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Grace Lavery / Joseph Lavery & Daniel M. Lavery / Mallory Ortberg - "Straight with extra steps" couple trooning out to avoid "dwindling into mere heterosexuality"
Side note it's still funny to me that Lavery wrote an entire weeb academic book without knowing any Japanese. He admits to it in his acceptance speech for an award. Tweet. (archive.md) I've uploaded all three pages but the key comment is here: View attachment 2178945
Translations can be good, but really aren't the same as the source especially for someone doing literary analysis, so it's absolutely wild to me that he wrote an entire academic book that cites Japanese literature without reading a drop of Japanese. To be fair, according to the blurb it mostly focuses on Victorian era weaboos, but way to entirely embody the actual thesis of Said's Orientalism. After reading the synopsis, I genuinely feel that this wouldn't pass muster if he was a historian, but then that's why people do English one supposes. He can act like he's made some sort of historical cultural discovery, while saying Kant six times to distract from the lack of actual substance.
I don't particularly like to defend Lavery but learning enough Japanese to be able to justly interpret Meiji-era works would have taken a good five years or so, so opting to outsource translation makes sense for a book that is more about Victoriana than anything else. On the other hand, perhaps if he had devoted five years to that he would have left Mallory alone.
So Mallory’s idea of socialism entails screaming at anyone who owns a rental property or business, but not on one of the most effective forms of political action: organised labour striking. I don’t actually think they should form a stunning and brave trans union to stifle free speech, but collectively bargaining for more equal pay and benefits among substack writers might genuinely be a worthwhile use of her time instead of writing boring stream of consciousness garble about the Boxcar Children or William Shatner being a “beautiful lesbian” that is only paid for by old fans who feel extreme guilt that The Toast folded due to insolvency.
Which is also funny because like most media that positioned itself progressively as “a place for YOU”, the toast paid its writers a flat freelance rate of $50, which Nicole revealed when Hillary Clinton wrote them a farewell letter. (Archive.md)
Not sure how much they paid their regular staff like Mallory or Nicole Chung their editor (speaking of which at least Mallory admits she needs an editor), but I suppose one really is making a place for women by barely paying anything even though they had a limitless pool of hedge fund money and Nicole owned shoes that could have paid the rent of some of their writers. By the way, have either Mallory or Lavery said anything about the various newsrooms across America that are all unionising? Or would they cross the news media picket line for “survival” (aka exposure).
The difference is that she wasn't complimented all the time, only when she really looked good. So you could count on those comments coming from a genuine place when people were moved to leave them.
Nowadays even ratty t-shirts and greasy hair earn streams of fire emojis for Daniel. Perhaps that feels superficially validating, but it smacks of overcompensation by self-conscious liberals striving to live their Trans Is Beautiful politics through Instagram activity. So much wordless, nonspecific gushing. I can't imagine how that's comforting — it comes off awfully insincere.
Side note it's still funny to me that Lavery wrote an entire weeb academic book without knowing any Japanese. He admits to it in his acceptance speech for an award. Tweet. (archive.md) I've uploaded all three pages but the key comment is here: View attachment 2178945
Translations can be good, but really aren't the same as the source especially for someone doing literary analysis, so it's absolutely wild to me that he wrote an entire academic book that cites Japanese literature without reading a drop of Japanese. To be fair, according to the blurb it mostly focuses on Victorian era weaboos, but way to entirely embody the actual thesis of Said's Orientalism. After reading the synopsis, I genuinely feel that this wouldn't pass muster if he was a historian, but then that's why people do English literature one supposes. He can act like he's made some sort of historical cultural discovery, while saying Kant six times to distract from the lack of actual substance.
How Japan captured the Victorian imagination and transformed Western aesthetics
From the opening of trade with Britain in the 1850s, Japan occupied a unique and contradictory place in the Victorian imagination, regarded as both a rival empire and a cradle of exquisite beauty. Quaint, Exquisite explores the enduring impact of this dramatic encounter, showing how the rise of Japan led to a major transformation of Western aesthetics at the dawn of globalization.
