog http://thereallacc.blogspot.com/ in citation of CA education code 201 A-C and Title IX of The Civil Rights Act of 1964, they were surely embarrassing in a Google search index. But these professors were not students of the law in the sense that they did not understand the distinction between quid pro quo harassment and an unequal hostile atmosphere. Tireless activism produced these laws and legal theory. It is tireless activism that might make way for an even better future.
I have been thinking a lot about language since around 2006 when I noticed every young person saying b**** every other word. I thought a lot about what is considered a manifestation of Tourette’s Syndrome. It is almost as if pop culture is the syndrome. We can’t stop cursing at each other. What is being accomplished?
I am isolating. I do not like to be around it. In a sense, my immediate social needs as a social animal are getting subordinated to my larger philosophical desire for respect. That respect is absent from so many spheres of society. Pay inequity abounds. The USA after thirty years refuses to sign the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. And my California anthropology teacher talks “sh*tty” “a**hole” “b****ing” “tits” and slams bulimia and transvestitism with callousness of a bull in a china shop. A woman is raped every six minutes, meanwhile pop culture would infect the mouths of so many poor women that we ourselves might say the word “b****” a hundred times a day. Meanwhile I struggle through Post
Traumatic Stress Disorder symptoms from a rape and near homicide in which the rapist chanted “b****” like a mantra. And then people say its just a word. I say its hate speech. Hate ideology. The word infects the minds of the young. They deserve better. They deserve silence, if not beautiful, musical words. Could we be called most honored human being? Simply? Could we revere each other? Bow, even? Could we permit words from our mouths which only heal?
In the discussion of ahimsa and satyagraha, it became clear to me, that the ahimsic value of speaking and thinking no ill towards a being, was in direct contrast to the way of justice. How can you fight for justice, if you must live???? How can you diagnose the disease? What if you were wronged? To accuse, to name, to disclose the crime, whether of hate speech or something more violent, might have a violent effect on the accused? But what if everything were from love? Love for future victims? Love for the future of equality? Love for peace? Love for future growth? If I were dehumanized by these words, might I not call it out so that my sisters not undergo such an assault? I became aware then of Paulo Freire’s pedagogy of the oppressed. The language of oppression might be blindly accepted, propounded, inculcated as the most insidious
way of stacking the cards against human liberation. When indoctrination into any
field occurs, it is important to find a unity of vision. The controlling jargon of disciplines dissolve in the face of interdisciplinary approaches and interdisciplinary people. We disrupt the closed circuits of sexist anthropology, or sexist prosecution manual guidelines, or homophobic male-dominated religious structures. These structures have embedded conflict so thick as to be catastrophic. We must take arms, blogs, words, court cases, technologies against the methodologies of oppression. We must disrupt the circuitry of hatred and the genocides it propagandizes into the realm of possibility and the real.
I upload the audio file to link into the blog and make this paper a multimedia affair: http://soundcloud.com/maryeng1/bartelt-and-eckford-defend-sexist-language-at-lacc-5- 25-10 the caption reads:
I began recording in hopes Eckford wouldn't raise his voice as much. he toned it down, but then gets pretty condescending. tag: censorship, sexism, blog, the reallacc, civil rights act, cursing, free speech This mandatory meeting I attended without representation. I then consulted with attorney Keith Fink who Eckford told to “jump in a stream.” He said "I'm going to hang up on your dumb ass" as Fink attempted to defend my free speech rights. I went to this meeting, honored that Bartelt and Eckford cared what I had to say about the future of equality. By blogging, I had gained forum and standing, whereas as an ordinary student, my words were shot down. the problem began with questioning a sexist rhetoric in the classroom. As Betty Hung of the Lawyers Guild Los Angeles points out, just because we admire the platform of a radical group, for instance the Black Panthers, it doesn't mean we should accept sexism within the progressive movement. We should question it, defy it, and correct it.
Be free, speak freely, but do no harm.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)