Gender Studies Seminar, Leeds University
4 June 2015
Okay, a bit of a long one here
folks, so make yourself comfortable, I hope I will be able to keep your
attention or that you will come back and finish reading this later. It deals
with some, but by no means all, of my issues with Gender Studies.
One of the good things about
being a graduate of Leeds University, and living not far from it, is that I
occasionally get to go to free seminars there, such as the one offered
yesterday by the Interdisciplinary Department of Gender Studies.
Before you flee at the mention of
the pseudo-science that calls itself Gender Studies, please let me reassure you
that these days it is high on my BS-ometer, but that is the reason why I feel
the need to take opportunities like this to give myself something to get my
teeth into as I begin my task of destroying its feeble basis and excuses for
existence.
Not that I hold with the idea
that sex and gender differences should not be scientifically examined. No problem with the idea, it is just that
the current dominant theoretical ground on which GS stands is as firm as
quicksand. In other words, it has no
firm footing in scientific evidence.
Let me fill a little
background. I had a good start with
this subject when as an undergraduate in the seventies I was tutored by Dr John
Blundell, already an established figure in the field of physiological and
biological Psychology, and later to become Professor of the entire School of
Psychology at Leeds University. I
attended his lectures on these subjects and found out much about brain mechanisms
such as the hypothalamus and its complex control of hunger and thirst
homeostatic drives and so on.
By the mid seventies much had
also been learnt about sex drives and how prenatal hormones had
predeterminitive effects on both these and gender identity. Whatever people may think of rat studies
there is an immense amount of hard data that has accrued from them over many
decades and it would be foolish to ignore things that have been learnt from
them.
So when we come to gender
studies, one might imagine that what has been learnt about sex differences
might be thought of as valuable information which could deeply inform our
studies of gender.
Sadly, you might be wrong. Gender Studies may promote itself as
‘Inter-Disciplinary’, but there is no significant input from the academic
discipline of Psychology, certainly not from neuro-psychology or related
fields. It is taken as axiomatic that
there are no significant psychological or behavioural differences between the
sexes.
Had they arrived at this conclusion
after studying the evidence of generations of experimental psychologists, not
only in neurophysiology but in long term behavioural observation and come to
this conclusion, one might disagree, but at least hope that they could provide
a rationale for their conclusions with reference to the overview of the
evidence they had sifted through.
No such luck I’m afraid. As I have said, it is axiomatic to academics
in Gender Studies that there are no innate differences in psychology (thought
or behaviour) between men and women. So
the biological developmental evidence doesn’t need to be looked at. They aren’t interested and it actually
becomes something they resent. My
assessment of this is that it is considered politically incorrect to suggest
such differences since the current political agenda seeks to equalise everyone.
But what is wrong with Equality I
hear you say! Are you suggesting that
we are or should not all be Equal?
Well, as a Philosopher, a Psychologist and an Art Therapist, I will have
to insist on quibbling about this, well, quite a lot.
The hordes of the Cultural
Marxist Comintern are probably lining me up for re-education by now, but
really, if this concept is so important then it needs to be clear what it
means, so please bear with me.
I recall my first conversation
about this with someone who is probably still as much of a Feminist today as
she was forty years ago when we had this conversation. We were discussing sex differences and
women’s equality, rights and feminism.
I said ‘But there are differences between the sexes which go beyond
physical differences, surely there is psychological evidence for this?’ ‘Yes’ she replied, ‘but we can’t
acknowledge that, or it will be used against us.’ This lady was a wonderful person and I count her as a friend to
this day, but that is not an intellectually honest and defensible
position. Truth cannot be hidden or
reversed when it has an important bearing on a subject.
Which brings me tangentially to a
point which came up yesterday. The final
speaker of the afternoon was Jon Mermelstein, an American exchange student in
his twenties who spoke about ‘Lad culture in American Universities’. I thought he was actually the best speaker
of the day, and I learnt a lot about frat houses on US campuses which I would
not otherwise have ever come across, and it is certainly the case that some of
the behaviour he detailed is bang out of order as some say here in
Blighty. However he gave one example
that I had to pick up on, the case of ‘Mattress Girl’ Emma Sulkowitz, the young
lady who dragged her mattress around with her for an extended period after she
claimed that a young man had raped her on it.
