Institutes of lower education

Madonna, a pop American idol of feminism and counter-hegemony: blurring the
boundaries of race, gender and sexuality

Who can be considered a highly educated person in today’s world? Well, does he or she have a fairly quick take on references from The Simpsons? Studied The Wire? Is this person fluent with, and grateful for, the pullulating neologisms for gender — does he know his “cis” from his “hetero,” his “two-spirited” from his “intersex”? Au courant on the latest pronouns, such as “ze” and “xe” for him and her, “xem” and “xir” for (I’m guessing) them? her? they? the guy next door? A diploma is his.

On a broader plane, I’d offer that someone who hasn’t read Mansfield Park, but who is nonetheless aware that Jane Austen was an (un)witting imperialist prop for “erasing” the economics of slavery from her parlour comedies and “silenced” the sexuality of her marriage-haunted heroines, is blissfully impregnated with the wisdom of some modern university courses. As is someone who has showered a storm of trigger warnings on an unread copy of Paradise Lost, to ward off the weak and unwary from Johns Milton’s awesomely appalling phallocentrism and misogyny.

Or maybe you may be called an educated person if you’ve done some post-graduate work in your younger days on the now passé Madonna — such as this one from 2000: “Madonna, a pop American idol of feminism and counter-hegemony: blurring the boundaries of race, gender and sexuality.”  (more...)

Institutes of lower education