No, Virginia

[Diana York Blaine]

Ah the old dissertation- avoidance dance.  Been there.  One year on diss.
fellowship I learned to cook Indian food (including roasting and grinding
my own spices), tore up the carpet and sanded the floor of my old house
after first scraping the whole thing with a spatula, and--here's the
kicker--hand-painted all my Christmas ornaments. This from someone nobody
would ever confuse with Martha Stewart.

Really I am on your "side" in regards to objectivity, as I mentioned,
although particularly in the process of becoming a feminist I began to
"see" a whole reality that I hadn't before been privy to. So I had the
bizarre experience of unlearning alot that I hadn't known I learned in the
first place, and while that may not have made me objective exactly, it did
give me buttloads of critical distance, which may be the best we can do.

And the first book I really enjoyed in college (a mere state school, but I
was only 15--my sole claim to elitism) was _The Social Construction of
Reality_. (Pace!  I know one of the authors is now a famous neo-con. I'm
not angling for trout tonight--too pooped). This argument made perfect
sense to me (and no one else in the class), and I'm sure ultimately
influenced my career interests much later (postmodernism and
post-structural psychoanalytic theory, for example). So I am hardly a
poster child for objectivity and will be more careful with the term in the
future.

Glad you took my potentially-acerbic post with good cheer.  Must be that
breeding I'm always hearing so much about.  Good luck on the diss!   Diana