The point about this being that it had been demonstrated to the
satisfaction of her college that the young man was not guilty of rape. They had had an on-off relationship for a
while but had parted and it was only some time later that she started sending
him lewd texts and eventually made her allegations against him. In a case such as this one is forced to
choose between the evidence and the claims of the plaintiff. I am not convinced that entirely unsupported
claims of rape should be entertained without some external corroboration. I know this is an unpopular view amongst
feminists, but how far should one stretch the requirements of legal proof in
such an instance?
Anyway, the fact is that she
never substantiated the allegations to the college, and she has won no case
against him or in a court of law.
I respect Mr Mermelstein
immensely for the fact that when I put it to him that this was a bogus case he
immediately conceded and said that he had not been aware of it, and that he
should have looked for a better example.
There was dissent against me in
the audience, and I’m really disappointed to say that a young lady with whom I
have been acquainted since the Occupy Leeds event in City Square in 2011 and
who now is involved as a post graduate in the Department of Gender Studies
spoke up against me. I am happy that she
did not contest my assertion (based on facts I had researched) that this was a
fraudulent case, but seemed to argue that it didn’t matter, and rather that it
was justified because of other cases that were real. Or at least that was my understanding at the time, several others
were speaking against me so I may not have it entirely correct, but that seemed
to be the gist.
In a way this summarises my whole
problem with the supposed academic discipline of Gender Studies. As I have said, they ignore or reject the
objective evidence on their subject, and in this precise case, where even the
person presenting the evidence deferred, others, zealots to the cause press
forward.
The implications of such
intellectual dishonesty are quite extensive.
Firstly, the subject matter of the day was ‘Lad Culture’. As I have said, some of this behaviour,
especially on college campuses is quite awful, if what is claimed to happen
does indeed happen. I wouldn’t contest
that.
But you have to get your evidence
straight. Making false allegations of
rape against an innocent young man who had understood that their relationship
was entirely consensual is bad enough, but then others wanting to use this
false claim as evidence in the feminist campaigns which tar men as sexual
predators is completely unacceptable.
Yes, there are sexual predators out there, but you have not correctly
identified them, and you have instead identified an individual and by
implication young men similar to him, falsely.
A question I did not get round to
asking because there were too many other points to pick up, and I could tell I
was already making myself unpopular with some of the more high profile members
of the day’s presentation team for asking the kind of questions that they
didn’t approve of, was about the MGTOW movement in the States. (Our American guest might have had something
to say about that.) MGTOW to British
and European readers is ‘Men Going Their Own Way’, and is apparently a
phenomenon which has recently arisen in the States amongst young men who feel
that Feminism has attacked men and left them with nothing.
I don’t really agree with the
reaction of these young men, it sounds defeatist to me, and going into a monk
like reclusion from engagement with women can only lead to none of them
producing children for the next generation, so it is kind of crazy, but I can
see the psychological mechanics behind this, defeatist as it may be.
False rape accusations are
extremely serious. Claiming that a high
profile lie should be perpetuated because it promotes a larger truth is even
more dangerous. The promotion of this
lie actually plays into a bigger picture which I believe is a part of the MGTOW
rationale, that of false rape accusation.
To even suggest that one rape allegation has ever been false is
something that would probably enrage many feminists. But I have heard the
possibility raised that there might be a vein of false accusations, perhaps
arising from regrets about ended relationships going on. That there could be a covert, or even
unconscious revenge behaviour being here enacted? We are so hobbled by Political Correctness that any examination
of a ‘victim’ is seen as ‘insensitive’.
This is a license for falsehood.
Would a perceived ‘victim’ ever exploit their position and make false
allegations?
False accusations, characterised
by say, well, Mattress Girl? When a
culture exists which refuses to question and analyse because it is
‘insensitive’ then the door is wide open for abuse of what one might call a
privilege ~ the privilege of being above question. We hear a lot about ‘privilege’ these days, but being protected
from questions or investigation and having every word you say believed fits the
very meaning of ‘privilege’ ~ ‘Private Law’.
They are above the law that applies to the men that they accuse, in a
legal realm of their own.
So with this kind of culture of
lies and superior privilege, I can’t really blame the MGTOW boys if they have
had enough and back away from engagement with that kind of reality, even if it
is non survival adaptive for our species.
As a Psychologist my view has to
be one of evolutionary adaptation. If a
behaviour or characteristic is not evolutionarily adaptive, then it will not
carry on to the future. The MGTOWs may
be non-survival adaptive, but so are the Feminists who seemingly make it so
hard for men to have relationships with them that they give up.
