Through These Eyes #8: The Meaning of a Word

     I was sitting in Theology class Monday morning, becoming enlightened to the spiritual matters that I guess one normally becomes enlightened to in Theology class, when the class discussion took a nasty turn. We were, as I recall, discussing the purpose of college education and how it was for educational purposes and not just to get a good job (I had enough trouble swallowing this) when some poor guy on the other side of the classroom offered up a comment. "I don't understand why women who are planning on being housewives and mothers go to college. They're just starting off life sixty thousand dollars in debt and aren't going to get a good job," he said.

     Uh-oh, I thought. I knew what such a comment like that meant, and so did the professor. He tried to steer the class away from the point, but my fellow theologians-in-training were on it in an instant, ready with their feminist salvos of reproach. And, of course, as this is Marquette University, home of enlightened minds and students willing to use their intelligence to better the world through meaningful dialogue, from the back corner of the room, I heard a helpful suggestion along the lines of "Hit the pig."

     Well, as there were no barnyard animals in the classroom, and I doubt that the speaker had ingested any substances that promoted the hallucination of such creatures, I must assume that she meant hit the young man that had spoken. Now there was a well-reasoned response which took all of a few seconds to formulate. The well-conditioned response of intellect to an argument.

     The description didn't particularly fit the guy, either. He didn't have too long a nose, nor could I see that he was particularly dirty. No offensive odors came wafting over from his side of the class, so I must disagree with the label.

     But it works, doesn't it? When one disagrees with the position of another, it always pays to have a back-up argument. Like the speaker is a pig. That way we don't have to listen to those mere gruntings as if they were something to seriously consider. To further isolate him, maybe we can call him a male chauvinist pig.

     Not withstanding that he does have to view the world from a male standpoint (we can't all be as lucky as Tiresias), he readily admits that it is an issue that he doesn't understand. Maybe it does seem a bit odd. He might be going to school just for a good job, and not be getting anything out of classes outside his field. There's no crime in that.

     The problem arises when he speaks out, and offers his opinion, and questions something, in order to understand and maybe even learn something. Maybe by getting him to empathize with the women who want to go to college before raising a family, he will come to understand and not be a "pig." But by defining him and filing him away as unreformable, those that label are actually doing little to further their interests.

     This little incident, other than sparking another of my tirades, seems to illustrate a problem that many people of a theoretically sound and rational mind have when dealing with opposing viewpoints. There is no limit of epithets in the English language, and we make liberal use of them to downplay our opponents. Not only is this illogical, but it will lead to further name-calling. I hate to think what would have happened if he had muttered "Stupid women," or "leftists," or something retaliatory. He might not have made it out of there alive.

     As stupid as it seems, it happens. Some people get tagged with a title that doesn't exactly befit them because it's easier to do that than to try and understand. I really hate to see it here, as we are supposed to be the ones making an effort to change the world. We surely can't reason with pigs, and if that's all we reduce the world to, how can we change it?