#professsor

[saishor]

Aryn, Npc professor for the Strixhaven campaign!

[higherentity]

[noisychopshoppaper]

Professor, as today marks our last day together you should know that you’re appreciated. I will miss you.

[infommunication-blog]

My Experience with Circularity In Social Context

This post is about letter I wrote to one of my ethnic studies professor after an experience I had with him and a few other of his students. 

He invited me to a table with 2 women and one man, as they wished to be called. We soon begin to speak of macro-historic trends in social co-operation, collaboration, etc. They did not agree with me for reasons that I am not sure are invalid or not as I do not know complete and accurate research and knowledge to inform me one way or another. 

I was right then informed that the conversation was making them uncomfortable and asked to leave. I was taken aback and had wished to know what it was I had said that was offensive so I could apologize. This may be an example of my own unawareness and ignorance but I am once again not sure. I was told that educating was not their role but that they would reluctantly invest time in me since I was the professors friend. 

I then was told that it's not my fault, it's just a product of who I am. I was invited back into the discussion and then told that I couldn't talk if I wanted to stay  (which I did since the professor was my friend), or rather that it was better not to and that it would be useless. I was, what felt to me like, condescendingly lectured to for 10-20 minutes by everyone there with the silent approval of the professor that my existence and thought was predetermined by my skin color, sex, and gender and that I was guilty of oppression since I lived a life of privilege ( even though I was an illegal immigrant at one point, I have a father who has lost jobs and developed clinical depression due to his skin color and religion, a mother who has been forced out of her career due to her accent and linguistic profiling, and come from a family that up until last year made around 15-20K a year for 6 people to live off). I was stereotyped, profiled, prejudiced, and discriminated against. I was told to stay silent and not say anything anytime I wanted to contest a point or even had a question to ask or even want to affirm what had been said. 

At the end of the lecture  was given the choice to leave or have them leave and enact myself as the oppressor. I left and cried outside the pub for about 10 minutes. I don't cry often, maybe once a year so far, knock on wood. To be fair they were all at varying levels of drunkenness and I had fair warning. I do not blame anyone for keeping me there as that was my own willful choice and I am glad I had the experience, and feel I did truly learn something valuable from it. At the same time I do place blame on the people for being verbally and psychologically violent towards me. 

I went back in as I had remembered that I forgot my sweater in the pub. Upon entering one of the women came up to me and asked me if I felt all right? I asked her if we could ever speak as equals. She indirectly replied no. I asked her if she was aware she was enacting negative equality. She directly replied yes. The professor approached and denied it. I was then pulled back into a slightly more discursive version of the previous lecture. I choose to leave of my own accord this time as I was emotionally and physically spent ( it was around 1 am). 

I feel like the experience opened me up to some important concepts and showed me a new perspective as well as helped me clarify my own position on such topics. It had left me emotionally troubled as well. In response to the experience I sent my professor an email, as he had prompted me to do so upon my leaving  For the purpose of serving my memory reliably (in the cloud) and serving my emotional need I will post this letter. I felt better after writing it. I understand some people may disagree with what I say and vice versa and versa vice. I understand some people will think this is just stupid. It is understandable. Feel free to post such sentiments and I will try to process. 

The following is the letter ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I am writing this email as a statement to the beliefs you seemed to reinforce when we last talked. If those indeed are the beliefs you hold then this email itself will most likely be disregarded as stupidity or oppression or a mixture of both. I say this because the way you and your friends spoke and acted implied that you believe that my very existence situated in the historicity of the world is an act of oppression. As you said yourself 'it is unresolvable'. You denied me choice as a person, you denied me space as a sentient being, as a mind bearing ideas. You framed me and boxed me ... You violently forced me into a role based on the history of my skin color and gender. You are heterosexist, monosexist, and racist. You commit the crime that you study. I'm sure this sounds as stupid and naive to you as the idea of transgender individuals, or violence in lesbian and gay relationships. You believe in a stagnant, not dynamic, form of engendered and enracialized cognition. But its the transgender thought that leads to adopting a transgender body. You ignore the dialectic though. The world shapes the mind you say, but fail to include that the mind just as much shapes the world. With the exclusion you preach a paradigm that breeds nothing but division and conflict. You self perpetuate these crimes and oppressions and promote a negative equality. Your female friend told me so herself in her own words. She answered 'Yes' when asked if she was aware that she was enacting negative equality. I was forced to empathize. I was forced to cry and feel a minute portion of the struggle that i know not whether they have or not have experience themselves directly, but make claims to. I have stayed up all night sleepless due to this trauma inflicted by you on me. They felt justified, and indirectly to an extent so did you. I have cried before and likewise experienced struggles you or your friends may not ever have the affordance too. There is every right to be angry and outraged and bitter but I believe revenge isn't an answer and it is inexcusable. The fight for equality should not and can not equate to a fight for counter oppression like the one that your group advocated; a world in which if the historic majority was non white, then whites would be oppressed. That's my belief and all i can do is state it and hope you see why I believe that. I wish to do no more and no less. I will once again stress that what you did as a group was violent, in a very real sense. It was hurtful and that was intentional at a certain level. I believe that much is undeniable, though your beliefs may differ. I cannot say that your gesture at the end of our conversation meant much to me. Hugs show people you value them, yet you cannot claim to value me as a being if you cannot respect my basic human right to speech, even if others was denied. The gesture was thus moot, and either ignorant or insincere in my eyes. How you feel about this is your choice. If you wish to have reference for any things I mentioned feel free to look up distributed cognition, trans feminism, 3rd wave feminism, etc. 

If you ever want to come back to me with a more open discussion platform and actually wish to have meaningful discourse instead of exemplifying an oppressive one, I am open to that. In a way this was addressed to the group at large, not at any one person, so do not take it on an individual level. This was meant for your group cognition (excepting the parts that explicitly mention you as a physical individual, ie terms such as 'you' may sometimes stand for the identity-mind that was the group). PS Philosophy as a historically shaped discipline falls prey to the process of philosophy itself. If philosophy is built on white male oppression, then what of meta-philosophy? What of self questioning? Thoughts are shared by all people, we all do philosophy weather we like it or not. The difference is that some is meticulous and accounted for in every thus far seen detail of LOGIC and some is not. It seems to me that the fact that you say philosophy is 'bullshit' is a product of your philosophy.

[dedo-na-ferida000]

O calendário diz que hoje é dia dos Professores, mas, na moral, todo dia é dia do professor, talvez por que ele esteja ensinando esses nóias ai todo dia, aí gente, vamos dar mais valor a quem ensina, antes de chamar um professor de FDP, vadio, vagabundo, pense... mil vezes se for preciso, pois é o professor que forma o engenheiro, o médico, o advogado, o vendedor... o professor é quem forma a sociedade, então eu peço só mais um pouco de respeito por quem ta te ensinando desde os teus, 4, 5 anos de idade, e seja la quem ele for, respeita e dá valor, por que se não fosse por ele, você seria só mais um bosta nessa sociedade... Respeito e Valor... Não é pedir demais não.