We may be a little more complex
than the sticklebacks that I heard Niko Tinbergen describe to a packed Rupert
Beckett lecture theatre in 1976, but the biological drives which motivate us
are deeply rooted in as many billions of years of cellular evolution as
theirs. Everything in us is
biology. Thought is biology.
Feminism is deeply ingrained with
abstract idealistic ideology which refuses to take this into account, or
criticises it as ‘reactionary’ and ‘bourgeois’. The Fabian Society stained glass window shows Sydney Webb about
to smash the world, held in place by GB Shaw, waiting for the hammer blow. It is true that occasional catastrophes have
caused the world to be remade and new layers of evolution have emerged, but
these are seismic, geological, meteorological or cosmic events which we cannot
avoid. To actively seek, or even create
catastrophe, as Sydney Webb is seen about to do, is reckless, a dangerous act
of egoism which he seems about to inflict on all humanity. I shall have to return to the theme of how
Marxism has claimed the right to invade everyone’s life and change it to the
will of another at a later time as this is too large a subject to allow myself
any further digression, but it is a big part of all this. In one sentence, Marxism has turned Feminism
into a weapon that is being used against the human race, especially the west
who have been most influenced by it.
I used to call myself a Feminist,
and in the days when one was still seeking empowerment this might have meant
something, but in the last decade or two it has gone somewhere else. Like the academics of Gender Studies,
Feminists are often not too keen on recognising factual reality. In this case, the factual reality of
survival adaptation is that women need to bear enough children to replace our
people. Not every woman, but enough to
balance out the loss from old age. Kind
of basic statement of fact one might think, but the implications are
enormous. The social trends that have
occurred in the last forty years or more have led to women having children at
much later ages, and therefore having fewer.
This is partly due to economic pressures put on the population by the
international power elites, but would not be possible if the social values
around this had not changed. In other
words, not only providing income to make ends meet, but rather pursuing a
career, which thus takes the place of a family. In her late thirties the career woman might think about when and
if she will have children, but even if she does, she will probably only take a
short time off for the childbearing and then be back to work with the child in
day care.
So the birth rate falls. When I mentioned this to the young lady in
an adjacent seat before the seminar began, she said, ‘Yes, but in an
overpopulated world that is okay’. My
reply was that in a world where all nations have a falling birth rate, that
would be fine, but when one group such as Europeans has a falling birth rate, and
the rest of the world does not, then eventually Europeans will become an
insignificant minority. We are only 8%
of world population, when a century ago we were 15%. The medical advances our scientists have made allow other races
to breed at a faster rate, while our own people, thinking they are being
responsible, decline and dwindle in number.
She said she hadn’t thought about it like that. I hope she will now.
So the social change which
Feminism allows also reduces the place in the world of those who practise
it. Feminism is less survival adaptive
than Islam. Wow. Think about it. Islam is an ideology which produces more babies than Feminism,
therefore it is more survival adaptive.
Pretty scary thought that? I
don’t want to end up overwhelmed by Muslims, so I think we need to find a more
survival adaptive ideology than the one which is a big part of the decline of
Europeans world wide. In case you
haven’t heard, if something doesn’t change big time, native English people can
expect to be a minority in England about forty years from now. I’ll probably be dead in 2055, but I don’t
want to live my declining years in a Sharia Caliphate, so we’d better start
thinking about how we can prevent it.
One of the most astounding things
about Feminists and Gender Studies academics is that they seem to be in favour
of supporting Islam in general, or at least are so engaged with ‘diversity’
that they are entirely blind to the fact that if Islam gains an hegemony in
Britain then we can say goodbye to equal rights for women, gay people and so
forth. But that would only be the
beginning. Britain is not a tiny banana
republic. If Britain fell to Islam
there would be major triumphalism and repression of the native British. To those who say this is paranoia, I would
suggest they look at the history of Islam and how all fifty or so countries
which follow it were converted through the sword, Jihad. This is the real terrifying outcome option
which too many people refuse to acknowledge.
I’m still hearing people say that it is xenophobic to not want millions
of foreigners to swarm into our stable countries because we have to look after
them, they are such poor victims.
Feminism fails to understand the dangers in this to themselves. Well these are subjects I will have to hold
over for later, as I still have a lot to say about Gender Studies.
While I’m around this area I’ll
just briefly mention what was to me an egregious example of this kind of thing
in action. In the first part of the
event Dr Alison Phipps, Head of the Dept of Gender
Studies a the University of Sussex and Dr Vanita Sundaram, University of York
spoke about their work on ‘lad behaviour’.
