The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Gender Insanity for $45,078 a Year

Posted on | March 31, 2015 | 63 Comments

Caroline Narby is “five feet tall and pudgy,” she tells us at the beginning of her article “My Butchness,” a rather solipsistic 2,000-word discussion of her sexual identity. Of course, I graduated from a third-tier state university in Alabama, where using a fancy word like “solipsistic” would be considered kind of a show-off move, but Caroline Narby is an alumna of Wellesley College, ranked No. 4 among liberal arts colleges by U.S. News & World Report. Annual tuition at Wellesley is $45,078, so when Carolina Narby (Class of 2011) gets solipsistic, buddy, she goes whole-hog. Among other things, she informs us that Wellesley has “a vibrant and visible LGBT community on campus,” and her first semester she took a course entitled “Gay Writing from Sappho to Stonewall.”

This is some high-class intellectual navel-gazing, y’all:

After agonizing over the matter and consulting and commiserating with other butch women, I’ve come to realize that butchness doesn’t need to be understood as “masculinity” at all. Its form and substance don’t have to be defined by its opposition to femininity.
Sometimes I like to think of butchness as a kind of satire. Not as a parody — not as a clownish imitation of manhood–but as part of a purposeful endeavor to dismantle the popular conception of masculinity and the hegemony that it represents. . . . [B]utchness works to deconstruct maleness and masculinity by co-opting behaviors and aesthetics that men have tried to monopolize. Butch is a trickster gender — and so, in a similar way, is femme. Lesbian gender expressions do not emulate heteropatriarchy, they subvert it. Femme removes femininity from the discursive shadow of masculinity and thereby strips from it any connotation of subordination or inferiority. Butch takes markers of “masculinity” and divests them of their association with maleness or manhood. Butchness works against the gender binary — the masculine/feminine paradigm — and reclaims for women the full breadth of possibilities when it comes to gender expression.
Other times, honestly, I just don’t like to think about my gender as a conscious political undertaking at all. I know that “the personal is political.” I know that no action or belief can possibly be apolitical because every social institution on every scale is steeped in ideology. But sometimes I just get so tired. Sometimes I want to just be.

You probably want to read the whole thing, complete with her description of Girl Scout Camp “where it seemed as though 99% of the staff were lesbians.” But you knew that, right?

In case you haven’t figured it out yet, Caroline Narby is the blogger we met earlier, complaining of the “dehumanizing” nature of “sexuality under heteropatriarchy.” She now has a master’s degree in Gender and Cultural Studies and is “currently finishing up a second master’s in public policy,” because I guess after paying $45,078 a year to get your bachelor’s degree at Wellesley, you need two master’s degrees before you can be bothered to get an actual job. Meanwhile, she’s a blogger, and you might want to read her contributions at Bitch magazine:

The aim of this blog is to explore and interrogate popular representations of autistic sexuality and gender performance from a queer, autistic perspective.

Let’s don’t and say we did.

Nevertheless, there’s “Erasure and Asexuality”:

In my previous post, I remarked that an examination of cultural representations of queer autistic sexuality will inevitably end up as a discussion about lack and absence, because so few representations exist. . . . This reflects and reinforces the presumption that autistic people are too “childlike” or socially stunted to comprehend the idea of sexuality, let alone to actually have sex. The result of prevailing cultural attitudes is that autistic people are perceived as inherently non-sexual. . . .
What popular culture tends to do is to deny that autistic people possess the agency and self-awareness to think about and establish sexual identities. Ableism combines with the general erasure of asexuality, and the assumption that a lack of interest in sex equates to naïveté, to produce the idea that asexual-identified autists must be asexual because they are autistic. They are asexual not because they are self-aware individuals who happen to express a particular sexuality, but because somehow their autism renders them too naïve, “innocent,” or socially inept for sex. They are not asexual because that’s what they happen to be, they are non-sexual because they have no choice.
This assumption robs asexual autists of all romantic dispositions of agency and recognition.

To repeat: $45,078 a year it costs to learn how to write that stuff.

 

Comments

63 Responses to “Gender Insanity for $45,078 a Year”

  1. TheAmishDude
    March 31st, 2015 @ 11:31 pm

    What kind of education is it that you can do nothing other talk about yourself?

