Posted on 01/27/2005 3:05:34 PM PST by blitzgig
Hysteria -- A functional disturbance of the nervous system, characterized by such disorders as anaesthesia, hyperaesthesia, convulsions, etc., and usually attended with emotional disturbances and enfeeblement or perversion of the moral and intellectual faculties.
-- Oxford English Dictionary
Forgive Larry Summers. He did not know where he was.
Addressing a conference on the supposedly insufficient numbers of women in tenured positions in university science departments, he suggested that perhaps part of the explanation might be innate -- genetically based -- gender differences in cognition. He thought he was speaking in a place that encourages uncircumscribed intellectual explorations. He was not. He was on a university campus.
He was at Harvard, where he is president. Since then he has become a serial apologizer and accomplished groveler. Soon he may be in a Khmer Rouge-style reeducation camp somewhere in New England, relearning this: In today's academy, no social solecism is as unforgivable as the expression of a hypothesis that offends someone's "progressive" sensibilities.
Someone like MIT biology professor Nancy Hopkins, the hysteric (see above) who, hearing Summers, "felt I was going to be sick. My heart was pounding and my breath was shallow." And, "I just couldn't breathe because this kind of bias makes me physically ill." She said that if she had not bolted from the room, "I would've either blacked out or thrown up."
Is this the fruit of feminism? A woman at the peak of the academic pyramid becomes theatrically flurried by an unwelcome idea and, like a Victorian maiden exposed to male coarseness, suffers the vapors and collapses on the drawing room carpet in a heap of crinolines until revived by smelling salts and the offending brute's contrition?
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
"felt I was going to be sick. My heart was pounding and my breath was shallow." And, "I just couldn't breathe because this kind of bias makes me physically ill." She said that if she had not bolted from the room, "I would've either blacked out or thrown up."
No mental problems here.
If you're a feminist, that's got to sting.
Ping
I couldn't believe she actually she said this when I first read about the incident. Some professions are far more forgiving than others, I think.
doesn't george will have a ping list?
He should...that guy is the best.
Sounds like Hillary's audio book:
"I could hardly breathe..."
I read it in an earlier article. She said it.
Yeah, I got a big laugh when I read her reaction.
"One of the Victorian treatments for Hysteria (by the way the derivation is from the greek for "uterus") was to pluck out pubic hair."
Now I'm gonna puke and pass out.
I thought the same thing.
I can cure that. Nurse, tweezers please. STAT.
A great idea describing the feminists as having vapors, just as in my post #39 on this topic last week:
What these academics were really saying was that: "You have violated a tenet of political correctitude, and I choose to have the vapours to emphasize your crime.."
Very good!
Yes, very!
Nancy Hopkins is a 62 year old researcher has spent most of her recent life cloning zebra fish. She is known neither for her writing, nor her teaching. She is, however, a useful cipher in calculating the number of female scientists on the faculty.
quick, get her some smelling salts!
Just another way of saying she would get the vapors.
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