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Lies Told in English
I should preface this post by noting I’m an (now domestic) engineer — hard “g.” English is not my proficiency, unlike my Hillsdale English major daughter, the Elder. You want help with your Math homework or figuring out how to fix the ice maker? I’m your gal.
Elder recently signed up for a 300-level 17th and 18th Century British Literature class at the local branch of CU in preparation to return to Hillsdale this fall, after identifying and dealing with some health challenges. She dropped the course after attending the first session, saying, “Mom, it’s not Hillsdale.” To which I responded, “Now you know why we insisted, if you’re going to be an English major, Hillsdale should be your top choice out of a scant handful of options.”
The first sign of trouble was the class introductions. Students were asked to give their name, year in school, and preferred pronoun. (You saw that coming, didn’t you?) Let’s keep in mind that “preferred pronoun” is an insistence that you talk about zir in the third person to someone else when xe’s not even in the room! If you were talking to they, you’d use “you, you, your” like any decent person. It’s coercive, totalitarian rubbish. I say we call the narcissistic little prigs “bastards.” Fixes everything.
Then Elder got a look at the syllabus. Nearly a third of the authors selected for study were women and none of them were named Austen. Too bourgeois, it would seem, except one of the women wrote about Islam after her experiences in Turkey where her husband was stationed as a diplomat. Oof — insert feminist scowl. And, yes, Islam was another major theme of the class about 17th and 18th Century British Literature! You can’t make this stuff up.
Finally, the class discussed an excerpt from Francis Bacon’s Novum Organum, a philosophical work first published in 1620. The professor focused on Bacon’s use of the phrase “empire over creation” (translated from the original Latin), suggesting the negative leftese connotation of “empire” (rather than the more likely Biblical allusion Bacon was making to dominion over creation). Oddly, he also asked the class the significance of the era in which Bacon was writing (early 1600s was the Age of Discovery), misleading the students to believe that Bacon could have been criticizing “empire” before the British Empire had even been established (Britain’s Imperial Century was from 1815 to 1914 according to historians), let alone before lefties had decided empire was a bad thing. Pull chute!
This incident started a family conversation about why university English departments are so corrupted and readily corruptible. Mr. C. (also an engineer — hard “g”) argued that the interpretation of literature is a subjective exercise. There aren’t hard truths built in like in Math and Science. I dissented.
Great literature reveals (absolute, universal) truths about the human condition. It isn’t subjective — it’s susceptible to misinterpretation by lefties with an agenda. Literature has staying-power when it is recognized for its truths by individuals over generations. As C.S. Lewis intimates in The Abolition of Man, it is against our human nature to continue to believe that which isn’t objectively true.
And speaking of the annihilation of our humanity, Drew Klavan makes the point that majorities don’t win — culture wins. If we don’t start fighting for the true meaning of words, I don’t see how the West survives. When the Elder was making her case for dropping the class, she said, “it lacks integrity.”
in·teg·ri·ty
/inˈteɡrədē/
noun
- the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles; moral uprightness.
- “he is known to be a man of integrity”
- the state of being whole and undivided.
Just so.
Published in Literature
Sometimes straying can be fun …
My wife wouldn’t approve.
Here’s one of her poems. (The vapors was thought to be caused by menstrual fluids, so getting pregnant would be a cure. In this case Delia is grieving the death of a lover. Note the brutality of II.3)
A Receipt to Cure the Vapors
BY LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU
I
Why will Delia thus retire,
And idly languish life away?
While the sighing crowd admire,
’Tis too soon for hartshorn tea:
II
All those dismal looks and fretting
Cannot Damon’s life restore;
Long ago the worms have eat him,
You can never see him more.
III
Once again consult your toilette,
In the glass your face review:
So much weeping soon will spoil it,
And no spring your charms renew.
IV
I, like you, was born a woman,
Well I know what vapors mean:
The disease, alas! is common;
Single, we have all the spleen.
V
All the morals that they tell us,
Never cured the sorrow yet:
Chuse, among the pretty fellows,
One of honor, youth, and wit.
VI
Prithee hear him every morning
At least an hour or two;
Once again at night returning—
I believe the dose will do.
