World-famous lesbian professor found responsible for sexually harassing gay male student.

Didn't happen. She merely thought he was a trans.

Nimrod? Seriously?

She had good taste! Love cute nerdy Jewish boys

[quote]Mr. Reitman, who is now 34 and is a visiting fellow at Harvard, says that Professor Ronell kissed and touched him repeatedly, [bold]slept in his bed with him, required him to lie in her bed,[/bold] held his hand, texted, emailed and called him constantly, and refused to work with him if he did not reciprocate. Mr. Reitman is gay and is now married to a man; Professor Ronell is a lesbian.

Where the fuck was this bed and how did they found themselves in one?

^^^^^ never mind. The bed is mentioned later in the article.

Another thread? More articles? Sheesh! She's a batshit deconstructionist, former performance artist, and a big HAM. Idées remarquables: allotechnologie, biophonie, "je suis stupide devant l'autrui", killer texts, narcoanalyse, oublittérature, "sujet suppositaire", tropium, toxicogeographie. Judith Butler and Slavoj Žižek couldn't save her. The guy who accused her is most likely an asshole and Mattress Girl adjacent.

This only proves how polluted and degenerate these branches are. Finally for all their suppository brilliance, these are not very clever people.

R6, I think I love you.

R6 That mental baggage Judith Butler supported her? ....like seeks like

What the fuck kind of lesbian does this sort of shit?

R9 Not a lesbian, seems the logical reply

Jesus. It wasn't even a man., FFS, regardless of how gross that still is?

Seems like he has my brand of shitty luck.

One of those women who identifies as / is identified as a lesbian, but isn’t one. For example, the (overrated by lesbian readers) British author Jeannette Winterson is often thought of as a lesbian, but by her own admitted sexual relationships with men, isn’t one.

R8 google it - It was in last months round of articles, before the "verdict" or whatever. They sent a public letter of support to NYU direction and the press. Hahahahaha.

r9 these people are all neurotic and many, like Ronell, a peculiar mix of grasping pretentious narcissism and inferiority that will NEVER enjoy decathexis from the true, glittery public intellectuals they will never be. She is OLD, a hag, mostly likely unfucked and even untouched for too long.

[quote][R9] Not a lesbian, seems the logical reply

As is commonly the mistake made when viewing sexual predators, the key component of the gratification is not necessarily the sexual contact.

Domination, humiliation, power, control - these are what makes the situation sexually gratifying for the predators like that professor. Does it really surprise anyone that someone who has made a career out of decrying the crimes of men would be sexually gratified by dominating one so completely?

Oh he’s adorable. She looks like a literal monster hiding under the bed.

She's direct from central casting.

oh vey! she's lesbian, he's gay.....please can't we just fuck the way nature wants us to?

Even if one were to discount his account of various events like the post-Sandy sleepovers, how could any of those idiots defending her read those emails and NOT believe those were inappropriate communications between a professor/adviser and student?

If those emails had been written by male professors to female students, the sky would be reigning down wrath and fire so profound that we'd believe it was another worldwide K-T extinction level event.

A veritable black hole of intersectionality.

“She put my hands onto her breasts, and was pressing herself — her buttocks — onto my crotch,” he said. “She was kissing me, kissing my hands, kissing my torso.” That evening, a similar scene played out again, he said.

I read "pressing" as "presenting" first. I've spent too much time on DL.

R14 That makes sense, thanks

I think Andrea Martin should play the role of the predatory lesbian professor and stutter whenever she says the word "sex."

R22 WW

I'm really disappointed with those feminists who signed that letter and thus acted exactly like the old powerful men who use the same tactics. Any credbility they have is gone, and they seriously damaged the credibility of feminism in general too.

Why would parents name their son "Nimrod"?

Judith Butler damaged feminism's credibility LONG before that letter, r24

R24 R26 Exactly, Butler is trash, and these types of 'feminists' strike me as far more interested in intellectual posturing (and dishonesty) than actually anything to do with feminism

R16 Roh roh, that jacket looks like cultural appropriation to meeeee. Or is she Asian like Elizabeth Warren is Native American?

Could be, R27. I did once attempt to read one of her books but couldn't get through it. Lots of nonsense about "the binary," I remember.

Ronnell is a deconstructionist. She isn't a rabid man hating feminist.

R30 Feminism is not about hating men, nor is that a prerequisite

[quote]Didn't happen. She merely thought he was a trans.

Considering that she called him her "cock-er spaniel", she seemed to know very well what he had between his legs.

R30 Feminism isn't a prerequisite of being a lesbian either.

OP, is lesbian really the key descriptor for older women who sexually harass young men?

Boys Beware!

[quote]The guy who accused her is most likely an asshole and Mattress Girl adjacent.

Did you read the emails she wrote him? It's clear that she used to hump her pillow while thinking of him. I bet she stuck a dildo in her vulva whenever she called him. And I doubt any gay man would've felt tempted by [italic]that[/italic], so it was certainly nonconsensual.

This guy wanted to have it everyway. If you read the details, she was all over him and fast and he most definitely should have made and early decision whether to play with her for his own gain, or nip it totally in the bud before she could have any impact on his parcours at NYU in that department and in his field.

r25 very Jewish parents might, it's a biblical king (and also the name of an old pipe lighter brand).

He's Israeli (as is she), and Nimrod is an old Jewish name with Biblical precedent.

From Genesis 10.9: "Nimrod was a mighty hunter..."

The lighters:

[quote]This guy wanted to have it everyway. If you read the details, she was all over him and fast and he most definitely should have made and early decision whether to play with her for his own gain, or nip it totally in the bud before she could have any impact on his parcours at NYU in that department and in his field.

She was already his adviser and would have an impact. Given the swift defense by people who rallied around her, do you suppose he stood a chance if he had complained any sooner - especially since the only reason he's being given any credibility is the long history of damning emails? Without that proof - which people are explaining away using the same defense as that used by men - he'd effectively have ended his career.

No. This is a prime example of the complaints made by people against Spacy or Weinstein - that if they didn't go along, they would have committed career suicide.

He has huge ears and BDF. Did she really think a young good looking guy, even a straight one, would be into her corpse aesthetic?

It's not as fun when it happens to them, is it?

This lady sounds so scary. Weinstein scary.

Swift defense? This went on years through his doctorate and he complained AFTER. She went at him from the get go. He could have walked away from it and got a new adviser and placated her. If he had shrugged it off, just changed affiliations, I doubt she would have ruined his career which he did not have yet as he was just entering! He played with her for years. They are both asswipes IMO.

R43 She did not build her career out of CIS man bashing.

[quote] He could have walked away from it and got a new adviser and placated her.

That's not how it works.

r46 the same people who are defending her would have been outraged if their counterparts had supported him, had the roles been reversed. The school wouldn't have ruled against a famous professor if there weren't ample proof of her guilt.

He most definitely cock teased her because he thought he needed her to make something of himself. She and others have now intimated he's not really up to snuff intellectually and one wonders..... Anyway, both jerks. She's the worse one though. At her age, she should know better. And as a Prof today (I am a prof) her conduct was quite ancient regime - droit de seigneur? Just not possible nowadays. What a desperate fool she was.

From what I understand, r49, she has a history of getting too close to graduate students and lacking boundaring.

How does one "cock tease" an admitted Lesbian, though?

She made her passes right away at him. He registered her "lesbianism" as performative. She was after all, a performance artist.

R51 Probably the same way I like cute shop girls flirting with me when I buy something on my way to the gay bathhouse.

r53 is not gay.

I'm gay and used my looks to get a lot of advantages professionally from both men and women. I also didn't let my thesis advisor paw me and sleep over in my bed. These two are loons.

[quote]He most definitely cock teased her

Because the man is always at fault, right sister?

No you unreconstructed troll. I said she was worse. Don't snark about deconstructionists or watch RuPaul if you can't read.

When the dust settles they will get married after he divorces his husband.

Yes we know r55, you've posted your opinions 20 times in this thread.

So... when's the bisexual buddy movie about Avital Ronnell and Kathy Acker going to be made? Hopefully starring Howard Stern as Andrea Dworkin.

Anybody know what/who R57 is ranting about?

Will Annie Sprinkle be character? At least SHE is charming.

r61 xhe's the one who posted "Idées remarquables: allotechnologie, biophonie, "je suis stupide devant l'autrui", killer texts, narcoanalyse, oublittérature, "sujet suppositaire", tropium, toxicogeographie" above, so you may need a Pretension-to-English translator for it.

They are just a gifted copy-and-paster, R63.

[quote]From what I understand, [R49], she has a history of getting too close to graduate students and lacking boundaring.

Tell us more, R50! Do you have any insider info?

[quote] She and others have now intimated he's not really up to snuff intellectually and one wonders.....

No, "one" does not.

He currently holds a fellowship at Harvard's Villa I Tatti, even despite the lukewarm recommendation the piece says she gave him; so he is clearly "up to snuff."

[quote] And as a Prof today (I am a prof) her conduct was quite ancient regime - droit de seigneur?

I [italic]sincerely[/italic] doubt you are an actual "Prof."

If you were, you might know the actual term is "ancien régime," and you would not refer to Ronell elsewhere as a 'deconstructionist," when actual academics know the preferred term is [italic]deconstructor.[/italic] (Deconstructors famously hold that deconstruction is not an "-ism"--that is, an ideology--, but is rather a practice of interpretation.)

[quote]you might know the actual term is "ancien régime,"

When I read that, I assumed that "ancient regime" was an auto-correct intervention and not ignorance.

Perhaps the aboveposting prof is not a humanities prof?

And why the hell would a "deconstroctor" hold a fellowship at Villa I Tatti? Did all the art history people die from plague?

"Deconstructionist" was not due to auto-correct.

^^deconstructor

[quote]Professor Ronell, 66, denied any harassment. “Our communications — which Reitman now claims constituted sexual harassment — were between two adults, a gay man and a queer woman

Oh for fuck's sake you're a LESBIAN. A big old DYKE. Enough with this queer horseshit.

[quote] —but then I'm nice

The self-identified "Prof" you're defending posted above, "Don't snark about deconstructionists or watch RuPaul if you can't read."

How "nice" is that?

Quasi scientific postmodernist humanities speaking professors sound pretty ideological to me.

Let's hope the "actual tenured professor" is LITERALLY NOT a professor of literature, as the author of this stunner:

Movies and book you didn't realize were all about their strong gay subtexts until you were older A Separate Peace

The Catcher in the Rye

The Great Gatsby

Midnight Cowboy

----------

Bitch is uglier than a dog's ass.

Angelina Jolie has looked better, I'll admit.

Why are two Jews so into German literature?

[quote] Let's hope the "actual tenured professor" is LITERALLY NOT a professor of literature

Oh, but I certainly am. As I said, I was much, much younger when I didn't realize how gay those texts were.

You, on the other hand, are an adult, and thus [italic]have[/italic] no excuse.

But I am impressed nonetheless at all the effort you went to digging up things about me from entirely other threads. I must have really embarrassed you for you to go to such lengths!

By the power of Lesbos, cease this fuckery! Trolls and pretentious twats depart!

The effect is more annoying, like a flea.

German literature is fatuous like the English without being so cluttered, has ideas like the French without being didactic and logical, and obsesses over bodily functions like the Italians, without the least hint of sexiness. It's a lowest common denominator of sorts.

Ronnell wrote Crack Wars about Gustave Flaubert's Madam Bovary and wasn't she a close associate of Derrida? I read that and Dictations: On Haunted Writing which was about Goethe, wasn't it. I didn't understanding it but at twenty I though reading it made me sort of cool. Anyway the whole thing put me off leaning French or German.

Yiddish Lit never glittered for a grasping academic. Now Derrida, that had glamour. Though the French threw him into le dustbin and moved on, sensibly. Unlike American intellectuals who have ruined two generations with this six-degrees of separation watered down prattle.

R55 How do you do that? I am good-looking but never use it to my advantage (or not enough).

Obviously she was attracted to giant ears, perhaps reminded her of the Dumbo ride at Disney world.

I think someone in that position is so flattered by a white male not taking an adversarial approach, that she overdid it.

Anyway, I think the best teachers all have boundary issues, that's what makes them effective. There are two ways to have equality: the way where everyone is treated equally like shit, and the way where everyone is given personal attention and encouragement. It would be literally impossible for the latter to be pursued in our zero tolerance times.

R86 Of the two arguments you make, I can't decide which is the dumbest.

Prof can give everyone personal attention and encouragement - dependent on class size and teaching load! No need to overstep boundaries.

Geniuses should be identified and followed up if they request or need something.

Also the squeaky wheels get the grease. That's my M.O. I like squeaky wheels. They have moxie and are going to get theirs in life.

May they both forever be trapped in a cottage built from knotty pine.

You are obviously not a teacher R87

"Jeannette Winterson...admitted sexual relationships with men."

NOOOOOOO! I. WILL. NOT. HAVE. IT.

R49, droit de seigneurita

Well, this is quaint. She sounds like a really bad lesbian. Is that why she's calling herself queer now? I guess queer is just an easy way of saying "I'll fuck anything."

R93 Catch up darl, queer is code for straight, with a side of purple hair and baggy clothes

Her behavior coming from a male would initiate a metoo lynch mob. She may identify as queer but that really means nothing since she was obviously into him.

I love that these #metoo female supporters of this professor are trying to discount that the university actually found her guilty of sexual harassment. Not to mention that they're complaining that Mr Reightman waited (so long) til after graduation to file his complaint. Yet these Hollywood women telling stories 10yrs later 20yrs later 30yrs later are seen as valid. It’s ridiculous that they would act as if Professor Ronell was anything other than guilty. She did the same things that Harvey Weinstein did to female actresses and that did Kevin Spacey to male actors. They abused their power and made these men and women feel that their careers were at stake if they didn’t give in to their wants and needs. Professor Ronell (suspended for only one yr...not fired)did exactly the same thing to Mr Reightman. But because it was a woman harassing a man the #metoo supporters don’t support the real victim. Had the roles been reversed and it was a male professor doing all the same things to a female student. That man would’ve been fired. This is a double standard. Professor Ronell should be fired!

Actually, I am sympathetic towards Ronnell even though her books disappointed me greatly. I think female #metoo is a ridiculous bandwagon and I can see it heading towards every sad lonely gay man who flirts a little too hard at the office. I get patted on the behind on my trips to the gay pub but you don't see me carrying on as if the dude wrecked my life.

I'd love to know who her last (or any) girlfriend was.

Sounds desperate for intimacy and touch. 66 now. If she were really edgy she would have hired a Palestinian houseboy, or a gourgandine bourgeoise from the Suisse Romande (Godard claimed they were the most beautiful in the world).

But no she heated up a boiler-plate mentoring illusion with campy romantic and literary mis-en-scene (je suis malade you must read me poetry in bed) with highfalutin emotions.

The most glamorous internationally known profs when I was in grad school had had monolingual working class imported houseboys, or personal assistants who had done finishing school.

I mean, how many internationally known critical theory profs are there?

(This is critical theory, right?)

No, it's hypocritical theory.

Hey, all you opposite-sex-loving “queer” ladies out there: Masculine and ugly does not a lesbian make.

