Allow me to preface this with the reminder that I hate squirrels.
That said, I promise you I am not making this up.
I was alerted to this from the – no… really… Journal of Feminist Geography.
No… really.
Here is an abstract of a contribution to the – I just marvel at this – Journal of Feminist Geography.
If you are more comfortable by… no, wait… less triggered by reading it in either Spanish or Chinese, the abstracts are available in those languages. Not that I’m judging you.
Abstract
Eastern fox squirrels (Sciurus niger), reddish-brown tree squirrels native to the eastern and southeastern United States, were introduced to and now thrive in suburban/urban California. As a result, many residents in the greater Los Angeles region are grappling with living amongst tree squirrels, particularly because the state’s native western gray squirrel (Sciurus griseus) is less tolerant of human beings and, as a result, has historically been absent from most sections of the greater Los Angeles area. ‘Easties,’ as they are colloquially referred to in the popular press, are willing to feed on trash and have an ‘appetite for everything.’ Given that the shift in tree squirrel demographics is a relatively recent phenomenon, this case presents a unique opportunity to question and re-theorize the ontological given of ‘otherness’ that manifests, in part, through a politics whereby animal food choices ‘[come] to stand in for both compliance and resistance to the dominant forces in [human] culture’. I, therefore, juxtapose feminist posthumanist theories and feminist food studies scholarship to demonstrate how eastern fox squirrels are subjected to gendered, racialized, and speciesist thinking in the popular news media as a result of their feeding/eating practices, their unique and unfixed spatial arrangements in the greater Los Angeles region, and the western, modernist human frame through which humans interpret these actions. I conclude by drawing out the implications of this research for the fields of animal geography and feminist geography.
I think a blind squirrel wouldn’t have to look too hard, if you get my drift.
Loading ...
The questions is more in the line of: what the heck got you on that site?
The full title of the journal is “Gender, Place & Culture: a Journal of Feminist Geography”.
You can peruse the peculiar titles of the contents of this journal:
http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/cgpc20/current
And yet this really isn’t even about geography. How someone can dedicate 10 minutes to this twisted nonsense, let a lone a whole career to this garbage is beyond me.
Here in Indiana the fox and grey squirrels seem to live in harmony. I have plenty of both on my property. If any(grey or fox) gets to be a pest by; getting in the bird feeder, crawling up into the underside of a vehicle, getting in the strawberry beds, or any other indiscretion yet committed, they get shot.
Unlike Father Z that holds an entire species in scorn for the evil acts of a few, I don’t discriminate. And, they seem to appreciate it.
I really have no idea what I just read about. Are there people who talk/write like this and understand what they’re saying??
Eric, my uncle also shoots squirrels, freezes them and gives them to his friend’s pet hawk.
I have long observed from my days editing law review that when it comes to academic publishing, and just about any other publication these days, in print or online, there are far more pages available for publication than there are quality articles to fill them.
Squirrels are nothing but rats with good OR.
Definition of “Squirrelly”: Restless, nervous, unpredictable.
I think the choice of subject and the purported journalism are eerily similar.
PR
I know you probably think the journal is nuts and that it is edited by nuts, and the paper you quoted is nuts. What you don’t get is that it really is a valid scientific-sociological study, and a peer reviewed one too. It is academic and scholastic. That’s obvious because the author is from the California State Polytechnic University. The author has a PhD and is an assistant professor at the university. What’s really nuts is that the research was probably funded by a Federal grant, and you nuts probably paid for it. Pretty “Squirrelly” , huh? ha.
@ChesterFrank,
With all those nuts, we might see squirrels hiding issues of the journal itself along with their usual fare.
I’m missing the joke.
Or are people laughing at the author’s handicap? We should be celebrating that she has found a journal willing to publish her thoughts without requiring her to conform to oppressive norms like coherence and usefulness.
You Trumpkin fools… Here is a video to help you understand.
https://youtu.be/lpzVc7s-_e8
What kind of foolish science is this. This is neither hard (natural) science nor soft (social) science. This is ludicrous blather that does not even bother to disguise its agenda or its ax to grind!
