As a feminist and someone with a liberal-arts degree, this post makes me feel ashamed. I guess my side interest in the evil, masculine STEMmery that is computer science and mathematics helped keep me from getting this far gone. (I reckon I'm one of those "jack of all trades, master of few" types.) My STEMmery also helped me be employed before I completed my degree and certification in language education.
A half-hearted critique of this: Laura seems to be grasping at various ideas from postmodern thought, feminist theory, and discourse analysissome of which are probably actually sensibleand then pasting them together to create this wharrgarbl. Her apparent failure at the aforementioned "grasping" likely has something to with the end result being wharrgarbl, as does her dismissal of using critical thinking to reach a sensible conclusion because that is apparently a "male-dominant" way of doing things. For some reason. Reading this oddly reminds me of when I read Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation for the first time, but that actually makes sense after a while and makes some pretty astute observations.
This prattle, however, does not. It is also woefully, dreadfully essentialist.
So far as I can tell, I am on the opposite end of the feminist-theory spectrum as this piece of work; I take the view that things are not essentially (i.e. inherently) masculine or feminine. Instead, they are normativized as such, and their normativization is mostly based on patriarchal whims and interests. Patriarchal norms are only legitimately supported, if at all, by a relatively small and broad set of general trends with regard to gender differences. These trends do hold true with a greater than chance frequency, and they do so independently of social norms and conventions. But the frequency in which they hold true falls far short of establishing any notion of essentially male and essentially female, which requires nothing less than universal absolutes exclusive to each gender.
Moreover, these general trends are oftenif not usuallywarped, embellished, spin-doctored, and exaggerated in their significance and extent to the point of caricature, framing those trends associated with females as weakness and those associated with males as strengths. This shoehorns human nature to fit patriarchal narrative, ultimately being presented as proof that there exists some sort of "natural order" that validates the legitimacy of patriarchy.
My arguably radically non-essentialist views on gender present a state of affairs very different from the apparent views Laura holds insofar as they can be gleamed from this quote.
No way of thinking, no way of looking at the world, no way of analyzing things, and no way of synthesizing and using knowledge is inherently masculine or feminine, inherently "male-dominant" or "female-dominant," or inherently "male-biased" or "female-biased"; such ideas are merely blindly accepted as facts because they can be enforced as axiomatic, self-evident truths in a patriarchal society and culture. (Another old comment of mine touches on this idea and another subtextual bone I have to pick with this quote: her apparent conceptualization of how "the masculine" is defined and privileged and how it is implicitly trans-exclusionary.)
I can't even imagine reading 100 pages of this drivel, but if I did, I could probably write a scathing 100 page critique of it if I wanted. It would probably appear equally pretentious and nonsensical, and it would probably be equally considered "radical feminist" rubbish and subsequently automatically dismissed. But it would at least make sense to someone familiar with the preliminary terminology and concepts, and they would be able to appreciate the logical soundness of my argumentation, even if they disagree.
Sorry for the TL;DR. At least maybe it will possibly help someone make some sense of this quote and not just appreciate how it is borderline incomprehensible, but also read and understand it for what it is and see how that makes it even more "WTF?!" than it seems at first glance.
@Jamaican Castle: Hell, I'm one of those dudes who learns better through verbal / social interaction. It probably what makes me inclined toward and well suited for teaching.
Edit: Dear god, my trainwreck syndrome is tempting me to read through his lady's logorrheamake it stop.