Among The Little People
We are in fairly constant contact with furniture.
Yes, it’s time to sup from the deep, sorrowful well of feminist scholarship and thereby discover previously hidden knowledge. Specifically, regarding the “problematic” nature of preschool seating, on which Dr Jane Bone, a senior lecturer at Monash University, Melbourne, focuses her keen mental cutting beam:
Then there is the ordinary chair, with a seat, back and four legs, usually arranged around a circular table… This chair is ubiquitous. I rarely go into an early childhood environment where there is not some version of this chair. Designed for children, it is sometimes metal, sometimes wooden, either painted or plain, but always – and this is my point – small.
Do try to keep up. This “child-sized furniture, suited to [a child’s] height and weight,” is of course the aforementioned problematic furniture, for reasons that will now become all too clear:
In my first intra-active encounter with the small chair,
Which I’m assuming entails bending one’s knees and lowering one’s buttocks.
I felt that it talked back to me
And what did the tiny chair say?
I felt that it talked back to me about the preschool as a workplace that is gendered, feminised, child-focused and ultimately disempowering.
And in particular,
The small chair passes on a very important commandment to teachers: “Thou shalt not sit down” – you are here to work.
This traumatic and “haunting” experience – being a grown-up among lots of small chairs – apparently reveals “the undervalued nature of teaching young children.” A point Dr Bone underlines with an anecdote involving a teacher who, during a meeting, perched on a chair intended for children, rather than searching out a more suitably proportioned one. Damning and conclusive, I think you’ll agree. And Dr Bone’s mental reach extends beyond mere anecdote:
In order to recapture this [experience]… I went to IKEA to sit on some small chairs.
Selfless, fearless dedication. Behold:
Dr Bone tells us that her “methodological approach is intra-active and diffractive,” which seems to necessitate disdaining that most unfashionable demographic, i.e., “dead white males,” and namedropping Jacques Derrida’s Spectres of Marx, the profundity of which was touched on here. She also informs us that her work is “not necessarily logical.”
Via Real Peer Review.
who decided to ‘become black’
Ohferfuckssake. There must be some form of official sanction against doctors who mindlessly cater to the whims of the mentally ill, especially if doing so endangers the health of the patient.
Stolen from Ace – We will crush you with empathy…
…or maybe not.
@Farnsworth,
C’mon. It works. That’s how the Soviets won the Battle of Stalingrad . . . with overpowering empathy.
We will crush you with empathy…
Feminism: The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World.
(Harlan Ellison may find this recycling of his words more than a little annoying.)
Hey, Lady! Get off the furniture! You’ll break it. It’s for kids, not adults.
“I talk to the chairs, but they don’t listen to me … ”
Do you think that, by aiming at the chairs, she is aiming for a Chair?
It reminds of the time Judith Butler used the term “Möbius strip” in some paper . . .
Mobius strippers never show their back side.
“Air stewardess turned glamour model . . .
Ah yes, her again . . .
(Harlan Ellison may find this recycling of his words more than a little annoying.)
Long ago, Ellison wrote a short story with the title “I See a Man Sitting on a Chair, and the Chair Is Biting His Leg.”
Or to quote Eccles “I talk to the chairs, that’s why they put me away….”
And I’m sure I have that Harlan Ellison story in a collection somewhere in my bookshelves, the Beast One, don’t recall the Chair one. Also Harlan Ellison that seems appropriate for this topic “I have no mouth and I must scream”
“Or to quote Eccles ‘I talk to the chairs, that’s why they put me away….’”
🙂 It’s never the wrong time for a Goon Show quote.
OT: I’ve seen it all now.
Gender neutral French! Sacre bleu!
By the way, RiseUp is an invitation-only email services provider (Roundcube is webmail software) which claims to be “politically neutral”, yet only far-Left organizations and individuals ever seem to be invited. Such as those nice Antifa folks. It might interest you to know that Mozilla (makers of Firefox) recently bunged $100,000 its way and don’t seem terribly keen on explaining themselves.
IIRC, the Beast story did not end well, for pretty much anybody. I remember bits about an ice pick, poison, and an image of a mentality being decanted into a jar.
Sorta reminds me of contemporary feminism.
The Beast
From Wikipedia:
“A man, William Sterog, goes on a killing spree. He poisons two hundred people with an insecticide stolen from a pest control man, kills a hundred people on a jet flight by means of a time bomb planted in his mother’s suitcase, and shoots 44 people on the stadium with machine gun, before he is arrested…”
The Left seems just about as loving as that murderous madman.
“I See a Man Sitting on a Chair, and the Chair Is Biting His Leg.”
I recall the title but nothing about the story.
For reasons that seemed clearer to me then than they do now, I took a teaching degree in Australia a few years ago and spent 2 years listening to deranged half-wits like this. When we take academic tenth-raters, comfortably insulate them from reality, and reassure them that the paychecks will just keep rolling in no matter what, we shouldn’t be too surprised if madness ensues.
.. reassure them that the paychecks will just keep rolling in no matter what, we shouldn’t be too surprised if madness ensues.
‘Subsidise something and you get more of it’ would have been obvious to my father whose education finished at 14, but is no doubt dismissed as ‘simplistic’ by today’s professoriate.
