Dear Sue.
I oscillate between feeling sympathy with your situation and feeling enraged at how foolish you make yourself out to be in your repsonses to a) everything I post to the list, and b)anything that has the faintest wiff of "feminism" associated with it.
You claim to write well, and yet fall into the same traps that the Conservative right would use to attack the same people you are attacking. As a white woman, I think you are in no position to make claims that "black people can make it to the top" and thus women and men are being pushed to the bottom. I also think the claim that women can "make it to the top" ignores plenty of tangible evidence that they, in fact, still cannot.
As well, I wish you would cease with your judgements of me personally, which have aboslutely no basis in reality. You ask in an earlier post whether I got into university due to my husband or father, and in this post claim that I get by on my "youthful sexual attractiveness" and/or money. I do not intend to reveal any of my personal details to you, nor have I in the past, so your specious personal assumptions betray the dishonesty in your claims of being a good writer who is discriminated against based on ideology alone. If you cannot even make an arguement without reverting to assumptions about my (a complete stranger's) personal life, appearance and class status, I place a great deal of scepticism on your claims of writerly ability.
I would ask you to re-examine the comments made regarding your research and to reflect on why these comments would be made. Perhaps if you were willing to incoroporate criticisms, or respond to them without ad hominem attacks, I for one would be more willing to take seriously your comaplints about an admittedly at times biased system. We all have said or written things that others do not like. To claim that all negative responses to your work on the Montreal Massacre are due to some Feminist Illuminati trying desperately to maintain a power block from the likes of working class men is, frankly, riduclous. It is not always the people in power who disagree with controversial work. In fact, many times it is the most disenfranchised who respond negatively to claims and statements such as yours, not because they HAVE power, but because they are constantly having elements of power wielded over the,
Finally, I do not take kindly to the suggestions that I have "won" (as in I personally or "the feminists" as you continually refer to this diverse movement). I do not think I have "won" anything, and your constant, unrelenting use of the homogenous term "the feminists" and continued, unreasonable and completely out of the blue attacks on me - which have been going on for over 2 months now, since I first posted anything on the list and which I must assume began due to the mere fact that I have a female name - make me convinced that you are either delusional or merely a conservative. Same difference really.
Please cease attacking me and making specious comments about my intelligence, attractiveness, sexual orientation and percieved class status to the whole list. I am willing to take up these issues with you in private, though I must admit, I am more than a little tired of this strange and unrequested debate.
Can you explain to me why I have been singled out for attack?
Yours in the struggle,
elise
"old girls" network at work. And no one had a voice in it.
>
>I write, and I write well. Any supposed lack of ability is not an issue. I am not permitted to discuss what happened at the university here where I first began a PhD and ws then pushed out. Obviously, OBVIOUSLY, if there was a problem it had to have been me, and not the professors. But I'll tell you, the women are just as bad as the men.
>
>Marc Lepine was fucked by an unafair system, and it's happening to me. There's nothing a person can do if people at the top take it into their heads I will not be allowed to use my skills and abilities. Marc lepine should not have killed!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! BUT WHAT SHOULD HE HAVE DONE.
>
>Please do not come back with any condescending comments, like make a formal complaint, and other idiotic things. I realize you can make me appear to be the one at fault (just as Marc Lepine was made the scapegoat) . It's not difficult when you have the credibility and I have none, and you have the money, the youthful sexual attractiveness, the middle class status, and so on, that is desired.
>
>I live in despair, treated by my community as as lesser human being, since being pushed out by Essex (yes, Rupert), I just got your post. When I went to Essex their standards were low. And they have raised them, I'm sure, in some ways, but they have also pretty much destroyed my life.
>
>I realize I can speak truths and not be heard, but why make accusations now. I only wanted to complete my PhD degree, at Essex, where I had been invited to come. When I say they destroyed my life I mean they started the process which would lead to me being rejected for jobs (ah ha - something happened at Essex, it couldn't have been the professors, it must have been this woman), and at other universities I applied to to do the PhD.
>
>I have applied to do a PhD again, but there's no reason to think athis point it will be accepted. There's too much in my past, and I have doubts about any potential supervisor who makes the wild claim that he is judging my proposal based on its merits. If I'm wrong, then the world will be a better place. But there simply is no reason to think that that could be true.
>
>And that's how they get ya, you see. they keep you hoping, and keep you silent, waiting. Well, I've waited ten fucking years. I don't stand a chance now of ever gettting out of debt. I am 60 years old. I don't stand a chance of doing what I had hoped to do.
>
>You win, Elise - you and the feminists at Western and the activists in London and wherever else can all have a great time toaking about inequality, and those hateful people like Marc Lepine and me, student name Sue Fulham. Tell them, I can't keep writing and writing and not be heard.
