One of the worst things about academia is how people will constantly tell you that "academia needs more people like you" because you are different while simultaneously telling you that if you want to get a job (or get tenure) you need to start acting/writing like everyone else.

This paradox is why I find myself one foot out of academia year after year. Any notoriety I have as a scholar is from being different, writing differently, thinking differently etc. But if I want a job I need to prove that I can be (i.e. write and publish like) a normal academic.

There is a constant hum of acknowledgement that the way that academics traditionally write is not the best for anyone. BUT if you want your articles published at the end of the day you are going to NEED to make them nebulously "more academic" before you will be allowed to be "in"

When I established the tone and style of the Commentaries section of @FPSWeekly I wanted to show that academic writing could look and sound different and STILL be real scholarship. That that work was just as valuable, just as necessary to our discipline as any journal article.

But over the many years since then, I've seen people (who do not work at FPS) treat commentaries as a sort of hole where "not academic enough" scholarship can be slotted in and left. "Well this is not serious enough for a journal article so why don't we put it over here instead?"

It's honestly the exact opposite effect I wanted to have. I wanted the commentaries section to show that academic writing AT LARGE can talk about the personal, can say fuck shit god damn, can be flippant, can be feminine, can be casual or fun and still be rigorous and important.

The whole idea of what IS scholarship, and what is valuable scholarship needs to be completely destroyed and rebuilt. Right now you still need to showcase very traditional scholarship to be allowed to progress in your career and then you have your ghettoized "other" work.

At the end of the day trying to do anything but write very traditional journal articles, anything that ACTUALLY mobilizes knowledge takes up more of your time and is not valued but that work SHOULD be valued just as much as those articles and not as this entirely separate thing.

In conclusion, I would like ppl to stop doing the following things:

1) Using the words "academic" or "serious" to describe a nebulous style you want ppl to adhere to
2) Using the term "journalistic writing" as an insult
3) Telling ppl their writing "sounds like blogging"

A journal article is no question a different genre of writing than a blog post. They are different, no question, but I don't think "seriousness" or "tone" is what makes them different. I don't think one is "more academic" than the other. It's about form and convention, not style.

Academics can't really define what they mean by "academic" in style so they lean on blogging and journalism to define what academic writing is NOT: if you sound like a blogger or a journalist then it's not academic enough! That's easier for them then having to define what it IS.

Obviously, it is belittling to these other forms of writing but it is also exhausting. Because if the problem is "this is like a blog or a piece of journalism" because it say has no citations or makes no argument then fine have at it. But it's always about tone or style not form.

Lastly, if it isn't obvious, these "distinctions" are rooted in long-established issues with gender, class, race, and ability. It comes down to not "are these ideas smart" but "does this person sound smart in this traditional way that all these mostly old white men sound smart?"

I am dyslexic, my family is not educated, I grew up poor, I was raised in the country, I am feminine, I fucking say like too much, I say fucking too much! I am NEVER EVER going to sound smart in the ways those old white men sound smart and I don't fucking. want. to. Why should I?

And I am obviously working from the point of privilege where people in academia don't necessarily know any of this about me. I am very white and straight passing and if you don't look too closely at my teeth or my shitty car you might not notice the stench of generational poverty

But it comes through none the less. It is constantly clear that it will never not be a struggle for a broke dyslexic woman to exist in academia. No amount of being "different" is going to make up for my absolute inability to play the game and write and talk like everyone else.

In conclusion, if you catch yourself looking at someone weird and different and wild and creative and interesting and you think "wow academic needs more people like you" ask yourself what you are doing to fundamentally change everything about academia to make that possible.