Drawing on philosophy, psychoanalysis, queer theory, textual criticism, and a wealth of in-depth archival research, Grace Lavery provides a radical new genealogy of aesthetic experience in modernity. She argues that the global popularity of Japanese art in the late nineteenth century reflected an imagined universal standard of taste that Kant described as the “subjective universal” condition of aesthetic judgment. The book features illuminating cultural histories of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Mikado, English derivations of the haiku, and retellings of the Madame Butterfly story, and sheds critical light on lesser-known figures such as Winnifred Eaton, an Anglo-Chinese novelist who wrote under the Japanese pseudonym Onoto Watanna, and Mikimoto Ryuzo, a Japanese enthusiast of the Victorian art critic John Ruskin. Lavery also explains the importance and symbolic power of such material objects as W. B. Yeats’s prized katana sword and the “Japanese vellum” luxury editions of Oscar Wilde.
Quaint, Exquisite provides essential insights into the modern understanding of beauty as a vehicle for both intimacy and violence, and the lasting influence of Japanese forms today on writers and artists such as Quentin Tarantino.
Suspected as much, especially (as I noted earlier in the thread) his entire book is framed around the interactions between Meiji Japan and Victorian England, which are anachronous. They did not happen concurrently, yet his “scholarship” acts like they did
I don't particularly like to defend Lavery but learning enough Japanese to be able to justly interpret Meiji-era works would have taken a good five years or so, so opting to outsource translation makes sense for a book that is more about Victoriana than anything else. On the other hand, perhaps if he had devoted five years to that he would have left Mallory alone.
That’s being generous. Starting from fluency? Sure. Starting from zero? Maybe 10 years. Japanese wasn’t modernized until post WWII. The kanji, the grammar and the entire writing system (it was written backwards when horizontal — so IWIK instead of KIWI — for example) was much different than what’s taught to language learners today. It’s all a new set of archaic forms you’d need to learn, unused kanji and flowery shit. It’s like asking an ESL person with an OK or comfortable grasp of English (ie: can read Twitter or this site) to read and understand Shakespeare.
I don't particularly like to defend Lavery but learning enough Japanese to be able to justly interpret Meiji-era works would have taken a good five years or so, so opting to outsource translation makes sense for a book that is more about Victoriana than anything else. On the other hand, perhaps if he had devoted five years to that he would have left Mallory alone.
I could agree with this, except in the “about author” info it states:
Grace E. Lavery is assistant professor of English and affiliated faculty in the Program in Critical Theory and the Center for Japanese Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.
I’d bet you Joe is one of the only professors associated with “Center for Japanese Studies” that has no understanding of the Japanese language.
He might have gotten dangerously close to being a respected academic or scholar if he tried to do something as difficult as immersing himself in the study of Japanese to more fully understand the Japanese side of the equation to write his book. Studying Japanese and understanding it’s cultural works in context and how that influenced Victorian England, and what was misinterpreted or misunderstood due to linguistic and cultural differences that weren’t well translated between the two cultures and languages.
I understand not having years to undertake this type of study for his dissertation (which was on the same topic) but it would have been appropriately challenging for writing a book, which took over seven years to publish after his dissertation. It would have been an extremely difficult undertaking but would have been the type of scholarship that might have produced a book of real importance and insight on the subject.
Sperg
Idk, one of the things that always impressed me about true scholarship was academics doing something as difficult as learning languages just to try fully understand a particular area of study. I had the pleasure of encountering old school curmudgeon literature professors that were fluent in several languages. A drama professor who learned Danish so he could read Isben’s works in the original text. Two professors who became fluent in Russian because they so admired the translated works of Russian novelists and poets they wanted read them in the original. Shit like that always impressed the hell out of me for the discipline, passion and dedication to scholarship it took.
It was also why for many years university professors in the liberal arts were highly respected. They tackled areas of study with real rigor and discipline. I have no doubt Joe met many professors of this stature in the classics and literature faculties at Oxford.
Joe is certainly not of this caliber. He just needed to finally get his Quaint, Exquisite book to press after so many years of dangling it as his upcoming publication. Not surprisingly the book is just more bloviating on the same material he used for his “Empire in a Glass Case” dissertation at UPENN.
