This will probably end up in the Pit, but for now I’m just looking to find out if this was true:
Some time ago, while listening to a radio talk show (Rush, I think) the host talked about a newspaper ad somewhere in California. A school district was advertising for an English teacher. Along with the job qualifications (degrees, etc) were the words “energetic and dynamic.”
A local woman’s group protested the use of the word “dynamic,” calling it “Euro-centric and Phallo-centric,” and succeeded in having the ad pulled.
Now, if this is true, I’ve certainly got more than my share of opinions about it, and I’m sure most of you do as well, but for now:
Has anybody heard anything about this? Did it actually happen?
I fail to see how ‘dynamic’ is anything-centric. 
That one gets a big ‘I doubt it’.
Well, it has the word “man” (spelled backward) right in the middle of a **dyic[/d]. So clearly it’s phallo-centric.
After all, every man (spelled backward or forward) fantasizes about putting himself in the middle of a dyic and convertering her back to our side. And that dininshes the value of women everywhere. :rolleyes:
I think they were just trying to say that sometimes there are certain expectations for women in the workplace, i.e. they should be bubbly and full of energy and able to use their feminimity to their advantage, and they were protesting that since there are no such expectations for men. Now it’s obvious we don’t have all the facts, I’m just hypothesizing here, so maybe someone can drum up a cite or whatnot.
RAWDuke, I changed your thread title from Heard this one? to Was a help-wanted ad really pulled because “dynamic” was deemed phallo-centric? In the future please try to choose more descriptive thread titles.
Let’s see whether it’s true before we think of anything else. It’s probably just a misremembered story or an UL. Many political correctness stories turn out to have their source in Miss Piggy. I found nothing on Snopes under phallocentric, dynamic, teacher or Rush.
Here’s the straight dope (but be warned…the page is a bit buggy; could only open in IE, not Netscape):
[Mods–let me know if that’s too long a quote.]
In any event, the ad was not pulled, it was edited before submission. The editing choice was influenced by PC concerns, but was not entirely dictated by them. Some conservative pundits seized on this seemingly harmless change (“dynamic” to “excellent”) as an example of PC madness.
[My question would be–how the hell did anyone outside of the department ever even find out about the change? Or care?]
On a related note, I saw this on-line ad yesterday looking for a “J2EE stud.” Basically they’re looking for a software engineer with Java 2 experience, but the language implies having a penis is also a requirement.
http://www.techiegold.com/main.cfm?page=job_search.detail.cfm&id=38839
Interesting the way talk-radio can transform “Maybe ‘dynamic’ isn’t actually the quality we’re looking for in a philosophy professor,” into “Crackpot feminists complain that the word ‘dynamic’ is sexist.”
Well, that’s neither here nor there. (“Here” and “there” being GQ, that is.) But hearsay and political spin can do remarkable things to the truth. Otherwise, Snopes probably wouldn’t exist.
First, it’s not “phallo-centric” it’s “phallocentric”. At least, that’s how the theorists (or as the above poster puts it “crackpot feminists”) usually associated with the word–Kristeva, Iragaray, et al.-- use it.
Second, this is probably the least understood, most misused word in critical theory. To be perfectly blunt, certain uninformed people tend to use it to describe anything that resembles a dick, figuratevly or literally. Kristeva used it originally to describe Freud’s prioritizing of the phallus in his theory and methodology: castration complex, Oedipus complex, etc. She adapted this from Derrida’s “logocentric”, a word he used to decribe the western tendency–from Plato to the present–to seek originary, detirministic knowledge (Plato’s cave parable to the preoccupation in modern Physics’with a “total theory”.)
So, “phallocentric” is not really a critique of men, per se. Actually, it doesn’t even qualify as feminist terminology. It describes a certain mode of knowledge: the originary, univocal mode. As it happens this is the mode favored by men for the past several thousand years but that hasn’t prevented women from producing their own “phallocentric” discourse.
Anyway, the following statement should be pretty obvious but I’ll say it anyway: Don’t believe everything you hear on Rush freaking Limbaugh.
Adam P… HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT!!! Seriously, what’s your job???
(sorry about the hijack, i’m just in awe)
The what? “Originary” isn’t in Merriam-Webster.
Thanks for all the responses.
Dang, I was really hoping to turn this into a good Pit Rant, but it seems that what I thought I heard wasn’t too accurate.:o
Changing “dynamic” to “excellent” seems a rather inane waste of time.
BTW, Bibliophage, thanks for the suggestion. I’ll whip up my imagination for my next post.
[url=“http://www.dictionary.com/search?q=originary”]Originary. Also, a google search on the word reveals the full philisophical context in which the word is used.
Nah, RAWDuke. Changing “dynamic” to “excellent” is not a waste of time. You are an employer and you are seeking a person with a certain set of credentials to accomplish a task. At first, you think a person with a dynamic (read: energetic, extroverted, etc.) personality is suited for the job. After further review, you decide that intesity or enthusiam isn’t a necessary quality for the job candidate. You want somebody who excels at their job and subject, regardless of their stylistic approach. Therefore, you change the word to “excellent.”
Does this really seem that weird?
Of course–HE’S the one who got hired by Chico State for the Philosophy position! Fess up, Adam!
On a similar topic, an employment centre here in England refused to run an ad about a month ago which wanted a “friendly” sales assistant, saying it was discriminatory, presumeably against sad sacks
Here’s a link to the story scm1001 refers to.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/england/2031350.stm
Reading between the lines, it seems employment centre’s concern was not that the ad was discriminatory against the unfriendly, but that the quality of “friendliness” could not be objectively established and (I speculate here) could therefore be used as a “mask” by an employer rejecting an applicant on some other, discriminatory ground.
Be that as it may, it seems to have been accepted by the authorities that the employment centre’s decision on the ad was wrong. The fact that a particular characteristic is difficult to measure does not mean that it may not be a relevant characteristic for the job, or that it should not be specified in a job ad.