Comment by ggm | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ggm | Hacker News Reader

Because she is routinely subjected to horrific misogynistic abuse online, I think this near-end paragraph bears repeating:

Mary Beard is a great scholar, and I don't want to be misunderstood as saying otherwise. There is more than just language proficiency to successful academic life, after all, and it is by no means the most important thing. For many reasons, knowing a language well is less valuable in academia than than knowing something else about the people who used the language, or having something worthwhile to say about texts written in it. The Czech writer Jan Kresadlo was at home enough in Homeric Greek that he was able to write a brilliantly hilarious Science Fiction Epic in it. But his facility with the language did not mean that he knew the first thing about Ancient Ionian land tenure practices.

But, that said, I think I agree with a couple of the authors points: She is brave to admit her lack of fluency and may have overstated how hard it is to learn.

Also worth reading is this, linked from the original blog: there's a conversation amongst latinists/classicists and they don't all agree with this polemic:

https://www.metafilter.com/181221/Lingua-pulcherrima

Why is she the subject of abuse? I am a total layperson here.

She's not just a Cambridge don. In the UK, she's well-known as a TV and radio broadcaster about classics, history, and art. She is of the left and approaches those subjects with a progressive slant, which attracts negative attention from conservatives (in my view, much of it justified), but also some vile sexist attacks from morons, which are definitely not justified.

I think people dislike her because she’s informal and popular in talking about a subject which is traditionally elite. She talks a lot about ordinary lives rather than great events, and she presents herself as an ordinary person, wearing trainers, with normal hair and teeth. A lot of it frankly is that she is not young and doesn’t attempt to make herself up to look young. You can see in many places there are very few women over the age of 50 on TV who have not been heavily made up.

All of this could be thought of as progressive or left wing but not in a way which anyone should object to! The only reasonable criticism of her I’ve seen is the discussion around the “ordinary British family in Roman times”, which was obviously wrong but made an underlying point which was valid, i.e. the lack of a modern idea of race in Roman civilization.

I think she has also objected to some aspects of gender self-id which would apparently make her right wing in a US context.

> I think she has also objected to some aspects of gender self-id which would apparently make her right wing in a US context.

Or a gender-critical feminist.

I agree with you about the rest, to some degree. I enjoy her shows, and she knows her stuff. But she does have a tendency to make foolish and out-of-touch comments: like the Roman family thing and the Oxfam thing.

There's a debate between her and Boris Johnson on youtube arguing the Romans vs the Greeks and he makes her look like an amateur both in delivery and content of her arguments

Any specific examples? I've seen people say the opposite.

I am unsure what the purpose of this comment is, which apart from making the assertion that Beard is "routinely subjected to horrific misogynistic abuse online" merely consists of copy-pasted snippets of the article. Perhaps we can assume that the purpose is simply to include is this former component. One must wonder, however, how much of this "abuse" is merely criticism brought about by perceptions of shortcomings in her work (such as those outlined in TFA), rather than by any inborn prejudice.

You might read https://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/jan/21/mary-beard-suf... or https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/09/01/troll-slayer which is about the "abuse" problem. I don't think the problem is just criticism brought about by perceptions of shortcomings in her work. As to the relative ratios, and nature of the problem, I don't know how that could be assessed.

I posted one snippet and a link. I stated why I posted the snippet. It is to set context: the blog author is aware of this abuse problem and wants to draw a contradistinction between their view and the abuse. I agree with them, and I too wish to draw a contradistinction between my view and the abuse. Also, the link is relevant here. Not every latinist agrees with the statement of the problem, there is an debate amongst latinists about the complexity of the language and nuance in the meaning of unfamiliar texts. It bears thinking about. I found it interesting, which is why I posted. I'm sorry you think my comment is pointless.

Although in hypothesis, it is tenable to argue the complaints about Prof. Beard are simply misunderstood, and in fact its legitimate debate about her thesis and lines of reasoning, I think its not solely down to this, and I don't think the problem is mischaracterised. That's informed by having read popular history works by Prof. Beard, and also read about her problems being a public TV figure.

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