OK I retell some of my stories.
1) Language in Mind, the Summer of 1988, UC Santa Cruz
I took this elective class called "Language and Mind" for Summer school as an elective. It was an interdisciplinary class in Cybernetics, that also referred to psychology, computer programming and probably a few other things.
Things went well in the class. I didn't really run into problems in the class until my oral presentation, and it was only the end of it where their was some fireworks.
I was really interested in the psychology of being a different culture. So I explored every book I could find on it. There are lot of interesting things between cultures:
A) Spatial zones. What your bubble of personal space is, where you don't want people crowding into it.
We Americans have the biggest personal space bubbles compared to I think everybody else.
B) Personal Boundaries regarding you personal space. this covers things like leaving a door open in your bedroom. or office. With Americans a person can be in the threshold of a doorway, but not invaded the space. Which is different than Germans. Where they are kind of absolutist about personal boundaries. e.g. they want you either behind the door, or in the house talking to them. Some kind of fence sitting thing of being in a doorway or just before a doorway talking to a person in the room is going to annoy them.
C) I got into a study that dealt with hand gestures across cultures. Things like the thumbs up sign, OK sign, various "phallic insults" etc. which was kind of fun.
And I should have stopped there... would have got a good evaluation (UC Santa Cruz was a university founded on an evaluation system rather than a traditional grade one). But I did do some reading on language vocabulary between cultures for point D)
And with feminism etc. being an important thing people talked about, and used to Critique things I mentioned a few interesting points I forget what they were except the big one that got me into trouble.
Growing up in my neighborhood their was a family that moved in that had done some lucrative contracting/ construction work in Saudi Arabia and Arab Emirates. But it seemed like the wife while living over their had some traumatic experiences. Like it seemed like she was sexually assaulted but we didn't know the details. But she told stories of living oversees and living in a compound for foreigners and basically being like a prisoner. Like playing tennis, in one of those little skirts, hitting the ball over fence but not being able to retrieve it lest you might be attacked etc.
Anyway that made an impression on me growing up. And it seemed like their was always something wrong with Islam or at least Arab culture. Anyway I read in this book that in Arabic there is not a "word for rape" (You have to use an entire phrase or sentence e.g. "he took her against her will") and I shared this with the class. And mentioned how I thought this kind of showed a problem in that society. And by the way this sort of Critique had been done by Feminism in other areas, Malcom X did something like it when came to looking at the use of light vs dark as literary tropes etc.
lol but boy did I step into it! The instructor said that I should have had some kind of warning statement before covering that last topic. (He basically wanted a "Trigger warning" disclaimer before that term was invented). He mentioned how if I said that kind of thing in this area of campus, where international students and other international studies majors are that I could be "Shouted down!" and face some kind of unrest / riot! But I pointed out, "Isn't that a problem?"
It was kind of funny I was sort of in the middle of a battle of perspectives between two liberal Jewish academics. I had a professor in junior college Don Rosenberg, who really encouraged people to push the envelope when it came to exploring the truth, and discussing things (believing in Dialectics) To not white wash things. But he did encourage people to "play the game" when it came to politics (a little bit of the be wise as serpents and peaceful as doves). Anyway this professor had a big impact on me. He especially took a great interest in his students, he tried to have really frank discussion of topics in class etc.
But this other guy, whose name I forget really was the first generation of people that wanted people to censure themselves. He was interesting he was "Jewish" but I didn't see any sign of him practicing, and had a black Muslim girl friend.
Anyway he tried to "deconstruct" my position. Trying to show how things are not "black and white". On average yeah, women in the Islamic world probably have it a little worse than folks here. But there is lots of variation etc. and recited some of the variations in dress etc. between cultures etc. But by and large his whole aim was to not unnecessarily offend people, while my point was trying to apply a universal standard of decency because the university will make every effort possible to show problems in "Western" culture. But why does it not practice this across the board to make the World a better place? Instead there is this giant elephant in the room that the most misogynistic society is also the most protected because it is "not western" thus it is off limits.