[quote] The most glamorous internationally known profs when I was in grad school had had monolingual working class imported houseboys, or personal assistants who had done finishing school.

But we've already established that this never happened.

It is'a

[bold] F A N T A S Y . [/bold]

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

"Tarquin Oliver Nimrod".

"Oh give the little bugger a chance".

R65

Did his parents really name him "Nimrod"?

The gay rapee is cute.

Nimrod Rees-Mogg

R77 I'll posit that their very German-Jewish surnames reveal ancestors coming from Germany. Many Jews feel the cultural identity and pull of the lands their families have lived. Despite The Third Reich and the Nazis, many German Jews still feel an affinity for the language as well as German lit and music.

She may be crazy but I have noticed that alot of millenials seem to extremely sexually paranoid. Though I see this more in women than in men. I think we have gone from one nutty cultural extreme to another. 40 years ago things like unwanted advances were completely dismissed even when they were excessive. Now, if someone has a bad date or receives an unwanted pass it's treated with hyperventilating hysteria. In all honesty, I have never understood people who portray unwanted advances as the ultimate worse experience. Verbal abuse, bullying and poverty do WAY more damage to the psyche. Those are the things that will really fuck you up in the head, not getting groped at a party or having your boss hit on you. I think the sex stuff just gets more attention because of American puritanism. I also think being a sexual harassment victim is an instant way to gain hero status in this country and alot of young people take note of that.

THE VICTIM'S NAME IS "NIMROD!"

GAME OVER.

There was one really crazy accusation a few years ago where a female student slept in a male professors bed, texted him hundreds of times and then reported him as a harasser a year later . I've never understood why these types don't State Their Boundaries right away. And yes, gay men will be next. The minute some lonely eldergay misreads a signal the media lynchmob will be out in force.

How did she not notice they were both gay?

She's a phony queare who has always lusted for the menfolk!

R111 I do certainly agree there is a neurotic and repressed sexuality amongst many American millenials, but If I may suggest a clue as to understanding why some portray the unwanted advances as the worst... or whatever: many seem quite meek and weak willed, and by not objecting loudly or strongly enough, they empower the predator type all the more. Whether it is out of politeness, truly being meek, or the predator being in a position of power, the lack of assertion lets all the negative feelings associated become a chronic type of dread and anxiety. I have seen these scenarios play out myself, and always pleaded with the object of the predator's gaze to firmly and clearly state it was unwanted and what the consequences would be if it continued. Some people are incapable of heading this sort of problem straight on. I once had an older man pursue to me to no end, get handsy, and try to trap me places alone with him. Though he was a close friend of a best friend's mother, I ceased to put myself in those situations after it had become clear he wasn't willing to accept no and move on. I suspect these two feckless twisted people both kept hoping the other would relent, but couldn't bring themselves to make a scene of it. Regardless of what assumptions I'm making on his behalf, she is a complete creep, and terribly in the wrong.

Or she was just a creepy rapist.

Nice try. A woman can be a creepy freak.

r65 here is something that was posted on a philosophy blog about Ronell's boundaries

[quote]A remark on the line [from the letter defending Prof. Ronell]: "We have all seen her relationship with students [...]" : Although I do not travel in the same circles, I have witnessed first hand Avital Ronell's behavior with her advisees during several conferences at NYU. To say that she cultivates a sexually- and erotically-charged environment would be a tremendous understatement. It is also a situation which is transparently fraught for undergraduate and graduate students and rife with potential for misunderstanding and conflict. While I know many who have thrived in this environment, I also know many who have suffered as a result of it. Obviously, none of this constitutes evidence concerning the case at hand (of which I know nothing), but it strains credibility to believe that those who are more familiar with the German Department at NYU -- such as many of the letter's signatories -- were not aware of this climate.

I am done with Feminists now, as time and again they show how hypocritical they are. It makes me less sympathetic to women when I see how they act EXACTLY the same as men when given the chance.

All lesbians ultimately crave dick.

"a gay man and a queer woman"

Guy's not up on the lingo, or he would have realized who he was dealing with. Tip from an (actual) lesbian: if they call themselves "queer" that = "straight woman with a fetish for gayness".

Ronell "identifies" as queer. There is no "is." It's all a construct.

So in effect, it sounds like being a lesbian is part of her job, and she really sucks at her job.

"World-famous" is a stretch. She has a niche following in critical theory circles.

No one's going to call this nimrod a "special snowflake"?

The answer was simple: get another advisor. This is academia, not Hollywood. This is an education, not a job. He had plenty of options, with thousands of professors and colleges out there. Turn the woman in to the department chair and let the school deal with it, and get another advisor.

By the way, all your esoteric jargon makes me incredibly grateful I majored in a social science.

Ooops! Forgot the link!

R119 how many feminists have murdered gay men?

How many feminists have committed mass shootings & killings?

Did anyone die here? Or was physically injured?

How many women are murdered each day in the USA?

How many girls are killed daily all over the world? As well as assaulted, raped & sold?

r125 = never been to university

r127 do you have those figures?

[quote] The answer was simple: get another advisor.

If he were an undergrad, definitely true. But when you get to grad school, you go for the academic, not the school. You find someone under whom you want to study a specific thing. If you are lucky and talented you find a very skilled and knowledgeable mentor and that association follows you throughout your career.

You can't just change advisors like underwear at this level.

Does it matter r129?

I don’t need to delve down a rabbit hole to know that men are safer & more violent than women.

Do men have to be careful how they dress?? Can they go out jogging anytime they want? Do other men talk shit to them alone in public? Do men get ridiculed for making mistake? Or for speaking up? Or for not speaking up!

As a matter of basic fact, R131, men are far likelier to be assaulted and murdered than women. It isn't even close. Mostly by other men, obviously, but it's nonetheless true, so men are the opposite of safer than women. And gay men are far likelier to be the victims of violence than lesbians or trans.

I disagree r132 but have no interest arguing with you. I am more interested in knowing why pointing out that male-pattern violence is a thing offends you?

Dana Rivers murdered a lesbian household a couple years ago in California. How many gay male households have been wiped out?

Females are easier targets than males.

Kids are easier targets than adults.

90% of all homicides are committed by men.

Men are more likely to kill their pregnant partners or their entire families than women.

You really think men are in just as much danger as women? Funny, I never hear guys being told not to go to a bar alone. Or get drunk in a bar alone. Or do anything alone.

I never hear men being told how to dress to avoid danger.

It's manifestly and obviously the case that men are in more danger, R 133, because they get injured and killed way more often. Maybe guys should be told not to drink alone, get drunk in a bar alone and so on because, again, that's when they get killed in far greater numbers. People in general need to take care. You explicitly asserted men are safer than women, which every single crime statistic in existence shows not the be true. Men are more likely to be perpetrators of violent crime than women, certainly, but any given woman is far safer than any given man and violence against kids and the elderly, though horrendous when it happens, is actually really rare. Ghastly individual cases demonstrate nothing about the overall picture. Any individual can get caught up in an appalling scenario, through no fault of their own. No-one is supporting violence against women, but the gender-distorted carnage you're alleging is not borne out by actual dead and injured victims, at least not in the way you suggest.

R133 Don’t forget: Tracey Wigginton, Becky Reid, Jennifer and Sarah Hart, etc. etc.

[quote] The answer was simple: get another advisor. This is academia, not Hollywood. This is an education, not a job. He had plenty of options, with thousands of professors and colleges out there.

Actually, that's all wrong.

It's incredibly hard to get into the top schools for graduate study, and just because you got into one does not mean you got into the others. And Ronell is very famous, and you need to have a very well respected advisor to do well on the job market. She was probably the best he was going to do. Moreover, graduate programs usually have a very limited number of people (sometimes only 2) that you can work with based on your field. He was likely pretty much stuck with her if he wanted to have a career.

Fortunately all this news broke after he already did a couple of prestigious postdocs, so he can likely still have a good career.

Neither student nor teacher could escape violent interpellation by ideological state apparatuses.

The investigation is not over:

[quote]NYU is, according to the Times article, now investigating the "retaliation" issues raised by the now infamous letter. I would not be surprised if the one-year suspension turns into an early retirement under the circumstances.

The letter written in support of Ronnell, which was signed by several NYU faculty, basically called Reitman a liar and could be in violation of Title IX.

More tea to come le mois prochain:

[quote]One thing that goes unnoted in the NYT article (I assume because they were unaware of it) is that the former Chair of the NYU German Department has written a damning account of Professor Ronell's tenure in the department that will appear in a German magazine early next month. I was sent a copy, and will post about it, and translate some bits, when it offically appears in early September.

[quote]Nimrod Rees-Mogg

His full Rees-Mogg name has leaked: Nimrod Crispus David Orville Rees-Mogg.

[quote]I mean, how many internationally known critical theory profs are there?

Badiou. Butler. Crenshaw. Zizek. That's it.

[quote]Dana Rivers murdered a lesbian household a couple years ago in California. How many gay male households have been wiped out?

It's funny how you think that single case overrules the reality painted year after year in federal hate crime stats - that gay men are the single group most likely to be targeted by such violence and that 80% of anti-LGBT hate crimes have gay male victims.

We don't have a lesbian version of Matthew Shepard (whereas gay men who suffer his fate appear in America on a monthly to weekly basis) and we don't have a lesbian version of the Chechen concentration camps either.

"Does it really surprise anyone that someone who has made a career out of decrying the crimes of men would be sexually gratified by dominating one so completely?"

Except there's been no epidemic of feminists sexually harassing men.

"If those emails had been written by male professors to female students, the sky would be reigning down wrath and fire so profound that we'd believe it was another worldwide K-T extinction level event."

No, you would all be attacking the victim, datalounge attacks female victims all the time

They're both Israelis which explains everything.

We have a misandrist lesbian with us now.

r145 = misogynist gay man whining about "misandrist lesbians"

r131 if you're going to ask for figures and statistics that you yourself don't know, but "just know" somehow are much worse than other figures you don't know but "just know", then your argument is irrelevant. Don't try to throw around facts and figures as if they support your argument, when you yourself don't even know what they are. That's just lazy arguing based on your own feelings, not facts.

This prof seems very much cut from the same cloth as Harvey Weinstein, Matt Lauer, etc: prominent and powerful enough in her workplace/field to intimidate underlings into tolerating her sexual abuse or to ruin their fledgling careers if they resisted, and entitled enough to feel that that was okay and even convince herself that her victims welcomed her attentions. It's disturbing that other feminists in academia are attempting to defend her behavior.

That said, r119, there's hardly an epidemic of feminists (or any women) sexually harassing people; for the most part, and of course with the occasional exception, women don't do this shit when given a chance.

This situation—as far as I can see from the NYT article—reminds me in some ways of the bizarre case at the U of Rochester neurology dept., where T. Florian Jaeger (a DL-worthy name!) began coming on to female grad students *even before he has started teaching there*. Ronell also was coming on to Nimrod around the time he was accepted into the program, the spring before he started! Differences: Ronell has long been a senior tenured scholar whereas T. Florian Jaeger wasn't; T. Florian is male. At Rochester the situation (which the male dept. chair and the administration refused to treat seriously) reinforced male power over women; at NYU that's not the case, but Ronell's behavior reinforced the personal power of seniority over junior scholars.

I also am reminded of the case uptown of William Harris at Columbia, ancient historian with a LONG history of sexually harrassing and having affairs with female grad students, who was finally brought down last year, in a case that was itself highly ambiguous, after MANY complaints were brushed aside by the administration. They made him retire at 79—far too late for a lot of people's careers that he messed up. Everybody knew about his abuses; I remember colleagues there telling me about them years ago. What can you do when you know these things are going on and you're not directly part of any of it, and moreover you know that the higher-ups are respecting the privileges of seniority more than the rights of the abused? In the Rochester case an eminent senior professor who took the victim's side finally quit in protest. I've had these moral dilemmas myself.

So I'm hesitant to blame Nimrod as some little bitch boy who used the prof and then turned on her. It's a murky world. The power dynamic in an institution has unpredictable effects, and university administrations and faculty can fail to measure up to high academic ideals that they should—hopefully they will do so more now that more faculty and students are pushing back. Someone upthread posted anecdotal testimony from an NYU grad student saying that everyone knew about Ronell's abuses—grad students warned each other. The letter from Butler, Žižek, and co.—at least the excerpts quoted—has a very ad hominem tone (for Ronell and against Nimrod) and admits that they don't have all the information the university had. Not worthy of people claiming ethical authority. Žižek is a blowhard self-marketer who I'd hoped was over after he endorsed Trump in 2016; Butler is a more serious and rigorous character, for all the scorn she gets on DL (except when she's quoted against the claims of transgenderism). But the support letter comes across as institutional power supporting itself.

I know Avital casually through people who know her well. She is an odd duck.

That said, most of the comments here about millennials and their sexually paranoid behaviors (not to mention their predatory willingness to turn any perceived weakness into gain for themselves, no matter the collateral damage) are spot on.

Academics today is a minefield. Professors must presume they are being recorded whenever they speak. If a professor says in class, "Did you know Donald Trump was a recurring character in American Psycho," you can expect that professor will get anonymous feedback online that says they are a Trump-basher, as well as multiple students slamming them in school evaluations (which administrators claim don't matter for much, and yet are the only metric they ever cite when firing "low-performing" adjuncts).

The whole thing is a clusterfuck (this situation, and the whole Academy). Nimrod probably has fucked his career by not fucking Avital, and now he is looking for a payout (or perhaps a change into Gender Studies) by going so public with this. Avital will probably be forced into early retirement, and her position will be absorbed into the department, with more adjuncts teaching at NYU than ever, and the endowment just gets richer.

r148 don't you think that men's cases would be underreported when it does happen, though?

R146 I'm not saying anything about women, though. You're the one trying to dismiss the obstacles faced by men targeted for sexual harassment by women in positions of power.

R18 is totally right. If their sexes had been reverted, the hypothetical male abuser would not have enjoyed so much support from the faculty and from feminist academics world wide.

r151, women's cases are "underreported" too.

But are they more or less underreported than men's?

"That said, most of the comments here about millennials and their sexually paranoid behaviors (not to mention their predatory willingness to turn any perceived weakness into gain for themselves, no matter the collateral damage) are spot on."

The old timers bashing millennials are hilarious, since most of the abusers who have been exposed in the #metoo movement are OLD but instead of bashing boomers like Weinstein and Spacey they use it as an excuse to attack millennials

I love how the first defense of a millennial is to use "old" or "elder" as an insult against any perceived slight.

In the emails she describes kissing him. There was forceful contact by her own report. Enough with the bullshit about "Millennial snowflakes", you bunch of geriatric diapers.

Thanks to R140.

She's grotesque and lacks any personal dignity. Any woman who dresses herself up in the cloak of feminism and then abuses her professional position to pester a student for sexual contact, affection or romantic gestures deserves to have the fucking book thrown at her. Talk about letting the side down. With equal rights come equal responsibilities. Stupid, pathetic hag.

R141, Teena Brandon.

Look, I’m not here to play the oppression games with you.

Men are dangerous. Women, not as much.