  2. Daniel Freeman
    April 1st, 2015 @ 12:04 am

    Wait. So she’s only theoretically lesbian? Her lesbianism is the intellectual construct of an over-educated homoromantic asexual?

    I… I can’t even.

  3. Fail Burton
    April 1st, 2015 @ 12:27 am

    Could Narby be a descendant of one of Dworkin’s Hobbit-witches from 17th century England?

    “Dey burned my great-great-great grandmum at da stake and da rest of the 9 million strong roller derby team.”

  4. Julie Pascal
    April 1st, 2015 @ 12:30 am

    You know… women used to have the full range of their personal expression before idiots started saying that if you didn’t FIT that you were now SOMETHING ELSE. Women might refuse to ever wear a dress without someone questioning them… they just weren’t “girly” and no harm no foul. Men, too, might not be particularly burly, and they could be, without having their manhood put in question over it. Some mannish women and some mild-mannered men might have been gay but it just wasn’t assumed. You could be eccentric, or you could be “outdoorsy” or “bookish” or whatever… did anyone care? Not really. Now they care *professionally* and wonder why the world they built isn’t more accepting of the boxes they try to shove everyone into.

  5. Daniel Freeman
    April 1st, 2015 @ 12:30 am

    Wait, yes I can even. “Bromances” are not new, and neither are the female equivalent. Same-sex non-sexual relationships with a romantic tinge are an ancient part of the grand Western Tradition. It is also normal for asexuals (if I can use those words together) to attempt to claim a sexual orientation by using their romantic orientation as a proxy.

    It is also natural for a woman with a more “male brain” (of which autism may be considered the extreme) to exhibit masculine traits. That doesn’t “subvert” anything. To me, the only really surprising thing here is how she managed to get a master’s in gender studies without apparently realizing how traditional she is.

  6. concern00
    April 1st, 2015 @ 12:34 am

    I always took butchness as an inability to be naturally feminine or simply a disdain for one’s presentation and looks. Or put a different way…just plain ugly.

  7. Isa
    April 1st, 2015 @ 12:44 am

    man, Mr. McCain. and you voluntarily dive into this madness?

    either you’re the most unshakable, completely sane human being on the planet… or you’re so far gone that you have nothing to lose. 😛

  8. DeadMessenger
    April 1st, 2015 @ 1:27 am

    I think you’re totally onto something here, Julie. I myself am half tomboy, and half girlie-girl. I can rebuild a carb and kill stuff to eat, but I can also mend socks and knit a warm sweater. And I dance around and scream hysterically if I see a snake. I like pink stuff and flowers, but I also like math and physics. I spend part of my free time on TOM, and part googling crock pot recipes.

    But I’m just me. I’m part of the infinite variety that God created us to be. And I am woman, hear me roar. Or hear me scream when I see a spider.

    But insane people, like this feminist, feel some obsessive need to “explain” stuff that needs no explanation, and indeed, cannot be explained. Why this crazy need to categorize the uncategorizable?

  9. Steve Skubinna
    April 1st, 2015 @ 2:23 am

    Why spend that much money to be stupid when one can be stupid for free? And who wrote the checks for this idiocy? And nothing says “dismantle masculinity” quite like getting a BA and two MAs from an all women’s school.

    Being butch is just a sideshow for this particular rodeo clown.

  10. Steve Skubinna
    April 1st, 2015 @ 2:24 am

    The very expensive kind. Whoever wrote the checks for this should sue Wellesley for academic malpractice.

  11. Steve Skubinna
    April 1st, 2015 @ 2:26 am

    Nah, they were all wiped out before they could breed. Which they couldn’t have done anyway, parthenogenesis not having been perfected in the 17th Century.

    Like Wicca, we’re seeing a modern phenomenon here, a faux attempt to recreate a mythical perfect past that never was. Stupid ideas can breed without their host having to do so.

  12. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    April 1st, 2015 @ 2:28 am

    Federally guaranteed student loans are probably involved, in part.

  13. Daniel Freeman
    April 1st, 2015 @ 3:45 am

    Well, short guys can take a lot of flak, and 5′ is short even for a butch. Maybe she’s overcompensating.

  14. RKae
    April 1st, 2015 @ 3:51 am

    They certainly are blathering a lot over something that’s pretty simple.

    I’ve always been the guy who liked Elizabethan poetry when all the other guys around me were talking about motorcycles. I didn’t feel a need to examine it.