>
>Sue McPherson
>Flat 2 Hannah Court
>St Botolphs Church Walk
>Colchester. CO2 7EE
>Tel: 01206 540097
>Email: sue@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>http://suemcpherson.blogspot.com
>http://SAMcPherson.homestead.com/homepage.html
>http://www.DiversityinRetirement.net
>http://diversityinretirement.homestead.com/DMR/mrdilemma.html
>http://www.MontrealMassacre.net
>http://woodstockYWCA57to64.homestead.com
>http://EmpressofFrance.homestead.com
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "elise thorburn" <elise@xxxxxxxxxx>
>To: "Mailing-list" <foucault-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>Sent: Saturday, June 10, 2006 5:47 PM
>Subject: [Foucault-L] Call for Papers! Call for Papers! (Grad conf)
>
>
>
>Hi all
>Some students in the Theory Centre at UWO have decided to put together a conference for next year with a more overtly political theme. We are excited about the possibilities that this conference will bring forward in terms of new ideas for theory and action, and the possibility of participating in the drive to increase and enliven activism in academia and in the community.
>
>In order for our dreams to be reality, though, we need your help. We need papers and workshops, proposals for panels or presentations. Check out the Call for Papers below and then put on your thinking cap and submit something so that we can have one of the most amazing conferences yet to be seen!
>
>Also, the long-term plan for this project is to put together a book from this conference, so if you submit something awesome you just may see yourself in print in the not too distant future.
>
>Please pass this CFP on to anyone or any list serv you think might be interested.
>
>Contact me with any questions at illusionsofidentity@xxxxxxxxx
>
>Elise
>
>CALL FOR PAPERS: PLEASE DISTRIBUTE WILDLY
>
>Illusions of Identity: resisting (beyond) identity politics
>An interdisciplinary graduate conference hosted by the Centre for the Study of Theory and Criticism, University of Western Ontario, Canada
>
>October 14-15, 2006
>
>With the limits of contemporary leftist social movements becoming increasingly apparent, and in the face of advanced capitalism's relentless appropriation of revolutionary discourses and the rise of the moral right in North America, we feel an urgent need to contribute to the ongoing efforts to rethink identity politics. We imagine this conference as an opportunity to work through and disseminate new frameworks for thinking social movement and resistance. As such, we intend to bring together students and activists whose works traverse disciplinary boundaries in an attempt to articulate some of the possibilities and pitfalls of identity categories (gender, race, nationality, class, sexuality, ability, etc.). Coming from the point of view that the much-contested division between theory and activism is a false one, our aim is that this conference will constitute a site for the proliferation of new conceptual frameworks that will be taken up, and hopefully transformed, by our fellow activists and academics.
>
>We are seeking papers and panels troubling, re-articulating, and creating theoretical frameworks addressing identity politics in areas including, but not limited to:
>- feminist theory;
>- queer stuff;
>- trans/figurations of identity;
>- the appropriation and containment of resistance;
>- global strategies and local tactics;
>- nationalisms and national identities
>- race and the racialization of identity categories;
>- thinking coalition-building and other political maneuvers;
>- capitalism and identity;
>- 'old' thinkers, 'new' readings;
>- critiques of capitalism;
>- the politics of theoretical practice;
>- trans/gressions, incoherences, destabilizations;
>- identities and legalities
>- law as constraint/law as possibility
>- (dis)abilities and identities
>- the politics of citizenship
>- First Nations and the nation-state
>- indigenous identities
>
>Please send abstracts of 250-300 words by August 15, 2006 to: illusionsofidentity@xxxxxxxxx
>(Please include your academic or activist affiliation in your proposal.)
>
>Do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions.
>
>Yours truly,
>Conference organizers
>
>
>
>--
>I am lost in a frenzy, unable to find where I am.
>
> - rene descartes
>
>the struggle is always inner, and played out in the outer terrains.
>
> - gloria anzaldua
>--
>
>
>
>___________________________________________________________
>$0 Web Hosting with up to 200MB web space, 1000 MB Transfer
>10 Personalized POP and Web E-mail Accounts, and much more.
>Signup at www.doteasy.com
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>Foucault-L mailing list
>
>
>
>
>
>
--
I am lost in a frenzy, unable to find where I am.
- rene descartes
the struggle is always inner, and played out in the outer terrains.