For the first time in recorded history, men outnumber women on the planet. It’s not because more males are born than females...it’s because of femicide. Meaning, females are being killed just for being female. And it’s not other females doing the killing.

Women are not killing gay men. Men are.

So using this bizarre case as an example of “how dangerous” women really are is deluded bullshit.

[quote]Women are not killing gay men. Men are.

Amen, R159 - she’s just a whack job with some personality disorder(s)... NPD, HPD, BPD - who knows, maybe all three. Intersectional lunacy.

Ok r161. You win. Women are just as dangerous as men.

Women are responsible for many mass shootings. So many people have died because a woman got mad or rejected or fired or alienated that she grabbed guns & ammo & went on a mass shooting spree.

So many serial killers are women.

So many children have been abdicated, beaten & raped by women.

So many women are profiting off sex trafficking.

and all the wars...so many unnecessary wars have been conducted by women over the millennia.

Women committed genocide all over the planet.

Women have committed so many acts of domestic terrorism...blowing up federal buildings & abortion clinics.

Thank God domestic violence is illegal. Women were just beating the shit out of their husbands & kids and the cops did nothing for decades.

I want the woman vs gay man debate that is going on here to stop, but if certain posters insist on demonizing men, and denying the existenxe of violent homophobia by women, I will keep posting these links.

The case below is about a lesbian thug who passed as male on Craiglist to rob gay men. She killed one of her victims.

Wow, Avital Ronell and the Soft Butch Sous Chef in the same thread!

If you make such categorical and absolute statements as, "women don't kill gay men", then a single instance of that happening is enough to destroy your case.

Learn to phrase your arguments better, and you won't have to melt down when a gay man refutes your weird arguments.

No you don’t, r164. Stop lying.

For every man killed by a woman, there is at least a thousand women killed by a man.

This is important for gay Rights. Gay men are devalued because they get fucked & suck cock...acts that homophobes reserve for straights only.

If it weren’t for misogyny, homophobia wouldn’t exist.

So being a misogynist gay man is self-defeating.

* acts that homophobes reserve for [bold]women[/bold] only.

R166 this is what I said:

[quote]Women are not killing gay men. Men are.

[quote] Fortunately all this news broke after he already did a couple of prestigious postdocs, so he can likely still have a good career.

The professor sexually harassed him. No question about it. What she did was despicable, nonsensical, and narcissistic. If he had gone to the Department Chair or a Dean, she would have been reprimanded and removed from purview over his dissertation. He would receive Department support in finding a new advisor, even if that advisor was not on the NYU faculty. But, there would have been suspicions lingering under the surface that he should have told her no, when it started. So it might have affected his career trajectory. So, he's very much a victim.

I still cannot help but think why did he wait until a few years after completing his doctorate. Yes, he had prestigious postdocs. But even with prestigious postdocs, the market is very tight, especially in the humanities. The humanities are dying across college campuses. Nimrod has probably received rejections from job applications. Did he think that she did not write him a good enough recommendation? Apparently so. But NYU found that she did not. Is this now a way to guarantee that he will not be rejected for the next academic job he applies to? Maybe.

Anyone in higher ed knows that men and women like this professor are so self-absorbed and consumed with the "importance" of their own research that they can be completely out of touch with reality. She probably disdains conventions such as appropriate behavior between professor and student as petit bourgeois.

R167 What makes you think that I'm misogynistic? Just the fact that I'm gay and I don't think women are saints who never commit acts of violence and oppression?

You should think twice before squatting on a gay male space to use tired stereotypes against the people there for merely making common sense observations about the sexes.

Women already get away easier than men for engaging in criminal behavior. And while there's a lot of debate on "gay misogyny", the reverse phenomenom - female homophobia - is seldom acknowledged despite being more frequent and more fatal. (I've never heard of a gay man killing a woman for sexism. But I already showed you two cases of homophobic women doing that to gay men. Here's a third below.)

I won't make it even easier for violent female homophobes to get away with their abuse against my people just because recognizing their existence offends you.

R167, it’s obvious from space that you hate women. Why else would you have a handy list of links iof women committing acts of violence?

Also, DL is not for men only. Gay includes men & women. See Ellen’s coming out cover on Time Magazine.

R170, good post.

[quote]Why else would you have a handy list of links iof women committing acts of violence?

I'm posting these links because they provide empirical refutation for your attempt to dismiss female homophobia. That's how debates work - by presenting arguments and evidence for one's thesis and against that of your opponent.

Considering that you inaugurated this debate method in this thread by bringing up the murderer Dana Rivers, in order to imply that gay men suffer less than lesbians, I can only describe your whining at the fact that I have brought up all these violent females homophobes as entitled hypocrisy.

I don't collect stories about female homophobia. But I do have a very good memory for stories of people like me being mistreated and murdered (and I can tell you that female perpetrators are common enough). I don't have the privilege to ignore the existence of these crimes, unlike you. And I won't apologize for not forgetting what happened to these men.

Btw, if I'm misogynistic for remembering those vile women, are you transphobic for adducing Rivers?

I really don't want to get involved in this two-handed debate--but one of you has a remarkable ignorance of scale.

R175 That must be the person who brought up Dana Rivers, since there is hardly any crime like it when it comes to the the identity of the perp and that of the vics.

To draw the conclusion that lesbians are persecuted and endangered, while gay men are safe and privileged, on the basis of this single, very unusual case - as r133 did - indeed shows a remarkable "ignorance of scale."

Please, more commentary about the "queer" professor and Nimrod...

The point is not about relative numbers of victims (queer male v women) but about the moral rot of people like Butler et al who have had immense cultural influence.

Was the queer professor ever self identified as a lesbian? She obviously isn't one, but I'm wondering if she claimed to be a lesbian. I found it weird that she claimed that it was a relationship between a gay man and a queer woman. As though that would explain the texts. She didn't say the texts were mutual jokes, that would be the only good explanation.

These lesbos who found DL recently have NEVER HEARD of poor David Messerschmidt and his foul nemesis Jamyra Gallmon who is an eternal DL hate figure for her catfishing of an innocent closeted gay on CL. Some called her 'murderbutch' some 'Soft Butch Sous Chef' but we at DL helped solve the case and direct the DC homicide police to capture her. So take your 'lezzies are saints' bullshit elsewhere, ladies.

[quote]Also, DL is not for men only.

We started it and we bring all the fun and the frivolity and you lesbos bring nothing so shut your pie hole

Oh look, a woman killed her son because she thought he was gay

R181, you are talking to a lesbian who volunteered in an AIDS hospice in the 1990s.

R182, the mother did not act alone — her BOYfriend was involved.

Men are dangerous. But I don’t regret helping my gay brothers. Even if the survivors don’t appreciate it.

In fact, I would do it again if I had too. I would even help the misogynists here. Somebody has to take the higher ground.

I’m transphobic & proud.

R183, hugs.

Academics are the worst kind of extremists.

I can’t wrap my head around the CRAAAZY

[quote]To draw the conclusion that lesbians are persecuted and endangered, while gay men are safe and privileged

Gay men are more likely to be victims of anti-gay violence than lesbians, but women are more likely to be victims of violence in general than men are. Men are (far) more likely to commit acts of violence , against both women and other men, than women are. How the hell is any of this in dispute? And why are we playing Oppression Olympics, anyway?

It's not straight if her balls don't touch his clit.

What about the old days of fucking your professors? It was great. Lots of films on the subject as well.

Jesus, what a simpering little shit stirrer that this guy couldn't handle this situation without all the drama We're men FFS. Man up!

[quote]What about the old days of fucking your professors?

Just how eager are you, as a presumed gay man, to fuck a woman who looks like a lesbian beef jerky, r189?

The Edith Head of critical theory?

R189 blocked for obvious trolling.

If I were a critical theory professor, I would be sure to have fun, custom-made get-ups, like this:

I would wear ironic fascinators.

183 It sounds like you did that for your own self-aggrandizement, not because you actually gave a flying fuck about these men. What a slap in the face to the brave women who actually loved their gay brothers unconditionally, and took care of them out of the goodness of their hearts. Instead, you tarnish their memories by using these deceased men as a rhetorical device on a forum 25 years later to show how superior you are to them in moral “character.” Nice!

I dont think she is a lesbian.

The cheeky bitch really did steal her damn look from Miss Edith

If R193 were my critical theory professor I would plead with him to sexually molest ME!

Well this look was something. Pity she didn't keep this Tel Aviv Mall Hot Topic / Nagel Print Punk Lady look into her elder years.

r199 I'm pretty sure she had that look for exactly the length of the duration of that photo shoot + the Photoshopping.

Her "performance art years". Any video of her performance art? I want to see!

Her anti terrorism studies years.

So she's been terminated, if I just heard correctly.

Ok that was easy to find.

I heard she wrote some thoughtful essays about AIDS in the early 90s.

r203 have a link?

I heard it on NPR, so...

The pic at R199 might as well be Marc Almond.

Have those two ever been seen in the same place at the same time, R208?

[quote]reigning down wrath and fire

Oh Dear! the grove of academe needs watering

"“Yet he who rains within himself, and rules Passions, desires, and fears, is more a wet king.”

I sense a Deep State plot. The Ideological State Apparatuses are coming for our inconvenient crazy lady profs.

r156, the first defense of an elder Republican is to use "millennial" as an insult

I want to see Nimrod sizemeat—and I want it NOW.

This entire story is making my asshole suck buttermilk y'all

From the NYT comments section, I think I've found a DLer!

[italic]I'm not sure what's more disgusting - professor Ronell's behavior toward her student or her use of "yr" instead of "you're" in an email to him.[/italic]

R212. Like Bill Maher?

RE: the (possible) termination: if anything leads to her termination, it will be The Letter.

How utterly stupid of her, and all the other critical theorists who signed it. They truly live in their ivory towers of narcissism and believe they are untouchable.

That letter will be construed as retaliatory, no doubt, and lead to additional consequences for Ronell.

I don’t understand this from the guys perspective at all- after one creepy encounter I would have been outta there and reported her. I am a professor.

I agree with you, r218. (I'm not a professor, but I work in academia.)

I know I will get bashed for victim-blaming, but do ANY of the grad students in these cases have any agency at all? In the infamous case at Rochester, the grad student complainant had lived with her advisor for a YEAR. Wtf? Nothing set off alarm bells? No one told her that that is not appropriate and a Very Bad Idea? (If I remember correctly, she was a domestic student. I can understand an international student who doesn't understand US academic conventions perhaps getting into a situation like that.)

Enough with the infantilization of grad students.

R219, and I’m a professor at NYU. In our dept a student can change advisors at any time, including doctoral students who work very closely with a mentor and dissertation chair. She clearly abused her position, engaged in very risky behavior to say the least, but then it looks like a dynamic that he too participated in- very sordid.

Pervy boomers can't stand to see one of their own fall. It must somehow be the spoiled Millennial's fault.

R212 the first defense of a triggered Genderfluid is to bleach their vaginas.

r220, a German-language publication is going to profile the Ronell case in early September. I'm looking forward to it. It apparently will focus on the dynamic Ronell created within the department.

R223, but who will translate it for the rest of us?

R194, the men were extremely grateful for my company. So fuck off.

R218 he wanted to have his cock and eat it too.

These intellectual types are all batshit crazy. I keep remembering the Leonard Bernstein thread...

r227: I know! Eggheads! Longhairs!

I learned a long time ago, most likely long before a lot of the people on this board were even born, that a very uncomfortable percentage of college professors in this country are batshit crazy.

If that ugly creature tried to crawl in my bed to rub her ass on my groin I would probably be in court today pleading a "lesbian panic" defense.

So has anyone suggested that he not only went along with the "harassment" but actually encouraged it, and is now crying foul after not getting as much benefit from it as he thought he would?

I mean, it's not like it was one or two incidents, it was apparently non-fucking-stop. Amd I doubt he was terrified of her, either physically or scholastically.

r231 = Kevin Spacey

[quote]I don’t understand this from the guys perspective at all

Try this. He is an early career post-grad, who wants to get on in a very narrow field, populated by a clique of self-protecting cunts like Butler et al., with whom his creepy nutcase supervisor is very friendly. She claims she's 'queer'. That's gas-lighting him, a tacit warning - 'you can't make any charge of sexual harassment, I'm lesbian, I get no sexual thrill from placing your hands on my breasts'. Her behaviour was, without any shadow of a doubt, highly manipulative, and aggressive. She's probably a histrionic disordered personality. She gave him stuff to help his career in exchange for his silence. It's all on her, not him. Cultural theory is full of absolutely miserable self-loathing neurotics who use their professional power to try and get laid.

R231 I agree. Millennial women pull this shit all the time ,I guess the men are catching up. It reminds me of that married chick who sucked and fucked Matt Lauer for a career, then claimed to the media that she didn't know how to say no. I'm not saying that either Matt Lauuer or this professor aren't creeps but I'm tired of the constant fucking infantilization of millenials. Being hit on doesn't ruin your life nor does a regrettable sexual experience. It's just in weirdo puritanical American society, these things are considered the ultimate in victimhood. Nothing is more lionized in American society than sexual victimhood, no matter how mild. I get a kick out of these chicks on twitter acting like some untoward advance or regrettable fuck ruined their lives. You know what ruins lives? Poverty, mental illness, poor health and bullying. Not having some old letches hand on your thigh for five fucking seconds. And alot of millenials would be better off Stating Their Boundaries right away than being passive little victim babies who say nothing until the horse has left the barn.

R232 = too dumb to think of an apt comparison that actually, like, makes sense or is remotely relevant

Judith Butler weighs in!

[quote]The first signatory of the letter was Judith Butler, a nationally renowned professor of critical theory and comparative literature at the University of California at Berkeley who is president-elect of the Modern Language Association. In an email late Wednesday, she said she had some regrets about the wording of the letter, which she said had been written in haste by a group of authors.

[quote]"We ought not to have attributed motives to the complainant, even though some signatories had strong views on this matter," Butler wrote. "And we should not have used language that implied that Ronell’s status and reputation earn her differential treatment of any kind."

[quote]When the letter was written, Butler said, the group understood that the Title IX investigation had been completed and that Ronell had been cleared of the most serious charges against her.

[quote]"When we learned that termination of employment was under consideration, we were bewildered by the severity of this possible sanction," Butler wrote. "It seemed incommensurate with what we understood at that time to be the investigation’s outcome. We did not have access to the file or the findings, nor were we fully apprised of the facts of the case."

For professors they seem to be saying they're actually pretty dumb. Nice attempt to CYA though.

Professors tend to be narcissistic, r237.

Odd that The Chronicle of Higher Education would refer to Butler as "nationally renowned" when she is clearly, objectively "world-renowned."

She's precious.

Prancersize lady is her sister!

Comment on video at r241

[quote]Abominable. Shallow, pretentious, utterly self-indulgent.

Breaking: MLA members have launched a petition calling on Judith Butler to step down as president-elect of the organization.