“….feminist food studies…..”
I have been in restaurants where apparently some of the studies were being researched. It was not pretty.
Good ol Squirrel! Here in Louisiana they are hunted starting in October. Local dishes include Squirrel sauce piquant, Squirrel in gravy, Squirrel dumplings. And what my brother in law called “chewy squirrel” (dont ask) also some people deep fry the heads and then scoop out the brains and eat them. I’ve tried them all even the brains.. it def does NOT taste like chicken. Cajuns will eat anything. Maybe this nut case that wrote this garbage should make a trip down tha bayou.. she can see a whole nother perspective on fox and cat (grey) squirrels..
Father, I beg your indulgence, but I have to say this:
Poor Scrat, I feel sorry for the guy.
[For the Scrat reference.]
I feel like a victim of bait and switch (no, not squirrel bait). The paragraph started out in regular Academic English, then switched to another language altogether half-way through.
I came across a programme once that randomly generates ‘academic’ articles of a certain kind. It simply jumbles together the right sort of jargon at the typical frequency and interval. Although the results of this programme are entirely random and meaningless, some of them have apparently been accepted and published by gullible ‘academic’ journals.
Is the author trying to say that the Eastern squirrels are being discriminated against by the popular news in California? How paternalistic! If the Western squirrels feel bullied, they can complain to the International Squirrel Court in Nuttingham, England. Basta!
Once squirrels started to chew into my PVC pipes inside my house when I lived in South Carolina, and ruined an entire ceiling from the water leakage, I decided to wage war on the squirrels. We killed them indiscriminately. My kids had BB guns to kill them, and we set traps for them. We had an old house, and the scurried through the walls night and day. Our African American friend, Pete, would take them, as he found they were a delicacy in the frying pan!
A radical feminist take on squirrels? Too early on a Monday for this. Wow.
Huh?
@Degaulle there is a program that will randomly generate scientific papers. The creators of that product used it to generate papers to be presented at scientific conferences and were successful. They then published their results on the absurdity of many science conventions . Those conventional are typically held at very nice places so that like minded colleagues might mingle. They are reimbursed of course, usually by the government.
Perhaps I could get a Phd also.
I spent a lot of years watching Rocky and Bullwinkle!
I don’t remember Rocky being a feminist, but he was voiced by a woman.
So we studied squirrels and a lot of bull…
The good news is that most of us rarely encounter this nonsense in everyday life except online. The bad news is that most universities have humanities programs that are intellectual cesspools. This wouldn’t be so bad except a degree is generally the gateway to more gainful employment and one of the requirements for it is a number of credits that render the college experience a system of crippling debt to buy for all intents and purposes a ticket on a tour through a PC museum. I’ll say it again, but we need to see more colleges suffer class-action lawsuits and perhaps a few well-crafted RICO indictments.
Fox squirrels are two meal squirrels. Danielinnola, squirrel heads are probably not safe to eat any more, there is evidence of raccoon roundworm in squirrels.
This isn’t stunning considering the hard-left politicization of more popular scientific outlets like Scientific American and National Geographic by global warmists and gender theorists. Like the liberal arts, science has allowed its legitimacy to be smothered by the putative exponents of ‘diversity’ and ‘tolerance’.
I live in an area that has a good sized population of white squirrels. They are a common sight here and we are quite used to them. Whenever we get tourists, they get quite excited to see white squirrels and take a lot of pictures. I always thought they were common. Evidently not. I shudder to think what the feminists would make of *white* squirrels.
Eastern squirrels, you say, Father? Ones who eat trash and people’s garbage? Instead of the usual fare of nuts? In California? Hmm.
To gain power, one of the first things the third Reich did was infiltrate academic institutions and promote its professors to department chairs. From their they consulted those recognized experts and promoted them to government heads. A viscous cycle.
