The juxtaposition of two examples, both of which, interestingly (and tellingly), come from Catholic universities, demonstrates the toxic political environment of contemporary academia, particularly in light of the fake controversy surrounding Brett Kavanaugh.
The most notable example of this poison is Christine Fair, a Distinguished Associate Professor at Georgetown University. Fair tweets:
“GOP doesn’t care about women. We knew this. F**k them.”
For the reader who may be curious as to the reasons for the good professor’s indignation toward the Republican Party, Fair is quick to supply her reasons.
“Look at thus [sic] chorus of entitled white men justifying a serial rapist’s arrogated entitlement. All of them deserve miserable deaths while feminists laugh as they take their last gasps.”
She adds: “Bonus: we castrate their corpses and feed them to swine? Yes.”
When Campus Reform, a college watchdog publication, contacted Fair for comment, she replied: “There is a war going on against women and you, and your despicable herd of so-called journalists seeking to protect male privilege and shame women for our victimization or our rage are complicit in this war.”
Fair has two blogs, ShitMenSay and Tenacious Hellpussy. While Campus Reform reports that she has published the home addresses, phone numbers, and employer information of those who have contacted her, Fair insists that she is not about “doxing,” but about “ACCOUNTABILITY.”
“Despite what some clowns have said, NO ONE finds themselves mocked and outed on #ShitMenSay without harassing me. No one. Some men have had the audacity to whine that I am outing my poor, defenseless harassers. I tell these weasels to take their (almost always) white, male privilege and kindly deposit it in the only orifice that doesn’t embarrass them when it’s open.”
As far as Tenacious Hellpussy is concerned, the professor characterizes it as “a nasty woman posting from the frontlines of fuckery.” A recent blog post of Fair’s has the title, “When ‘Aunt Lydia’ of Campus Reform Tried to Launch Another Harassment Campaign: This is what she got.” The person from Campus Reform who contacted Fair is a young woman by the name of Abigail Marone. Fair derisively refers to her as “Aunt Lydia,” a character from The Handmaid’s Tale, a television drama that is a dystopian feminist morality tale about a post-American Christian theocracy and all of the patriarchal oppression for helpless women that this entails.
Aunt Lydia is the Simon LeGree of the story.
Fair defends against Campus Reform her previously expressed judgment that Republican senators “deserve miserable deaths”:
“You don’t like my violent words—which in fact are not posing a threat to anyone. I am not calling for violence. I am merely speaking to what my spirituality says these vile souls deserve.”
Immediately afterward, Fair goes on the offensive: “Surely, as a fine upstanding Christian, you condemn the godless heathens like me to an afterlife of hell? You can micturate in your yoga pants at my WORDS, but I am angry at the VIOLENCE done to women and children in this country and the preponderant complicity of ONE political party right now.”
School administrators disavowed Fair’s remarks. They refused to take any kind of disciplinary action, however, because Fair’s call for the miserable deaths of Republican senators—and, her protestations to the contrary aside, since justice is a matter of giving people what they deserve, and we ought to be just, Fair is indeed insisting that GOP senators ought to be made to suffer miserable deaths—was sent by her private twitter account.
Meanwhile, at another Catholic college, The Catholic University of America, the Dean of the National Catholic School of Social Service (NCSSS), Will Rainford, was suspended from his position from the remainder of the semester because of a tweet that he fired off—but from his official college twitter account.
Rainford didn’t call for the harming of a single hair on the head of anyone, much less the death of anyone. He simply made a sensible observation concerning Julie Swetnick, the truly _in_credible woman who has accused Brett Kavanaugh of having organized gang rapes during his college years.
“Swetnick is 55 y/o, Kavanaugh is 52 y/o. Since when do senior girls hang with freshmen boys? If it happened when Kavanaugh was a senior, Swetnick was an adult drinking with & by her admission, having sex with underage boys.”
Rainford concluded his tweet by adding: “In another universe, he would be victim & she the perp!”
On its face, it seems like Rainford was disciplined only because he used his school twitter account in weighing in on the cooked Kavanaugh controversy. The President of CUA, John Garvey, said in a press release: “The Catholic University of America has no position on the Kavanaugh matter.”
Yet Garvey immediately adds: “But let there be no doubt that our University, and particularly our National Catholic School of Social Service, has a special concern for every victim and survivor of sexual assault.”
Notice, Garvey is taking a position. In making this comment, he implicitly suggests that Kavanaugh’s accusers actually are the victims of sexual abuse at the hands of Kavanaugh that they claim to be.
Garvey continues: “Rainford’s tweets of the past week are unacceptable. We should expect any opinion he expresses about sexual assault to be thoughtful, constructive, and reflective of the values of Catholic University [.]” Garvey laments “the serious lack of judgment and insensitivity of his comments.”
In charging Rainford with having acted inappropriately and insensitively toward victims of sexual assault for identifying problems with Swetnick’s allegation against Kavanaugh, CUA is presuming that she is telling the truth, that she is a victim. This, though, is precisely what’s supposed to be in question. Thus, Garvey, representing CUA, is taking a position.
Parents everywhere, and especially the parents of boys, should bear all of this in mind before sending their children off to college.
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