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How to Signal You Are Not a White Supremacist

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Professor Kim READ FIRST:  Why Dorothy Kim Hates Me , The Color of the House of the Lord It’s back to class for those of us who teach in medieval studies, and my medievalist colleague Dorothy Kim , Assistant Professor of English at Vassar College ( pictured in 2014 ), wants to make sure you understand the stakes . The medieval western European Christian past is being weaponized by white supremacist/white nationalist/KKK/nazi extremist groups who also frequently happen to be college students.  That does sound bad. But, wait, it gets worse! Don’t think western European medieval studies is exceptional.... ISIS/ISIL also weaponizes the idea of the pure medieval Islamic past in their recruiting rhetoric for young male Muslims. If the medieval past (globally) is being weaponized for the aims of extreme, violent supremacist groups, what are you doing, medievalists, in your classrooms? Because you are the authorities teaching medieval subjects in the classroom, you are, in fact, ide
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Talking Points: Three Cheers for White Men

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1. When white women (see Marie de France and Eleanor of Aquitaine) invented chivalry and courtly love , white men agreed that it was better for knights to spend their time protecting women rather than raping them, and even agreed to write songs for them rather than expecting them to want to have sex with them without being forced. 2. When white men who were celibate (see the canon lawyers and theologians of the twelfth century and thereafter) argued that marriage was a sacrament valid only if both the man and the woman consented , white men exerted themselves to become good husbands rather than expecting women to live as their slaves. 3. When white women (see Christine de Pizan, Mary Wollstonecraft, and the suffragettes) invented feminism , white men supported them (see John Stuart Mill) and even went so far as to vote (because only men could vote at the time) to let them vote, not to mention hiring them as workers and supporting their education. And before you start telling me a
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Make the Middle Ages Dark Again

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I miss the good old days. You remember. Back when the only thing people knew about the Middle Ages is that they were Dark and filled with evil barons wresting a living off the back of their serfs, not to mention lecherous clergy imprisoning young maidens so as to rape them and then accuse them of witchcraft. You remember, right? What it was like when the Middle Ages were Dark? The Roman Catholic Church made slaves of everyone, stripped them of their sense of dignity and independence and made social status a matter not of achievement, but birth. The Church hated science and industry and did everything in its power to keep people in chains. It guarded its authority with the sword and the stake, stifled all innovation, and fed the common people lies. And why were these Ages so Dark? There were no universities, no towns, only castles with dungeons. Monks huddled in their cells thinking dark thoughts about sin, while Vikings stormed across the countryside, raping and pillaging and ca
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Who Wants to Be a Heretic?

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I have been struggling for some time with whether and how to write this post, but not writing it is making me feel weak, so, following Our Father Jordan’s advice, I’m going to say it. Jordan Peterson is a heretic . His Orthodox friend Jonathan Pageau would say all of us Latin Christians are heretics, of course . The question is whether it matters. It does. My burden is to help you see why. I know from the Facebook groups I belong to that many of his followers take Jordan as a kind of spiritual advisor, some would say guru . They spend thread after thread discussing how to live out his sayings. Which would be fine. If not for the fact that some of his sayings go directly contrary to the tradition in which he purports to be speaking. I know, I fell for it, too . In Jordan’s powerful words : Don’t underestimate the power of your speech! Now, Western culture is phallogocentric. Let’s say it... It is predicated on the idea of the Logos. The Logos is the sacred element
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The Good Thief

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Would you be ashamed to be crucified next to a thief? Never mind the tenderness of your body, the injustice of being condemned to death for speaking the truth, the betrayal by your friends, the wracking of your entire body and all of your senses with agony, the mocking and scorn of the mob . Would you be ashamed to be crucified next to a thief ? This is what the thirteenth-century Dominican Jacobus de Voragine said about the pain of Christ’s passion: The pain of the passion was of five kinds. The first was its shamefulness. It was shameful because it happened in a place of shame, namely, on Calvary, where malefactors were punished. The mode was shameful, because he was condemned to a most ignominious death, the cross being the instrument of punishment for thieves... The Lord’s passion was shameful because of the company in which he suffered. He was reckoned with thieves and robbers who were criminals to begin with; but later one of them, Dismas, who was crucified at Christ’s ri
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