#too academic

[chained3fthigh]

Profile doesn't match the job application

Struggles of a MS Degree or any degree in nowdays;

I just wanna job :(

[radtransfem]

Tell me more about how trans women intimidate you because we are "too academic", because we have read too many feminist books. Do you know what happens when we try to go into feminist spaces, to do feminism, when we haven't read those books?

Some of us are staying up late every night, doing our feminist homework, when you are blundering into feminist rooms and expressing the most naive kinds of feminism imaginable; doing and saying things which would have us hounded out as men.

Some of us are well-read because the only way we are allowed to participate at all is if we have read circles around you, if we can both demonstrate our right to be there far beyond all reasonable doubt, as well as being thoroughly prepared for any theoretic moves you may pull on us to try and trick us out.

Some others of us are well read because we feel the weight of women's liberation on our backs. The way our queer spaces are set up now (I say "our" with a half-smile), you can ID out of "woman" any time you like. ID in, ID out, dodge what you can. We don't have that luxury. We are here to stay.

[radtransfem]

When you are a woman and you use a confessional narrative, people tend to think there is not some more complex structure of thinking or philosophy behind that narrative. I needed to bring some of that background thinking more to the fore, otherwise, it failed... ... I am passionate about ideas. They’re not just the stuff of spectatorship and entertainment to me. They’re a life-blood, and that’s what makes the intellectual process so radically different from the academic process. Part of the challenge for insurgent intellectuals, particularly those of us who are artists in this society, is to pull back from academe, actually, and academic settings, precisely to break this notion that has become so popular in the culture, that the two experiences are one.

bell hooks, in interview with Lawrence Chua (BOMB magazine, issue 48, 1994)

[radtransfem]

Theory is ultimately not about being ‘academic’. You want to slag theory, you see it as pretentious and impractical… all right, that’s your opinion. For me? Theory rebuilt my world. And believe you me I did not have much will, faith, or desire to build a birdhouse let alone a future. But with theory, with coming out — I discovered possibility. And I want to share the projects of possibility and therefore resistance that feminist philosophy can enable.

Aoife Emily Heart, Aoifeschatology and the Number of the Beast

[radtransfem]

accessibility of my writing? let me know

Do you find my tumblr difficult or exclusive to read because of the language I use? Are there changes which would make it easier?

I try to vary the register I write in, so that I cover each concept from a variety of angles, and try to always give definitions of some words like "epistemology" (I often define it as "a particular way of deciding what's true, or who gets to decide") which I remember I always used to find baffling.

I've been told in the past that some people have found my work "too academic". I have criticisms of how often this is used to describe trans women's work - I think it's disproportionate - but of course one can be unfairly criticised for something one's still doing wrong. :)

[msfehrwight]

I did it I said Wuthering Heights is not a romance.

Other news: I want to give these people theory books to read and terms to use.

[radtransfem]

Continuing with the "too complicated/academic" thread, I read two comments from other trans people today who talked about how, after they came out, people stopped inviting them to events because they were "too complicated".

[radtransfem]

I regularly find myself simplifying my own identity for the benefit of those who struggle with the very concept of transfemininity on the most basic of levels. Too often do we find ourselves either simplified out of existence or disregarded as being “too complex” to be bothered about right now, when everyone in the world has an idea of what a gay marriage might look like. The demands placed on trans* people to make information about them palatable, having spent so many years in a society where the information on trans* people was rendered obscure by design is a frustrating task. It was cissexism that taught us to hate ourselves and we should not be talked over or pigeon-holed in our desire to make information about us available. But, please understand, cis folk: it is not for you. It is the trans* youths who are at risk of ill-health and self-destructive behaviour if they are not given the tools to understanding what it is to be transgender. Cis people should be able not to attack us without ever having read Leslie Feinberg, one would hope.

Lexi Kamen Thomas, It’s Complicated: On Being “Academically” Transgender

Great article in which Lexi picks up and runs with the recent threads I've been gathering around the idea that trans people and our thought somehow embody/exemplify the idea of being "too academic" / "too complicated" (obviously I reject this!)