From Philip Sherburne Sent Thu, Feb 18th 1999, 03:37
From Philip Sherburne Sent Thu, Feb 18th 1999, 03:37
> people are boring and predictable and all this crap about gender issues is > annoying. get over your insecurities. it's called "essentialism." give me a > break. think of some more catchy phrases to fit your silly little ideologies. ok, i just can't resist responding to this. look: there's a body of theory out there that deals with things like sociology, gender, race, class, aesthetics, culture... "essentialism" just happens to be a very useful term that theory has come up with to describe the idea that women & men are somehow *essentially* different creatures. i'm not talking about the commonsense, "well, they're built differently, no?" but rather the extension of that difference into roles. i really don't wanna get into this too deeply, but for an egregious example of essentialism, look no further than the review of the angel (60 channels, actually) a few months back (sorry, don't remember the rag) that claimed that her music was essentially, necessarily different from the music of male musicians, that women have a fundamentally different way of pushing buttons on sequencers, that a basic "feminine sensibility" was at the root of that. bollocks. i agree, however, that people are boring and predictable -- and the poverty of intelligent discussion of gender (amidst other potentially interesting topics) seems only to prove that. i'm not forcing anyone to agree with anti-essentialist theories (though i'd be thrilled if they did). but to come out and dis the very idea of "essentialism" as so much hogwash is ridiculous, given the body of work behind it. agree or disagree in the principles, but it's not just a fucking catchphrase -- i can't help thinking it's just plain ignorant to go trashing scholarship without having attempted even the most rudimentary engagement. and even "catchy phrases" have a basic semantic purpose (where, after all, would this list be without IDM, jungle, trip hop...). remember that every side of an argument is ideological. maybe you ought to get over *your* insecurities. p