The past few years he has tried to tuck himself into the gender studies niche after discovering his lady dick because it has even less academic rigor, and more navel gazing opinion writing, than fucking critical theory. I mean he could be a intellectual giant if his only field of competition is the nutters in gender and trans studies.
It’s amusing because Joe’s writing exemplifies how turgid and unreadable academic writing can be. Everything I’ve read by him comes off as trying to demonstrate he really did his homework and is such a smart boy. He tries so very hard to demonstrate his superior intellect via pointless name dropping and unnecessary references. The only difference for his substack writing is he takes the same academic material and throws in even more pop culture references to show he’s hip and relatable - RuPaul and Kant! Or tries to use the same academic metrics to write absurd academic critiques of shit like Urkle and Lady Gaga ffs.
I honestly think one of the biggest appeals of being a transwoman professor was it greatly lowered the bar for the academic rigor expected in his work and gave him immediate opinion expertise thanks to having a lady dick. I’m sure he’d love to have a writing career more like Mallory’s, but he has a very unoriginal voice and his writing puts one to sleep with its desperate, needless intellectual pirouettes. So he will continue to grind out the academic paper type writing he’s accustomed to doing like a well trained seal, but with huge helpings of pop culture bullshit to try and make it more readable/relatable.
Joe is smart enough, and been around enough real intellectuals at uni, to realize he’s actually not that smart and his academic rigor and writing is mediocre. Therefore he troon shields, name drops and uses lots of intellectually empty rhetoric to hide his inequities.
Outside of world of “academic writing and publishing” he has no particular talent or even a slightly original or interesting voice. He relies completely on high brow literate and cultural references to give his writing meaning and gravitas. This is fine for the world of critical theory writing, but absolute turgid poison outside of it.
This is why he needed to coattail on Mallory and trooning out to get his first professional writing gig outside of academic circles. I think he dreams of being a writer but utterly lacks the talent and originality required. This is why he also leans so heavily on being outrageous, degenerate and ironic - to cover up the lack of actual creativity and originality.
Joe actually has far more in common with art history professor Lily than he does with Mallory. He can also can feel superior to Lily career-wise, there’s no hyper-literate competition from her and she’s more attractive. Lily is much better for Joe’s fragile ego.
Mallory is the only professional artist or creator in the throuple. Joe and Lilly are professional academics that study and write about artists.
You would think this would make the Mallory the apex member of the throuple- she’s the professional writer, she’s actually known outside of academia - but it’s the opposite. Joe is extremely resentful of Mallory’s career and is an expert at negging and backhanded praise of her work. (I have no idea if Lily resents her or not, but she certainly knows she is Joe’s handmaiden, not Mallory’s) He’s managed to make her desperate for his academic stamp of approval.
There’s a weird thing in the human psyche, esp with some women. If they are particularly talented or beautiful they get bored with praise but are like moths to a flame towards someone who criticizes them. (The old negging a hot chick does work very well on some women.)
Joe easily detected this trait in Mallory, not about her looks but about her writing. Joe was so disinterested in Mallory physically that only playing Dr Frankenstein with her made her interesting to him, at least for awhile. I don’t think Joe has any sexual attraction to Mallory now save for the pleasure he gets from degradation and humiliation of her. Lily appearance is obviously what gets his rocks off.
I don't particularly like to defend Lavery but learning enough Japanese to be able to justly interpret Meiji-era works would have taken a good five years or so, so opting to outsource translation makes sense for a book that is more about Victoriana than anything else. On the other hand, perhaps if he had devoted five years to that he would have left Mallory alone.
No I kinda expect liberal arts professors at Joe's level to have some kind of autistic dedication to their craft and specialty.
Reminds me of a Harvard admissions form from around the turn of the 20th century - applicants were expected to know both Greek AND Latin. If you read anything by academics/authors of that period, you quickly find out that some kind of translation of an ancient work was nearly always their first published work. Fast forward to Anno Domini 2021 and Mr Lavery knows only English despite heading some Japanese literary association and his biblio is filled with "Trans Femininity in the American sitcom" and other tripe. We've replaced dead white males with living lazy pop culture xirs.