Yeah the signatories are in for a world of pain from outraged millennial postgrads. Zizek took a beating in the comments to his excuses for signing

[quote]You're a disgrace to the academy. How can you defend this? You're protecting the power structure that allows faculty to abuse graduate students, not your darling outre friend. Her "surface eccentricities" are enough to be terribly abusive to her advisees, but you don't care about them, do you?Faculty decides if we get our degrees, if we get jobs, if our daily lives working in the department are livable. And we can't report the people who harass us without losing all of those things, so we have to either suffer in silence or walk away from careers that we've dreamed of all our lives and worked hard for for years. Faculty can destroy graduate students' careers as easily as rolling over in bed and I've seen it happen.This isn't about your stupid internal political maneuvering, this is about the suffering inflicted on people stuck at the bottom of an entrenched power structure and your unwillingness and inability to care.

Butler is in a quandary now as she dragged a gay male victim of harassment. As we have noted here at DL for years, these postmodernist gender studies feminist types don't like us, we are too masculine and successful for their tastes.

How odd in a thread about one demented lesbian's whackiness more lesbians come and display their own separate whackiness.

Men and women are different; gays and lesbians are worlds apart.

I love you, R195.

R204, I settled in with my popcorn ready for salt but it was too cringey. My second-hand embarrassment syndrome flares up too easily to witness such po-mo larping. (It's fine.)

Love that the "I’m transphobic & proud" bitch is also the "I don’t regret helping my gay brothers. Even if the survivors don’t appreciate it" bitch.

Some of you are so fucking broken that you'll never be right in the head. R195 has it right and is 100 times the person you are, R183.

He's sort of cute.

Trevor St John can play Nimrod in the eventual movie.

R230, your exquisite comment is why I still visit DL after all these years, They get rarer and rarer, but when you find these DL truffles... bellissimo!

Someone upthread said Zizek supported Trump? I thought he was a globalist. I watched those two film docs of his and found his breathless blubbering less than insightful. Are there any post-modernists who are worthwhile? There are so many things to learn about the world, post-modernism seems like forcing yourself to eat cat food while pretending it's better than pate, at the same time denouncing pate as just a bunch of bullshit.

The basic problem is post modern and post-structural shot their wads by the late 80's early 90's at the latest. All the theories in critical theory since have been 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon rehashes and controlled by ne'er-do-wells.

[quote]I watched those two film docs of his and found his breathless blubbering less than insightful. Are there any post-modernists who are worthwhile?

Zizek isn't a postmodernist (aka deconstructionist, which is what the lez professor is), he's a Lacanian Hegelian Marxist. He uses their work to attack the absurdity, vulgarity and contradictions of the postmodern late capitalist era.

R253 not all critical theory is postmodern and / or post-structuralist, though most CT is influenced by post-structuralism. It is possible to be an entirely anti-postmodernist critical theorist - the ones that are base their work on materialist critiques of society and culture and power, usually using Marx and Gramsci.

I know all that, but zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

If one examines the cultural paradigm of discourse, one is faced with a choice: either accept capitalist desituationism or conclude that context must come from the masses. Thus, Bataille’s critique of the cultural paradigm of discourse suggests that the establishment is capable of truth, given that capitalist desituationism is invalid. Marx uses the term ‘social realism’ to denote not materialism, but submaterialism.

In a sense, Debord promotes the use of capitalist desituationism to deconstruct narrativity. The main theme of Prinn’s[1] model of the cultural paradigm of discourse is the role of the poet as participant.

It could be said that if capitalist desituationism holds, the works of Smith are not postmodern. The premise of presemiotic nationalism states that language is part of the collapse of culture.

But d’Erlette suggests that we have to choose between the cultural paradigm of discourse and cultural capitalism. Any number of theories concerning a neodialectic whole may be found.

Ok r250...you need attention. And since I’m bored at my desk, I will indulge you.

When you attack others, justified or not, you are really attacking yourself.

You will never be happy should you continue your pattern of self-destruction.

I want you to know that you have nothing to fear. Fundamentally, all is well. You’re ok.

And all the pain, harm & suffering you think you caused...is dead & gone. It’s over. You are innocent. You are free.

The door from your prison is unlocked. All you have to do is walk through it.

But if you choose to continue to hate, attack & harm...well, you will remain imprisoned. Voluntarily. And you will suffer for it. And only you.

Because, deep down inside, that’s what you want: you are attracted to guilt & suffering.

So I have a different opinion than you. So what. So I volunteered at an AIDS hospice in the 90s, when I starting out in the world as an adult. So what. Do you think it helped my career? Do you think anyone knows or cares? Do you think I benefited from it? You think I received an award?

What did you do when you were 21 years old? Did you do anything to help AIDS patients?

If so, good for you — and my sincerest gratitude.

Do you think the men you helped are proud of the way you are behaving here?

No. They are not.

Because dying changes people. It makes them deeper. They know what’s really important. And I learned countless life lessons from those brave, sweet men.

And your contributing pain to the world...or even just to the gay community...is not helpful. It is not admirable. It is not heroic.

It’s pathetic. And weak. And destructive to not just others, but to your self.

In fact, it’s more destructive to you than to anyone. I’m fine in my air-conditioned office. My car is paid off, and soon my house will be too. I have no credit card debt. I have three retirement plans. And plenty of savings to buy myself anything I want.

So: You. Can’t. Hurt. Me.

Keep wearing yourself out trying, though. If that’s how you wish to spend your precious time, go for it.

But one day you may regret it.

There. Feel better? You got the attention you desperately crave. 👏👏👏

J'adore r258.

Excellent R258!

WTF is "Critical Theory"? No wonder the poor Nimrod was worried he wouldn't find a job.

When you go to college, pick a real major.

Im curious as to what her thesis or dissertation posited.

This thread and the Rees-Mogg one are the best threads on DL right now.

R258, I’m on your side for now but you didn’t answer the transphobic parts... did he lie about you being “transphobic and proud”? That doesn’t seem to go with your posts/tone...

R264 Don’t let r258 fool you. She hates anything with a penis attached and has a martyr complex. If she really worked in an AIDS hospice as claimed, she probably did “help” those men - with a pillow.

R265, Ts are the ones out to “fool” people. They obsess over “passing”....and being “stealth” or “dead-named” or “misgendered.”

Recently, a transwoman managed to get a free plane ticket for being “outed” as a T by airline staff.

A transman was convicted for rape because “his” online lover did not consent to lesbian sex.

T prostitutes who trick straight men have gotten beaten up & even killed when the straight man realized he’d been duped.

R264, are you new to DL?

DLers started the infamous “drawp the Teeee” petition years ago.

T ideology is regressive, conservative & homophobic.

T is being used as “gay conversion therapy” on gender nonconforming children. These kids are being told that they can magically change bio sex.

But they can’t. Nobody can. It’s impossible to change sex.

And attempting to do so may render the kids sterile. They are too young to consent to that.

And they will always be dependent on expensive hormones.

Their bodies will always betray them. They will have to focus all their time, energy & resources on fighting their own bodies....rather than on education, owning a home, & saving for retirement.

How can you not know that...? T is popular in Iran for a reason.

R265 proves that T is a front for men’s rights activists.

If I hated men, as you claim, why on earth would I have volunteered in an aids hospice of all places?

I do believe that women deserve & require privacy from men in public bathrooms & the like.

I also believe it’s impossible to change sex.

Therefore, transwomen should NOT be in women’s restrooms & the like.

Sorry if you think that makes me evil. But that’s your problem, not mine.

[quote] WTF is "Critical Theory"?

The University of Chicago legal philosopher, Brian Leiter, who exposed the letter by Judith Butler and others defending Ronell said critical theory "is what they call bad philosophy in literature departments."

r262 the title of her dissertation: The figure of poetry: self-reflection in Goethe, Hölderlin, and Kafka (Princeton, 1979)

It's amazing to me that there are such people working on CT. How many people really read this stuff?

And to the lesbian poster, there are people on here who don't play fair. Don't let them bother you.

R267 [quote] T is being used as “gay conversion therapy” on gender nonconforming children. These kids are being told that they can magically change bio sex.

Why not just do REGULAR gay conversion therapy - Wouldn’t these parents try that first? After all, aren’t most homophobes also transphobic? Would they rather have trans kids than gay kids? Are gays and lesbians actually more ridiculed and stigmatized in our society than transgender people? I have so many questions! If you have statistics to back these claims up, I’m all ears.

It's interesting how every single lesbian on DL seems to have worked with HIV patients in the 80s.

Never seen such a mommy line as, "When you attack others, justified or not, you are really attacking yourself."

Time to downgrade lesbians to frauhood?

This lesbian was but a child in the 1980s. I didn't even know anyone who was an AIDS (or HIV) patient.

Christ Almighty, DLers can turn any thread topic into a argument about trans people.

Nimrod is suing both Ronell and NYU.

R276 lol. It's become our version of the everything comes back to Hitler thing you see in other websites comment pages. Here everything will eventually come back to trans people or Barbara Streisand.

Her girlish excuse of her/their "penchant for flowery and campy communication arising from our shared academic backgrounds and sensibilities" is so unbelievably dumb, weak, and dodgy that you wonder why she didn't hire a top communications advisor to help her out. That's like something a 20-something would write, not someone pushing 70.

Grow up, r273. Wow 🙄

[quote]aren’t most homophobes also transphobic?

Are you kidding?? Bruce Jenner is clearly homophobic. So is the family of Jazz Jennings. And Dana Rivers who slaughtered a lesbian couple & their son.

Wake the fuck up dude. Gay & trans are polar opposites.

Holy shit. This is an interesting thread on a (imho) fascinating current event.

If the trans-obsessed posters get it shut down, I'm going to be pissed.

R113

Such eldergays may request ... SEPARATE TABLES!

No one will sign that letter calling for Butler to step down as president-elect of the MLA because they fear her. And those who sign will not sign their full names. Good for him for suing.

Apparently the Butler letter was written and circulated AFTER Ronell had already been found guilty of sexual harassment.

How were these people so stupid?

R282 — Why don’t you bitch about how Trans obsessed GLAAD, HRC, NCLR & Planned Parenthood are?

For fuck's sake, r286. This thread isn't about GLAAD, HRC, NCLR or Planned Parenthood. It's about RONELL and NIMROD.

[quote]What about the old days of fucking your professors?

R189, For Your Consideration, THE WIFE. In theatres now!

r71, if she is trying to get a piece of his junk inside her that she ain't exactly a lesbian. Good on her for re-identifying as queer.

Where are we going and why are we in this basket?

What a Nimrod. Literally. JK of course. He is the victim and didn’t name himself, but who would change their first name to something normal at their first legal opportunity?

Well, she may not be in the TERF crowd.

Look DL, I found this video of Ronel and Zizek at NYU. He's licking her taint and telling the crowd he 'loves' her. Is Nimrod in the audience? The talk is called Is Hegel Dead—Or Are We Dead in the Eyes of Hegel.

R291 Why do Americans get so hung up in such trivial details as people's names?

His name is common in the country he's from. You people are being not only tiresome but also culturally insensitive towards Nimrod.

R293 Thank you for that link. This video is surreal. Five minutes in, Zizek interrupts Ronell, ironically mansplains about male appropriation of female literature, makes sexist comments about beauty, and even jokes about “penetration.” He compares Ronell to the facist, anti-semite Elisabeth Nietzsche (because behind every great man, yada yada.) Ronell looks mortified, and I actually feel bad for her. WOW

Zizek is an ass and an intellectual grifter.

But then, have of these people are grifters.

*half

I didn't work in an AIDS hospice and I was certainly old enough to do so.

Why would I want to help people who hate women?

And please don't say that gay men don't hate women. It's too obviously untrue.

If Zizek and Robell are an example of how German studies are being taught nowadays, it’s no wonder these programs are being systematically elimated from American universities.

*Ronell

[quote]Ronell looks mortified, and I actually feel bad for her. WOW

I was mortified by that slobbering sweaty bore's chest beating display of dominance but I did NOT feel bad for her - she kisses his hairy ass and is proud to do so. Fuck her.

[quote]If Zizek and Robell are an example of how German studies are being taught nowadays, it’s no wonder these programs are being systematically elimated from American universities.

There's a pushback and it's gaining momentum. Postmodernists and Marxists have held sway over humanities and social sciences in the developed world for over thirty years now. As a fashionable intellectual cycle, it's coming to an end.

LGBTQQAA+ Nation are PISSED

From the comments

[quote]I have never understood why people think that Butler is a progressive. She earns a fortune in compensation and speaking fees, but to my knowledge, has never donated a dime to any progressive cause. She is a lesbian but refuses to identify as such, a kind of 21st century closetedness. She has never lifted a finger on behalf of any LGB or T cause. A wealthy self-promoter, masquerading as a progressive.

Is that true? What does she identify as then? 'Queer'?

R302 Yes - after all his chauvinistic blustering, she nonetheless gave him a nice rim job. Maybe she was illustrating Hegel’s “master-slave” dialectic.

R302 Yes - even after all his chauvinistic blustering, Ronell nonetheless gives Zizek a nice rim job. Maybe they were doing that schtick to illustrate Hegel’s “master- slave” dialectic.

Let's not forget Butler was against marriage equality: several of my lesbian friends who took her schtick too seriously actually went around saying that we shouldn't want equality because it was a heterosexual institution, and we are better off without legal status.

**Sometimes really intellectual people can be hopelessly stupid.

Clearly they learned nothing from DADA or The Situationists. They are both complete messes. No agency and yet no willingness to enjoy a certain chaos.

I dont believe for a second he couldn't have extricated himself from her slimy attacks. He let it go on for years. Did you read quotes of his letters to her? Is he claiming Stockholm syndrome?

And she's an embarrassment to NYU and to our profession. Keep your dirty bits and affective needs out of your relationships with students.

And any professor who signed such a dumb letter of support is an officious histrionic. One lets the institution deal with such matters, the end, because that's the way it goes down 100% - the institution decides.

I roar with angry power at this penised persyn's attack on our syster Avrill.

I heard through the NYU grapevine (my Blatino husbear works in their HR department) that Miss Nimrod stated his boundaries when Professor Ronel insisted on playing her Fiona Apple playlist during tutorials. By which I mean massage and weed sessions.

Hasn't Fiona been through enough without being dragged into this shitshow?

ROFL, R22!

The prof' looks just like Perini Scleroso-with a lttle R.B. Ginsburg thrown in.

The guy looks like he'd burst into flames if he walked too close to a fast food heat box. And that stance? Instant ED. Ewww.

Given how intertwined this affair is with the ethnic backgrounds of the players, maybe the community should settle it amongst themselves, rather than make a big-assed public deal of it? Has the old babe pulled shit like this before? I don't think yer' average goy (guilty..so guilty) can even begin to grasp this sort of ethnocentric neurosis. Isn't this how Freud earned his brownie buttons? Tinkering with the society Jewesses of Austria?

This whole thing reminds me of that 6 Feet Under scene when Brenda decides to take a class and immediately gets in a tif with the professor about biological determination through genetic technology.

“All the sequestered people desperately defending the one good idea they have ever had”

Did Zizek really credit Nietzsche's work on his sister, who's known not only as a fascist but also as a know-nothing philistine incapable of understanding metaphysics when taught?

Thank God it wasn't Camille Paglia.

