How to Butterfly a Chicken - handy information since I’M GONNA HAVE A BARBECUE SOON! (via Pinch My Salt)
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From further down the comments thread. (See also the open letter.)
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Dear Mr McCurley,
A faculty member forwarded me your Open Letter and I must say it’s wittiness made me laugh out loud, especially your comment about being “camp.” Touche. When I mentioned camps, I was thinking of Frankie goes to Hollywood’s two tribes song and perhaps it was a little ill-advised on my part, but such are my sorry cultural referent points.
I am a little weary of some of the sad posts from certain of my countrypeople who love to misrepresent and distort the nature of my views or the context and issue they were directed at. Always sweeping, uncompelling and with the tired litany of insults and presumptions, but then, perhaps they read religiously from Schopenhauer’s Die Kunst Recht zu Behalten but fail to see the irony.
It really is the last straw.
Contextualisation is key, I am sure you will agree.
I was sorry to read that you were beaten up - that is never justified; and being called “faggot” is as ugly as being called “homophobe” so perhaps we will leave the name-callers to their own devices and treat each other first and foremost as human beings with intrinsic dignity. (Is that a howl of protests I hear across the cyber-waves by the usual band of demonisers? C’est la vie.)
I find the internet not to be conducive to genuine communication as people will say what they will say and believe what they want to believe. Pot. Kettle. Black.
Anyway, please do come knock on my door or drop me an email and have a coffee with me when I reach your not so sunny shores (if you do caffeine, that is). I would welcome having a civilised conversation with you; you can ask me whatever questions you might have to understand where I am coming from and what my political convictions are - if you care to know the truth of things. I find face to face talks are very effective in disabusing falsehoods and clarifying misapprehension and well, heck, distortions, particularly those redolent with malicious intent.
Thank you for the letter,
All the very best,
Li-ann Thio.
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From the comments section of this post. (See also Thio’s response.)
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I read your recent e-mail interview with Inside Higher Ed with some interest. It seems that you may be a little concerned about what awaits you at NYU this fall. As a gay person and a law student, I wanted to take the opportunity to reassure you and to welcome you to the university. I’m not sure if you’ve been to New York before, but I gather from your CV that you got a quite a fine education in the UK. Because of a few phrases you used in the interview, it occurred to me that you may not be familiar with some peculiarities of American English and I want to point out a few that may come in handy. First, we call chips “french fries” and crisps “chips.” Second, we generally call Members of Parliament “elites” and law students, well, “law students.” We don’t really use the word “diktat” a whole lot.
New York being New York, you may also find a few Yiddish words to be useful. Foremost among these is “chutzpah.” “Chutzpah” is hard to translate directly and its meaning is perhaps best illustrated by example. New Yorkers would say that a former NMP and graduate of Cambridge and Oxford who denounces gays in a rather vulgar manner on the floor of Parliament in a successful bid to enable their imprisonment calling the highlighting of her remarks by a few law students “ugly politicking” based on “their own prejudices, from whatever sources” has a lot of chutzpah.
Now, having grown up in a farming village in Kentucky and spent a number of years in the enlisted ranks of the Army, I share your distaste for both “ugly politicking” and “elite diktat.” As I’ve been called a “faggot” and been beaten up a few times, I don’t care much for “bullying” either, although I’m not sure having one of one’s own Parliamentary speeches circulated really qualifies as such. This may be yet another peculiarity of American English.
You are quite correct, however, that in the face of bullying, one must have courage. It also helps to have supportive gay friends. One of the nice things about gay folks is that we tend not to belong to either the “liberal camp” or “communitarian camp” which you described in your speech. We’re just into camp. Likewise, the gays at NYU don’t by any means have a problem with you, your right to your views, or academic freedom. We just don’t think that state power to imprison or discriminate against sexual, racial, or other minorities is a particularly “academic” question. Again, that’s American English for you.
Another generally appreciated feature of the gays is our sense of taste, which has been highlighted in television shows like “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.” You are a bit mistaken if you think that the gays at NYU want to censor you. It’s just that, like mixing polka dots with plaid or having George Wallace teach a course on civil rights in the American South, we tend to think NYU’s hiring you to teach a class called “Human Rights in Asia” demonstrates a lack of taste.
Dr. Thio, if you’ll have me, I’d like to be your supportive gay friend. We can have lunch, dish about men and listen to music together. I know a great tapas place in Greenwich Village and, as an American, I’d like to disabuse you of the notion that I have any interest in “refus[ing] to engage with dissenting views” or directing “intolerant animosity” at you. There are also a few great American songs I’d love to introduce you to. One of my favorites is called “Cry Me a River.” It was written by Arthur Hamilton.
I must make one friendly request before I let you go, however. We American gays are doing fairly well post-Lawrence v. Texas. Unlike our Singaporean brethren, we can’t be arbitrarily thrown into prison and can generally defend ourselves under the law. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for our friends, the straw men. From “human right to sodomy” to “Americans … appropriating the rhetoric of human rights … [to] impose their views on a sovereign state,” you’ve spent a good deal of time knocking them down. Last I checked, they hadn’t done anything to you, so why not go a bit easier on them?
All the best,
Jim McCurley
NYU Law Class of 2010
One can dream.
I can’t really envision what the inside of our new flat might look like, yet. All I see is the balcony. Modest sized, just enough space for a couple of chairs, and a downsized kettle barbie. A recycled wine crate is inverted over the barbecue, transforming it into a side table. On its side, it doubles up as a guerrilla prep table.
And when the weather turns cool, we’ll be sitting outside as the sky darkens, swigging beer from the bottle as I get up to slap a couple of steaks on the grill, toasting buns over the glowing embers. It’s hard to be happier than when you’re manning a grill, flushed from the mixture of the crisp wintry breeze, alcohol flowing through your veins, heat from the coals, and laughing till your cheeks ache.
Maybe what I need to do is bake.
Something’s up. It’s been bugging me all day, but I can’t figure out what it is. I’m irritating the people around me with my reticence, and it’s adding fuel to the fire. I’m waiting for the explosion, ‘cos hopefully that will just get whatever I’m feeling out of me once and for all, but perhaps it would be best if I stayed at home and away from the world in general for a couple of days.
Also, I have a menu to plan. And all the variations I’ve come up with aren’t really cutting it. I wonder if a downside to having become fairly adept in the kitchen means that my standards have been raised to a level where it’s impossible to please myself anymore. I feel petulant and bratty, but nothing’s going right so what’s the difference anyway.
PS: The stew I just made is a bit too salty. Which is also getting on my nerves, but short of redoing it I don’t really know how to fix it. I’m hoping the addition of the pastry will dilute the saltiness sufficiently but it’s not looking optimistic. And you’re going to say it’s fine and not to bother which is why it’s coming out here in this general rant and not actually directed at you. I SHOULD HAVE REMEMBERED NOT TO CORRECT THE SEASONING TILL AFTER I ADDED THE CHEESE STUPID STUPID STUPID STUPID STUPID RAH.