Imagine working all your life to get into one of these schools, taking on ungodly loans to afford it, only for your classes to be Zoom calls with this creature. (I realize Ol Joe has been on sabbatical for most of the pandemic, but still.)
Suspected as much, especially (as I noted earlier in the thread) his entire book is framed around the interactions between Meiji Japan and Victorian England, which are anachronous. They did not happen concurrently, yet his “scholarship” acts like they did
Can you explain more about this? I don't know anything about Japanese history, but Google tells me the Meiji era was 1868-1912. Victoria reigned from 1837-1901, but Victorianists often cover the long nineteenth century/long Victorian era (1789-1914). Without having read his book, I think it's not necessarily egregious to take on this subject without reading Japanese if the work is primarily about how English culture responded to Japan. But I'll definitely defer to those of you who are willing to slog through his writing.
Joe's RateMyProfessor reviews are actually pretty glowing, so I'm willing to believe he's a good lecturer. Totally possible to be both a completely insane narcissist and good at teaching undergrads.
Can you explain more about this? I don't know anything about Japanese history, but Google tells me the Meiji era was 1868-1912. Victoria reigned from 1837-1901, but Victorianists often cover the long nineteenth century/long Victorian era (1789-1914). Without having read his book, I think it's not necessarily egregious to take on this subject without reading Japanese if the work is primarily about how English culture responded to Japan. But I'll definitely defer to those of you who are willing to slog through his writing.
Joe's RateMyProfessor reviews are actually pretty glowing, so I'm willing to believe he's a good lecturer. Totally possible to be both a completely insane narcissist and good at teaching undergrads.
Let’s be clear here, teachers get glowing reviews on “ratemyprofessor” for being easy to get A’s with minimal workload, not having strict mandatory attendance policies and “not being boring”. I’m sure Joe is the professor that Berkeley undergrads think is so cool. The professor all the undergrads gave rave reviews to at my university did so because the twit let them substitute half the reading list with movies - and not even good ones. They, of course didn’t say this in the reviews, but this was the well known reason they were the most popular undergrad English-lit professor.
I don’t know if the website has undergoing any radical transformation in recent years but it was known as a guidebook to the easiest way to ensure a high GPA with the least amount of effort in my memory.
Dear Prudence was a contract, part-time position. Mallory took the Substack deal to get health care and focus on writing full time. (Like Katelyn Burns, you schedule major troon surgery the second you're hired.)
Jesus christ, literal crack heads can get themselves on a state health insurance plan. Danny was dropping tons of money on ugly clothes, a huge apartment, and endless assorted 'stuff' and I guess decided to just wing it when it came to health care? I guess he figured the Bank of Nicole would take care of any emergency? If I was her, I'd be pissed.
Edit: And while he was on hormones! He paid out of pocket for all this shit?
I could agree with this, except in the “about author” info it states:
Grace E. Lavery is assistant professor of English and affiliated faculty in the Program in Critical Theory and the Center for Japanese Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.
I’d bet you Joe is one of the only professors associated with “Center for Japanese Studies” that has no understanding of the Japanese language.
He might have gotten dangerously close to being a respected academic or scholar if he tried to do something as difficult as immersing himself in the study of Japanese to more fully understand the Japanese side of the equation to write his book. Studying Japanese and understanding it’s cultural works in context and how that influenced Victorian England, and what was misinterpreted or misunderstood due to linguistic and cultural differences that weren’t well translated between the two cultures and languages.
I understand not having years to undertake this type of study for his dissertation (which was on the same topic) but it would have been appropriately challenging for writing a book, which took over seven years to publish after his dissertation. It would have been an extremely difficult undertaking but would have been the type of scholarship that might have produced a book of real importance and insight on the subject.
Sperg
Idk, one of the things that always impressed me about true scholarship was academics doing something as difficult as learning languages just to try fully understand a particular area of study. I had the pleasure of encountering old school curmudgeon literature professors that were fluent in several languages. A drama professor who learned Danish so he could read Isben’s works in the original text. Two professors who became fluent in Russian because they so admired the translated works of Russian novelists and poets they wanted read them in the original. Shit like that always impressed the hell out of me for the discipline, passion and dedication to scholarship it took.
