Men are ridiculous.

Men are ridiculous.

So I organized this discussion group for our Economic History of Latin America class, and included all the guys who are in my discussion section. Mistake! This is why it's important to be selective about who goes into your midterm study groups:

1) Men are stupid assholes. They will spend the whole time bitching about the TA, saying retarded chauvinist things like "we should get her laid."

2) They will come a whole fucking hour late, and try to leave after 10 minutes, when they've collected everyone else's portion.

3) On top of that, they'll lose their midterm study sheet, and won't do the reading they said they'd do; in fact they'll email you at 10:00PM the night before to ask you for the reading, and put the blame on you for THEIR not having read the damn thing because YOU didn't get back to them until 12:00AM that night. (Bed time for Mr. Chauvinist Piggy?)

3) And when Mr. Alpha-Male-Brazilian comes into the room, all the other guys go nuts to lick his balls. The subject of the conversation flows ever-so-gently to football and how many chocolate bars and cans of beer they had for breakfast. Wow.

Okay. So that's not even what bothers me the most...

There's an essential difference in the TA's take on economic history, and the professors' take. Economic history is a super-pragmatic semi-history that seeks to extract all the useful information from the past that can be used to give quick-fixes to current policy, and ignore the rest. In-so-doing, it often whitewashes obviously racist ideas with lofty economic terminology: "ethnic heterogeneity in Latin America was bad for economic growth." Excuse me? Did you just say what I think you said? Who was it who came rape-landing onto the continent with his guns, germs, and steel, crashing civilizations, and bringing his slaves with him? "Ethnic heterogeneity?" If you're so worried, why don't you just stay the fuck home, white man!

And as you can see, I definitely agree more with the TA's take on economic history than with the professor's- that economic history is way more econ than history, that it just doesn't give you a good fair look at what happened. This is not the only "history" I want to know.

But the men in the room disagree. They like that alpha male crap.

And they are the Ivy League crony-boys that are far more liable to be ruling our world in the future and setting our policies than I.

And this perspective on economic history, on simplistic notions of "institutions" that negates the more complex realities of people, race, power, struggle - this stupid self-congratulatory belief in mathematical "economics" and "institutions", which whitewashes inequality and injustice, IS WHAT THESE GUYS ARE GOING TO CARRY WITH THEM TO THE TOP.

(And they are Econ majors...the Alpha-Male-Brazilian is Econ-PoliSci...so that's where their ambitions lie.)

And their football-beer cronyism, their chill-buddy, fuck-that-bitch attitude is the attitude in the upper echelons of government! In fact I bet that's what white house meetings are like. Just a bunch of stupid chauvinistic men, talking about how much chocolate and beer they had for breakfast.

This is why I hate my major. Why do I put myself through this shit, knowing that I don't believe a fucking word of it? Is it really worth it to put myself through all these miserable classes so I can "master the language" (economics) of those policy-makers - is that really how I would be able to make a difference in changing it?

Damn. I really should have gone for comparative literature, anthropology, anything. Not this shit. Stick with my happy, hippie art world.

What made me most upset about this morning: I hate that I didn't speak up for the TA during our meeting today. I didn't speak up for the ideas of social history, which I really DO believe are superior to those of "economic history." I kept quiet in a room of obnoxious guys, and I didn't call out their chauvinist, DISGUSTING comments. Why not!?! If I can't speak up in a meeting room with a bunch of stupid college kids, how will I ever speak out in the future? In another bigger, more dire room?

Next time, I swear I will not be this quiet.