A protest at Queens university in Kingston, Ontario against Lindsay Shepherd, claiming that she is a white supremacist, stretches bounds of … well, sanity. The video on the Global News page is priceless.
The leader of this protest group, Sofie Vlaad, has published an article that sheds much light on his/her “brilliance”. Here’s the abstract:
This paper seeks to develop a new framework for discussing transsexual subjectivities. Drawing on Karen Barad’s theory of Agential Realism, I posit sex not as an immanent quality, but one that exists through its relations. Agential Realism as a theory presents us with a framework for discussing things-in-phenomena, and the material-discursive practices from which they arise. Under this paradigm, I mark a distinction between transsexuality qua process as a natural function of sex by which determinate (sexed) boundaries are (re)articulated, and transsexuality qua subject as the determinate categories that boundary-making practices, such as sexology and state institutions, bring into being. Adapting Jay Prosser’s theory of transsexuality as a form of autobiography to Barad’s framework, I delineate the ways in which sex acts as a process of becoming. Finally, using the language of Freud’s Mourning and Melancholia, I describe gender dysphoria as both constructed and melancholic, existing as the psychic feeling of loss incurred when the determinate boundaries of sex are rendered legible to state institutions, but illegible to transsexual subjects themselves.
Would an SDA reader be so kind as to translate this into … you know … legible English for the rest of us.
Lest we forget, this person’s education is being highly subsidized by taxpayers.
If only she was a black supremacist or an islamist those idiots would have rolled out a red carpet for her.
She spelled “imminent” incorrectly.
Otherwise, the rest is the product of a disturbed mind.
The word she meant to say is “immanent”, meaning “innate, intrinsic and inborn” – your 62-dollar word for today; just zhir way of showing how highbrow zhe is, sorry…
In any event, the protest drew all of 30 people; maybe Queen’s students have brains after all!
If she was trying to spell “immanent” she got it right; if she was trying to spell “imminent” she got it wrong. But how would anyone know? She was simply splashing big words around. In my class she would receive a well-earned zero.
This is the product of someone who thinks that using big words that most people cannot understand is enough to impress people into believing that the writer is smart.
I don’t blame the student particularly — that is exactly what is promoted in universities — particularly in bizarre fields lijevgener studies. Higher learning has definitely slipped a peg or two in some of these institutions.
O.M. fucking Gawwd. That paragraph beggars belief. Behold the condition of contemporary academia. It is so mired in make-believe that it invents an entire new language to “define” itself. Inscrutable and vague, and so hard to pin down (to quote Pete Townsend).
I used to wow my clients with stream of consciousness jargon to describe how unique and wonderful their projects were. They would praise my highly articulate speech, at which point I would self-deprecate by telling them I am a graduate of UC Berkeley, and learned to “bullshit” like nobody else with a highly refined vocabulary. And we would all laugh.
I am not laughing at this ridiculous display. It is profoundly SAD. And demented.
Looks like it was word processed on a quantum computer.
No, “immanent” is spelled correctly. It means the quality of being present within something and throughout it, as opposed to “transcendent”, meaning to exist beyond and outside something.
Basically, if I follow it right (having read none of the cited authors but knowing literary analysis-jargon pretty well), the claim is that sex is something that arises out of how people interact with each other rather than existing in people as isolated individuals, and “transsexuality” is the attempt to define for yourself how these relationships create your sexuality rather than accepting society’s general definitions.
It actually takes a fair bit of brainpower to pad a rather basic idea out to that extent, but it’s that very brainpower which hides the basic thinness of the idea. Hence Orwell’s observation about some ideas being so foolish only an intellectual can believe them.
“Hence Orwell’s observation about some ideas being so foolish only an intellectual can believe them…”
Yes, that covers it pretty well. Thanks for the executive summary of the pseudo-intellectual gibberish.
Think Oscar Wilde: “I have no objection to anyone’s sex life as long as they don’t practice in the street and frighten the horses.” Would horses be frightened by the most recent transsexual coming=out apparitions?
migawd. I wish o I wish Oscar were alive today.
jeezuz. his wit was the sharpest object in all human history.
is this story related to the one about the emperor’s new clothes?
“as long as they don’t practice in the street”
You mean like the now annual, GAY PRIDE PARADES?
From BlaBlaMeter-Bullshit Detection:
Try it yourself http://www.blablameter.com/index.php
She probably used this tool to write it http://sebpearce.com/bullshit/.
