Letters to the Editor
-
Am I being too hard on you?
... Disciplines do not function in this manner, because scholarly networks that produce scholarship are already interdisciplinary. Departments are merely convenient units for academic bureaucracy; they have nothing to do with the way scholarship actually works. Each form that Women's Studies takes in universities--whether it is a major or minor and whether it is an autonomous free-standing department or a program in which faculty members share time with departments--is not a product of any "ideology." It's a product of the local conditions that give rise to the demand for courses in the study of women or gender.
I don't know where to start on this either. You imply there is no intellectual unity or common assumptions? So, it is therefore like a shell game? How does this make it a rigorous body of KNOWLEDGE?
I know less about Britain, but the U.S. university system is large and extremely diverse; it's impossible to generalize about women's studies departments.
Using a phrase like 'impossible to generalize' is another snake oil phrase. Of course one can generalize about anything, no matter how diverse. One can also go into some depth parsing out the sub generalizations. Further, there is most definitely a generally agreed upon position, stance, academic charter, philosophy, body of knowledge from which feminist theory works. Such a facile phrase as 'impossible to generalize' defies logic.
... That said, the idea that Women's Studies departments are dying is silly. I teach in one, and our enrollments are up every semester. Our major numbers are up.
There are more neo-Nazis today than there were in 1939 too. A field can be studied by more people than ever, this does not mean it ia alive and useful. Latin is studied all the time, it is still a dead language.
We have male students who enroll in courses and major in Women's Studies. They don't come out saying that we indoctrinate students.
The ones enrolling in the classes likely already have a predefined position, being positive on radical feminism. OF course, they would not say people are being indoctrinated.
Christine Summers is entitled to her point of view, but readers are not entitled to assume she is right without reading more arguments that counter her's.
Maybe readers already have heard the counterarguments hundreds of times BEFORE hearing Summers. The reason she gets so much traction is precisely because she is a breath of fresh air from teh PC hegemony infiltrating most major media.
Do not tell people what they are entitled too. It reeks of the typical female entitlement, where women will tell us men what to think, how we feel, what our motives are, etc... putrid.
After all, isn't learning about struggling with contending views, sifting through their evidence, and then deciding after a process of inquiry, what is truthful?
So how come feminism never follows this model?
You talk about evidence. SHOW ME the evidence where you interviewed average men to ask them what they think. This does not happen because feminism has already labeled average male thinkign as anti feminist, therefore it is dismissed.
You can rant at the darkness but until you women begin to live your own propaganda, quit telling the rest of society how to live and what to think.
At core, I do not believe nor do I trust you. You have a vested interest in whitewashing the sins of feminism.
All I seek is true equality between the sexes, in that MEN should also have all the rights and privileges accorded to women in this society. MAKE IT HAPPEN, then we can talk about feminism.