My initial reading was done under the impression that the reading would be understandable. Then I realized it had all the words: cis-, binary, post-humanist, speciesist, which make comprehension impossible.
I know I already commented, but I both want to laugh and weep when I read this. It takes an unusually warped mind to write this kind of garbage. I often think that people who see discrimination, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, or whatever at every little thing must be really disturbe. And by that I mean mentally ill. As troubled as the world is, I can’t imagine looking at the entire world as this horrible hateful reality. Of course, we know that isn’t the case. On need not be a conservative or even a believer to realize that. But the over the top nature of some of these people strongly suggests troubled minds.
According to WorldCat, 867 academic libraries around the word have access to this journal.
I think Calvin from [i]Calvin and Hobbes[/i] pretty much nailed this one: https://inveritascrescentes.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/calvin_hobbes_writing.jpg
As a geographer I find issues with her premise. It surmises that human beings and squirrels are similar in both their spatial and non-spatial decision making. It lacks the basic understanding that squirrels do not make civilizations with laws, morals, etc. They instead live based on instinct versus humans who often act completely against any instinct. I sincerely hope this journal is a farce.
Oh Lord, I had one of their editorial board members as a professor in college. The class was the Global Village. It tried to show how diversity was the cure for social I’ll while trying to highlight the cultural differences of different regions and countries. Diversity destroys those differences and it didn’t seem that came across in her thoughts.
That article is something else, I haven’t the foggiest idea what most of that means. Perhaps Tracer Bullet, Ace Private Eye, is on the job.
_____
San Francisco, 9 p.m. The early evening rain had ended, leaving wet streets glistening under the street lamps. The fog rolled in from the Bay, and a ship sounded its horn as it edged away from the docks. Outside the Hobart Building some guy was leaning against a lamppost, playing a slow, mournful, tune on a saxophone as if someone had just kicked his dog and dynamited his car.
On the third floor of the Hobart Building Tracer Bullet sat at his desk. The window was open and only his desk light was on. Tracer was nursing a bottle of gin and a grudge. That sax player had to go.
Tracer thought about going out to the street and serving up a hot knuckle-sandwich, but Fr. Finelli didn’t want to see Tracer in the Confessional more than once a week.
There was a knock at Tracer’s door. This should be his new client, she sounded like one tough cookie on the phone earlier. “Come in.”
The door opened and a woman with a shovel-face wearing a pantsuit entered. Tracer stood up, greeted her, and motioned to a chair in front of his desk, where she sat down without a word.
“You’re in trouble,” Tracer said. “Big trouble. Who’s pushing you around?”
“Eastern fox squirrels,” she replied. “Reddish-brown tree squirrels native to the eastern and southeastern United States.”
Tracer lit a Lucky Strike. “Sounds serious, but we’re in California. What’s the catch?”
“Many residents in the greater Los Angeles region are grappling with living amongst tree squirrels, particularly because the state’s native western gray squirrel (Sciurus griseus) is less tolerant of human beings.”
“They sound like tough characters.” Tracer patted the revolver lying on his desk. “But I can be intolerant myself.”
She continued. “‘Easties,’ as they are colloquially referred to in the popular press, are willing to feed on trash and have an appetite for everything.”
“Ah, the East Coast Gangs. Yep, this could be a tough case.”
“Mr. Bullet, this case presents a unique opportunity to question and re-theorize the ontological given of ‘otherness’ that manifests, in part, through a politics whereby animal food choices stand in for both compliance and resistance to the dominant forces in culture.”
Tracer stared at her, looking for signs of drug use. The phone rang. It was Tracer’s bookie. Tracer told him to put a sawbuck on Prancing Fool in the fifth race at Bay Meadows.
Tracer set the phone down. “That’s how I like to spend my time, ma’am. How ’bout you?”
“I juxtapose feminist posthumanist theories and feminist food studies scholarship to demonstrate how eastern fox squirrels are subjected to gendered, racialized, and speciesist thinking in the popular news media.”
