OPINIONS
Opinions Editor Mel Napeloni Section Meeting Wednesdays at 2:30 p.m. Contact opinions@thesil.ca
Thursday, February 14, 2013
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COLUMN
Skeptics can be sexist too The skeptic movement hasn’t checked its privilege
Why we are here
Mel Napeloni Opinions Editor Similar to other groups that shout intellectual superiority, a Western skeptic’s movement has taken form in the last two decades. No unlearning is involved, no re-thinking. This outdated resistance often alienates progressive ideas from taking part. It’s dug its way into our institutional framework. Rebecca Watson, who has experienced and extensively researched sexism within the skeptic community, discussed how many women who attend skeptic/atheist themed events are made to feel unable to return. “After a few years of speaking at skeptics’ conferences, I began to get emails from strangers who detailed their sexual fantasies about me. I was occasionally grabbed and groped without consent at events,” she said. She goes on to communicate a feeling of betrayal from respected scholars like Richard Dawkins who unashamedly deny her personal experiences and (more broadly) the oppressive standards conveyed by the skeptic community. “They’re angry that feminist thought has a platform in ‘their community.’ What they don’t get is that it’s also my community.” The lack of critical approach in McMaster’s philosophy program revisits this unsettling culture. A nerve in me broke after being in a curriculum for over three years and having no other conception of my world beyond the outdated ramblings of men who thought God was nature. When I’m a critical twenty-year-old student reading a text by Stroud on how everything Descartes said was right and asked to spend my time and effort to write a five-page paper on it, what am I supposed to think? Men like Hegel, Kant and Leibniz shaped philosophical thought. For that, they deserve attention and patience. But stripping an entire intellectual framework of progressive discourse is problematic. Without it, there is a hell of a lot missing. It’s history’s discursive formation. It’s patriarchy and political strife. It’s checking (and reducing) your privilege. It’s knowing who can reclaim a word and who can’t. It’s ridding yourself of crippling norms. It’s finding new ways to combat that ‘change’ or ‘cultural wave’ or ‘revolution’ (whatever the hell you call it) to come to fruition. It’s learning that it’s okay to be emotional about the world you’re forced to deal with every waking day. It’s knowing that happiness or ‘finding the ultimate truth’ isn’t the only thing that makes for a good life - it’s fighting for or against whomever or whatever needs to be fought. It was five years ago when I promised to devote myself to philosophical engagement with my experiences. If there was one subject that hammered the concept of defining your terms, it was philosophy. If there was one subject that made you question your existence (you know, as a particle in a vast whole) more than anything, it was philosophy. Anyone who denies this impact doesn’t know what it means to sit naked at three in the morning against a cold wall and cry your eyes out to experience a moment of clarity. But when a movement so adamantly denies social context, where does the real learning take place? Wasn’t philosophy designed to redefine the horizons of our thought and to make the appropriate pre-suppositions by which to approach certain realities? How, thus, does it so easily defend the status quo?
Written by the winners How can we trust historical texts when so many have proven to be a lie? Sarah O’Connor Silhouette Staff If you aren’t an Anthropology or History major then you probably haven’t heard the big news over in England. Last fall, a skeleton was uncovered under a parking lot in Leicester, England. After thorough scientific tests and DNA
results the skeleton was discovered to be none other than that of King Richard III. A year-long project, archaeologists continue to examine the body but have also discovered something that will change history. In William Shakespeare’s play Richard III, King Richard is described with a hunched back and a withered hand. But when
McMaster Discovery Program: a journey into the community KAREN WANG / GRAPHICS EDITOR
Karen Wang Graphics Editor The first things I noticed about Peggy-Anne when I met her on orientation night were her twinkling eyes and her radiant smile. Jet-black hair, pearly white skin and rosy cheeks, she appeared to be in her fifties, but she spoke with the energy and exuberance of a five-year-old. Her smile lines gave the effect of effervescence instead of old age, her shrunken physique a sense of childish vivacity rather than fragility. As she introduced herself, her voice bounced off the walls and her legs – too short to reach the carpet – kicked in the air emphatically. Peggy-Anne is one of eighteen participants of McMaster University’s Voicing Hamilton Discovery Program this year. In step with Patrick Deane’s Forward With Integrity initiative to strengthen intercommunity relationships, the program offers a twelve-week course on the history of Hamilton to local Hamiltonians encountering barriers to education. “I just want to learn,” PeggyAnne said simply as to why she signed up for the program. The genuine desire to learn defined the energy at our weekly Saturday classes and is what I find awe-inspiring as a Support Team member of the program. This array of adult students – despite differences in age, background