It was also why for many years university professors in the liberal arts were highly respected. They tackled areas of study with real rigor and discipline. I have no doubt Joe met many professors of this stature in the classics and literature faculties at Oxford.
Joe is certainly not of this caliber. He just needed to finally get his Quaint, Exquisite book to press after so many years of dangling it as his upcoming publication. Not surprisingly the book is just more bloviating on the same material he used for his “Empire in a Glass Case” dissertation at UPENN.
The past few years he has tried to tuck himself into the gender studies niche after discovering his lady dick because it has even less academic rigor, and more navel gazing opinion writing, than fucking critical theory. I mean he could be a intellectual giant if his only field of competition is the nutters in gender and trans studies.
It’s amusing because Joe’s writing exemplifies how turgid and unreadable academic writing can be. Everything I’ve read by him comes off as trying to demonstrate he really did his homework and is such a smart boy. He tries so very hard to demonstrate his superior intellect via pointless name dropping and unnecessary references. The only difference for his substack writing is he takes the same academic material and throws in even more pop culture references to show he’s hip and relatable - RuPaul and Kant! Or tries to use the same academic metrics to write absurd academic critiques of shit like Urkle and Lady Gaga ffs.
I honestly think one of the biggest appeals of being a transwoman professor was it greatly lowered the bar for the academic rigor expected in his work and gave him immediate opinion expertise thanks to having a lady dick. I’m sure he’d love to have a writing career more like Mallory’s, but he has a very unoriginal voice and his writing puts one to sleep with its desperate, needless intellectual pirouettes. So he will continue to grind out the academic paper type writing he’s accustomed to doing like a well trained seal, but with huge helpings of pop culture bullshit to try and make it more readable/relatable.
Joe is smart enough, and been around enough real intellectuals at uni, to realize he’s actually not that smart and his academic rigor and writing is mediocre. Therefore he troon shields, name drops and uses lots of intellectually empty rhetoric to hide his inequities.
Outside of world of “academic writing and publishing” he has no particular talent or even a slightly original or interesting voice. He relies completely on high brow literate and cultural references to give his writing meaning and gravitas. This is fine for the world of critical theory writing, but absolute turgid poison outside of it.
This is why he needed to coattail on Mallory and trooning out to get his first professional writing gig outside of academic circles. I think he dreams of being a writer but utterly lacks the talent and originality required. This is why he also leans so heavily on being outrageous, degenerate and ironic - to cover up the lack of actual creativity and originality.
Joe actually has far more in common with art history professor Lily than he does with Mallory. He can also can feel superior to Lily career-wise, there’s no hyper-literate competition from her and she’s more attractive. Lily is much better for Joe’s fragile ego.
Mallory is the only professional artist or creator in the throuple. Joe and Lilly are professional academics that study and write about artists.
You would think this would make the Mallory the apex member of the throuple- she’s the professional writer, she’s actually known outside of academia - but it’s the opposite. Joe is extremely resentful of Mallory’s career and is an expert at negging and backhanded praise of her work. (I have no idea if Lily resents her or not, but she certainly knows she is Joe’s handmaiden, not Mallory’s) He’s managed to make her desperate for his academic stamp of approval.
There’s a weird thing in the human psyche, esp with some women. If they are particularly talented or beautiful they get bored with praise but are like moths to a flame towards someone who criticizes them. (The old negging a hot chick does work very well on some women.)
Joe easily detected this trait in Mallory, not about her looks but about her writing. Joe was so disinterested in Mallory physically that only playing Dr Frankenstein with her made her interesting to him, at least for awhile. I don’t think Joe has any sexual attraction to Mallory now save for the pleasure he gets from degradation and humiliation of her. Lily appearance is obviously what gets his rocks off.
So all this because a college in Commiefornia decided to hire and give tenure to a deeply disturbed, mentally ill man in grave need of long term institutionalization with several CC's of Thorazine for good measure.
This is what college for all gets you these days. And the degrees aren't worth any more than a booklet of S&H Green Stamps.