Camille Paglia is more or less a successful public intellectual. Or was. We don't have a lot of them in the USA so I would say Paglia is bigger deal than this nobody.

Looking at r298/r299, I now understand why lezzies don't like trannies. They're competing for the same spot - the same demented, wild-eyed, BPD throne. The mix of woundedness and vengefulness is the same in both groups, who indeed are very alike. But they can't admit rivals, so they can't turn their similarities into an alliance. Each wants to be the most hurt, so they can't co-exist with whoever claims the same crown of thorns.

I've said it before on DL but before these postmodernist,neo Communist, leftist pieces of shit spout off on "gay misogyny" I wish they could give just ONE example of a gay man abetting his husband in mowing down a roomful of women like Omar Mateen's wife did in order to murder gays in Orlando.

If they could demonstrate through facts or statistics that significant numbers of gay men vote against the best interests and equality of women then I might actually give a damn about what they're trying to say.

Sure, some gay men in a bar or private party or on DL may mock or use unflattering language to describe certain types of women but the truth is,as demonstrated by polling and voting data, the OVERWHELMING MAJORITY of gay guys SUPPORT women....and indeed often times the women that straight society has cast out. And even if some gays are indifferent to women they still see them as absolute equals. The number of homosexual men out there that actually "hate" women and try to undermine them culturally, socially and politically is SO FUCKING TINY that I've never actually encountered it in reality(and if I did I would denounce it) yet their existence is used to generalize CONSTANTLY about gay male opinions toward women.

So ,if these SJW pricks are trying to equate that with the fact that hundreds and hundreds of MILLIONS of women(including millions of "women of color", which the left is always presenting as "victims") across the globe SUPPORT institutional discrimination and criminalization of homosexuality and ACTIVELY seek through political means to prevent rights for gay people,including up to the point of death then I must say they seem to be pretty FUCKED in the head about where the REAL hatred is coming from.

R315 Yes -But Zizek may have been doing it tongue-in-cheek; it’s too absurd. I’m wondering if Zizek / Robell have some bizarre rivalry, and if he compared her to Elisabeth Nietzsche just to piss her off. Lots of insincerity and sarcasm, typical of post-modern “humor.”

There’s a Disney movie about that, r318 - It’s called [italic] The Fox and the Hound. [/italic]

Her reviews on RateMyProfessors are mostly raves but there are some critics.

"Incredibly intelligent (seriously - very sharp), but if you want to witness an academic cult of personality at its most grovelling, take this class and watch how people who disagree with the professsor (there MUST be other poets than Holderlin and Rilke to examine) get eviscerated. "

"Sad, sad case. She's hopelessly stuck in the effete, pseudo-philosophical theory camp of decades ago. Can't think outside rote memorization of Derrida and Heidegger. Ridiculously pretentious to boot. Study with a serious *scholar* instead. "

"Often misunderstood: In class, she is not only teaching the subject but also a very singular conception of "the professor" and of the philosophy of teaching, through a self-conceived postmodern performatic method, that makes use of facial gesture, body language, and vocal expression, plus sartorial and make-up props: A truly revolutionary method. "

[quote]Often misunderstood: In class, she is not only teaching the subject but also a very singular conception of "the professor" and of the philosophy of teaching, through a self-conceived postmodern performatic method, that makes use of facial gesture, body language, and vocal expression, plus sartorial and make-up props: A truly revolutionary method.

This almost reads like a parody of a postmodern professor.

God I hope this takes down that vomit scum head Judith Butler, that would be heavenly

Please stop dragging the lez-beans on this thread. I have known several in Chicago who have befriended and worked tirelessly on behalf of AIDS patients. I have known a few who worked at Howard Brown's charity shops too. Lez be friends!

La lesbianité is not a discours aigu for interrogating this liaison dégueulasse. Un geste épistolaire et Kantien, peut-être.

Mon dieu tu as besoin d'aide avec ton Francais!

The "Gay Code" defense.

Big stinking fetid pile of Balderdash R328! AND she's not a real lesbian in my estimation.

Just like Ronell sang

I said, just like Ronnell sang

Be my little baby

Baby my darling, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh

Well said R319. Thank you.

The more I read, the more she sounds like Norma Desmond.

She understood her strapping semitic/semiotic prince played fort/da with her mimicking of Norma's codes. Colonizing Norma's flesh would have been LITERAL violence to gay men (though she suspected his phallocentricity was performed, never purchased), and she never went to the real, only code. But not a binary code. She assumed he knew, and realized too late he simply isn't very bright.

I can't approve of the victim, La Reitman, wearing that deep tan sweater.

It's Butler and Ronell hoofing and mugging like a couple of dime-store chorus girls in front of, oddly, old footage of Miss Aretha

God, that was painful, r335.

I knew most professors were comfortable being the center of attention. They have to speak in front of large classes all the time. These two at R336 appear to think they're rock stars. It's easy to imagine how they'd be oblivious as to how they might make the less powerful uncomfortable or that the might just not care.

r337 Butler IS a rockstar to a whole generation of gender and literary studies acolytes.

Boy, if the Nimrod thought he had trouble finding a job before, certainly no one will hire him now. But maybe he can still get a job teaching at a (liberal) community college.

I dont know how I can respect my teacher if they acted like that but I am not in their field so...

5-year old comment on the video posted at R335:

[quote]This lying sack of shit Ronell seems more repugnant and more devoted to the support of fascist and criminal activity without the makeup, I guess that's how Nixon's face got televised too.

How do you go through life with the name Nimrod?

That is a nickname you are given if an idiot.

Nimrod is an Israeli name evidently.

Also from r335 video:

[quote]Is judith butler...dancing???

[quote]No, she's being coerced into her performative gender according to the normative sex script from the metanarrative of the politics of truth...or some bullshit.

Shit, I was really hoping that Ronell would have a German accent.

I thought she was going to sound like Frau What's-Her-Face from the Austin Powers movies.

"Transphobia" isn't real, cunt (with a fake cunt) @ R250

This is from the professor at NYU who hired Ronell:

[quote]The row continues to spill out across the academic world. In an extraordinary intervention, Professor Bernd Huppauf, who hired Ronell at NYU before clashing with her, has written a excoriating feature for a German periodical that will be published soon. In the piece, which has been shown to The Sunday Times, Huppauf describes how Ronell has “sadistic tendencies” and sought to “discredit me” and “destroy me as a person”, at one point claiming that she had publicly labelled him an anti-semite.

[quote]Of Ronell’s time in the department, he writes: “Contradiction was heresy and heretics were rebuked or excluded — not always with a smile, often ironic, mocking, sardonic.”

[quote]He adds: “Even if one is familiar with the closed world of the university, it is hard to believe how many years had to pass before this abuse of power could reach the public and the sexualisation of her teaching was even mentioned."

Why does the academy still take Judith Butler seriously?

More lesbian drama, why did she have to drag a gay man into it?

R348 I just pray this is the downfall of Butler as well, now her true revolting colours have been revealed

All the progress made by lesbians will now be brought down by the actions of this one woman. Sad.

[R335] reminds me of a professor I dated briefly. Utterly delusional, thought he was a rock star, with an unearned and undeserving sense of his physical appeal. He would have danced that same exact way.

He was smart and funny but standing in front of 20-year-olds and being the default authority stunts a person. I need to talk to adults who age, not a succession of 18- 21-year-olds.

Please, not 1 in 10 lesbians know who Judith Butler is.

R353 Ha, of course not, but other intellectuals do and spout her sick shit like it makes sense or is actually relevant to the real world, in anyway. It is not

Even fewer non lesbians know who she is.

I just looked Butler up, she seems like a typical academic. Bennington, Yale, etc.

She also writes like this r356:

[quote]The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power.

I ask you professor of DL...

Reading the quote posted by R357, is the material itself that she's writing about bullshit, or is it that her writing style is dry? Are there other writers of this sort of thing who aren't as opaque?

^^^professors, that was supposed to be

R357, that scans like a typical, rather clumsy, academic.

What exactly is your issue with this teacher? She may have harassed a student? Has it been adjudicated either by the university or by a court? Do you have some sort of personal issue with her?

Wow, it seems that Avital is also a pedophile. This is from Salon:

[quote]But their relationship takes on a different coloration in Benoît Peeters’ authoritative biography “Derrida,” which reports that Ronell began an affair with Derrida’s son Pierre while she was staying with the family for the Christmas holidays in 1979, when she was 27 and Pierre was 16. They moved in together the following year (after Pierre's graduation from high school), living for a time in a Paris apartment borrowed from one of Derrida’s colleagues. Her relationship with Pierre, Ronell told Peeters, “was a way of becoming part of the family. … For me, those years in Paris correspond to a really lovely dream.”

I don't see where you get pedophile from, R361. The age of consent in France was raised to 15 in 2018. It was younger at the time of the affair you cite.

r362 The age of consent has nothing to do with the definition of pedophile, moron. Pedophilia is a clinical concept, not a legal term. Someone who's attracted to minors is a pedophile even if his or her desires and actions are within the law of the country.

You're fucked in the head, R363, and you see pedophiles where there aren't any. That's no surprise, you right wing Q-tards have infested the Datalounge for a while. You see pedophiles everywhere.

We actually are talking about legal issues. He was over the age of consent at the time and he consented. Case closed. You don't get to determine for the people of France whether or not their citizens are old enough to consent to sexual conduct, nor do you get to determine that such conduct is pedophilia as a clinical concept. According to France, consensual sex took place between two consenting persons who were both old enough to consent and it's none of anyone's business.

Find a better case, hon, this one won't work for you regardless of your personal issues with this teacher.

r364 Wow, why are you so triggered that I call people who have sex with 16 year olds pedophiles? How many teenagers have you bedded? Do tell.

Again, I made no claim about the legality of her actions. Pedophile is a clinical, not a legal, term, you fucking retard. You're projecting your imbecility on me because you're a bad reader (in addition, I bet, to a pedo yourself who can't help but show his thin skin when this issue - sex with minors - is addressed and duly condemned with the appropriate words).

Btw, I come from a country where the age of consent is 14. But people here would still call such a relationship pedophilia, especially if the older partner were male. So spare me the lecture about the complexities and nuances of French law, of which pedos tend to be so fond.

This bitch thought Derrida (spawn) splooge in her cunt would quench her unquenchably thirsty striving.

R368 It is mental masturbation and abstract thought taken to the nth degree of self reverential bollocks

Martha Nussbaum's controversial critique of Judith Butler, "The Professor of Parody":

Excellent critique and good reading. Thanks R368

I work in academia (not as a professor) and have been a doctoral student, R360.

My beef with Ronell is that grad school, especially at the PhD level, puts students in an extraordinarily precarious position. One's advisor has almost limitless power over one's future in academia. Too much power, some argue. The student often does not have the option of switching advisors if a working relationship sours. Many departments will keep this option open, theoretically -- but three or fours years into a dissertation, working with the one member of the department who specializes in obscure Subject X, is often too late to start over with someone new.

People like Ronell, with a sadistic streak and a need for total control, thrive in this system. Unfortunately, her kind is a dime a dozen in the higher echelons of academe. They have the power to make or destroy entire futures, and that power is an aphrodisiac. All while speaking out against "oppressive systems of control" or other such rhetoric. Many academics are big hypocrites, in addition to narcissists and often charlatans (at least in the humanities).

That is why I have a beef with her, and all academics like her.

Well said R370, even without getting personal. I doubt R360 has read ANY of the linked articles, or is even familiar with this lurid story.

[quote]Has it been adjudicated either by the university or by a court?

Clearly r360 knows nothing about the Ronell case and can't be bothered to read.

[quote] is the material itself that she's writing about bullshit, or is it that her writing style is dry? Are there other writers of this sort of thing who aren't as opaque?

No, it is not 'bullshit', if you are interested in reading theories of power, how power is obtained, how it is held on to. In that paragraph, Butler is trying, (rather verbosely, it has to be said - she's a rather plodding, inelegant writer) to trace the development in critical theory from a structural, Marxist, theoretical account of power (typified by the work of Louis Althusser) to a post-structural, Marxist theoretical account of power, which draws heavily on the work of the Italian theorist Antonio Gramsci.

Look, it's not everyone's fucking cup of Earl Grey, but you'd have the same difficulties, as a lay person, trying to wade through a reserach article on quantum physics or developments in oncology.

[quote] Do you have some sort of personal issue with her?

Are you new here? There are a small, loud, group of 'radical feminist' lesbos on DL who hate Butler - and now her pal, Ronell - because Butler popularised the concept of gender being a 'fluid' and 'performative' 'construct'. This idea is used by trans lobbyists - who the lesbos despise and view as a threat to their very being or some such bullshit - to argue that being trans is 'cool' and 'radical'. The lesbos have one track minds, everything they post here comes down to the T, and their hate of the T.

[quote]You're fucked in the head, [R363], and you see pedophiles where there aren't any. That's no surprise, you right wing Q-tards have infested the Datalounge for a while. You see pedophiles everywhere.

R364 that person you are chiding is not a Q tard, it's a lesbo who hates postmodernists and trans and wants to smear them all as pedophiles.

r373 - That paragraph was one long run on sentence. It is terribly written, so no matter what the intention it's a bloody awful waffling drag to read.

It's an area I'm interested in, but that sort of rubbish writing makes me want to take a structural post marxist poker to my eyes and brain.

[quote]People like Ronell, with a sadistic streak and a need for total control, thrive in this system

Their days are numbered. It's certainly true that such types thrived in the old academic culture of twenty of thirty years ago. But things are changing. Students regard themselves increasingly as consumers of professional services, not the playthings / disciples of personality disordered, preening narcissists. Postmodernism is very old hat. It was a craze, and academic cult, and it's cycle is almost over. Butler and Zizek and Ronell will all soon be retired, and barely remembered, twenty years from now.

Butler has long been known as a writer of what seems to be unnecessarily difficult prose. Whether it is intentional or whether she just can't write in a straightforward fashion (while still maintaining the complexity of ideas and arguments) is always a point of discussion. A number of years ago, she got very defensive, saying her ideas were so complex that they required difficult prose. Tell that to Plato. She has contributed important ideas to gender studies and is, I gather, a good teacher and mentor to her students, but I don't feel as if I ever need to read anything she's written again.

I realized that I had something by Ronell about ten years ago, for a grad seminar in Disability Studies: her "Telephone Book," which purports to be about, among other things, schizophrenia. I waded through it but thought it was a waste of time (as was the seminar I was in, taught by two of the most meretricious scholars I've ever had the displeasure to know).

[quote] Gay men are more likely to be victims of anti-gay violence than lesbians, but women are more likely to be victims of violence in general than men are. Men are (far) }more likely to commit acts of violence , against both women and other men, than women are. How the hell is any of this in dispute? And why are we playing Oppression Olympics, anyway?

Excuse you, how do you not get that.

Men are far more likely to commit violence... TRUE No one is disputing that.

Women are more likely to be victims of violence than men... FALSE and definitely disputed. For sure in the Western world men are far more likely to be victims of murder and other violent crimes than women according to any crime statistic.

Pedophile is a clinical term describing a person sexually attracted to children before they hit puberty, so up to around twelve. Someone after 16year olds is not a pedophile. The term is often used as an insult in such a case, but there is definitely nothing clinical about that.