Interestingly, when I put my rephrased translation into the BlaBlaMeter, it couldn’t evaluate it — they thought it was too short.
Monkeys and typewriters. Lots of them. At Queens.
Translation: Horseshit.
Buddy, nope- bullshit it is!!!!
Where is her spell-checker? I think she meant AGENITAL rather than AGENTIAL? I think it would be rather more appropriate, aliteration and all that, certainly areasonable.
Cuttin’ yer pecker off doesn’t make you a woman, it just makes you a damn fool who cut off his pecker.
I must be stupid. Here I am, with 4 degrees in engineering (including a you-know-what) plus membership in Mensa, and I, for the life of me, can’t figure out what that twaddle actually means.
@Deplorable
Yeah, man, I feel your pain, I tried reading Vlaad’s vapid vacuous paper in the link but it was incomprehensible.
(note the alliteration)
Translation: “Blah blah blah…”
Unlike most words, which carry fixed meanings, these ones are meant to be incomprehensible to allow their meanings to shift depending on the relationship of the ‘author’ to his/her/its audience and situation. In other words, meaningless BS. Glad I could help…
Famous Sofie Vlaad quotes:
“Would you like fries with that?”
“Welcome to Walmart.”
During the protest she led against Dr. Peterson, it was stated that she is not a Queen’s student. She is, if I remember correctly, in her mid-thirties. How can a few people cause such havoc? Surely even George can’t be behind every idiot trying to overturn society. If you listen to Dr. Peterson’s video where he describes what it was like to be in Grant Hall at the time of her group’s protest against his speech, you will know he was frightened. A small group led by that jackass Vlaad can frighten a roomful of educated adults by yelling, putting garbage cans in front of the door and breaking a window is disgusting. The men behind the names of Queen’s students who gave their lives in WWI and WWII must be weeping. Angels must be weeping. How many followers does she have? A handful out of all the students who tramp the streets of Kingston to class every day. The Principal, like all of his kind, has no guts. Shame on them all for giving into this kind of BS. And shame on every news outlet who covers her shenanigans. I pity the parents who don’t know she’s influencing their young darlings.
https://www.queensjournal.ca/story/2018-09-25/news/students-protest-lindsay-shepherd-talk/
Bourgeois white kids protesting whtie supremacy, The irony hurts.
BTW That “woman” with the megaphone was a man in a dress wasn’t it?
That would certainly explain the I, Napoleon references in that gibberish that xe/xer/xit wrote.
Challenge accepted. Here is my take:
1. First, you must be very interested in “transsexual subjectivities” i.e., people with male genitalia feeling like people who have female genitalia and vice versa. If you’re not interested in why they feel thus, read no further.
2. Second, you must be familiar with “Karen Barad’s theory of Agential Realism” as well as ” Jay Prosser’s theory of transsexuality as a form of autobiography to Barad’s framework” and also “the language of Freud’s Mourning and Melancholia”. If you’re not familiar with these works, not much point in reading further either. But I press on.
3. In any case, Sofie Vlaad uses these basics to propose that sex is not as an inherent quality, “but one that exists through its relations”. And by “sex”, I believe she means gender …. it’s all rather confusing.
4. Sofie then tells us she will “describe (in her full paper) gender dysphoria as both constructed and melancholic, existing as the psychic feeling of loss incurred when the determinate boundaries of sex are rendered legible to state institutions, but illegible to transsexual subjects themselves.”
And there you have it. People’s gender is clear to the state but unclear in the minds of the transexuals themselves…… and it’s all your fault for not caring.
Wonderful explanation — thank you.
Just another *&^%$#g drip in the land of leaky faucets.
That is totally painful to read. I recognize the style as classic academic bafflegab. Someone should tell these people they are not fooling anyone with their pompous rhetoric. They are revealing themselves to be fools. I used to be very accomplished at writing convoluted academic prose. That is how I know it is all phoney. Using fancy expressions to say . . . well, not much. The “post-modern” stuff is the worst.
Translation: “Mentally disturbed perverts are victims. We need to give them money and it is their human have to have their perversion considered normal.” Admittedly, it is largely a universal translation.
It appears Mother Nature has had an epidemic of goof-ups, not assigning the correct equipment, but has anyone ever called them freaks of nature?