    But these over-analyzing loons seem WAY more stuck on cliched gender roles than we are!

  15. Mike G.
    April 1st, 2015 @ 4:24 am

    I see what you did there and I’m watching you!

  16. Mike G.
    April 1st, 2015 @ 4:28 am

    Men overcompensate by buying an Italian or German sports car.

    How do butch lesbians overcompensate, by wearing overalls and a loud flannel shirt?

  17. Steve Skubinna
    April 1st, 2015 @ 4:47 am

    Ah, so perhaps you and I, you think?

    Well, ain’t we a couple of saps?

  18. Steve Skubinna
    April 1st, 2015 @ 4:48 am

    Heard Randy Newman one time too many, you think?

  19. Daniel Freeman
    April 1st, 2015 @ 5:41 am

    Okay, I think I see what you’re seeing. What I was actually trying to say is that she’s short even for a woman, she seems to identify with masculinity in some respect, and I’ve known guys taller than her that walked around with a chip on their shoulders, like they had something to prove. I’m on the short side of average for an American male myself, not dissing anybody.

    True story: I know a guy about her height who confessed to me that he once got so mad at the way a cowboy was treating him like some kind of mascot or something that he sucker-punched him as hard as he could. Fortunately, the guy took it as a joke, since it had no effect.

    On the flip side, I’ve known for really tall guys to say that they prefer hanging out with shorter guys like me over the ones that are 5’11.5″ since those are the ones that really seem to have something to prove.

    It was joke — not just a joke, element of truth, but now this analysis has surely sucked all of the funny out of it.

  20. Daniel Freeman
    April 1st, 2015 @ 5:50 am

    Those are probably the confident ones. In this case, it seems to be by getting multiple degrees and analyzing to death the psycho-social-political implications of their personal presentation.

  21. Daniel Freeman
    April 1st, 2015 @ 5:55 am

    Thanks! Never heard of him before. Did a little search, and I thought I was politically incorrect, but damn.

  22. RS
    April 1st, 2015 @ 5:56 am

    I know that no action or belief can possibly be apolitical because every social institution on every scale is steeped in ideology. But sometimes I just get so tired. Sometimes I want to just be.

    Behold a flicker of self-awareness. Even she realizes deep-down, she’s full of shit. In the words of Sigmund Freud, “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar” and sometimes a morning cup of coffee is exactly that. Is it any wonder these people never accomplish anything? They’re too busy pondering the socio-political ramifications of the most mundane aspects of day-to-day life.

  23. Mike G.
    April 1st, 2015 @ 6:31 am

    See what happens when a person tries to make a joke before his morning coffee? 😉

    As to being on the cusp of 6′-0″ tall, there might be an element of truth there…at least when I was younger and dumber, being 5′-11.5″ tall and having younger brothers that were/are taller than me. But I’m the smart one, lol.

  24. kilo6
    April 1st, 2015 @ 6:32 am

    So everything in the universe is to be forced into the Procrustean bed of Feminist theory just as with earlier versions of Marxism everything was viewed in solely Marxian economic terms.
    This isn’t education, it’s indoctrination and moral reorientation.

  25. Bob Belvedere
    April 1st, 2015 @ 6:46 am

    Why, yes…yes we are.

    Could This Be One Explanation?

  26. Bob Belvedere
    April 1st, 2015 @ 6:56 am

    The only thing they accomplish is making Normal People miserable…oh, and offing themselves sometimes.

  27. Bob Belvedere
    April 1st, 2015 @ 6:56 am

    It’s just another manifestation of Marxism.

  28. Daniel Freeman
    April 1st, 2015 @ 7:37 am

    I wish that I could give you a thousand upvotes. I love being a man and have recounted some stories before from my rough-and-tumble boyhood, but I was also a sci-fi/fantasy geek and computer nerd long before it was cool.*

    In my introverted adolescence, there were peers — mostly guys — who questioned my sexuality, although there was no legitimate reason for it. I brushed them off, but not everyone is as bullheaded as me, and it wasn’t pleasant.

    I wish that we could go back to the time you describe.

    *Q: How did the hipster burn his mouth?
    A: He ate pizza before it was cool.

  29. M. Thompson
    April 1st, 2015 @ 7:44 am

    I haven’t even hand breakfast yet, but I want whisky after reading this.