[quote]Ronell began an affair with Derrida’s son Pierre while she was staying with the family for the Christmas holidays in 1979, when she was 27 and Pierre was 16.

Complètement normale!

Post-structuralism is still relevant in many academic disciplines. I find its practitioners who concentrate on literary theory to be the most incomprehensible and pretentious of writers.

Oh fuck off r374. I'm r370 and my issues with Ronell and her ilk have nothing to do with "T"

[quote] There are a small, loud, group of 'radical feminist' lesbos on DL who hate Butler - and now her pal, Ronell - because Butler popularised the concept of gender being a 'fluid' and 'performative' 'construct'. This idea is used by trans lobbyists

You've got to be kidding. The small group of radical feminist lesbians in existence are Butler's only fans: they are the only people going to her speeches when she travels, reading and pretending to understand her blather.

Radical feminism is anti-Butler and anti-gender-nonsense.

The above quotation from Butler won the first prize for the annual Bad Writing Contest sponsored by the journal Philosophy and Literature. Here is Butler's turgid prose:

The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power.

And here is Martha Nussbaum's scorchingly clear restatement in her above referenced article:

Now, Butler might have written: "Marxist accounts, focusing on capital as the central force structuring social relations, depicted the operations of that force as everywhere uniform. By contrast, Althusserian accounts, focusing on power, see the operations of that force as variegated and as shifting over time." Instead, she [Butler] prefers a verbosity that causes the reader to expend so much effort in deciphering her prose that little energy is left for assessing the truth of the claims.

I love Katha Pollitt's take on this kind of (awful) writing and (awful) scholarship:

[quote] How "the left" came to be identified as the pomo left would make an interesting Ph.D. thesis. I suspect it has something to do with the decline of actual left-wing movements outside academia, with the development in the 1980s of an academic celebrity system that meshes in funny, glitzy ways with the worlds of art and entertainment, with careerism -- the need for graduate students, in today's miserable job market, to defer to their advisers' penchant for bad puns and multiple parentheses, as well as their stranger and less investigated notions. What results is a pseudo-politics, in which everything is claimed in the name of revolution and democracy and equality and anti-authoritarianism, and nothing is risked, nothing, except maybe a bit of harmless cross-dressing, is even expected to happen outside the classroom.

[quote]How else explain how pomo leftists can talk constantly about the need to democratize knowledge and write in a way that excludes all but the initiated few? Indeed, the comedy of the Sokal incident is that it suggests that even the postmodernists don't really understand one another's writing and make their way through the text by moving from one familiar name or notion to the next like a frog jumping across a murky pond by way of lily pads. Lacan...performativity...Judith Butler...scandal...(en)gendering (w)holeness...Lunch!

R387, thank you for posting that.

I really doubt that trans people would be endorsing Butler's view of gender as performance. Their position is usually the opposite, that gender is biological and rooted in the brain.

I have no idea what Butler and Ronell do or why they are academic stars, but do they just pull out ideas out of their ass and publish them? Dont they do anything similar to peer review and hypotheses testing for whatever shit they dream up? Do people in their fields lap up any bad idea really?

R389 Sweetie, they can twist anything

Although it's somewhat dated, Google the Sokal Hoax, r390

Agree with you R389 and I went to college late 80s early 90s and read quite a bit of post-modernist feministthought. I am surprised we haven’t discussed Kristeva yet.

Quite frankly, Ronell & Butler in their writings sound vaguely reminiscent of Schizophrenics. (Butler more so).

That's because it's a vacuous word salad r394

R395 Yes, I'm familiar with the symptoms. The echolalia was more of what came to mind, but the word salad and very distant analogies are present, as well as loose associations, and non-sequiturs,

R396 seems a bit testy.

Hold on here. You may not agree with Butler's or other poststructuralists' arguments (and in my opinion there's a lot there to disagree with fundamentally), but just because you don't understand the terminology she uses or think she shouldn't be using unfamiliar technical vocabulary, it doesn't mean her argument is wrong. There's a difference. As someone upthread said, scientists' arguments are also hard for a person without special training to get through; I'd add social scientists, economists, mathematicians, even scholars in fields like archaeology and art history when they get into the nitty gritty. For some reason there's a prejudice out there that literary and cultural topics are perfectly accessible to everyone and if you use specialized terminology talking about them, you're just being pretentious. No. There's a place for popularizing scholarship, but there's also a place for treating complex intellectual questions in all their complexity; if you disagree with the treatments, focus on the argument (*in context*), not on the terminology.

Analytic philosophers like Quine write on much more sophisticated topics with much more lucid prose, r398. Opacity sometimes signifies nothing more than opacity; other times, it's a tool to cover up lack of coherent argument.

The dismal opaqueness of the style is deliberate, to disguise the banalness of the argument. Nussbaum's rewrite quote by R386 makes that manifestly clear.

Sorry, 'banality', duh.

I once had a professor tell me, after we attended a particularly confusing paper presentation, "If the person cannot explain what he's saying in words you can understand, you can rest assured he has no idea what he's talking about."

Or, in this case, she.

R398 Easy there, your smugness... I was a philosophy student, well aquainted with the dialectic, Heidegger, and Hegel. It is very much the same ilk, I know quite well whereof I speak. Please read the Nussbaum critique, if you will not allow me to hold my own opinion, like literary criticism. Nomenclature aside, you really have been deluded if you find that to be good writing, and I mean REALLY! Furthermore, even if you were better at the gentle art of persuasion, it is far too late, as I have signed the petition forcing Ms. Butler to resign from her MLA position, along with several hundred others thus far.

Women are oftentimes their own worst enemy.

r404 third wave feminism holds several positions that are (arguably) anti-woman

I never level these accusations, and detest the word, BUT... I daresay R398 is a BLEEDING FRAU.

Bizarre, desperate attempt by Trump's henchmen to discredit the me too movement before 2018 elections. "See? They're all LIARS!".

I think all gay men have known 'lesbians' who buzz around gay men like fruit flies, monopolizing their lives.

??? are you talking about, r407?

The victim in the Ronell case was a GAY MAN.

[quote] I think all gay men have known 'lesbians' who buzz around gay men like fruit flies, monopolizing their lives.

Lesbian here.

I have a broad circle of lesbian friends and acquaintances--in fact, ever since I was in college 10+ years ago. I have never met a lesbian who has tried to monopolize the lives of any gay men. (THOUGH, I have known many lesbians of the stripe that try to "herd" their lesbian friends--and even lesbians they don't know--around.)

What they used to call "hags" are straight women.

She's not a lesbian. She may be "queer" as that has such a broad meaning it can mean anything. "Queer now means wanting to have inappropriate sex with subordinates and those who are only 16."

To those above who suggested that Reitman was liking it -- he tried to get away from Ronell in multiple ways?

[quote]At various points Reitman tried to get out of Ronell’s thrall. When it became clear what her mentorship would require of him, he tried in vain to contact Yale, to see if they would allow him to enroll despite his earlier rejection of their offer. Alas, the head of admissions in the German department was Ronell’s close friend, so Reitman couldn’t pursue that avenue further without risking her finding out and sabotaging his plans. When Reitman reached out to the vice provost at NYU, several times, he came up against the fact that the administrator had come from Ronell’s department. Rather than reporting the incident, as he was legally required to do, the vice provost encouraged Reitman to stay away from Ronell: She was "like a halogen light," the complaint has the vice provost telling Reitman; get too close and you might find yourself "seriously burned."

That administrator is toast.

I agree with R399. Quine is an excellent example of a great prose stylist.

I would love to know the difference between theory and philosophy.

According to Brian Leiter, "theory" is merely a name for bad academic philosophy.

Dear god, I have just read (or skimmed) Reitman's legal complaint against Ronnel linked in R 412.

If it is even remotely true -- and the complaint includes extensive emails and texts from her -- she is not only unhinged but, as an advisor, dangerous and vindictive. She should be fired: had she been a man, she already would have been.

She is one big black hole of Cluster B tendencies.

The Chronicle has been doing a good job of covering this case.

R416. Read his emails to her as well. Conversations he initiated. You may feel less absolute about the need to dismiss her.

r419 No, he wouldn't. Fuck off. She demanded that he use that language with her, and punished him when he did not.

It's so funny how these lezzies like r419 all cry, pull out their own hair, tear down their clothes, and throw ashes over their heads when they hear of a man stepping on a woman's toe, but when the situations reverse, and a woman is exposed for tyrannizing, groping, sexually assaulting a man, and punishing him professionally for resisting, they don't even want the perverted she-Hitler to lose their job, where they'll continue abusing students.

R422 That's because, though DL lesbians love to accused gay men of misogyny, they hate men 1,000 times more than gay men hate women.

They hate men more than they love their supposed principles against abuse and harassment.

[quote]They hate men more than they love their supposed principles against abuse and harassment.

So true. Hatred of men is the core of these wimmins personalities and, indeed, lives. If men didn't exist, ironically, they'd be at quite a loss as to what to do with themselves.

Google LChat "I genuinely hate men" and find your suspicions confirmed.

[quote]find your suspicions confirmed.

They aren't 'suspicions', plenty of us here have been around men-hating lez and worked with them at non-profits.

DL fav Conner Habib weighs in.

I wish posters here would cease lumping Ronell in with lesbians, as I don't believe most real lesbians would find her authentic. Perhaps it is only a particular sort of gay man who has problems getting on with lesbians here. Never have I found myself the object of their hatred, nor have I found myself in any strife with them. At the very least, trying to find common ground, some have seemed indifferent to gay men, or not quite interested in becoming closer friends. Hate is a two-way street very often, and we bring our expectations and assumptions to relationships, while respect is a give and take as well.

Authenticity is not possible. Everything is performative.

R428, thank you for your post.

My pleasure R430. I love that this thread has given me ample oppurtunity to block even more worthy nudniks. I am leary of all the woman hating gay men on here, especially the lesbian haters.

So you're saying you won't entertain ideas that don't fit your personal views? Hmm.

[quote]You're fucked in the head, [R363], and you see pedophiles where there aren't any.

A 27 year old who thinks fucking 16 year olds is ok is a piece of shit. Sorry.

R428 Gay man here, and totally agree, this foul mess is not a lesbian, in any sense, and dykes rock! I believe the latest few stirring up shit here with lesbians are bad/hate them gay men' are not gay, or men.

Lesbian here.

Once again, she's not one of ours. I don't know any lesbians who are sexually assaulting men AND had an affair with another guy named Pierre.

By the way, if you want to see what real feminists think, go thither to twitter and watch hundreds of them rip Ronell and Butler (especially Butler) a new asshole.

R434, thank you, too!

So was Frau Ronell the real life inspiration for the Armie Hanmer character in CMBYN?

Close to 400 signatures.

[quote]By the way, if you want to see what real feminists think, go thither to twitter and watch hundreds of them rip Ronell and Butler (especially Butler) a new asshole.

That is doubtless your own personal idea of a great time, but frankly I'd rather rip myself a new asshole.

I read the most recent legal complaint against Ronell and NYU by Reitman. It is horrendous. I hope he wins and gets a big settlement. I hope she is fired and economically broken.

I mean she's 66, that seems like an okay age for retirement, but yes she should have to pay up.

R440 Judith Butler should go down as well, if not just for her terrible obfuscated prose.

r416 What a sicko, Jesus. This is much worse then it first sounded, and it always sounded bad.

He's filed the legal complaint because all the school did was give her a slap on the wrist. She should be fired, lose her tenure, and be forced to move to Namibia.

And that's because nobody at NYU wanted to tangle with her, [R44]. Agreed that she should be fired, let's see if NYU administration has the balls. It's a second rate school.

I don't see Nimrod in any way as crazy as Ronnel. He came to NYU to try to study with her only to realize -- immediately -- that she was a sexually obsessed madwoman. It's hard to shift advisors, it damages you in an impossible job market. As the object of her fantasies, he tried to manage her, when she was in the position of (relatively absolute) academic power. Though I love the fact that according to an NYU professor she has only placed TWO graduate students in tenure track positions during her two decades at NYU.

What is particularly pathetic is the actions of her friends -- Butler, and especially Jack Halberstam, who dismiss her egregious and indeed criminally liable behavior, and accuse Nimrod as either malicious or -- even better -- an exemplar of "sex panic." Nasty and in fact immoral.

He's going to win that lawsuit.

R428, R434, and R435. Thank you. I do not understand the hate directed at lesbians here at times. You have my eternal gratitude. Lesbians were the ones who came to our help at the beginning and throughout the Aids Crisis., when very few others did.

Oh pleez, he's a special snowflake who participated in the behavior. He obtained his degree then two years later sues for$$$

Can't stand these wimpy young gay guys who expect the world to be kind to them.

Graduate students are often naive at the beginning of their graduate students. Remember they were undergraduates just a few months before arriving at the new university and have no real idea how the graduate programs work, etc. I can see him getting taken advantage of. And then it turns into a bizarre psychological game from this woman, almost immediately.

^^ beginning of their graduate studies.

r448 Shut the fuck up, everyone can expect not to be harassed and stalked by their superiors. Or otherwise they can sue. The world isn't that kind to abusive psychos anymore, deal.

Has anyone slept with their professor?

Wow if you read the full complaint, she is a stalker, she is a criminal and just clearly a sociopath. She wasnt just being eccentric, oh me, I am weird like that. She made him her slave.

R449: he was a man in his late twenties when this happened. I'm not defending her (I would like to see her be more than just suspended, based on everything I've read about her), just saying he had some life experience.

It wasn't his age that's the issue; it's the fact that the had total control of his career prospects.

One article (not sure if linked to this thread or the other) said something like, "the 40 most important people in his field signed the letter. His career is over."

There are few fields as limited or intertwined as academia.*

*Cue a moron to scream, "THEN HE SHOULDN'T"T HAVE GONE INTO ACADEMIA." I know you're out there.

^^the fact that she had total control...

Fuck the people defending her and attacking him. shame on them.

Now you're infantilizing adults in graduate school? Oh, for fuck's sake.

R458 = Elderly French Literature professor with pants around his ankles as he masturbates furiously to the Reitman complaint. "Gender is performative" he moans softly.

Too right, r457. First, Ronnell is not a "lesbian", she describes herself as "queer". Which basically means she's straight but, hey, sexuality is all a construct and these days anyone can call themselves "queer". She probably thinks that sexuality is all a performance (much of her own "work" is about "performance") and so felt she could totally ignore the fact that a gay man was gay. Reminds me of when I was at uni in the 90s and a straight friend couldn't believe that I "identified" as a lesbian because, as a woman, I am attracted to and only fall in love with other women. She thought it was just some choice, playing, performance (because, deep down, these "intellectual" straights believe that everyone is really straight).

For those saying Nimrod could have easily changed his advisor and that we're infantilising grad students - just look what happened to him when he made a complaint against her and he was found to be justified: the "aristocracy" of critical theory came out to bash him and defend her. Even though she was found to have abused her position and sexually harrassed him, they couldn't care less about the facts and just want to stick up for their buddy. If he'd made a complaint about her while still her student or tried to change advisors he would have been blacklisted by the academic world. Which other professor in their department would have taken him on if he said he no longer wanted to work with her?