In the Q and A session after this the finding that Black and Minority Ethnic
groups had a higher incidence of male sexual molestation of women came up. In a very nice demonstration of experimental
confirmation bias I heard Dr Phipps excuse this away as being the result of
different cultural values and the men not understanding the non-verbal signals
the women were giving. It was never
suggested that some of these cultures might have values which are inimical to
ours or that of Feminists. Personally,
I should say from my own knowledge of young men in the 19/20 age group, that
many of them have very little idea about the signals women are giving off and
misinterpret them for whatever reason.
The bias was clearly to let BME perpetrators off the hook, but pin the
blame squarely on the native British lads.
So
these middle class academics cloak their results with the attitudes they wish
to promote.
At the core of this is the abdication of agency and
responsibility that we see. This arises
from a sense of guilt which has been covertly sown amongst us and with which
too many have been infected. It was
truly cringeworthy to hear Michael
Conroy of ‘A Call to Men, UK’ talk about how ‘men are the problem’ and how they
need to be trained from birth to act respectfully. I could almost see the iron collar about his neck and the chain
leading to his handler.
I would suggest that
neither men nor women are the problem, but that we need to negotiate and evolve
our relationships on the basis of our individual differences. So women need to respect how men are, and
men need to do that to women.
An aside again to
my old Occupation comrade. I spoke to
her shortly before the show began, and she talked about doing her PhD on the
sexualisation of men. I asked her about
the influence of testosterone on this and how she would cover it. Her reply was to ask why she would need to,
since some women have polycystic ovaries which produce testosterone. Well, a very small number do, and the amount
of testosterone they produce varies.
Some women have so much that they suffer hirsutism and severe acne. Others have only minor or no consequences
due to lower levels. She then asked me
what is ‘normal’ anyway with regard to hormone levels, and my simple reply was
‘What is the case with the vast majority of women’. Fortunately we didn’t have time to go into the eternal regress
which Gender Studies academics are prone to, deconstructing every concept which
doesn’t fit their world view, until we are in a world where everything is
merely a construct and could be entirely different if we chose it to be. To them we don’t live in a world of
biological bodies in time with hormones and developmental processes, but in a
world of ideals, where these things are politically incorrect impositions to be
resented. Reproduction as the gift of
women for the perpetuation of our people is turned into a burden to be shunned
as if it is the fault of men punishing women.
Neither reason nor
empirical evidence is of any use to the Gender Studies academic who pursues
only the correct ideology which seeks always to elevate the victim and control
any threat. This is an ideology which
treats people as caged animals to be controlled, but surely we all know that an
animal which is caged can become dangerous when it is not allowed to express
its instinctual drives. Men have strong drives which are mostly absent in
women, who have other feelings and motivations. Sure, there is an overlap, survival adaptation likes that. I have to say these things because we have
been propagandised that there is no difference for so long that the Gender
Studies people have been successful to some degree in convincing the general
population. Only where the propaganda
has been run mind you, but that is ubiquitous in European civilisations.
The internal
contradictions of so much of this should be obvious after a little
thought. There are no psychological
differences between the sexes, but men are the problem. Women can seek to dominate men with lies
because men are so bad. But this is all
the fault of patriarchal society apparently.
The fact that all the hardest jobs in our world are done by men and that
they die on average five years earlier than women of comparable class, having
often supported us financially, is of no account.
I do not deny that
there is an element in society, and in education, which engages in ‘lad’
behaviour for want of a better term, and some is out of order. But simple blame and contain will not do for
anyone of any intellectual rigour. Men
need to have constructive outlets for their energies in ways that allow them to
take risks and build character and confidence. This is how our ancestors grew for millennia. It needs to be adapted to our present world,
but a way must be found to express these instinctive drives, as it does with
women.
As a society we
need to train ourselves to be the best we can be, not just anything that we
could be.
In relation to
this vision of what we should be, Dr Phipps presentation was a litany of
negativity. I will single out the
absence of a positive and active contribution to building strength in women to
deal with men on an equal level of respect.
When I asked a question about how social skills and personal empowerment
were important for women in how not to get into dodgy situations, or how such
things could help them prevent things going bad if they have got into one of
those situations, the knee jerk response which I knew would come back at me was
that we didn’t want to be making it the victim’s fault if she got raped. I knew this was the reply so I had my answer
ready. That on an interactional
behavioural basis, every detail and nuance of a person’s behaviour contributes
to the gestalt assessment of the other and so is continuously modifying the
choice tree that they dyad is going down.
To refuse to take a path that you could, to abdicate or deny
responsibility is as much a choice as it would be to take make some proactive
choice which could prevent further slippage in the situation. Isn’t this obvious?
I first began to
become aware that there were problems with this model of intimate interactions
as one in which women were not expected to take responsibility a few years ago
when the ‘Slutwalks’ began. This is way
beyond ‘Reclaim the Night’. This is
provocative dressing presented as a right.
‘Whatever we wear, wherever we go, Yes means Yes, and No means No’. Okay, well, in principle, that sounds
fine. But I’m reminded of Pussy Riot
and their behaviour in a place which is sacred to a large portion of the
Russian people. There are times and
there are places in which some things are done, and others when they are
not. They demand the right to provoke
anytime, anywhere.
What we have here
is a society where constant confrontation and coercion to certain group norms
are in themselves a norm. This
continually pushes the boundaries of the ‘Overton Window’ and the norms move
further to the left. There was one
point when I was listening to Michael Conroy when I had a distinct feeling that
I was witnessing some kind of proselytising or propaganda briefing. His group ‘A Call to Men UK’ runs four day
workshops which cost a cool £2,500. As
I recall these are basically training exercises in how to be a good ‘agent for
change’ I think is the euphemism. In
other words, a mole to gnaw at the roots of everyone’s conventional and
traditional beliefs so that they become good Cultural Marxists who will police
and enforce the ‘Correct’ views on themselves and everyone they encounter.
There was some
debate raised by my question to Dr Phipps so I said I would catch her in the
break. When that came around I motioned
to her across the room but she didn’t respond.
Shortly, after finding the tea and snacks, I stood next to where she and
another were talking. When their
conversation flagged, I positioned myself in relation to them so that it was
quite clear I was initiating a discourse.
She barely made eye contact and was reluctant to engage with me. I raised the subject of social skills again
and mentioned the work of Dr Paul Ekman (made famous by the series Lie To Me a
few years ago). She had not heard of
him. He is a world famous researcher in
physical anthropology who has established conclusively that there are such
things as universal facial expressions which correlate with mood or
affect. I was introduced to this
subject by Dr Blundell when it was new material back in the seventies. It has since been massively consolidated and
Dr Ekman has gone on to do work with the Dalai Lama on the quality of human
interaction and related subjects.
He also runs
advanced training courses for crisis negotiators, psychotherapists, police
interrogators and so forth on recognition of micro expressions and their
understanding as ‘tells’ about whether people are lying, telling the truth or
their emotional state. Dr Ekman is at
the cutting edge of a well established science of behavioural interaction
arising out of ethological and physical anthropological studies over many
decades. The intellectual foundation is
in biology and evolutionary adaptation of behaviour and communication.
What has this to
do with ‘Lad Culture’ and the response of Feminists to that culture? It is an entry point to behavioural
management of intimate personal interactions.
If you better understand the person you are with then you not only have
a better chance of predicting their behaviour, but you have a better chance
also of responding adaptively in real time.
All that Dr Phipps
had to offer was ‘Consent Training’.
How to know when to give consent to intimate behaviour or not. I would suggest that this is far too
particular, and far too far into the interpersonal interaction for it to be
able to maximise benefit. My own
experience as it probably is with millions of others, is that when things get
to a certain point in intimate situations, then consent is something that is
implicit. It is much easier to not slip
down a slippery slope if you have not stepped onto it in the first place. The whole feminist ideology around this sees
it as an experience to control, rather than manage, which I think is a big
difference. If you properly manage your
situation, then it won’t get out of control.
And I not blaming the victim. I
am simply discussing how to avoid disaster.
If you can see the train coming, get off the tracks because it’s not
going to take any notice or you.
The funniest thing
about my interaction with Dr Phipps was her so clear and obvious avoidance
behaviour which continued through our short conversation. She was continually looking around and
didn’t pay me full attention. When I
pointed out that she had made little of her ‘Consent Training’ during the
speech and that I felt it needed to be part of a larger concept of personal
skills and empowerment she simply said ‘Well I’m telling you now.’ The reason it was so funny was because
thinking about Paul Ekman I couldn’t help be amused at how her facial
expressions indicated suppressed anger
through her frown, narrowed eyes and down turned mouth.
