Oct 12 2008
in which politics comes into it again
Right, so, England is more liberal than the US. I’d be hard pressed to think of anyone I’ve spoken to who strikes me as actually conservative, someone who would agree with my morals–at least a couple of my flatmates think all Christians are crazy and that Sarah Palin is evil, so…there’s that. One professor, in discussing Palin with me (again, because I said I’d come from Alaska), said that Palin “would have me shot” because she’s gay, which seems to me to completely miss the point of just about everything (if you’re a Christian, you might well disapprove of homosexuality, but you should also have absolutely no intention of doing anything like that and should be appalled at the idea. I mean, really, duh), while another professor made a throwaway comment about Palin to the effect of “So it’s really bad to kill someone inside the womb, but once they’re out it’s totally cool? Yeah, sure” which also shows a distinct lack of understanding or possibly an unwillingness to understand, because it’s not that hard. Go go openmindedness!
The weird thing, though, is that on a list we were given of the people in charge of each school and faculty here, the vast majority of the heads–like, all but three or four out of twenty–were male. That’s not so bad except that every single one of those male heads had the prefix “Prof.” or “Dr.” in front of their names. The few women? Every one of them went by “Mrs.” even though they have to be professors to be heads.
I’m not much of a feminist, generally speaking, but that is just strange, yo, and I don’t like it. Especially because a few people here have been more than a little smug about their views.