This is why it's so hard for students to make complaints about professors who are harassing them - they fear they will not be able to get a job.

To the lesbian bashers - fuck you.

Btw, the heterosexual friend who thought being gay was just a "performance" had been reading hetrosexual "queer theorist" Eve Sedgwick, and that's where she got her stupid ideas from.

r459 a friend of mine in French literature went to a lecture of an eccentric professor who specializes in the Marquis de Sade.

In the middle of the lecture, the professor got an obvious erection.

Also, anyone reading the complaint can see that he fought. He said "no", he said "please back off", he was talking to a person in power at the University ... and paid the price, because all that person did was talk to AR, who punished him. The only thing he didn't do was walk away from his chance at a PhD and career. AR is a psychopath.

And then she had the audacity to claim Nimrod's complaint was motivated by frustration at his own intellectual inferiority.

Ronell is certifiable.

Letter from Ronell's attorney to the New York Times (which they declined to publish):

Uhuh. Because Reitman calling her a "witch" and "monster" to his friends certainly makes me believe that she was nice to him and it was a mutual flowery friendship.

Of course they declined to publish it; it's nothing but a vicious attack on Reitman. Apparently she was the victim of his campaign of harassment. The coward tries to have it published under her lawyer's name.

As a gay academic who finds Avital ("Be My Baby") Ronell's behavior reprehensible and believe she should be forced to retire, at the very least and who finds Butler's prose unnecessarily obtuse (and her sense of self as "patriarchal" as any man's), I do think much gets misunderstood in the whole "gender as performance" concept (performance studies is one of my areas). Butler was building on speech act theorists such as Austin and Searle, philosophers of language who simply (or not so simply argued) that there is a certain class of utterances (usually sentences) that do not simply "state" something as reportage, but cause actions to take place (such as "I now pronounce you man and wife"--the linguistic utterance has a real-world force)--which they call "performatives."

Butler imported that to make he argument that what we call "gender"--what used to be understood as social scripts and conventions of masculinity and femininity--are akin to "speech acts" in analogous ways--that such behaviors are not inherently male or female, but have taken on the "performative" qualities associated with socially-recognized ways of being male (masculinity) and female (femininity), but are not themselves biological categories--hence, feminine men and masculine women. Of course, once she made this useful point (albeit in ridiculously difficult prose), she expanded her argument to suggest that sexuality itself may have performative dimensions. Of course, the jury is out (and will probably always be out, barring genetic or other biological discoveries) about that--I certainly do not feel my homosexual orientation is simply a role I have assumed, changeable like a costume. I do think it's likely that the way I live and act socially may be to some degree shape by the social and historical contexts in which I live. And so, while I have no great love for Butler on any level, I think her lesser acolytes have sloppily reduced her poorly-written original thesis to "all sexuality is made-up."

In her arrogance and self-importance, she has contributed to this misuse of what wasn't all THAT original to begin with (though she made the leap to applying Austin and Searle to gender studies) by not reining in the lumpen versions of what she took (with attribution to be fair) from better philosophers (including Hegel and others I gave up reading long ago, as I'd much rather read novels and history).

Yes, yes, I know: tl; dr. Fine by me.

[quote]AR is a psychopath.

Every single unpleasant or difficult or unstable person you ever come across in your life is doubtless labelled a 'psychopath' by you, you overwrought fucking frau.

About 2% of the population are psychopaths, idiot. It's not some kind of fairy tale story. Most people tend to ignore psychopaths being psychopaths, not the other way round. Ronell clearly suffers from a personality disorder and displays notable sadistic tendencies and an off the charts drive to manipulate and play with her victims and destroy them when she is done with them. Psychopath is the best guess, though Malignant Narcissist might also be a possibility.

I hope someone writes a really good book about this case, which includes extensive background on Ronell.

She is gross but fascinating, in a Norma Desmond kind of way.

Actually, Norma/Gloria looked great for her age.

R468, always good to throw a bone into the conversation. You never know who will take it up.

Great, r468. The problem is with heterosexuals who went to seem cool reducing gay to "queer", "queer" to performance and then calling themselves queer. Like Avital Ronnell does.

That website is crazy, r465. You can see from it what a persistent, self-righteous weirdo Ronell is (no doubt she's behind it). She's unable to consider that she might have made a mistake, either in this case or in anything in life.

The lawyer's letter seems to contain a number of inaccuracies.

The website linked at r465 is also just a continuation of the Ronell "star academic" cult. She and her acolytes seem to think she's entitled to do whatever she wants. They're only digging a bigger hole for her.

What one of her worshippers says: "Your work also embraces what being a woman in the philosophical institution actually entails : nothing short of embodying the madwoman. Moreover, the attention you brought to the differential gap between discursive figures and bodily practices in female philosophers led you to claim shamelessness and occasional exhibitionism as means of making explicit the tacit intellectual debate that conditions such position."

Second rate article in the New Yorker on Avital Ronnel and "me too" -- a laughable argument that the fallout from the scandal has engendered profound intellectual reflection on the part of academics, notably Butler and Duggan, on the nature of sexual harassment.

Masha Gessen, the author of that piece, is a bit of an idiot, r477.

Gessen is talking bullshit when she says that a 36-year-old Ronell having a relationship with a 16-year-old boy in France 30 years ago was "legal and socially acceptable". It may have been legal but even in France they don't find that socially acceptable and didn't then.

Ronell's defenders just don't get it - the more they close ranks and try to convince us that Ronell is some kind of genius who has been wronged and Reitman is a bad person for bringing these charges against her, the more they prove that Reitman was trapped in a shitty situation where if he tried to go against Ronell's pathetic demands on him, let alone change adviser or make a complaint about her, there would have been a huge backlash against him and he could just forget any dreams of an academic career.

R468 it's interesting how you wrote all that and then blew it with your sentence at the end. The fact that you wrote "yes yes tl; dr, fine by me" in an attempt to show you DON'T care just shows you DO care, very much, and are preemptively blowing off people's reactions in order to shield yourself from potential injury.

R477 for them to reflect on it means they'd have to admit they were wrong. From butler's follow up comments on how they "didn't know the whole story" she is still trying to shift blame to someone, anyone, other than her and the culture they have created.

R479 No, it's just that I have become accustomed to the short attention spans on DL and know someone was likely to trot out the "get a blog" comment, instead of skipping over the post. Of course, I do care about the issues and hope that some people would find them complex enough to read. The "tl;dr" was a bit tongue in cheek, if also defensive. If that undid the rest of the post, well, so it goes.

R481, people with a sense of humor (we're a dying breed on DL) got it.

I love you R481

R481 yeah you were defensive, and preempting the "get a blog" comments. Either post your opinions proudly or don't bother, the mealy-mouthed approach is off-putting.

Another reason might be you were fishing for compliments.

R482 there wasn't anything funny about it. Did you read what he posted? It was clearly defensive and passive aggressive. And that is why you should be embalmed.

Embalmed?

Is that a mortician put down?

R468's posts was useful - whether intentionally or not - in that it laid out the bullshit of literary and "queer" theory, which has led to the decmiation of gay culture today and other ridiculous consequences, such as a situation wherein a heterosexul woman in a position of power can call herself "queer" and thereby thinks it's ok for her to sexually harass a gay man.

"And so, while I have no great love for Butler on any level, I think her lesser acolytes have sloppily reduced her poorly-written original thesis to "all sexuality is made-up."" Yup, this is where we find ourselves today, "all sexuality is made-up" we are told. And shame on Butler for sticking up for this sexual predator and manipulator.

[quote]Yup, this is where we find ourselves today, "all sexuality is made-up" we are told.

Nope, this is where a sad collective of dykes find themselves if they spend all day on Facebook looking for nutters to confirm their own bias. The vast majority of normal people - gays AND straights - have never heard of 'gender theory'. You lot are a fringe minority, obsessed with a fringe minority.

R487: every reasonably educated person is at least aware of the rudiments of gender theory (and its most influential thinkers), regardless of their opinion of it.

From the New Yorker piece:

[quote]Ronell, who is sixty-six, is a literary scholar and philosopher at New York University and, by all accounts, one of the great academic minds of our time.

What utter bullshit.

From a piece Ronell wrote in 2013:

[quote]Like nearly everyone else who isn’t entirely sociopathic, I continue to falter and know defeat.

Not entirely, Avital; just significantly enough to seriously abuse those around you.

"... one of the great academic minds of our time...."

Yes, [R489] a pathetic joke, given the intellectual qualities of philosophers such as Martha Nussbaum, to give one example quoted in this thread.

Avital and her ilk have gone far on performance, an embrace of theoretical obscurity over clarity, etc. etc. Perhaps this sorry time has come, here, to a sordid end.

Masha Gessen should stick to writing about Russia.

Wow, wading through this thread was a bit like swimming in a sewer. The fascinating thing is seeing all the anti-T people somehow using this to validate their prejudice, while simultaneously attacking each other as lesbians or gay men. Fascinating. (And the lesbian bashing here is just infuriating.)

She was completely inappropriate. She deserves to be 'metoo'd. she's an ephebophile, clearly.

How any of that translates into DL's childish obsession with bashing T's, I'll never know.

Thank you, r468 for that synopsis. It brings some clarity into this trainwreck of a thread, and has even earned you a stalker, apparently.

R478 Actually for the most part the French aren't overly concerned with May December relations. Look at the Macrons for example. Mary K. Letourneau was viewed as a victim in France. I recall when Villi came to Paris to promote a book about their story and he was treated like a hero

My impression is that this story has layers we're not seeing. I'm sceptical of charges that are registered 2 years after the fact. I'm sceptical that the student did not change supervisors. It happens all the time. Even I changed mine at a top British Uni with little drama

I don't like to see an accomplished scholar become the target of an obvious effort to destroy her - and I'm a guy. A gay guy. She was always quirky and hyper sexual. And lauded for it. So this take down seems overly reactive. Vindictive

R495 Has it occurred to you that the politics of changing advisors at an American University, might be different than a British University? You may have also lucked out by not having a vindictive adviser. Here in the U.S. It's getting harder and harder to become a tenured professor. Schools are saving money by using adjunct professors. They have no insurance, no job security, often no offices. Some of them qualify for government assistance. Someone hoping to pursue a career in academia will be very wary of pissing off a powerful professor with a personality cult built up around her.

She shouldn't have been lauded for hyper sexuality, if it included a predatory streak. Harvy Weinstien was thought of as that wacky uncle Harvy. Michael Jackson was just a man child. People were ignoring predatory behavior and calling it quirky.

Are you trying to say, r487, that you haven't head that we're the "LGBT community" now, that millenials don't call themselves gay/lesbian but "queer" and that trans issues are gay issues?

R495, Macron and his wife married as adults and are always careful to say that nothing happened between them while he was still at school, i.e. while he was 16. Moreover, their relationship is a real one that has lasted decades.

I'm sure most French people who had heard about it would have thought that the only reason Ronell was interested in the Derrida son was so as to fuse herself to Derrida the father.

As for her being a great scholar - no one outside of a very narrow cicle had heard of her before this incident became known and having learnt a little about her since then I can safely say she's a pretentious moron who spouts shit. Her calling herself "queer" is a good example of that.

Stop excusing harrasment and sexual abuse. The very fact that Reitman is being hounded by these "top" scholars now is because he dared to challenge Ronell's manipulation of him. Imagine if he'd done that while still a student.

There isn't so much politics involved in changing your PhD supervisor at British universities r495, even the supposedly top one you went to. Still, you have to give a reason, usually along the lines of "I would prefer to work with Professor Smith because he's a specialist in the line of research that I'm becoming increasingly interested in." It's a bit trickier to say "I'd like to change my adviser because my current one - the academic genius god who can do no wrong - is sexually harassing and manipulating me."

And, it doesn't happen that people at British universities change their PhD supervisor all the time, there still has to be good reason for it; it's a hassle, and departmental political sensitivities do come into play. Your supervisor was probably happy to get rid of you, which is why you found it easy to change. Not to mention that in most PhD progammes you have two supervisors these days.

The problem with 468's synopsis is that it ends with nonsense. No one is saying that sexuality can just change on a whim. Younger people are just acknowledging bisexuality as a reality, something that also rankles DL's old age home residents.

R501 - What part is of r468 is nonsense? Seems pretty sensible to me. On the other hand, you state that “No one is saying that sexuality can just change on a whim” (unfortunately, many people DO believe that, otherwise conversion therapy would not exist) and “younger people are just acknowledging bisexuality as a reality.” FALSE. Bisexuality has been widely accepted as a reality for decades, and was even quite fashionable in the 20s and 70s. Please get your facts straight before accusing others of “nonsense.”

R498, It is extremely rare to change supervisors, in Britain but especially American, and most of all in the humanities. At my graduate school, I knew of no one who had done so -- and that was over a period of many years. To do so makes you "damaged goods." And why the two years? By that time it had become clear to Nimrod that Ronnel was either indifferent or hostile to his career prospects. I am sure that she has her side to the story -- indeed she has told us that he is "not smart enough" "a thanatophile" or even "in love with her" but anyone reading her emails to him must recognize her preening narcissism and borderline psychosis.

Lisa Duggan is a cunt if you aren't "famous" within the industry.

MLA President on Butler's apology:

Dear Colleague,

As many members know, a letter written in support of a New York University faculty member accused of sexual harassment was signed by Judith Butler, who was identified as the 2020 MLA president. The letter, written without authorization from the Executive Council, runs counter to aspects of the MLA’s Statement of Professional Ethics and to the council’s own document outlining the legal duties of care and loyalty the council owes to the association. The Executive Council is a broadly representative, member-elected body, with no single member accorded any more decision-making power than any other, and no officer of the MLA speaks for the MLA unless expressly authorized to do so.

Professor Butler has apologized for allowing the MLA to be associated with the letter and has expressed regrets for arguments in it. The officers have accepted her apology.

The MLA recognizes the power disparity between faculty members and graduate students, and we affirm our strong commitment to graduate student rights and welfare and to academic professional rights and responsibilities. Those commitments will not change.

Sincerely,

Anne Ruggles Gere

President, Modern Language Association

In other words r505, Butler will be the next president of the MLA.

The point is that Ronell is neither lesbian nor bisexual but a straight person who calls herself "queer" because the critical theory milieu which she and so much of the academic world is part of has enabled that.

I suppose it more fashionable than ordinary R507!

[quote]There isn't so much politics involved in changing your PhD supervisor at British universities...

I'm a mere high school dropout - but shouldn't it be 'There aren't so many politics involved...'?

R509, No dear, the other way.

R509, it's a tricky one and I did think about it! But... politics is in the singular despite the s at the end and we're not talking about a literal quantity that can be counted, so it's "much" rather than "many".

What does "Cantab" mean? Candidate ____?

It's arsehole for 'Cambridge', R512.

r512:

Yah!

