Letters to the Editor
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what has it moved on to
perhaps it has moved from studying how bad men are to studying the fact that they are "really" just like women, or have I got the direction of movement reversed.
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The dog is dead but the tail still wags
It's not that Women's Studies is dead, it's that it should be dead. There is no academic department with less rigor and insight anywhere in academia. It's a dumping ground for women who think that shitty attitude is a substitute for competence.
How unsurprising to see Broadsheet defend it.
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I don't feel the love...
for women's studies. A couple of decades spitting out vitriol and hatred doesn't give it credibility. Like the AAUW publishing a report that girls are being cheated in school, when in truth and in fact, they knew just the opposite was true. Calling all men rapists, like happened at Brown, allowing a Professor to keep men out of her class, like Daly...I hope it is dying.
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Women's studies - it's a strange one
Women's studies consistently cranks out graduates who are up in arms about women making less money than men.
But oddly enough, women's studies doesn't teach you anything useful for making money.
My older sister has women's studies bachelors degree. After graduation she ended up fetching coffee and typing memos for male bosses who treated her like (and called her) the "office broad." She was vindicated - men are pigs, men do treat women poorly, etc.
Then after lots of encouragement from her dad and I (both men) she went back to school and got an associates certificate in accounting. Now she works with "the cutest and most considerate guys she's ever known." And she gets paid over four times what she made being the "office broad."
Maybe the first thing you should learn in women's studies is that if you want to be treated as an equal, you need to get skills that make you an equal.
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Who Cares?
Is there anything sillier or more self-indulgent than "women's studies"? I mean what the heck are you supposed to do with a degree in "women's studies" - go work for one of the big, Fortune 500 women's studies firms? What a fucking waste of tuition.
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Darn it!
I was glad to see the end of women's studies. Then I thought nothing had really changed, because it's been thoroughly woven throughout all the rest of the studies. Now you tell me it's both? ARGH!
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They still teach 14th Century Italian poetry too
Not because it's useful but because someone wants to know. Or have a job teaching it to someone else at any rate.
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Underfunded compared to what, Men's Studies?
The old girls networks needs a little comptetition for my tax money. Personally I think it is a swimming idea for colleges to start Men's Studies Departments. Run by men for men, just like the women's programs.
My guess is that will never be tolerated. The irony is that it will undoubtedly be opposed by the same gyno-saurs that are currently standing on their hind legs braying for more money for women's studies.
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who are you people?
and when was the last time you were in a women's studies course?
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In a truly post-feminist world...
...there would be no "women's issues." They would be "issues," and people would have them.
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@jello5929
you said:
"Women's studies consistently cranks out graduates who are up in arms about women making less money than men.
But oddly enough, women's studies doesn't teach you anything useful for making money."
________________
hahahahHHAahahaaHahdahaha. