Carol Queen and Robert Lawrence misrepresent Greek vernacular, want to eradicate “the Greek system of thought”
American sexologists Carol Queen and Robert Lawrence can barely conceal their disdain towards Greek philosophy while at the same time misinterpreting and misrepresenting the Greek language for an American audience, openly stating the one thing they want to change the most in American society is to eradicate the influence of Greek philosophy on American thought. If Queen and Lawrence knew their gay history well they should’ve known that American homos both lesbian and gay of their and especially earlier generations referred to the ancient Greeks and the so-called “Greek life” to normalize their lifestyle. Greek thought and philosophy thus effectively paved the way for the American gay movement to gain societal acceptance. Now with austerity and the economic crisis and the constant scapegoating of Greece in the mainstream media it is no longer cool for American homos to associate themselves with Greece, so now we have reached a point where anything that is Greek, and Greek language and philosophy specifically, which are the bedrock of Western thought, has got to go and is hence being rejected and vilified along with Greece. Greece has become fair game. Excerpted from the following Youtube interview:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oHudIUB5TY
Robert Lawrence: I am a member of the Youth International Party, or the Youth In Protest, the Yippies. We sort of believed you could fuck yourself to peace. If we all had good orgasms, most war would stop. I kind of still believe that, but I would take out the Greek system of thought that our philosophy of the United States is based on. The Greek system and the universities where young white males run 80% of the largest corporates in the world come from, the Greek System.
I would take out the idea that there is an ideal perfect male, and anything less than the ideal perfect male is to be bought, sold, owned. The Greek System. I would change that philosophy, but I don’t know what I could replace it with other than a philosophy where all humans are beautiful. All life is beautiful. Choose: Would you rather be a piece of road made out of carbon, or would you rather be a human? I’ll take a human and life itself. All life itself is beautiful. The idea that we can look at each other and experience things as the universe is experiencing itself, which is what we’re doing really. We’re the stuff of the universe going, “Oh wow! We’re the thing! Isn’t it nice?” I would make the idea that life itself is beautiful fundamentally, and I would take the commercial ideal of beauty and make it go into a more expressive structure where it’s — humans are amazing creations, whatever their condition. When dead it’s a great sorrow but the whole idea is that when we’re alive, we can learn and speak and talk and touch each other, and that sort of stuff. That’s what I would change. The whole thing, I’d change the whole thing. I’d make it like, I don’t care who you are, that you are human, and you can talk with me. The Greek system says that there is a man and he is perfect, and women are unformed men. Even the concept of words, “Hey malákas,” you know, “hey masturbator”, is male in sense. It’s not female.
Interviewer: Is that Greek?
Robert: Its Greek. Carol taught me this so I may not be pronouncing it right. But then in the feminine, it’s “malákismeni,” which is one who is masturbated. You don’t even have the exigency to touch yourself.
Interviewer: Oh my gosh! I didn’t know this.
[NOTE: What is stated here is a misrepresentation of contemporary vernacular Greek. Μαλακισμένη in contemporary Greek doesn’t mean “a woman who is being masturbated”, because the term is not used in a literalist sense by contemporary Greeks. Μαλακισμένη is a Greek vernacular pejorative term or swear word, where it is almost exclusively used to mean a woman who is an insufferable, terrible person. Also, the female version of μαλάκας is actually μαλάκο, which is again used as a perjorative term to refer to an insufferable person of the female gender, and is used even more often than μαλακισμένη. The suggestion made in this Youtube video that there supposedly no equivalent female term in Greek for μαλάκας is thus proven false.]
Robert: And the Greek society and the Greek language and philosophy runs us. It’s fundamental. It’s the bottom root of our thought process, how the classics are taught.
“The Greek society and the Greek language and philosophy runs us.”
I note, stress and underline that Carol Queen identifies herself with so-called “Germanic traditions” as a neo-pagan and in her youth also spent several months as an exchange student at a German girls’ school. If you’ve been paying attention to the news you know what the Germans have been doing in Greece since the start of the economic crisis. Is it any wonder that a person who identifies herself with so-called “Germanic traditions” is advocating for the erradication of Greek thought and philosophy in American thinking? Greece was useful to kickstart the American gay movement, but now it can be cast aside as a bad influence on American society itself. Which ironically was the same argument once used to demonize homos in America, the argument that gays were the wreckers of Western civilization. What a convenient way to turn the tables on Greece now that homos themselves have gotten themselves a seat at the table having used Greece to do so.
German-imposed austerity in Greece is clearly not just an economic war waged against Greece, it is a cultural war. It is meant to disenfranchise Greeks not just economically but also culturally, to deny them their cultural currency on top of denying them actual currency through mechanisms such as capital controls.