This is from a student who wanted to work with Ronell, but whom Ronell rejected (it's from an email to Ronell):

[quote]From my interactions with you and observing you in various settings, you give the impression that you suffer from a well-known mental illness referred to as malignant narcissism in a borderline structure…

[quote]There are clear clinical descriptions of sadistic object relations. You may get some sense of why your criticisms of students are so often felt to be destructive and disillusioning: you appear to be unable to control your sadism. Don't you realize that the metaphor you expressed to me in front of other faculty, that you liken your role to that of a Procrustean bonsai master who prunes and places wires on her students, probably points to a destructive, violent and sadistic phantasy that is only worsened by the self-satisfied relish with which you related it? This disorder, were it found to be present, would also account for why you sometimes seem to me slightly unkempt. These comments are meant to be helpful. I hope you will seek out a proper professional evaluation to identify whatever the problems are and have them addressed. I am concerned for you and I hope you will take this caution seriously….

Dear god, that student sounds like a loon.

On the contrary, the student sounds spot on.

r517 = Avital Ronell

That rejected student was essentially calling her a psychopath.

Funny how the sole online reference to "malignant narcissism in a borderline structure" can be found on Leiter's blog:

It was a mature student, an actual psychotherapist, who diagnosed her, and left the department after spending a good deal of time with her, according to the blog above. Not just some precocious young whippersnapper. As a mature student myself, I have noticed we tend to approach teachers more as peers than untouchables, so it doesn't surprise me that an older student would send an email like that. It also doesn't surprise me if the student was rejected - he would have been asking too many questions, trying to understand her bizarre approach and requirements, so she would never have allowed someone like that to continue under her, because she would know she couldn't control them.

[quote]These comments are meant to be helpful. I hope you will seek out a proper professional evaluation to identify whatever the problems are and have them addressed. I am concerned for you and I hope you will take this caution seriously….

People (especially online) so often use this type of language in a condescending and/or "concern-trollish" and insincere way (" I worry about your mental health; I hope you seek help") that I'm inclined to be skeptical. But you're probably right, R521.

r520, I assume this is because the article in which that email appeared is from a German-language publication. The email would have been translated. In addition, the article itself may or may not be behind a pay-wall.

So "malignant narcissism in a borderline structure" is an inaccurate German translation of English psychiatric terminology? Because the phrases "malignant narcissism in a borderline structure" and "in a borderline structure" (both exact phrases) appear to occur nowhere else on the Internet.

Translation aside, or what Germans may have printed is not germane. She is highly disordered. That is probably more in keeping how a native German speaker would refer to her. She is sadistic and sick, I am sure of it.

No, r524, you're missing the point.

1. Student writes email (in English) to Ronell.

2. Email translated to German for German article.

3. Leiter posts on blog in the original English.

The adult student who diagnosed her, that's hilarious!

The prof didn't ask for a psych evaluation and how dare he/she call her unkempt. The psychotherapist/philosopher is a real piece of work. All these people seem like total assholes.

I just find it curious that someone speaks with apparent authority yet uses terms that are clearly not in general use within their field, based on the one Google hit they yield.

Are you fucking room temperature IQ? That was prime snark delivered by the student to an asshole prof.

R528 so because psychotic people don't ask to be locked up, we should just ignore them?

R529 universities don't teach students to be automatons. If the student was giving a prescriptive diagnosis it'd be using the diagnostic codes from the DSM. He was putting things in terms for a layman, anyway - the prof wasn't a shrink.

So uncivilised. Give me European Universities where decorum is still the rule.

[quote]He was putting things in terms for a layman, anyway - the prof wasn't a shrink.

Sorry, layman or not, "in a borderline structure" sounds like nonsense.

It's not supposed to be valid, you schmuck.

Maybe someone illiterate in snark and satire should stay completely away from all snark about critical theory?

Leiter's blog is as loony as the people he seeks to expose.

Yeah, and let's condone sexual harassment by critical theorists (aka bullshitters), r535.

So he is saying ronell is a malignant narcissist and borderline as well? Sounds like the piece of work that she is.

r538 not Nimrod, but another student, one whom Ronell refused to work with

R537 - reading skills? I think she an insane crackpot, and never defended her in this thread. I think the adult student who published the snarky diagnosis is a riot, and there is a dipshit troll on this thread who can't read any of this satire for what it is.

Another student who worked with Ronell speaks out:

That "diagnosis"is not unambiguously sardonic. Unless you know the person who wrote it and the background to the story, it could just as easily be taken at face value.

She looks like a narcissistic and humourless bitch just from the way she dresses. Any woman her age who dresses like that is probably unhinged, and takes themselves far too seriously. She’s probably been allowed to get away with acting like this due to the kind of avant-garde academic she’s considered to be. The university leadership has most likely been letting her get away with this shit for decades.

Because she was never censored she thought she was above the law and her behaviour escalated.

Good insights, r543..

Ronell strikes me as the Norma Desmond of critical theory.

R542 do you have mild autism? If you are are a troll, you're funny! If the flat aspect is for real, you're a crushing bore and a bit creepy.

OMG, Gayatri. Isn’t she just as big a deal - if not more - as Judith Butler?

[quote]Academic celebrity soaks up blood like a pair of Thinx. A letter to NYU’s president, Andrew Hamilton, a draft of which leaked in June, argued that Avital’s “brilliant scholarship” qualified her for special treatment. The 51 signatories included giants of feminist theory like Judith Butler and Gayatri Spivak, as well as my department chair — and the professor who emailed to “encourage” me to play nice with Avital. (Butler has since issued some tepid regrets.)

A friend of mine ran into Spivak in an airport coffee shop. Spivak was ordering something and my friend was leaning over to look at the pastries; he realized he might be crowding her out and said, "I hope I'm not invading your space."

She replied, "What a middlebrow thing to say."

R502 What part of BISEXUALITY did you not understand, moron?

The most interesting bit from the article posted at R541:

Avital is a Germanist and a deconstructionist who has made no serious contribution to feminist scholarship... When news media report that she is a feminist — “What Happens to #MeToo When a Feminist Is the Accused?” read the Times headline — they are factually mistaken. This is a professional distinction, not a political one. Personally, Avital may be a feminist, in the Taylor Swift sense of a woman who doesn’t like being oppressed, but professionally, she is not a feminist scholar, any more than every person who believes that humans descended from apes is an evolutionary anthropologist.

The most interesting bit from the article posted at [R541]:

[quote]Avital is a Germanist and a deconstructionist who has made no serious contribution to feminist scholarship... When news media report that she is a feminist — “What Happens to #MeToo When a Feminist Is the Accused?” read the Times headline — they are factually mistaken. This is a professional distinction, not a political one. Personally, Avital may be a feminist, in the Taylor Swift sense of a woman who doesn’t like being oppressed, but professionally, she is not a feminist scholar, any more than every person who believes that humans descended from apes is an evolutionary anthropologist.

Anybody Mention Taylor Swift in the context of Critical Theory and you're dead to me.

Haha that’s funny r547. But appropriate I guess since she’s a self declared Marxist [in addition to being Deconstructionist/Feminist].

I thought she was an Insufferablist, r552

I don't understand how these cunts are still alive and still teaching? We thought they were old hat in early 90's when the French flippantly informed us that semiotics and deconstruction had become heavy, American, and yes middlebrow. Bitter, badly fucked cunts, of all genders, who were never to glitter like their fetishized gods once did. Any Contemporary Artists making BIG Hay were doing it correctly for the times. Not some chaired professors writing gobbledygook.

Thank you, R494. As to the stalker--I'm kinda astonished by their passion in insisting on my cowardice and passive-aggressiveness. It would be amusing if it weren't tiresome. Well, that's what the block function is for! Bye-bye, stalker! how do you like THAT for passive-aggressive? Toodles!

"I don't understand how these cunts are still alive and still teaching?" R554, because they managed to entrench their mafia-like grip in the universities and are hard to dislodge, as shown by this case.

And Butler is still slated to become the MLA president in 2020, r556.

R555 seems obsessed with himself.

An uneducated prole like me looks at all this and sees a tempest in a teapot. And it’s amazing to me that people get paid to argue about theories and isms.

I guess every tribe is this way, though.

The Ronell affair is just a microcosm of the sorry state of the humanities.

I hope Nimrod wins his lawsuits.

Why are they hard to dislodge? In medicine, the superstars bring millions to a university in grants and funding. What do humanities academic superstars bring to the table? Her so-called celebrity cant really be bringing NYU any money?

I doubt this bitch has ever had sex, much less a relationship, in her life. Lesbians don't seduce their friends'/colleagues' teen aged (or any age) sons.

Prestige, r562. This is why they will refuse to oust Judith Butler as president of MLA. Because she is Judith Butler.

[quote]all taking her class and working hard to familiarize themselves with her particular methodologies

That is a quote from R541. An always accurate indicator of the pretentious and pseudo-intellectual is their misuse the word 'methodology/ies.' This person meant Ronell's METHODS.

r565 what I find obnoxious is when they make plural words that have been traditionally singular: Marxisms, feminisms, jurisprudences, postcolonialisms, etc.

... because those concepts are already abstract and plural.

"Methdology" is the accepted jargon in the literary theory world. The whole thing has been a long con that is finally starting to unravel. This is part of it. Midsize universities are defunding the humanities in part because the administration recognizes the fraud and undergrads don't want to take those types of courses. Administrators won't publically state that they know it's a con. Why get into that battle?

It's been unraveling since the Sokal Hoax, r568 -- so, not quickly enough.

No, R568 methodology / methodologies are entirely legitimate words used by researchers in all disciplines, including the humanities. But the words are misunderstood and abused by the pretentious who , I assume, think they sound more impressive than 'method/ methods' - even when they, in fact, mean 'method/ methods'.

R560, that book title is hilarious yet deeply disturbing. How could an editor ever commission that shit?

R562, I doubt beyond a very small circle Ronell was ever considered a superstar, certainly not in the way Butler and Zizek are.

Plenty of young people would be interested in majoring in the humanities and also taking humanities electives. If the departments weren't so obviously bullshit. There's no reason this gobbledygook needed to infiltrate bachelor programs. It's one thing for a doctoral students to waste his brain on critical theory arcana but history, literature, philosophy, political economy, can easily fill up 4 undergraduate years with solid reasonably straightforward and certainly worthwhile studies.

Yes. r572. I know a lot is made of people in STEM disparaging the humanities. From my vantage point, it's not so much they are against the humanities in theory (I know physicists who seem to enjoy reading far more than any professor of literature); rather, they recognize how little rigor is left in certain humanities disciplines.

The greatest art lovers I've met were all physicians R573.

Marjorie Perloff wrote a good piece about what the Ronell case says about the state of the profession. It included this gem:

[quote]From the perspective of other university departments or the medical school or law school, from the perspective of those who work in publishing or the TV industry or in Silicon Valley, the professor’s behavior must seem simply unbelievable. Many universities now have laws against faculty-student relationships, at least while the student is actively working with the professor in question. But more important, from the perspective, say, of a medical student or engineer: how do these Comparative Lit stars have such endless time on their hands? In one email, about two years into the relationship, Avital tells Nimrod she is available from Thursday through the entire weekend: he need merely say the word. When, outsiders ask, do these people actually do any work? Grade papers? Teach their classes? And how can knowledge in our field be so subjective and tenuous that a professor who begins by praising a given student so extravagantly then turns on him and declares that his dissertation had no solid argument? What did his other dissertation readers think? Or were they afraid to go on the record with their evaluations? And was there no outside member (from another department) on the dissertation committee?

"Little known hetero professor with several personality disorders perved disgustingly on gay male grad student."

Another student rushes to Ronell's defense:

R577. I have to say, that reads like satire (I know it's not intended as such. It contains every imaginable, pretentious, non-intellectually sound "citation" from the misogyny of Plato ( yeah, that's news) to Lacan's petit objet a. Tasha sounds like a humorless scold--a drudge who keeps hoping Ronnie will notice her and invite her to be Nimrod's replacement in her folie.

Oh Tasha what a pretentious twat

The academics marjorie perloff and jon weiner who wrote articles at la review of books blog seem normal. They restored my faith in the humanities. Marjorie Perloff is such a snarky grandma.

There's not a new thought in that screed. Years ago as an undergraduate undergraduate I studied classical political philosophy and learned Greek to do it.

Tasha Devische is not even a real name.

So some anonymous coward is criticizing Chu. Grand.

See below.

Maybe "Tasha Devische" is an anagram?

A shaved cishet. It is L'affaire Sokol redux.

I hate to nitpick but it's not ' Lacan's petit objet a,' it's 'Lacan's objet petit a'.

That entire piece is invalidated by the silly pseudonym.

Thanks for the link r575...

You're welcome r588

Wait ... are we thinking Chu wrote that satire herself?

Yes, r303, especially at state schools. Public funds are propping up this empty, pseudo-intellectual nonsense., and it's not sustainable.

R586 Vous avez raison!

Lol at the name of that blog: BLARB

The exposée by one of her colleagues of Ronell's tyranny over the NYU German department, alluded to somewhere upthread, has been published in German and now in English in Salon. Unfortunately it's very unspecific (maybe he was unable or unwilling to go into names and other details?), rarely more than a list of unpleasant anecdotes, but obviously reflects a desperation and frustration with her by others in the dept.

One thing he does do is clarify that she, like other deconstructionists and many scholars lumped into post-structuralism, is basically doing continental philosophy in the tradition of Hegel and Heidegger, applying it to literary texts and other cultural productions.

I have to say, I've taught in university departments for a quarter century, and I can't imagine the opacity and autocratic behavior he describes happening in a department of mine—e.g. her forbidding other professors to speak to the dean without her permission, getting instructors let go and assistant professors denied tenure against the consensus of the rest of the German faculty, admitting grad students apparently single-handedly. These things are completely unthinkable in my own experience: there are rules in place for how these things are done, and they involve quorums and votes and so on; deans are above departmental structures and there are means redress at the administrative level for any abuse; power is deliberately diffused. NYU must have been—still is?—run on very archaic principles. (Also, some of the essay I'm having trouble understanding on first reading, e.g. the last paragraph of §3; there might be problems with the translation as well as the author's reticence and elliptical style.)

Whatever she may or may not have done, she deserves some punishment for her sense of style.

Has she been disbarred yet?

All told, is NYU really a reputable institution for grad school in humanities? I suppose they have a few good departments but its such a folie de grandeur type of place, isn't it? Seems like a school that has good to great professional grad school programs.

They rip off their undergrads blind. Nations biggest generator of student debt.

They're just the natural outcome of higher-education-as-corporate-capitalism. They're very big on their Abu Dhabi campus—colleagues of mine are constantly teaching there for terms or on shorter junkets. It's one of only several dozen international campuses NYU has in various countries (many of the illiberal variety), all doubtless quite profitable.

But I think they are a reputable institution for both undergrad and grad education. In my field (in humanities) their BAs and PhDs seem happy and well educated. The teachers themselves are generally dedicated—the psychotic tyranny attributed to Ronell is an exception—and even she kept getting students, whether rightly or wrongly. As I said in r594, the autocratic academic structures that her colleague describes as enabling her abusiveness are fortunately less common—institutions increasingly have safeguards in the form of diffused power and independent actors.

Ronell's excessive nosehair made her commit those murders. I'd stake my professional reputation on it.

Hope she loses everything