  30. robertstacymccain
    April 1st, 2015 @ 8:10 am

    Maybe she’s overcompensating.

    “Paging Doctor Freud. Doctor Sigmund Freud please call your office.”

  31. Art Deco
    April 1st, 2015 @ 8:18 am

    Forty-odd years ago, Betty Friedan offered that the problem the women’s movement was facing was takeover of their organizations by lesbians.

    I suspect Wellesley and the residual corps of women’s colleges face that problem as the notion of liberal education integrated with the vocation of being a woman dissipates and what the college has to offer is it’s social environment (all female) conjoined to its job market signalling (from selective admissions) conjoined to its pacing (from selective admissions) conjoined to its portfolio of offerings (the eschewing of vocational disciplines).

    For my grandmother’s generation (and my mother’s as well), Wellesley’s job was producing liberally educated housewives and the occasional teacher (some of whom returned to the school to teach after sojourns elsewhere, Margaret Clapp and Harriet Creighton to name two). The school’s disciplinary regime contained and channeled their associations with men at nearby institutions. It was a promoter of a particular sort of feminine vocation. Now it’s job is preprofessional schooling for girls who want an all-female environment for whatever reason, and for many, that reason is that they cannot abide men.

  32. totenhenchen
    April 1st, 2015 @ 8:19 am

    Gotta hand it to feminists; they do the Gish Gallop far better than Duane Gish himself ever dreamed.

  33. Art Deco
    April 1st, 2015 @ 8:25 am

    The school has never had much of a vocational dimension at all. They’ve long had a post-baccalaureate degree for training athletic coaches, but that’s about it. It’s always been academic programs, i.e. liberal education. One odd feature they had was an astronomy department. Very few institutions with an enrollment that size invest in astronomy, but Wellesley did.

  34. Daniel Freeman
    April 1st, 2015 @ 8:34 am

    It might not be fair, but I’ve always perceived astronomy as astrophysics with more of the cool looking into space part, and less of the math and science.

  35. Is Sexual Desire Dehumanizing? : The Other McCain
    April 1st, 2015 @ 8:36 am

    […] UPDATE II: Her name is Caroline Narby: […]

  36. Adobe_Walls
    April 1st, 2015 @ 9:00 am

    You really need to research more of his work.

  37. Adobe_Walls
    April 1st, 2015 @ 9:02 am

    For what she spent on College she could have afforded Doctor Freud.

  38. Fail Burton
    April 1st, 2015 @ 9:06 am

    Narby, you magnificent butch. I read your mullet and tattoos!

  39. Daniel Freeman
    April 1st, 2015 @ 9:07 am

    Man, I just can’t seem to stop putting my foot in my mouth today. Down to the half-inch. Thank you for being a good sport about it. 🙂

  40. Daniel Freeman
    April 1st, 2015 @ 9:12 am

    Will do.

  41. Quartermaster
    April 1st, 2015 @ 10:11 am

    “You probably want to read the whole thing….”
    NO! JUST NO!

  42. Quartermaster
    April 1st, 2015 @ 10:13 am

    Astronomy acts in support of Astrophysics. You may look into space, but even the serious amateurs can’t escape the mathematical aspects. Most comets and the calculation of their orbits, is done by serious amateurs. The rest are just sightseers.

  43. Quartermaster
    April 1st, 2015 @ 10:15 am

    Stupid ideas seem far more fecund than rats.

  44. Quartermaster
    April 1st, 2015 @ 10:17 am

    And, what does that say about those of us who frequent the McCain asylum?

  45. Quartermaster
    April 1st, 2015 @ 10:21 am

    While it’s sad they off themselves, it’s one of the few things they do that improves the world.

  46. Quartermaster
    April 1st, 2015 @ 10:22 am

    Its effect will be faster and stronger on an empty stomach.

  47. Steve Skubinna
    April 1st, 2015 @ 10:34 am

    That’s due to the Dopeler Effect, which states that stupid ideas seem smarter the faster they come at you.

  48. Dana
    April 1st, 2015 @ 12:33 pm

    Our esteemed host wrote:

    You probably want to read the whole thing,

    Uhhh, no I don’t.

  49. Dana
    April 1st, 2015 @ 12:34 pm

    Theoretically lesbian means that, at five foot and pudgy, she can’t get laid by men or women.

  50. Dana
    April 1st, 2015 @ 12:35 pm

    I vote for the second!