The worst insult known to man (real men, anyway)

Last week I was listening to Science Friday on NPR, where they were interviewing the totally amazing Maria Popova.  I had no idea who Maria Popova was at the time, nor why she is so amazing, but was quickly convinced.  (The interview is available here, Ms Popova's site is brainpickings.org, and if you never return to this blog after clicking that second link, I will understand.)  For the uninitiated, Maria Popova could be described as a super-blogger, though she calls herself an "arbiter of interestingness", and the important takeaway from the interview, for me, was that she posts on her blog three times per day, not pictures of kittens, either, as you'll see if you click through.  It's insane.

Now, spite and envy have always had a place in my toolbox of motivations, so I was inspired to start posting to my blog again, in hopes of emulating Maria's success.  I may, however already be behind, given that it's taken me five days to write this one post.

Whatever, click through to find out what the worst insult known to man is.

"Pseudo-Intellectual"

I do not think it means what you think it means (dammit, memes, get out of my blog post!).

These appear most frequently in comments section, usually in a political context, sometimes in music for some reason. Remember Ashley Judd's piece on the Daily Beast about body image and the media's constant shaming of women who fail to look like June Cleaver every minute of the day? No? Well, it's here.

It's a well constructed and passionate argument, made cogently and calmly. There were of course many responses in support. On the flip-side, though, you will find the term "pseudo-intellectual" bandied about quite a bit (the original comment board is now shut down, but you can find the essay re-posted all over the place, and the response is about the same no matter where you look).


Sontag, God rest 'er.



The term pseudo-intellectual is a hard one to nail down. By strictest definition, it should mean "having the outward appearance of intellectualism but on closer inspection, is a shallow regurgitation of half-understood concepts", which could encompass 70% of the entire internet (including around 10% of the porn). The way people use the term, it seems more likely to mean "someone who has said something that I don't understand".



He even looks the part.



If I were to reference Susan Sontag in a blog post (which I may have done, too lazy to go back and check), and actually got any comments, I might be accused of pseudo-intellectualism. Apparently real intellectuals write books and articles, but only pseudo-intellectuals read them. I've even seen the term applied to the writers themselves; in one of the more bizarre bits of verbal vomitus I've ever come across, Umberto Eco was labelled a "pretentious pseudo-intellectual". Now, whatever you might feel (if anything) about Eco's theories and work, the man is a professor of semiotics at the University of Bologna, author of a zillion books and seven zillion articles, and is probably the archetypal intellectual of our time. He's bona fide, as some might say.

Which makes me wonder what's really going on here.

In my totally unscientific research (click, click, click), I've been able to draw a few conclusions about the pseudo-intellectual tag.  First, it's frequently applied to women, especially if they're taking on any kind of cultural phenomenon in a way that could be labelled feminist (see Ms Judd, above).  Second, if it's directed against men, the man in question is usually challenging some aspect of masculine culture using sociological, psychological, or genderal terms.  Third, when the term is used, the user seems to believe that the opponent has been fully and completely discredited, and need no longer be bothered with.

It's the gender aspect that's especially interesting to me.  The assumption seems to be that women who express complex ideas are simply echoing other, more sophisticated thinkers (or acting uppity, to put it another way), since women by their nature are not suited for such mental toil.  Simultaneously, men who attempt the same are just making themselves less manly by having deep thoughts (probably eat quiche too...).  The appellation, in other words, is another rung on the "real man" ladder.

If you're a pseudo-intellectual, you are either a feminist (ooooooooooh!), a phoney (burn!), or, worst of all, you might be an actual intellectual (oh snap!)  and we all know that a real man isn't any of those.  The internet tells us so.

And you should always trust the internet.