Agree re: not having time to fret about such things, when you’re trying to help self and family to survive. That said: Don’t sell the whole North American continent short…Just sayin’.
There’s really no mystery, is there? It’s not like “zie” and “zir” and whatever, already existed before the leftys wanted them. If French, German, Russian, etc don’t have the new made-up words yet, well then they’ll just have to get busy and invent them!
Male vulvas and female penises. In which I unexpectedly find agreement with radical lesbian feminists.
OK. Truly. Not long ago – this idiocy would’ve only shown up as dark, laughable comedy. It frightens me to think what it’s gong to take to bring this culture out of this depraved insanity.
You know when we traditional freedom-lovin’ conservatives find common ground with radical lesbian feminists who are brought to tears over the lies being forced on us/them, there may be hope.
“Misery loves company.”
You imply (close to a plain statement) that the knowledge literature reveals is objective (in addition to absolute and universal, but those have to be hyperbole so I discount them) – can you elaborate on that?
Knowledge about the human condition, not knowledge generally. The universal experience of tension between desire and reason. The (nearly) universal experience of suffering and tragedy and love — all bound up together. Themes we all find relatable at some point in life.
Grammatical gender, worldwide is a complex and confusing matter for non-speakers of the language in question, as the Wikipedia article shows. Couple of cases in point:
Then there are gender qualifiers like animate and inanimate, which usually refer to the masculine side of things, so some languages have female, neuter, animate male, and inanimate male genders.
There are a few languages with genderless pronouns. I think Persian is one which makes no distinction between he and she. (Don’t ask me how that works, but it might be one way to solve the “preferred pronoun” conundrum–we all get the same one!) Some languages (Chinese I think) differentiate gender pronouns in written form, but they are pronounced the same.
do not have the courage to look.
can someone help a brother out?
It’s an article by Austin Ruse in Crisis Magazine about Heritage Foundation hosting four lesbian feminist activists in a discussion about the lies of the trans agenda. The activists couldn’t get any lefty think tanks to host them, and, in fact, one of them was kicked out of an LGBT organization for saying a trans woman (man) [Edit] rapist is a man, even though it’s stating the obvious. Some on the Left are waking up.
Hopefully not before Gov Northam hits the bricks.
If he’s thrown out, I hope it’s for the right reasons.
Well the point seems to that a feminist is upset that a man thinks he is a woman and a lesbian so the tranny still likes and rapes woman. Not sure why that is a problem. A person can identify as it wants and be attracted to what it wants to be.
If you read my Rico bio you would see why this all makes sense to me. It seems life has caught up to my sarcasm.
thank you ma’am
Or Sister… Sorry, Stan.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R79yYo2aOZs
That sounds like a free pass for rapists.
Rapist/defendant: “I identify as a woman (at least today or right now).”
Judge/jury: “Not guilty!”
Dude was placed in a women’s correctional facility and raped more women. He identifies as a lesbian trans woman who’s keeping his penis. Absurd enough for you?
It becomes absurd for me long before that. But apparently it’s not yet absurd enough for the Left.
btw, “Lies Told in English COURSES” might be a better title.
Not by today’s standards. It is not even starting the absurdity level.
The ‘common cause’ here seems to be that even lesbian feminists find it a travesty that men – who are still anatomically male – can be forcibly placed in women’s prisons (after being convicted of raping women), use women’s lavs/locker rooms/showers simply by ‘identifying’ as female. As well, conflating gender with sexuality/sexual expression, is the catalyst for the current Heinz-57 list of “genders”. (A lesbian panelist was booted off of a “diversity commission” because she insisted on referring to a trans-male member as a *man*.). There’s the CliffsNotes version for you.
P.S. Sorry I was late to the party…Thanks, Chauvie!
To be clear, that wouldn’t be “forcibly” as against the will of the “trans” prisoner, it would be putting them in with true female prisoners against THEIR will, the will of the other truly female prisoners who probably don’t want a really-male “woman” in their midst. Especially not a convicted rapist.
Precisely so…Thank you for clarifying.
I like it my way.😁 It suggests not just universities, but all of Anglo Western culture, which happens to be accurate.
Except your entire post is about college/university English courses.
No, it’s about a culture which perverts language, with my daughter’s experience at university as the example.