Went to an overly optimistic seminar today - there were people there trying to teach us poor PhD students how to turn our theses into commodities, i.e. how to make them sound more interesting to the general public, how to sell articles to newspapers and get rich and famous overnight. We'll see what happens. If I won't get famous by Xmas, I'll sue the History Department.
An interesting little incident occurred towards the end of the lecture. A youngish man put on his coat and collected his stuff: a dead giveaway that he was going to get out before the session was through. He excused himself to the lecturer by saying that he was leaving because of "family logistics".
Sounds important, doesn't it? It's not just picking kids up from the kindergarten; that's what mothers do. He made it sound like he was planning some sort of intricate process of moving people from place A to place B with the greatest efficiency. Which is exactly what mothers do. They just never make it sound so important.
I don't mean to denigrate his choice of words (or indeed the fact that he was picking up his kid(s)). In fact, I kind of admire what he was doing. I seriously think we women too, need to come up with such ponderous-sounding appellations for our daily tasks. If nothing else, it might just promote the idea that none of the domestic duties (cooking, cleaning, shopping, childcare etc.) is our biological destiny.
I'll leave you with this brilliant clip:
An interesting little incident occurred towards the end of the lecture. A youngish man put on his coat and collected his stuff: a dead giveaway that he was going to get out before the session was through. He excused himself to the lecturer by saying that he was leaving because of "family logistics".
Sounds important, doesn't it? It's not just picking kids up from the kindergarten; that's what mothers do. He made it sound like he was planning some sort of intricate process of moving people from place A to place B with the greatest efficiency. Which is exactly what mothers do. They just never make it sound so important.
I don't mean to denigrate his choice of words (or indeed the fact that he was picking up his kid(s)). In fact, I kind of admire what he was doing. I seriously think we women too, need to come up with such ponderous-sounding appellations for our daily tasks. If nothing else, it might just promote the idea that none of the domestic duties (cooking, cleaning, shopping, childcare etc.) is our biological destiny.
I'll leave you with this brilliant clip:
(via feministing)
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