Letters to the Editor
-
Sharing his misery
Parson Jim seems to have an unlimited supply of misery that he is ever ready to share. Maybe one day he will take seriously this old saw: Hatred is like taking poison and expecting the other person to die.
-
Women's Studies is not a discipline
It's an agenda.
A discipline is subject matter. And within that subject matter all viewpoints exist. Economics, example, includes laissez-faire, Friedmanism, Marxism. Every viewpoint about wealth and money can be countered by an opposing viewpoint.
When was the last time you heard of a pro-life Women's Studies course? Or a Women's Studies professor holding that women are NOT suitable for positions of leadership?
There is nothing studied in Women's Studies that can't be studied within the existing fields of psychology, history, economics, anthropology, etc. Splitting off existing WS courses to those fields would expose the professors to a much more diverse student body and students who actually disagree with them, and would expose their scholarship to true critical peer review. This would only improve the quality of their teaching and of their scholarship.
-
If it is no longer wanted or relevant, then it should disappear.
If Women's Studies is no longer relevant or students don't wish to study it, then it should disappear.
And to my (doubtless predujudiced and masculine) mind, the very title "Women's Studies" seems to belong to the 1980s.
-
In academia we study all sorts of discredited social theories
Like Communism & Marxism and the fact that they are stupid, discredited and insane hasn't stopped anyone from delving into them, embracing them even.
-
@christopher1988
Sommers is a gender feminist, not an equity feminist. She's said so many times.
So many times that you got it exactly backwards, huh?
-
A class here and there, maybe, but a major? God, no
I went to a pretty liberal U where embracing Women's Studies would have been gilding the lily, to say the least. I instinctively stayed away and am glad I did. But I read a lot of overtly feminist stuff on my own and enjoyed some of it. Cannot imagine embracing this as my discipline. And that goes for all identity studies, quite honestly. If enough people share this opinion and these departments become unsustainable, well, that's the market talking.
Also, in what universe is Christina Hoff Sommers an "anti-feminist"? I think she's an inspiring feminist thinker. It hurts feminism to shut her out of that tent. And why is there a bouncer at the door in the first place?
-
Good for the UK.
Women's studies departments are indeed viewed with suspicion in academia, and although sexism plays some role in this, much of the criticism is well deserved. As someone who has been in academia for seven years now, and who has studied women exclusively (within another department), I have a few observations about "women's studies." Their enrollees tend to have lower GPAs and GRE scores going in than those of students in the traditional liberal arts, sciences, or professional disciplines. This really shows in their writing and analysis! As far as I can tell, the field of women's studies has no disciplined methods of inquiry, or rather no unique methods of inquiry that aren't borrowed from history, philosophy, or the social sciences - and subsequently watered down. This suggests rampant interdisciplinary dabbling - the worst kind of scholarship.
Rather than herding all of the feminists into the academic ghetto of women's studies, which is insular and navel-gazing even for academia, why not bring feminism into the traditional disciplines where feminist analysis is often greatly needed? There are feminist historians, psychologists, anthropologists, ethicists -- feminism represented in every discipline under the sun except perhaps the bench sciences -- and these women are doing "women's studies" work, only with much more critical audiences to keep the bar appropriately high.
-
Yes, LetterWriter, exactly
Separating Women's Studies from other disciplines only marginalizes what good may come of it.
-
No jobs = terrible society?
"And if being a feminist doesn't lead to a job, doesn't that suggest that society is still perhaps just a wee bit patriarchal?"
Seriously? Do you know anyone with a degree in sociology? Or history? Not many jobs there either, for men or women.
-
The problem with...
...womens studies, queer studies, etc., is that some young people take this crap and get majors in it. Which qualify them to do.....nothing at all. Money isn't everything - until you don't have any and can't get a job. I have no idea why colleges and universities offer these crap degrees, they should have some shame.
-
@Parson Jim
Kiss American leadership in science goodbye when the Title IX gender cops and wimpified politicos get a hold of it.
Point taken--science can be undermined by ideological attacks from all sides, by the Right and the Left, by government and private interests, and for a whole host of reasons. Rest assured, however, that the single biggest threat to America's scientific literacy and proficiency today is to be found not among the leftist PC and gender war crowd, but on the Right. By a long shot. Read The Republican War on Science by Chris Mooney for a good primer on the topic.
Oh, and America's leadership in science is withering rapidly, again thanks mostly to attacks from the Right and our poor overall educational standards and achievements relative to the rest of the West. The US has fallen behind Europe in the publication of scientific papers, for instance. And when one considers that so much science in America is being conducted by foreigners and not by native-born, native-educated researchers, it becomes apparent that the magnitude of the problem with science education in the US is more grim than even the worrisome surface appearances would indicate.
But hey, not to worry, as American science recently celebrated the opening of a $27 million Creation Museum in suburban Cincinnati (www.creationmuseum.org), that will finally put to rest those silly Darwinian fantasies and promote the "truth" of Genesis! Awesome! How can America not be proud of such an amazing "scientific" achievement?! Of course humans lived with dinosaurs just like in The Flintstones. This is evidence that American science is as healthy as ever, and ready to resume its commanding lead over the rest of the world. Watch out Europe, here we come!
-
Feminist Studies are Nothing more
than indoctrinaire hate mills.
That they continue to exist and to poison the society is testament to the fact that women are given much more leeway to get away with crap than are men.
Can you imagine men starting up a Nazi style indoctrination camp on every major campus in the USA? Can you imagine that camp teaching that all elderly people are evil and that they must be neutralized or destroyed? Can you imagine the indoctrinates pummelling the courts and laymakers until they created laws discriminating against the elderly?
But because these are WOMEN, we do not take them seriously, letting them act like free radicals in a cell, destroying everything they touch.
Already, political correctness has ravaged the interplay of free thought and intent in thsi nation. Women's demands for a nanny state have led to Clinton and now Bush being able to traipsie in all sorts of socialistic/communistic attacks on our freedoms and rights under the guise of protecting Americans. Women, not men, voted in Bush. They always vote in the strongmen, while the strongmen then ravage the society. Marriage has become a joke because women feel they no longer need to be kind to men- so we have a society of men trashed for abandoning their kids when the men WANT to be with their kids in intact marriages, but they did noit follow every single direction from their wives to the last (men are sub human slaves in other words). Now I hear science is being attacked by feminists.
Lamentable. the only confident conclusion one can make is that the emergence of 'feminism' is the last gasp prior to a society collapsing.
Sounds like a really good PR stunt. not.
They should not call it Women's Studies, but Hateology. Or maybe Excusology. Idiotology?
I know the one gender studies class I attended was extremely man hating. What is forever burned into my mind is the vicious hatred emenating from women's studies majors.
Great, really great. has beens.