{"id":3720,"date":"2007-10-22T09:59:34","date_gmt":"2007-10-22T13:59:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lia.bulaong.com\/wp\/?p=3720"},"modified":"2007-10-22T09:59:34","modified_gmt":"2007-10-22T13:59:34","slug":"the_language_of_constant_apology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lia.bulaong.com\/blog\/2007\/10\/the_language_of_constant_apology\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;the language of constant apology&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Verlyn Klinkenborg&#8217;s recent NYT editorial on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2007\/10\/15\/opinion\/15mon4.html\">teaching young writers<\/a> at a small college in Minnesota really struck a chord with me when I first read it, and I found myself wanting to revisit it today, especially this part:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>I\u2019ve often noticed a habit of polite self-negation among my female students, a self-deprecatory way of talking that is meant, I suppose, to help create a sense of shared space, a shared social connection. It sounds like the language of constant apology, and the form I often hear is the sentence that begins, \u201cMy problem is &#8230;\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Even though this way of talking is conventional, and perhaps socially placating, it has a way of defining a young writer \u2014 a young woman \u2014 in negative terms, as if she were basically incapable and always giving offense. You simply cannot pretend that the words you use about yourself have no meaning. Why not, I asked, be as smart and perceptive as you really are? Why not accept what you\u2019re capable of? Why not believe that what you notice matters?<\/p>\n<p>Another young woman at the table asked \u2014 this is a bald translation \u2014 won\u2019t that make us seem too tough, too masculine? I could see the subtext in her face: who will love us if we\u2019re like that? I\u2019ve heard other young women, with more experience, ask this question in a way that means, Won\u2019t the world punish us for being too sure of ourselves?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Verlyn Klinkenborg&#8217;s recent NYT editorial on teaching young writers at a small college in Minnesota really struck a chord with me when I first read<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cheesedip","category-movable-type"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lia.bulaong.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lia.bulaong.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lia.bulaong.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lia.bulaong.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lia.bulaong.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3720"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lia.bulaong.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3720\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lia.bulaong.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lia.bulaong.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lia.bulaong.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}