Mar 30
“ I first thought Noam Chomsky was a woman, maybe because of the soft vowels in his first name, or because I found, and still do, his linguistic approach to be gentle, considerate, and receptive. These are great qualities in writing, which I generally attribute to women, who often make better writers, but historically were not given an equal chance to write and publish due to a complex set of institutional matters. See? That wasnโt so hard. During college, in a damp seminar room which exuded patience, I kept referred to him as โshe,โ and the (this was some political theory class, in UC Santa Cruz) feministy T.A. sort of looked at me with huge grateful eyes, like I single-handedly had done what her Ph.D. was trying to do.
— Jimmy Chen