Saturday, October 08, 2016

Christina Hoff Sommers at CSULA

   The PC thought police were there, crusading against the free exchange of ideas, their mortal enemy. Consequently, there had to be a fair number of ordinary police, too.
   Sommers is great. Who Stole Feminism? like saved my life. I'm barely exaggerating at all! It came out my first year in a shitty one, year job. I was living in a pre-fab house up on a ridge above a couple of giant industrial-strength chicken...I dunno...barns I guess...in the middle of nowhere. If the ridge had been steep enough, I'd have jumped off at several points. Got the book on a Friday, stopped off for a 12-pack of cheap beer and the cheapest steak over t' th' Food Lion...seriously, I was not making enough money to live on, even pathetically. If I hadn't just finished my dissertation like a month before, I'd have genuinely been suicidal... Shit man hell...it was baaaaaad...
   Anyway, paleo-PC insanity had already begun to fade, but I was still fretting hard about it... Went home and stood in my pre-fab kitchen, drinking too much cheap beer, cooking and eating a really terrible steak (and nothing else), and finished the book at like three o'clock Saturday  morning. It gave me hope that liberalism (in the broad sense) and reason might possibly re-emerge as a force against the lunatic left and their postmodern misologist allies who were taking over the academy. Well...that's the way I saw it at the time, anyway...and haven't changed my mind about it to this day...
   Also I then got into a big, heated public argument about Sommers with a prominent feminist when I was visiting Chapel Hill soon thereafter. It wasn't my fault! Had to be broken up by the department Chair... Not my fault! TOTALLY NOT MY FAULT!!!
   Anyway, CHS is one of my heroes.

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