It ain’t been subsidized by this taxpayer! I down scaled and deliberately took a 50% pay cut so I can (a) actually see my wife and kids again, and (b) so I know FOR A FACT that I am now a net receiver of tax benefits overall, rather than a provider. I call THAT winning! Loving my new lifestyle, working around 30 hours per week, got a newfound appreciation for VV and just not buying stuff, and have pretty much stopped going to bars and restaurants. Knowing that I pay a crap ton less taxes to causes that hate me because of my race and gender? … Priceless.
Life is good. You guys should try it. Now THAT is really sticking it to the government.
This pseudo-academic emperor has no clothes. But then wandering around stark naked may be the eventual objective.
It’s a … O_o
‘Bout carnal knowledge without guilt.
Stripped of the jargon, it becomes a personal manifesto both mundane and sad:
-I want to make the case for transgenderism. Sex is not what you are born with; it is something you discover from the way you interact with other people. Sexuality is not a fixed condition; it is fluid. A healthy life is one that is continually redefining its sexual nature. Gender dysphoria is not the fact that I am confused about my identity, but is something caused by the state refusing to accept the sexual definitions of transsexuals. –
Nice Brian. I concede to your superior translation which is much more succinct and right on the money. Well, now that we’ve figured it out, can we please move on………
This translation also has the virtue of capturing the aggressive hectoring tone of the underlying philosophy, which mine did not.
… hence according to Brian’s perfect summary … I should have become homosexual in kindergarten … when I was first REJECTED by a girl. We were playing “House” and she wouldn’t let me be the “husband”. I guess I should have discovered from that interaction that I just wasn’t suited for girls. Thankfully, I learned that the girl in question was just a nasty little bitch, and that 99% of her gender were quite suitable partners.
We are conceived as either male or female. And we will die as such. Sex is immutable.
It’s hard to argue with her.
Millie, whether I argue with her or not, it will not get “hard” for her. :-)))
I grok that Millie, especially when all you want to do is reach over and choke the living shit out of her for making a mockery of humanity.
Gender is defined by your actions, not your genitalia.
Is that in the biology texts?
It will be, and I see that as a problem.
Queens U is living off its past reputation. Looks like it’s becoming a shithole.
Sadly, many post-secondary institutions are like that now. I used to teach at one that relied on its public image from the past. My own alma mater has long gone down that path as well.
I’m glad I’m no longer in that system.
I think they should change the name of that place. “Queens” attracts a type of ‘drag-queen’ or ‘transsexual’ as they now call themselves.
I think they should try calling it “Men’s” and perhaps sanity will return.
The article is written, like much of philosophy today, to impress with use of big words and those words preferably that other people don’t understand. Its only purpose is to impress the professor and you can say it is sort of mutual admiration society. The more convoluted the more “sophisticated” is the idea.
Took philosophy at UofC as an interest, not as a program to be a philosopher.
Of course the professor guy started on defensive that people don’t care about philosophers because they are dealing with airy stuff. There is very little of practical use.
Then he started with Descartes. If you remember the guy proposed that nothing exists, that everything we see, do, experience is our imagination. The only thing that exists is the brain because it comes with the thought itself. Not as the common saying goes “I think therefore I’m”.
You can say that it was very good intellectual exercise …. OK.
Asked the professor, somewhat with sarcasm, to go and walk through the wall in the class room and see what happens if he insists that the wall is his imagination. He scoffed.
The convoluted language is today’s philosophy. If nobody understands, even the person that wrote it as soon as it was written, does not matter. The only thing that matters is, that it was written.
The guy in the dress got his 15 minutes. He is happy and the life goes on. The protesters are perhaps the guy in the dress, friends. The guy is willfully under the nonsense impression that everyone else is against him, as though anybody cares.
The repetition of slogans is to numb the participants so they become oblivious to the stupidity of their chants. There is no way back, they can’t stop. The mob will not allow it. They got sucked in.
The socialist/fascist, international socialists, communists know that slogans are something as first order of business. Everything else is peripheral. Once the LIV are sucked in there is no return unless they realize what happened …. maybe.
In 500 B.C. a philosopher wrote:
TO DO IS TO BE
In 300 A.D. a philosopher wrote:
TO BE IS TO DO
In 500 A.D. a mathematician subtracted the two ideas:
TO DO IS TO BE
TO BE IS TO DO
————————-
DO BE DO BE DO
And that is how music was invented. True story.
Oh we know that music…from Frankie
Strangers in the night,
Two lonely people
They were strangers in the night,
Up to the moment when they said their first hello,
Little did they know…
The warm embracing dance away…
It’s no holes barred subjectivism over objective reality.