Jesus christ, literal crack heads can get themselves on a state health insurance plan. Danny was dropping tons of money on ugly clothes, a huge apartment, and endless assorted 'stuff' and I guess decided to just wing it when it came to health care? I guess he figured the Bank of Nicole would take care of any emergency? If I was her, I'd be pissed.
Edit: And while he was on hormones! He paid out of pocket for all this shit?
For that matter, why couldn't Joe add him to his plan?
For whatever reason, Mallory has never had to worry about money and never got health care.
Her top surgery was $6,000. I remember because the article she wrote on it is called "The best $6,XXX I ever spent."
Nicole is such an enabler with this, I can't.
It’s amusing because Joe’s writing exemplifies how turgid and unreadable academic writing can be. Everything I’ve read by him comes off as trying to demonstrate he really did his homework and is such a smart boy. He tries so very hard to demonstrate his superior intellect via pointless name dropping and unnecessary references. The only difference for his substack writing is he takes the same academic material and throws in even more pop culture references to show he’s hip and relatable - RuPaul and Kant! Or tries to use the same academic metrics to write absurd academic critiques of shit like Urkle and Lady Gaga ffs.
Joe must have missed the day when his professor went over making sure your audience understands who you are quoting. Academic & scientific writers don’t just name drop & expect their entire audience to get it. There is a rule to MFA & APA style, to cite, & explain.
It would be considered proper to give a descriptive about anyone name-dropped, such as Foucault, “known as one of the forefathers of post modern theory...” & perhaps mention something he is known for.
It’s good practice to always include that info.
Joe’s writing is so unclear because he constantly name-drops, does not introduce or explain why he is name-dropping, & mainly, he never has much to say.
In that last substack, he used an old, essay writing trick, that I’ve never seen him use. He laid out three premises he was going to prove. He did so in an odd place, but, he did so, so I attempted to read it.
Guess what? He never proved them. He didn’t connect any material, he had no overall thesis statement, his writing is seriously sloppy & all over the place.
Not trying to be mean, but I’ve never read someone so good at saying nothing at all.
He uses ten cent words, where five cent words would get the job done, not to mention make his shit slightly more readable.
It’s really, actually, fucking ghastly.
He uses those words to hide, though, not to clarify. If he clarified his writing, it would be clear he isn’t saying much of anything.
I skimmed & attempted to read this latest substack, but it was so full of nothing. Really not trying to be petty.
I’d attempted to read his “scholarly work” before. He has a piece on his website called “Egg theory’s early style” & it suffers from the same thing.
No thesis, no explanation, no fucking point. There are surely authors & academics I don’t care for, but I’ll admit when they write well, or are able to articulate clearly.
Joe uses “academic/ scholarly” to camouflage his word vomit. How did he graduate Oxford w/ that bile? He must have written with more clarity in his undergrad, as I don’t know one professor who would pass his ass, on any recent essay or “study.”
Joe must have missed the day when his professor went over making sure your audience understands who you are quoting. Academic & scientific writers don’t just name drop & expect their entire audience to get it. There is a rule to MFA & APA style, to cite, & explain.
It would be considered proper to give a descriptive about anyone name-dropped, such as Foucault, “known as one of the forefathers of post modern theory...” & perhaps mention something he is known for.
It’s good practice to always include that info.
Joe’s writing is so unclear because he constantly name-drops, does not introduce or explain why he is name-dropping, & mainly, he never has much to say.
In that last substack, he used an old, essay writing trick, that I’ve never seen him use. He laid out three premises he was going to prove. He did so in an odd place, but, he did so, so I attempted to read it.
Guess what? He never proved them. He didn’t connect any material, he had no overall thesis statement, his writing is seriously sloppy & all over the place.
Not trying to be mean, but I’ve never read someone so good at saying nothing at all.
He uses ten cent words, where five cent words would get the job done, not to mention make his shit slightly more readable.
It’s really, actually, fucking ghastly.
He uses those words to hide, though, not to clarify. If he clarified his writing, it would be clear he isn’t saying much of anything.
