I don’t care how much you admire Noam Chomsky.
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I don’t care how much you admire Noam Chomsky. For centuries, men in high positions have behaved unspeakably to women and children, and I don’t give a shit how great a thinker they were.
Indeed if anyone had the capacity to understand the monstrous consequences of a power imbalance and what consent is, it’s people like Chomsky.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/nov/22/noam-chomsky-jeffrey-epstein-ties-emails
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I don’t care how much you admire Noam Chomsky. For centuries, men in high positions have behaved unspeakably to women and children, and I don’t give a shit how great a thinker they were.
Indeed if anyone had the capacity to understand the monstrous consequences of a power imbalance and what consent is, it’s people like Chomsky.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/nov/22/noam-chomsky-jeffrey-epstein-ties-emails
@Remittancegirl he's still alive?
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J jwcph@helvede.net shared this topic
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@Remittancegirl he's still alive?
@the_turtle Yes, he is 96 years old according to the linked article
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I don’t care how much you admire Noam Chomsky. For centuries, men in high positions have behaved unspeakably to women and children, and I don’t give a shit how great a thinker they were.
Indeed if anyone had the capacity to understand the monstrous consequences of a power imbalance and what consent is, it’s people like Chomsky.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/nov/22/noam-chomsky-jeffrey-epstein-ties-emails
@Remittancegirl I only know Chomsky's work very superficially and still it makes me deeply sad to hear. One thing it brings to my mind is the pattern, which is more common among male intellectuals, where you can have a high intellectual understanding of social dynamics and very poor practice in your life. There's a disconnect between the ideas and the lived practice.
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@Remittancegirl I only know Chomsky's work very superficially and still it makes me deeply sad to hear. One thing it brings to my mind is the pattern, which is more common among male intellectuals, where you can have a high intellectual understanding of social dynamics and very poor practice in your life. There's a disconnect between the ideas and the lived practice.
@Remittancegirl This sad story brings one more thing to mind. I see the impulse to separate the person Chomsky from the ideas he had (which might be brilliant etc). I would say this depends on which kind of ideas that person had and when those ideas are about power imbalances, the contradictions between theory and lived practice matters. As you say, if anyone should know, it's him.
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@Remittancegirl This sad story brings one more thing to mind. I see the impulse to separate the person Chomsky from the ideas he had (which might be brilliant etc). I would say this depends on which kind of ideas that person had and when those ideas are about power imbalances, the contradictions between theory and lived practice matters. As you say, if anyone should know, it's him.
@Remittancegirl Ellen Meiksins Wood once wrote "A Social History of Western Political Thought" where she used the lived experiences of the time in her understanding of the ideas normally attributed to intellectuals that seem to live without context, we never hear of their personal lives etc. They're decontextualized.
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@Remittancegirl Ellen Meiksins Wood once wrote "A Social History of Western Political Thought" where she used the lived experiences of the time in her understanding of the ideas normally attributed to intellectuals that seem to live without context, we never hear of their personal lives etc. They're decontextualized.
@Remittancegirl If there's anything I've learned from feminist meta-theory it is that standpoint is always contextual. And that the only view on the world without context is the God's eye view. That might be a key to not treat male intellectuals as gods going forward - bring them down to earth and understand their ideas partly through their own practices.
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@the_turtle Yes, he is 96 years old according to the linked article
@malte Why?
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@the_turtle I don't understand, you're asking me why he is 96 years old?