“Well,” Tracer rubbed his chin, “we all need a hobby. Now, where can I find these goons?”
“In the greater Los Angeles region. And in the western, modernist human frame through which humans interpret these actions.”
Tracer made a mental note to pack his metaphysical magnifying glass. He stood up. “Ma’am, that’ll be $50 a day plus a train ticket to L.A. Anything else?”
“I conclude by drawing out the implications of this research for the fields of animal geography and feminist geography.”
She walked to the door, opened it, and looked back at Tracer. “You’re not going to hurt those racist, misogynistic squirrels are you?”
Tracer lit a Lucky Strike, picked up the revolver, and loaded it with bullets. Tracer looked at her. “Sorry, ma’am.” He spun the cylinder and slapped the loaded revolver shut. “I’ve known too many squirrels.”
The woman shut the door and Tracer went to the open window. He tossed a fresh pack of Lucky Strikes down to the sax player. He had a train to catch.
As the fog rolled in from the Bay, the guy underneath the streetlamp played a slow, mournful tune on his sax, as if someone just kicked his dog and dynamited his car.
[Yep.]
We have people like that on this side of the Pond too:
“The red squirrel, with its aesthetically pleasing features and associations with a green and pleasant land, makes for an emotive symbol. … The anti-grey squirrel campaign is deeply rooted conservatism masquerading as environmentalism”
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/09/prince-charles-attack-grey-squirrels-nostalgia-environmentalism-red-squirrels
Some are laughing because it’s a nonsensical academic paper about a squirrel.Obviously you have never had one of those rodents sign your time sheet, or watched them climb the quasi-government, quasi-academic ladder quicker than a squirrel scurrying up a tree.
Father,
If you hate squirrels, I recommend “Morte d’Urban” by J.F. Powers. The principal character is a priest of the Order of St. Clement (aka as the “Clementines”) who is banished to the order’s ramshackle property in Minnesota where one his main crosses is — squirrels. The novel won the 1963 National Book Award.
“Morte d’Urban” by J.F. Powers.
It happens that I just put that on my Kindle a few days ago at the urging of a friend.
@ RichardT
“We have people like that on this side of the Pond too:”
That was an amusing read, but also a bit worrying, because as hard driving as the editorial was, I’m not entirely convinced even the author realized he was writing satire.
One of the more shocking revelations of this election to me has not been that somebody like Mr. Trump could be elected, but there is no claim so outrageous that it won’t be believed by at least some of those opposing the person the claim is made about. So it appears entirely possible to me the author really believes that Prince Charles wants to rid Great Britain of an invasive species so he can enjoy the full powers of a true monarchy.
I’m convinced that every author in that journal is just a pseudonym for Alan Sokal. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair)
“to demonstrate how eastern fox squirrels are subjected to gendered, racialized, and speciesist thinking in the popular news media…”
Wait, what? I can’t remember EVER hearing about eastern fox squirrels in the media, period. How can they be subject to gendered thinking in the news media if they aren’t in the news media?
The only time I ever saw anything about them that wasn’t seeing them directly with my own eyes was when I looked up a Wikipedia article on them to illustrate to a friend how huge they are in comparison to your typical, ubiquitous grey squirrel.
Were those who promote “publish or perish” to be set, as their purgatory, to reading all the mountains of trash and trivia their doctrine has generated, they would soon be found in great crowds at the gates of Hell, clamoring for admission.
Squirrels remind me of flying monkeys. Which in reality do not actually exist. But you know, the same totalitarian leftist brainwashed stare. The greed and their depriving littler creatures of food. That sort of thing.
If women are truly from Venus, I recommend they return there.
Ahem…correction, I mean only these “feminists.”
The point of the article (if any) is fogged by the pomposity and pretentiousness of the language, demonstrated by the preponderance of polysyllables. The best way to make a point is to stick to short words. Monosyllables rule.
Check out @RealPeerReview on Twitter for more of this kind of thing.
It’s “new” because tolerant paladins of diversity doxed the original account.