and don't believe an avowed cardcarrying one either

Daniel A. Foss (DFOSS@CCVM.SUNYSB.EDU)
Thu, 16 Dec 1993 19:49:21 EST

[Note to the reader: This was a frivolous excuse for some holiday fun. The]
[serious one comes next weekish. The bottom line, modo americano, is that,]
[not only can you call someone a pomo who denies it (Geertz); you can't ]
[readily call one pomo who says she is one. Question: Does this mean, ]
["There's good and bad in every race," or that races are illusory, to bor-]
[row a figure of screech. See headlines at the bottom....]
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Preface: This for me is a nose; for my text, perhaps otherwise. Yet in
accordance with the two criteria for the constitution of text qua text I
gave to zeek qua Leader of the People on the Leri@gossip.pyramid.com list,
this cannot be a text. Mercifully, I have forgotten the criteria; hence
cannot explicate at the orignial length of Leri posting. To resume my burdens
at point prior to incapacitation, impossible; e-life flows on evermore; you
can never step in the same pile of e-mail twice. Why, I recall, as you cannot,
that at time prior to my sinking into prone position there was a thread on
Porno. The evolution of Porno into Pomo, if such there was, has not come down
to us. In days, still, of Porno there was offline advice sent to this userid,
not, understand, to me, to lie down and read. This was already done 12 hours
daily; he, on behalf of a she and himself, would want this further increased
to save both the sum of a quarter per annum ($0.25) elsewise thrown out on
deletion of posts I'd just become too sick to send. And no offer to send the
quarter in question to the Medical Industrial Complex to cover body parts not
fully owned unburdened with debt. (Rumours to effect Medical Industrial Com-
plex has revived *nexum* abolished by Romans in 364 BC for *assidui* on the
land, debtor's prison for *proletarii* who are not, are under investigation
by Free Kevork For All at this time.)
The foregoing has been not merely a perverse display of refusal to reform
deformed character; there has been received at this account a *Complaint* from
one Canadian that she finds the *content* prevalent at this time *tedious*.
Hence, content in the foregoing has been omitted for her benefit.

I. Catharine Mackinnon Prior To Ever Having Heard Of Harraway:

The most popular work of Catherine A. Mackinnon prior to her recent slim
volume with Andrea Dworkin on Porno (no slimmer than K. Roiphe's Morning
After) which has been rather lightheartedly reviewed in a recent issue of
The Nation (wherefor such lenity is daring treatment for grimly determined
anti-dominance/hierarchy writers like these), reminding you that our own
Porno Era dates to over a week ago, is Feminism Unmodified, Harvard, 1987;
all sophomores here read it.
Is Porno an objectively existing ideology rooted in entrenched hierarchical
social relations, then; not merely something in the mind of the beholder? Yes,
with one partial exception, myself. The dissection of the ideology of Porno
I could handle in stride: "[P]ornography is a set of hermeneutical equivalences
which work at the epistemological level." This I found not in the least dirty.

It was when she asserted, sweepingly, that sex was constituted as sexy for
men and women alike under dominatively, if that's a word, sexist social
relations that I got *terribly disturbed*. Not by the ideational content; by
the wording of her zinger line (which I cannot bear to look up again for the
page number), "A good fuck is no compensation for being fucked." Obsessions;
reflections on where they came from; complete inability to shut the foul
language off.

Yesterday I asked Dr A, "How come till just recently I never thought or
said or, excepting only in a context of having been flamed - er, perssonally
insulted or vituperated upon computorically - by a male anthropologist, and
then only in the aggressive sense, did I ever use the word, "fuck," and then
with utter phoniness? Yet only today...."
Dr A handed me a sheaf of prescriptions, whereof only the cheaper ones got
filled. Henceforth I fixated on Pure things.

Today, having read a book on the subject of the ideological strains in
the social construction of male sexuality in relation to an order of celibate
monastic knightly warriors, and the cynical politcal manipulation of this by
a greedy 14th century monarch (Malcolm Barber, The Trial of the Templars,
Cambridge, 1978), I'd like to say one word; but not quite yet.

Instead, I shall sink forthwith into the sickest of ideation.

Given the currency, the crescent criticality, even, of sexual harassment,
another area of Mackinnon's expertise, in the discourse of decent people,
academically, I feel emboldened, my soul is damned for eternity anyway for
most unChristian infidelities (not even mainly to long-forgotten wives; unbe-
lief, I mean, of the most metaJewish sort, I declare herewith: It is time,
adapting Haraway (Donna Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention
of Nature, Routledge, 1991), for yet another reinvention of Unnature in a
most unnatural, purely academic among you - most pure of academics - exercise.
This is sexual unharassment. Thus, I herewith contrive to skirt, indeed, to
negligee, even perhaps to "turn around and don't you dare look," ortho-sexual-
harassment itself. My speech, thus, is stark naked of first amendment protect-
ion should I say, for example, to a suspected female and professionally
accredited woman for instance, "Never crossed my mind to fuck you." This is
the most extreme, most daring nonapproach: In no way retreatist. Consider,
though, "Never crossed my mind to want to fuck you." This, surely, hints at
amenability to pressure or coercion! Yet also zero-for-nine on the Supreme
Court against the male: The relevant rule is, no matter what he means, she's
offended because the word is dirty, the content is dirty, his mind is dirty.

What might, conjecturally, pull a 5-4 split on the court is the offhand
remark, "I'll not consider fucking anyone without at least a theoretically
demonstrable possibility that she wasn't getting fucked." ....<4:00am>

<9:30am> "Someone broadcasting voices through the air that just won't
stop?" The Chinese, that is, own television, they own radio. No, this is
my very own:
"Land where the turkeys died,
"Land where the pantry pried,..."
I call an eminent scholar.
"This, uh, Jeffrey M. Masson, Mackinnon,'s, uh, *main squeeze*,..."
"Fuckbuddy. Main squeeze is gendered usage. But I may be wrong; if so, I
stand corrected."
"The, uh, journalist who did the New Yorker article...."
"Janet Malcolm. Now a book, In The Freudian Archives. Shows Masson is quite
a fuck...."
"Sensu...."
"Dickhead. Also badass motherfucker fucking over people left and right."
<Did Mackinnon get her good fuck without getting fucked? Seemed unlikely.>
"Uh, this word,...."
"Word?"
"The four letter one."
"It's everywhere."
"Except ANTHRO-L."

[I have now succeeded in proliferating work to exclude all possibility of my
goint to the Sociology Department Xmas Party. I'm sure the necessity for this
needs no explanation.]

**** COMING: AVOWED POSTMODERNIST HARAWAY SHOVELS MUCK UPON MACKINNON FOR ****
**** SLIGHTING, EVEN DENYING, THE HUMAN SUBJECT, MOST SACRED COW OF MOD- ****
**** ERNISM, AS MILLIONS OF THE POSTMODERNIST MASSES WORLDWIDE PAY NO NEV-****
**** ER MIND WHATSOEVER! Doulass St. Christian vindicated in spades! ---------