- gloria anzaldua
--
___________________________________________________________
$0 Web Hosting with up to 200MB web space, 1000 MB Transfer
10 Personalized POP and Web E-mail Accounts, and much more.
Signup at www.doteasy.com
I oscillate between feeling sympathy with your situation and feeling enraged at how foolish you make yourself out to be in your repsonses to a) everything I post to the list, and b)anything that has the faintest wiff of "feminism" associated with it.
You claim to write well, and yet fall into the same traps that the Conservative right would use to attack the same people you are attacking. As a white woman, I think you are in no position to make claims that "black people can make it to the top" and thus women and men are being pushed to the bottom. I also think the claim that women can "make it to the top" ignores plenty of tangible evidence that they, in fact, still cannot.
As well, I wish you would cease with your judgements of me personally, which have aboslutely no basis in reality. You ask in an earlier post whether I got into university due to my husband or father, and in this post claim that I get by on my "youthful sexual attractiveness" and/or money. I do not intend to reveal any of my personal details to you, nor have I in the past, so your specious personal assumptions betray the dishonesty in your claims of being a good writer who is discriminated against based on ideology alone. If you cannot even make an arguement without reverting to assumptions about my (a complete stranger's) personal life, appearance and class status, I place a great deal of scepticism on your claims of writerly ability.
I would ask you to re-examine the comments made regarding your research and to reflect on why these comments would be made. Perhaps if you were willing to incoroporate criticisms, or respond to them without ad hominem attacks, I for one would be more willing to take seriously your comaplints about an admittedly at times biased system. We all have said or written things that others do not like. To claim that all negative responses to your work on the Montreal Massacre are due to some Feminist Illuminati trying desperately to maintain a power block from the likes of working class men is, frankly, riduclous. It is not always the people in power who disagree with controversial work. In fact, many times it is the most disenfranchised who respond negatively to claims and statements such as yours, not because they HAVE power, but because they are constantly having elements of power wielded over the,
Finally, I do not take kindly to the suggestions that I have "won" (as in I personally or "the feminists" as you continually refer to this diverse movement). I do not think I have "won" anything, and your constant, unrelenting use of the homogenous term "the feminists" and continued, unreasonable and completely out of the blue attacks on me - which have been going on for over 2 months now, since I first posted anything on the list and which I must assume began due to the mere fact that I have a female name - make me convinced that you are either delusional or merely a conservative. Same difference really.
Please cease attacking me and making specious comments about my intelligence, attractiveness, sexual orientation and percieved class status to the whole list. I am willing to take up these issues with you in private, though I must admit, I am more than a little tired of this strange and unrequested debate.
Can you explain to me why I have been singled out for attack?
Yours in the struggle,
elise
"old girls" network at work. And no one had a voice in it.
>
>I write, and I write well. Any supposed lack of ability is not an issue. I am not permitted to discuss what happened at the university here where I first began a PhD and ws then pushed out. Obviously, OBVIOUSLY, if there was a problem it had to have been me, and not the professors. But I'll tell you, the women are just as bad as the men.
>
>Marc Lepine was fucked by an unafair system, and it's happening to me. There's nothing a person can do if people at the top take it into their heads I will not be allowed to use my skills and abilities. Marc lepine should not have killed!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! BUT WHAT SHOULD HE HAVE DONE.
>
>Please do not come back with any condescending comments, like make a formal complaint, and other idiotic things. I realize you can make me appear to be the one at fault (just as Marc Lepine was made the scapegoat) . It's not difficult when you have the credibility and I have none, and you have the money, the youthful sexual attractiveness, the middle class status, and so on, that is desired.
>
>I live in despair, treated by my community as as lesser human being, since being pushed out by Essex (yes, Rupert), I just got your post. When I went to Essex their standards were low. And they have raised them, I'm sure, in some ways, but they have also pretty much destroyed my life.
>
>I realize I can speak truths and not be heard, but why make accusations now. I only wanted to complete my PhD degree, at Essex, where I had been invited to come. When I say they destroyed my life I mean they started the process which would lead to me being rejected for jobs (ah ha - something happened at Essex, it couldn't have been the professors, it must have been this woman), and at other universities I applied to to do the PhD.
>
>I have applied to do a PhD again, but there's no reason to think athis point it will be accepted. There's too much in my past, and I have doubts about any potential supervisor who makes the wild claim that he is judging my proposal based on its merits. If I'm wrong, then the world will be a better place. But there simply is no reason to think that that could be true.
>
>And that's how they get ya, you see. they keep you hoping, and keep you silent, waiting. Well, I've waited ten fucking years. I don't stand a chance now of ever gettting out of debt. I am 60 years old. I don't stand a chance of doing what I had hoped to do.
>
>You win, Elise - you and the feminists at Western and the activists in London and wherever else can all have a great time toaking about inequality, and those hateful people like Marc Lepine and me, student name Sue Fulham. Tell them, I can't keep writing and writing and not be heard.