I skimmed & attempted to read this latest substack, but it was so full of nothing. Really not trying to be petty.
I’d attempted to read his “scholarly work” before. He has a piece on his website called “Egg theory’s early style” & it suffers from the same thing.
No thesis, no explanation, no fucking point. There are surely authors & academics I don’t care for, but I’ll admit when they write well, or are able to articulate clearly.
Joe uses “academic/ scholarly” to camouflage his word vomit. How did he graduate Oxford w/ that bile? He must have written with more clarity in his undergrad, as I don’t know one professor who would pass his ass, on any recent essay or “study.”
I think this is especially true of critical theory scholars. They think the whole point is wordplay, so it's extremely masturbatory because they don't seriously expect people to agree with them, follow their arguments, or respond to anything but their "style." It's all "what if Kant and Urkel were saying the same thing, and what if that thing wasn't anything you could understand?" It's completely pointless and self-contained within their own head. And postmodernism being what it is, it's just supposed to show how malleable ideas are and how you can make them say whatever you want, and it's all valid and true and interesting, regardless of how impenetrable it is. Judith Butler, case in point.
I've read philosophers and theologians that are extremely easy to follow even when they're writing for an academic audience, so it's possible in even the most confusing fields. But Joe is aping queer theorists who were just trying to see what they could get away with and trying to act like being clear is being PEDESTRIAN.
Even those (imo) horrible queer theory writers had something to say. At least the early ones. Often, it sucked, they said horrible shit, like Butler, yes. But still, they made their terrible points. Joe has no point.
That “Egg theory’s early style” piece of shit Joe wrote has a fucking hilarious reference by the way. He cites a footnote to the notion of “horrible terfs on Twitter” & then name drops a bunch of “terf” Twitter names he hates.
In an “academic” piece of writing. It’s kind of mind blowing, & fucking hilarious. Made the 20 minutes I spent perusing that awful piece of writing totally worth it, to laugh at his ridiculous, out of place, won’t stand the test of time, footnotes. He didn’t explain why he even mentioned them, either. Just that he didn’t like them.
ETA: typo
Joe must have missed the day when his professor went over making sure your audience understands who you are quoting. Academic & scientific writers don’t just name drop & expect their entire audience to get it. There is a rule to MFA & APA style, to cite, & explain.
It would be considered proper to give a descriptive about anyone name-dropped, such as Foucault, “known as one of the forefathers of post modern theory...” & perhaps mention something he is known for.
It’s good practice to always include that info.
Joe’s writing is so unclear because he constantly name-drops, does not introduce or explain why he is name-dropping, & mainly, he never has much to say.
In that last substack, he used an old, essay writing trick, that I’ve never seen him use. He laid out three premises he was going to prove. He did so in an odd place, but, he did so, so I attempted to read it.
Guess what? He never proved them. He didn’t connect any material, he had no overall thesis statement, his writing is seriously sloppy & all over the place.
Not trying to be mean, but I’ve never read someone so good at saying nothing at all.
He uses ten cent words, where five cent words would get the job done, not to mention make his shit slightly more readable.
It’s really, actually, fucking ghastly.
He uses those words to hide, though, not to clarify. If he clarified his writing, it would be clear he isn’t saying much of anything.
I skimmed & attempted to read this latest substack, but it was so full of nothing. Really not trying to be petty.
I’d attempted to read his “scholarly work” before. He has a piece on his website called “Egg theory’s early style” & it suffers from the same thing.
No thesis, no explanation, no fucking point. There are surely authors & academics I don’t care for, but I’ll admit when they write well, or are able to articulate clearly.
Joe uses “academic/ scholarly” to camouflage his word vomit. How did he graduate Oxford w/ that bile? He must have written with more clarity in his undergrad, as I don’t know one professor who would pass his ass, on any recent essay or “study.”
Two examples where as a prank people submitted absolute nonsense garbage that sounded very intellectual and used big words to post modern /critical theory academic journals...and they were published. It was done to highlight the awful standard of scholarship in “post modern cultural studies”
There are very good reasons these fields get lambasted and accused of being steaming piles of bullshit. It’s not just Joe, but he’s an excellent example of the vapid and intellectual emptiness that plagues these academic niches. In fact, he’s sort of a perfect poster boy for the problem.