It is really such
a disappointment that the supposedly multi or interdisciplinary subject of
Gender Studies should have abandoned the scientific aspects of its purview and
launched itself off into space with an agenda of political goals to be enforced
by interpersonal challenge and policing.
One last example.
Michael Conroy treated us to a short clip of Harry Enfield, Paul Whitehouse and
another chap whose name I don’t know.
It is the Fishing/Beethoven sketch.
It was well observed, as are many of Enfield and Whitehouse’s
sketches. Basically two of the
fishermen wanted to talk about a Beethoven concert but the third would sneer at
that and then the first two would be cowed and make jokes about tits and bums
to get back in favour.
This was presented
as an example of ‘Lad Culture’ which penetrates even to older blokes, and which
must be challenged.
I despair.
Mr Conroy said he
was I think 46 or maybe 47 so he should be old enough to have some memory of
Desmond Morris, he of ‘The Naked Ape’ fame, and ‘The Human Zoo’. Paradigm shifting works, which may be a
little dated now, but are fundamentally sound in their conception. Dr Morris would simply point out the
ethological basis of the three males’ behaviour.
Harry Enfield is
the Alpha, for whatever reasons, but at least partly because he doesn’t care
what the others think about him. They,
on the other hand are afraid of what Enfield will judge on them, so they are
kept in line. To step out would risk
engaging in open conflict or be put down.
When you see this with two male wild animals it can be messy or over in
seconds when the Beta male realises he cannot win. The Paul Whitehouse character and the other Beta shrink before
Enfield when he returns to the group and are afraid to carry on talking about
Beethoven. This is nothing about
‘Laddism’ or ‘sexism’, it is all about keeping their places in the dominance
hierarchy. It is a largely unconscious
process and they don’t really understand why they do it. Should they understand, they would have to
choose between carrying on, challenging the Alpha, or leaving the group. The first is the status quo, the second very
risky, and the third is probably the mark of an emerging new Alpha seeking his
own path. This is all ethological
behaviour with clear analogues in the animal kingdom but the Gender Studies do
not care if there is a deeper explanation than their political one. All they would like to do is smash the power
of the Alpha. But we need the Alpha. In times of danger the Alpha acts
assertively and can save the tribe. The
evolutionary psychology of which Ekman and Morris represent some of the best,
is almost entirely unknown to Gender Studies.
Evolutionary Psychology angers them because it is incompatible with
their idealistic view of how the world should be, and what they want to
change it into. The realities of
evolutionary adaptation are to be rejected as politically incorrect. ‘Lad Culture’ must be ruthlessly suppressed
and controlled. The idea of empowered
men who have found meaning and purpose in their lives through positive role
models and rites of passage would be threatening to the Feminist drones who
would not be able to control them. Both
women and men have intuitive status hierarchies established by subtle non
verbal cues. But for either to seek to
be approved of by the hierarchy of the other side and rise up that hierarchy,
as some in the politically approved ‘Men’s Movement’ do is to abdicate power. Both men and women have their own power, however
it is important not only to recognise it in yourself, but in the other
also. To deny or suppress it to mere
social conformity is destructive to our spirit. We are wild creatures and need to reclaim that in our souls. Perhaps then we will find a respect and
balance between the polarities.
Well that’s it for
my critical analysis of yesterday’s seminar at Leeds University held by the
Department of Gender Studies. Now that
I have my book Waking The Monkey! out at last I shall be endeavouring to do a
few more blogs on this PC Deconstruction page or my other blogs, WTM! or Cosmic
Claire.
Coming up I have
thoughts on:
Why do so many
people fear challenging the norms of Political Correctness?
The
Asymptote: 2012 and beyond. How everything we thought we knew is being
reversed before our very eyes.
Political
Correctness in itself. Why is it being
enforced so ever more fanatically? Why
are there certain topics and objective facts that the collective herd freak out
about if they are mentioned?
I don’t know quite
what the subject will actually be, but it will be something around these
areas. The last one is a big favourite
of mine and I am looking forward to tackling that one. Also there are topics around the
interpretation of history where I would like to examine the attitudes of
contemporary people to them rather than the actual event or material evidence
for it. The limited scope of History in
education these days is of great concern to me, so that will find its way in
somewhere too.
In the meantime,
if you haven’t read my introductory post on my book Waking The Monkey! in my
other blog
I hope you’ll drop
in over there, and maybe even follow the link to have a look at the book itself
on lulu.com
See you soon.