By Civis Americanus
It is grossly unfair to judge all police officers based on the actions of a handful like Derek Chauvin, all Black people from the behavior of Patrisse Cullors and Black Lives Matter Global Network, or all Caucasians from the actions of swastika-waving white supremacists like Andrew Anglin. It is however reasonable to judge the fields of Gender and Women’s Studies, Feminist Studies, and similar academic programs from the endorsement by roughly a hundred such university departments of anti-Israel hate propaganda that denies Israel’s right to exist. The Palestine Action Toolkit, from the same Palestine Feminist Collective supported by these departments, goes even farther: “78% of historic Palestine was stolen to create the Israeli state. This catastrophe was greenlighted and supported by the United Nations.” In addition, “There is Only One Solution: Intifada! Revolution!” and “From the River to the Sea! Palestine Will Be Free!”
A hundred such departments, which represent thousands of professors of these so-called disciplines, are not “a handful” (like Chauvin and other bad cops, or BLM looters, or KKK members), “a few,” or even “some.” They are no less than “many,” which casts a shadow of anti-Semitism over the fields of Gender and Women’s Studies, Feminist Studies, and so on — and, noting some other content of the Palestine Action Toolkit (“From Palestine to the Philippines Stop the US War Machine!”), anti-Americanism for good measure. It is therefore reasonable at this point to rename all these academic programs “Maenad Studies,” after the Greek term for the lampshade-drunk female followers of their booze god Dionysus. “Maenads” means literally “raving ones,” and it is an excellent description of the female academicians in question.
What about the men? Imagine a man with wild hair and an unkempt beard (Karl Marx comes to mind) and a Che Guevara shirt (or a keffiyeh) yelling slogans such as “When I see an NYPD car burn, I say we’re waking up revolutionary consciousness,” along with other left-wing gibberish about intersectionality, wokeness, and so on. The Greeks did not leave us a good word for raving lampshade-drunk men. I did, however, find Kompastís, which means “ranter” and is also recommended as the Hellenic counterpart of a scumbag. Let’s use the terms in a sentence. “A Maenad and a Kompastís had a girl, whom they named Socially Conscious Woke Intersectionalist, and a boy they named Che Guevara Castro Lenin Mao Zedong.”
There is no relationship at all between a strong-willed woman and a Maenad. A strong-willed woman has something constructive to offer society and the confidence with which to deliver it. Harriet Beecher Stowe had a coherent message about the evils of slavery, and she put it so eloquently in Uncle Tom’s Cabin that Abraham Lincoln, at least according to legend, blamed her for causing the Civil War. There is no doubt that Stowe played a major role in promoting national revulsion against slavery. She certainly didn’t achieve what she did by bleating unintelligible slogans and ideological claptrap like the academicians in various Maenad Studies departments. Maenads have nothing to offer society other than half-baked ideological jabber about “intersectionality,” “wokeness,” and so on.
What can you actually do with a degree or minor in Maenad Studies? It looks as though the material qualifies the graduate to (1) teach Maenad Studies or (2) ask, “Would you like fries with that?” This is probably why some universities are making social justice–heavy courses mandatory; they need the tuition money to carry faculty members who have nothing useful to teach in the way of job skills, literacy, or civics. Our so-called educators now want to teach anti-racist mathematics and contend that asking students to show their work (which is how many teachers award partial credit for incorrect results) is white supremacy. They add that “a focus on getting the ‘right’ answer is a ‘toxic characteristic’ of math instruction.” Accounting, pharmacy, medicine, and engineering are all regulated professions, so none of these students will fortunately be practicing any of these professions in the foreseeable future. The educators in Russia and Communist China, and also in friendly countries like Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Germany, teach their students science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), so we can see where we will end up in twenty or so years if the Maenad, the Kompastís, and their intellectual counterparts get their way.
False accusations against Israel, and open association with an organization that denies Israel’s right to exist, by a few Women’s and Gender Studies and Feminist Studies academicians would not reflect on these fields of study. The association of roughly a hundred such departments and therefore thousands of academicians, with some in prominent universities like Yale, with this agenda does reflect on the entire discipline, as well as every university that tolerates association of its name with these activities. This makes Maenad Studies about as credible as phrenology, the discredited racist quack science that used the shape of human heads to “prove,” among other things, that Black people were inferior to Caucasians.
Civis Americanus is the pen name of a contributor who remembers the lessons of history and wants to ensure that our country never needs to learn those lessons again the hard way. The author is remaining anonymous due to the likely prospect of being subjected to “cancel culture” for exposing the Big Lie behind Black Lives Matter.