and enduring difficulties in life, whether monetary, linguistic, cultural or medical – all share the simple excitement to engage in a purely educational environment. At the graduation ceremony four months after we first met, Peggy-Anne recounted her struggle in entering an academic setting as a big, scary step; one that she is ever so glad she took. Having led a difficult life, it wasn’t until a decade ago that she recognized herself as a victim of family violence and childhood sexual abuse. The program gave her a newfound confidence and a sense that she is allowed to have a voice, to take up space. The program isn’t just about the spirit of learning, or the history of Hamilton for that matter. It is an opportunity to reach out and make connections; it is about searching for a sense of self and identity. In short, it is about finding your place in society. Every Saturday morning Peggy-Anne comes to class bearing Tim Horton’s coffee and breakfast for herself and Lina, another student that she has grown close to. Through discussions on local activism and controversial topics, despite occasional opposing opinions, the class members have shown tolerance, respect and intelligence. By sharing stories, ideas and inside jokes, the class of the Discovery Program has become family. As university students, we
have become sheltered in our university life. Often at 2 a.m. when an essay due the next day is still waiting to be started, I wonder ironically why we often feel trapped in this system of deadlines and morning lectures and where our sense of adventure and excitement is that the students of the Discovery Program effortless find in learning. “Why we are all here?” I often find myself wondering about the mass of students in lectures and tutorials waiting for the proverbial bell to ring, the students who join clubs to fill resumes (we all do it). I am talking about myself, my roommates and the many people I see around campus. I suppose we are here for an education. For a degree. For a future career. Most of us look at school like an assignment, an obligation to check off the grand To-Do list of life. I realize that in the path of finding a future, we’ve lost something important in the present. We are becoming robots in an educational system. Yes, we are students. But before that, we are members of larger communities – the McMaster community, the Hamilton community, the global community. We need to remember that. I am grateful to the 18 creative, intelligent, resilient people who have reminded me of this by sharing their stories and their presence.
FEEDBACK
What are your thoughts on Black History Month? Compiled by Mel Napeloni
“Reminds us of historical struggles. We shouldn’t forget it after February.“
“It’s something we should slowly get rid of. It isn’t needed as much in Canada.”
“I used to be against it. I know now it’s needed and isn’t acknowledged enough.”
Hassaan Malik, Comp Sci I
Derek Brown, Sociology, III
Sandra G. Sami, Psych, IV
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A history in favour of those who won battles or reigned over countries isn’t a truthful history. uncovering the body, although the skeleton presents scoliosis spinal deformity, the archaeologists didn’t find exactly these descriptions on the skeleton. That leads to one question. Why did Shakespeare exaggerate? The answer was discovered quite quickly. During Shakespeare’s time the Tudors were in charge. The Tudors had killed King Richard III in a two-year battle known as the War of the Roses. When Richard III was killed, the Tudors reigned. And what playwright would dare write anything against royalty? It is concluded that in order to please the Tudors, Shakespeare
portrayed Richard III in a negative light with negative characteristics to favour his rulers. But now we approach much deeper questions. Shakespeare also wrote of King Richard III as a tyrant, a man who murdered his nephews so he would stay king. If Shakespeare lied about his physical appearance, what else of Richard III is a lie? As my dad told me, “History is written by the winners, not the losers.” And since all we have are the winner’s stories, we have a biased history. A history in favour of those who won battles or reigned over countries isn’t a truthful history. So if history (our past) is a lie, then who are we? How do we know that what we’ve grown up believing is the truth? You may be thinking, “But that’s just England, that isn’t Canada. We know our history.” But do we? Do you remember learning
about Residential Schools? The schools that First Nations children were forced to attend that taught them colonial values and forced them to forget their heritage? Do you remember learning about how the Indigenous children were emotionally, physically and sexually abused by their teachers? Do you remember that the residential schools opened in the 1840s and didn’t close until 1996? Were you taught that or did your tenth grade history teacher simply skim over that bit of Canada’s dark past? Every country has its dark past, but we aren’t proud of it. But does that mean we should hide our heads in the sand, denying what we did, lying to future generations? If our history is a lie, then who are we? How can we base ourselves on people and incidences that may not have happened or happened in very different ways?