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    freelancejournoJia Tolentino
    3/28/16 2:01pm

    I went to one of the top MFA fiction programs in the United States. Sexism infected the culture and colored both how the professors treated male vs female students and also how we discussed the work.

    Despite the fact that more women apply to MFA programs than men, and also — as anecdotal data — I know many more women who identify as writers than men, there was still an expectation that “serious” fiction was the purview of men. The (male) professors seemed to identify better with the male writers and their male protagonists, as if they had some special insight into the human condition. Another (male) student was handed contact info to the New Yorker to ease the submission of his story; the same professor invited me over to his house to cook lunch and discuss the local food scene. I think this kind of behavior went well beyond my program, and though harassment and assault aren’t always the output, I see fundamental sexism as the germ of this behavior.

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      MostlyKelp ( Now, you people get that oven, or die trying. You hear that, Stormy? DIE.)freelancejourno
      3/28/16 2:11pm

      I’d be inclined to agree with you but Pounded in the Butt by my own Butt is light years better than 50 shades of Twilight.

      Women suck at things, there is no way a woman could write a book series as good as JK Rowling and his Harry Potter series or write music as good as that dude PJ Harvey. They def can’t sing as well as Pat Benetar, that dude has range.

      Come on, name one woman who is a better writer than Toni Morrison or George Eliot. You can’t because those guys are the tops!

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      AntisocialJusticeWarrior is not Anti-SJWMostlyKelp ( Now, you people get that oven, or die trying. You hear that, Stormy? DIE.)
      3/28/16 2:13pm

      Alice Cooper, DUH!

      ;)

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    DonaldDuckistheonlyDonaldJia Tolentino
    3/28/16 2:39pm

    Stop. sleeping. with. your students. period. How is this hard????? You should not sleep with people you are teaching and/or have substantial power over. I get it your students are hot 0r whatever. You are a grown ass adult and know better. Stop sleeping with your damn students*

    *note: this message is for all teachers, of all genders, at all levels of education. Stop sleeping with your students.

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      schweddyDonaldDuckistheonlyDonald
      3/28/16 2:58pm

      Right? I mean, even if you find your bona fide soulmate, why the fuck is it so hard to wait one semester?

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      ad infinitumschweddy
      3/28/16 3:19pm

      As men line up to explain every time anyone suggests that attempting to seduce your female students or subordinates is inappropriate, there is literally nothing worse than asking a man to forego a potential opportunity to get his dick wet. War, genocide, sex slavery — these are mere trifles compared to the indignity of any man, anywhere, being asked to treat women as human beings instead of walking orifices.

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    Murry ChangJia Tolentino
    3/28/16 2:06pm

    Meh...everything the ‘Important Literary Man’ ever wrote was boring as fuck. Good riddance, I say.

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      TheBurnersMyDestinationMurry Chang
      3/28/16 2:20pm

      You aren’t fascinated by the story of a middle-age man in the midst of a mid-life crisis that can only be solved by sleeping with some 20-year-old college student? You must not understand Real Important Literature.

      /s

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      AgingHipsterMurry Chang
      3/28/16 2:24pm

      Amen. Bunch of bloviating horseshit.

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    PinkBunnyHatJia Tolentino
    3/28/16 2:14pm

    Ah Professor Not Quite Grabby, I had two of those. The ‘accidentally” brushing up against the female students, and when there was a sexually explicit poem to be read out loud, guess who he with with his affectatious elbow patches called on. I did refuse to read one the poems out loud once, totally threw him for a loop, which was quite gratifying.

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      wjd236PinkBunnyHat
      3/28/16 3:03pm

      “affectatious elbow patches” that’s pretty good... This guy sounds like a real schmuck.

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      thundercatsaregoPinkBunnyHat
      3/28/16 3:10pm

      I had Professor Stares at my Tits. One time I actually ducked my head down to try to meet his gaze, to no avail.

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    TailypoJia Tolentino
    3/28/16 2:20pm

    I have struggled with expressing this to young women — that the experience of A: Experiencing shocking sexist mistreatment B: Being informed that now you at the crossroads between a naive rube and a savvy member of our (literary, artistic, etc) in-crowd. If you respond to the sexism you experienced as offended and protest then you are bourgeois, small-minded, sexually immature and comical/pitiable. If you suck it up, brush yourself off, steel yourself with a knowing attitude, and smirk at the next new initiate, you are a ‘man’s woman’ and in the club. This is what coming of age in the Seventies and Eighties was. This is what letting girls into the boys club meant. It was my introduction to gasslighting and I am really glad to see today’s young women breaking it down. Kill it, kill it with fire!

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      AgingHipsterTailypo
      3/28/16 2:28pm

      Me too. Same. As a young woman I thought of myself as “cool,” because I could “hang” with the dudes. I didn’t think of sex in a needy emotional way! So I fucked all of them and let them treat me like shit, while talking to me about their One True Loves (invariably someone not “cool” who didn’t “hang,” who invariably was the girliest of girls and needed to be “protected” etc.) and when I finally realized that I was just letting myself be used and humiliated I sure was pissed off. The tradeoff was that once I started demanding and receiving respect, sure, I got a shit-ton of negging (still get it) but boy did I get into a great relationship eventually, with a man who really, truly regards me as an equal, and as a human, and as someone worthy of respect.

