Dreams of a Nonfiction Academic

i just...don't vibe with d*nna t*rtt.

Dude same!

As a disabled kid who was in the same phys ed class as everyone else with predictably horrifying results, HARD SAME

“Nobody should have to compete against people with biological advantages in the biological advantage assessment game!”

as a little kid, I enjoyed community sports a lot, and then around middle school i got heavier and worse at running and suddenly sports were just... off limits. the focus was entirely on being a good, competitive team and "kids having a fun time, getting exercise, and making friends" meant nothing. refusing to allow trans kids to play is the exact same principle

As someone who couldn't run from having one leg shorter than the other PE was just hands down emotionally abusive and a catalyst for some of the most damaging bullying of my elementary school years. "Cripple! Cripple!" And such. PE should be banned.

one thing that really strikes me about anti-intellectualism is that it's just so. self-limiting and sad. like it's a good thing to learn and i feel like we've forgotten it. all this information at our fingertips and people are refusing to use it for the simplest things like when they don't understand one specific word in a text. if something is a tough read it's a moral failing of the author and not an opportunity to build on your own personal knowledge and experiences. it doesn't matter if you think picasso is a renaissance artist because who cares about art history anyway and besides, picasso was a creep, even though it would take a minute to look this up. like obviously there are issues with accessibility in say, access to academia, but some things are genuinely not going to take significant amounts of effort to look up and remember for future. yes it's not a bad thing to not know something already, but a refusal to learn? come on. learning - expanding your knowledge, getting to know more about the world or humanity or art or science or anything - serves you, not some elitist academic in the sky or whatever. whether that's just reading the first paragraph of the wikipedia page for pragmatism or taking three months to read crime and punishment, there's a sense of achievement in the end. and yeah to some extent it's a skill, but it's not a difficult thing to foster and build upon, and sitting around proclaiming how you refuse to learn anything, even the most basic and simple fun facts, due to whatever the excuse of the month is is just so insular. it's a truly wonderful and interesting and diverse world out there and we're letting it all pass us by

Not even to mention the ignorance it takes to have anti-intellectualism and how today's society has lost all forms of critical thinking