>
>Sue McPherson
>Flat 2 Hannah Court
>St Botolphs Church Walk
>Colchester. CO2 7EE
>Tel: 01206 540097
>Email: sue@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>http://suemcpherson.blogspot.com
>http://SAMcPherson.homestead.com/homepage.html
>http://www.DiversityinRetirement.net
>http://diversityinretirement.homestead.com/DMR/mrdilemma.html
>http://www.MontrealMassacre.net
>http://woodstockYWCA57to64.homestead.com
>http://EmpressofFrance.homestead.com
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "elise thorburn" <elise@xxxxxxxxxx>
>To: "Mailing-list" <foucault-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>Sent: Saturday, June 10, 2006 5:47 PM
>Subject: [Foucault-L] Call for Papers! Call for Papers! (Grad conf)
>
>
>
>Hi all
>Some students in the Theory Centre at UWO have decided to put together a conference for next year with a more overtly political theme. We are excited about the possibilities that this conference will bring forward in terms of new ideas for theory and action, and the possibility of participating in the drive to increase and enliven activism in academia and in the community.
>
>In order for our dreams to be reality, though, we need your help. We need papers and workshops, proposals for panels or presentations. Check out the Call for Papers below and then put on your thinking cap and submit something so that we can have one of the most amazing conferences yet to be seen!
>
>Also, the long-term plan for this project is to put together a book from this conference, so if you submit something awesome you just may see yourself in print in the not too distant future.
>
>Please pass this CFP on to anyone or any list serv you think might be interested.
>
>Contact me with any questions at illusionsofidentity@xxxxxxxxx
>
>Elise
>
>CALL FOR PAPERS: PLEASE DISTRIBUTE WILDLY
>
>Illusions of Identity: resisting (beyond) identity politics
>An interdisciplinary graduate conference hosted by the Centre for the Study of Theory and Criticism, University of Western Ontario, Canada
>
>October 14-15, 2006
>
>With the limits of contemporary leftist social movements becoming increasingly apparent, and in the face of advanced capitalism's relentless appropriation of revolutionary discourses and the rise of the moral right in North America, we feel an urgent need to contribute to the ongoing efforts to rethink identity politics. We imagine this conference as an opportunity to work through and disseminate new frameworks for thinking social movement and resistance. As such, we intend to bring together students and activists whose works traverse disciplinary boundaries in an attempt to articulate some of the possibilities and pitfalls of identity categories (gender, race, nationality, class, sexuality, ability, etc.). Coming from the point of view that the much-contested division between theory and activism is a false one, our aim is that this conference will constitute a site for the proliferation of new conceptual frameworks that will be taken up, and hopefully transformed, by our fellow activists and academics.
>
>We are seeking papers and panels troubling, re-articulating, and creating theoretical frameworks addressing identity politics in areas including, but not limited to:
>- feminist theory;
>- queer stuff;
>- trans/figurations of identity;
>- the appropriation and containment of resistance;
>- global strategies and local tactics;
>- nationalisms and national identities
>- race and the racialization of identity categories;
>- thinking coalition-building and other political maneuvers;
>- capitalism and identity;
>- 'old' thinkers, 'new' readings;
>- critiques of capitalism;
>- the politics of theoretical practice;
>- trans/gressions, incoherences, destabilizations;
>- identities and legalities
>- law as constraint/law as possibility
>- (dis)abilities and identities
>- the politics of citizenship
>- First Nations and the nation-state
>- indigenous identities
>
>Please send abstracts of 250-300 words by August 15, 2006 to: illusionsofidentity@xxxxxxxxx
>(Please include your academic or activist affiliation in your proposal.)
>
>Do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions.
>
>Yours truly,
>Conference organizers
>
>
>
>--
>I am lost in a frenzy, unable to find where I am.
>
> - rene descartes
>
>the struggle is always inner, and played out in the outer terrains.
>
> - gloria anzaldua
>--
>
>
>
>___________________________________________________________
>$0 Web Hosting with up to 200MB web space, 1000 MB Transfer
>10 Personalized POP and Web E-mail Accounts, and much more.
>Signup at www.doteasy.com
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>Foucault-L mailing list
>
>
>
>
>
>
--
I am lost in a frenzy, unable to find where I am.
- rene descartes
the struggle is always inner, and played out in the outer terrains.
- gloria anzaldua
--
___________________________________________________________
$0 Web Hosting with up to 200MB web space, 1000 MB Transfer
10 Personalized POP and Web E-mail Accounts, and much more.
Signup at www.doteasy.com