      Also all those stupid types I used to want to hang with are, I realized in adulthood, hacks. Not just hacks; bitter, angry hacks who can’t stand that I have professionally bypassed them and will still send me messages about how they had once thought that I was cool. Good riddance, I say. I wish I hadn’t waited so long.

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      Honey HarlaquinTailypo
      3/28/16 2:54pm

      Bravo. There’s a classic “It’s a trap” situation. If you have emotions - are emotional - then you are a girl and girly and that is fundementally not equal to “us boys” and only girls who reject girliness can be in with us. From the playground onward, you must have masculine taste (I would never read a romance novel or watch a soap opera! I watch sports and drink beer and read “graphic novels” that are not comic books at all!) Nobody is a cartoon or exclusively mascline or feminine, but the fact that comic books are now seriously studied as literature shows how much more power men have in the academy than women. Their childhood passions are now worthy of study. Girly childhood passions are still, most often, a joke or damaging (shame on you for loving your Barbie, you were damaged by it - complicated I know but still true) I do know an academic who studies pulp romances of the 19th Century, but he’s a man. He told me once a woman could never get away with it.

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    Honey HarlaquinJia Tolentino
    3/28/16 2:24pm

    An important literary man expresses his feelings: he’s a genius. A woman does it: she’s a hack, put that lady in a pink cover and call it chick lit.

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      thundercatsaregoHoney Harlaquin
      3/28/16 3:15pm

      Similarly: Male professor is an abrasive bully in class—he’s called “brilliant but tempestuous” or “gruff” or “rough around the edges” but always brilliant. Those same things would be character flaws in evaluations of female teachers (“mean” “bitchy”) and would be cause for discounting her brilliance. But the male genius soldiers on. His “genius” is never called into question because of his abhorrent behavior.

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      The-Rumors-Are-All-Truethundercatsarego
      3/28/16 4:37pm

      Same standard also applies to politicians.

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    SipowitzJia Tolentino
    3/28/16 2:07pm

    I just wanted to come here and say that I signed up for Jez’s newsletter because the guys at Deadspin said the first site to get so many subscriptions get a pizza party.

    I hope you all win.

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      ColonialSaabJia Tolentino
      3/28/16 3:48pm

      Jia, not possessing a MFA, or for that matter a MA - I have to defer to your knowledge to guide me. Halfway through reading this article, I decided to go find out more about this gent, Ellis. I know little of poetry in English, apart from a a few of the classics (dead Englishmen).

      So, I went ahead and read some of the poetry of Ellis. What dreck. But then again, I might lack the cultural context to understand his verses. Fair enough. So then I went off to take a dekko at his photography. Here, I felt like I am on more firm ground, having more than a passing acquaintance with this discipline. Again, I am disappointed. There is very little finesse, no sign of any particular technical ability. There are no outstanding compositions. There is nothing here with the faintest touch of beauty. You know what? This guy isn’t really a photog. He is a fucken instagrammer, and even then, not a good one.

      So Jia, help me out here. How does a hack like this apparently make it to the top of his chosen profession?

      Btw, the domain name tsellis.com is for sale.

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        RedVioletColonialSaab
        3/28/16 4:29pm

        Relentless self promotion. Duh.

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        SemiotextingColonialSaab
        3/28/16 8:49pm

        Please, you’re just calling him a hack because of what he has been accused of. Your wearing smoke tinted glasses. The man is talented. Despite his reprehensible actions the man is talented.

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      ILikeThunderstormsJia Tolentino
      3/28/16 2:32pm

      Zero shock here. Whether it’s science, medicine, politics, literature, visual art, music, fashion, knitting, botany—men have historically used their alleged talent and “genius” as an excuse or cover for horrible behavior, from general assholery and misogyny to rape. I’m glad that the douchebags and criminals who also happen to be so-called luminaries of the literary world are getting exposed for who they are. The more we talk about this bullshit in all fields, the less acceptable it becomes and the more influence and equality women will gain.

      Great article.

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        Rutherford B. Hayes, caretaker presidentJia Tolentino
        3/28/16 1:58pm

        This sort of unsavoriness happened in my MFA program to a degree. However I do believe that the women the (very popular, very polarizing) author slept with were also given publishing deals and blurbs from the man himself.

        Women should be able to get books published without paying homage to the penile gate-keeper.

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          Barnacle BettyRutherford B. Hayes, caretaker president
          3/28/16 7:52pm

          My partner and I went to an MFA together about ten years ago. He continued on to another writing program. I was giving him the run down of Jia’s article on the TSE and VIDA news along with the note about how it was noticed that the women that slept with powerful male literary dude got funding at Iowa and that (rightly) pissed people off. His words, “So you have to suck dick at Iowa to get a fellowship? Jesus.”

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