I’ll highlight this little part from the Grievance Studies affair because it’s worth it.
Included among the articles that were published were arguments that dogs engage in rape culture and that men could reduce their transphobia by anally penetrating themselves with sex toys as well as Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf rewritten in feminist language.[2][4] The first of these had won special recognition from the journal that published it.
It still says A WHOLE LOT about Berkley, doesn't it?
My small private university had the practice (along with the area community colleges) of having students fill out a review form about the professor. There was always space to write out, in your own words, what you liked or disliked about the course, the tests, the pedagogy, and anything else you can think of including whether you would recommend this class or professor to anyone else.
One downside is, the university is very small. That means a lot fewer profs and fewer course choices/times. So, unlike a state system school or community college, if you ended up with a disturbingly mentally ill sex pervert like Joe Blow here, IDK what you could've done about that.
You have to figure that the entire department is pozzed and even the department head can mess you up--especially if any of these classes are important for achieving credits toward your major.
I was really hopeful Trump would actually do something about the FAFSA and get these departments defunded. Looks like we're in for a lot more of: Walking, Talking, Farting, Queefing Workplace Liabilities 101.
Behold, the first truly masculine hobby Mallory has revealed. I hope she blew a bunch of substack dosh on Warhammer toys. Lol She should get together with Fire to play Warhammer, he’s all in on this shit and desperate for other troons to play with.
So I guess Mallory highly covets the Adam’s apple that some transmen develop on T?
Can you explain more about this? I don't know anything about Japanese history, but Google tells me the Meiji era was 1868-1912. Victoria reigned from 1837-1901, but Victorianists often cover the long nineteenth century/long Victorian era (1789-1914). Without having read his book, I think it's not necessarily egregious to take on this subject without reading Japanese if the work is primarily about how English culture responded to Japan. But I'll definitely defer to those of you who are willing to slog through his writing.
Joe's RateMyProfessor reviews are actually pretty glowing, so I'm willing to believe he's a good lecturer. Totally possible to be both a completely insane narcissist and good at teaching undergrads.
Late, but of course this fucking tranny idiot can’t even academia correctly.
Victorian Britain and Taisho-era Japan could never “encounter” one another because the fucking Taisho era didn’t begin until a full 11 years after the death of Queen Victoria — you know, that person whose life literally defines the beginning and end of the Victorian Era?
The era you’re looking for Joe is MEIJI. You fucking idiot mong.
Where’s my PhD? I just fucking fixed Joe’s book for him.
tl;dr For a time, Joe thought Taisho and Victorian eras were synchronous.
Again, sorry. Chalk it up to late night posting and the fact I spent all weekend reading Japanese sources about Emperor Taisho (who was, by all accounts, actually retarded) that continually made all sorts of hilarious assertions about his mental faculties so that they didn’t actually have to write “this dude was legit retarded.”
Sorry. I misremembered the mistake. It was like 2am when I made that post. Please forgive me.
An older post contained something Joe wrote about the book which stated:
“ I am fascinated, too, by the encounter between Victorian Britain and Taisho Japan as it continues to impress itself on our contemporary moment.”
Which prompted me to write:
tl;dr For a time, Joe thought Taisho and Victorian eras were synchronous.
Again, sorry. Chalk it up to late night posting and the fact I spent all weekend reading Japanese sources about Emperor Taisho (who was, by all accounts, actually retarded) that continually made all sorts of hilarious assertions about his mental faculties so that they didn’t actually have to write “this dude was legit retarded.”
I’m glad this got mentioned because I had no idea Hirohito’s father was retarded. I love reading about how royal courts dealt with literal idiots/mongoloids who managed to inherit dynastic power. It’s like some of history’s best absurdist black comedy. It must have been particularly hilarious in Japan given their absolute deathly serious reverence for the emperor, so I’m going to have to dig deep into the details on this.
Also, if this is what things were looking like in Japan in 1890 I think the Victorians had a far greater influence on Japan than vice versa. This is such a bizarre Japanese wood block print.