“And Goldilocks sat in the first chair, but its intra-inactive disempowerment was too small … so she sat in the second chair but its refractive post-qualitative oppression was too big … and finally she sat in the third chair and its gender dystopian privilege was j-u-s-t right.”
“Please don’t ever read to me again, Daddy.”
“Subsidise something and you raise its aggregate cost” is something even more difficult to get people to understand.
All the things are offensive.
Now I am just a caveman physician and your new ways frighten and confuse me, but as no one yet has survived completely without a spine, I think this is really speciest as it implies someone is an invertebrate.
Well she came into IKEA on one cold December day
I don’t know if you intended that to scan to Pinball Wizard, but it does.
I don’t know if you intended that to scan to Pinball Wizard, . . .
. . . but it does.
IIRC, the Beast story did not end well, for pretty much anybody.
I mostly read Ellison from around the age of nine into my early teens, so my memory is hazy. How many of his stories did end well for anyone involved? The dog of A Boy and His Dog is the only character I can think of that came out of a plot both mentally and physically intact.
Feminism: The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World.
Hmmmmm. Think it works better as Feminism: The Beast That Loved to Shout at the Heart of the World.
>> “I See a Man Sitting on a Chair, and the Chair Is Biting His Leg.”
>I recall the title but nothing about the story.
I read it in an anthology called Partners in Wonder a collection of stories that Ellison had co-authored with other people. IIRC, the co-author of that one was Robert Sheckley. Aha! It’s on the Web, very likely pirated: http://www.rulit.me/books/i-see-a-man-sitting-on-a-chair-and-the-chair-is-biting-his-leg-read-244343-1.html
Tiny chairs, tiny minds
I don’t know if you intended that to scan to Pinball Wizard, but it does.
It’s meant to be a parody of “The Wabash Cannonball”, but you’re absolutely right about that.
if you intended that to scan to Pinball Wizard, but it does.
It’s amusing just how many pop songs overlap.
but as no one yet has survived completely without a spine,
Loopner’s Disease? Anyone? Anyone?
Brain and spine in search of original owner, or perhaps next victim.
On behalf of Australian taxpayers I’d like to thank Dr Bone for her important work.
On behalf of Australian taxpayers I’d like to ask for our money to be spent in more useful ways. It should be simple given I can’t think of a less useful one.
Pre-school is child-focused? Wow. Send in the clowns!
We did. She wrote the paper.
I like childcare places being feminised and so on. There is plenty of time later in life for my sons to enjoy the privilege of testosterone.
Watched this a few weeks ago
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0742611/plotsummary?ref_=tt_ov_pl
If you can find this episode, watch the part where the radio guest talks about children.
You just can’t parody today’s SJWs
(With apologies to Cathy Newman) So what you’re really saying is you’re a fat parasitic tax thief?
‘Fat’ is a bit unfair. But I guess the rest of what you said was actually true so in the Cathy Newman style you had to project, embellish, and put stuff in that had nothing to do with what was said.
I feel sorry for that prof. It doesn’t seem like any of his positions are outrageous yet from now on he’ll be demonised and lumped in with the alt.right. I’m guessing his ‘fans’ are going to be a bigger problem than his detractors.
I was reading the comments on his blog post where he said his employer didn’t want him to give a speech (or something) because they would be legally responsible for his words. A whole bunch of commenters were urging him to leave his job, go YouTube full time, etc. As if he’d leave what I assume is a tenured position (or equivalent) in a fit a pique.
I, for one, welcome our new, tiny overlords.
she wears fake dead leopord skin, leopard killing disempowers leopards
Either a comedian has infiltrated Monash Uni and has produced an hilarious parody… Or this proves that some ideas are so stupid that only highly educated people can think of them.
reminds me of this…
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQ7RpQQSkc_ho89seRh6gOpQ6fFwAglUFEIrM-LxiRVQqIe3rbN
… Which I’m assuming entails bending one’s knees and lowering one’s buttocks.
I felt that it talked back to me…
I, one of the less educated in the audience, usually use more vulgar terms like – ‘I passed wind’, or ‘I cut cheese’ or the very vulgar – ‘I farted’ but from here on I can use the PHD term that the chair ‘talked back’ … love it. Thankyou, my vocabulary is now complete.
Well the science is settled. 97% of all scienctists known to mankind agree with the Professor.
Little chairs talk to rather large backsides with words that are not used in mixed company
Fess posted “Either a comedian has infiltrated Monash Uni and has produced an hilarious parody… Or this proves that some ideas are so stupid that only highly educated people can think of them.”
I know I’ve posted this before, but it works so well.
Saturday Night Fry, “Cutlery Exhibition” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V22NdMydqbg#t=4m37s
Hugh Laurie: I’m using a bread knife at the moment and I must say it appears to be working perfectly.
Medusa Stoppit: Thank you. You’ll notice that one edge is sharper than the other.
Hugh Laurie: Yes! Yes, I have noticed that, yes.
Medusa Stoppit: This is quite deliberate. Although all knives are essentially double-edged, it seemed important to me to ensure that one edge was keener. This reflects a sense in which the choices in life, though endlessly varied, relentlessly ambiguous, must ultimately resolve. One view of the world is in the end truer, one action juster, one decision wiser, one edge must be sharper.