I counsel faculty to switch to hardcore apllied colleges that teach trades and technology programs. This BS doesn’t fly in places where you are taught how to maintain commercial aircraft…
“..It’s no holes barred subjectivism over objective reality…”
And that my friends says it in a Language even my kids, when they were 6, could understand. This eloquent front hole is just that, someone that unzipped her jeans one day and simply refused to believe what presented itself.
As has been stated on many prior occasions, They will never reproduce….Nature ain’t stupid.
“…translate this into … you know … legible English…”
Can’t be done. The basic ideas are incoherent. As in, do not cohere into a sane thought.
[/engage pedantry mode/]
Example, the first sentence. “This paper seeks to develop a new framework for discussing transsexual subjectivities.”
“seeks to develop” means trying, not doing or proposing. But really its a kid using “learned phrases” that she’s seen elsewhere. Its a buzzword.
“a new framework for discussing” What is a framework in a discussion? What was the old framework? Why do we need a new one? This is worth a paragraph or two on its own. But in this paper its just another buzzword.
“transsexual subjectivities” This is a meaningless noise in English. My spellcheck underlined “subjectivities” because there is no plural for this word in our language. There is the dichotomy “subjective” meaning viewed by the subject, and “objective” meaning viewed by an outside, dispassionate observer.
Subjectivity is defined as “judgment based on individual personal impressions and feelings and opinions rather than external facts.”
To use the word “subjectivity” in the plural is to suggest there is more than one. Either its a lazy-ass way of suggesting that each person’s subjective judgement and view is unique, as in “many subjects, many subjectivites” or the author has no f-ing idea what she’s talking about, and is using another buzzword.
The Phantom Pedant renders judgement: Three buzzwords in the first sentence, you get a D. But then it runs downhill from there, so you get an F.
[/disengage pedant mode/]
What I find particularly appalling is that this girl has been TRAINED to write like this. If I wrote a paper using words in plain English, and rejecting ridiculous formulations like “subjectivities” and “scapegoating” (its not a verb, people) then most likely I would get an F. Its buzzword bingo.
Sofie Vlaad is not a “girl”, she is an activist in her mid-thirties. Did she graduate from Queen’s U? Does she live in Kingston? Possibly or close enough to keep her tiny group of “followers” brainwashed. They number under 50 I expect but she is able to cause a dozen SDA commenters to take her seriously enough that they actually read one of her essays.
In this case it’s not ignore at your peril, it’s ignore and give your brain a rest.
Thanks to Robert for giving her more publicity; just what she needed. /sarc
This is a new writing style and is one of the reasons that computer generated hogwash is accepted in scientific journals. As an old prof used to say, the more complex your writing, the less likely others will understand it. Some people think that is a good thing.
This paper seeks to justify my melancholic, aberrant sexual proclivities using impenetrable jargon and my profs reasearch that I can mimic and thus suck up and get my shitty degree etc.
Stevie? … is that you?
…“but illegible to transsexual subjects themselves.
Finish this sentence with … because they mutilated their genitals. and you might have something.
Subjectivity cannot supersede objective reality unless it is destroyed. That said, a transsexual severing its own joy place serves as metaphor to an illiterate self inflicting blindness. Perhaps these people just need to be taught how to….
hey SDA, ya want a real laugh, plug this wordery into a foreign language translator.
all I get out of it is the citing of *other* theories.
reminds me of an old office joke about generating jargon, ‘pick one form columns A B and C to generate an big impression’
also, who the fcuk is gonna tell all the farm animals they got it wrong?
next stop for ms vlaad, a mental hospital.
liberals don’t bother with the details all they have to do is accuse someone of anything that upsets little snowflakes and its all over
Queens enrolment in 2017 exceeded 22,000 (via pdf link):
https://www.google.ca/search?q=queens+university+enrolment&rlz=1C1GCEA_enCA816CA816&oq=queens+university+enrolment&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l5.7823j0j8&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
30 attend the ‘protest’
30/22000 = 0.0013636 = 0.000136 %
wow./sarc off
Everyone. That is the answer to your question. Everyone knew, and knows.
The paper’s meaning is clearer when you leave out all the fluffy academic-speak:
This paper …
presents us with a…
process…
by which…
gender…
boundaries…
are rendered…
illegible.
Not sure what she is actually saying. I think it comes down to ‘her’ people .. (liberal pervs) to whom sex … is life itself … everything else is nothing but a support system for their sexuality.
It’s not.
It’s the economy stupid.
People demanded cheap higher education.
They got it.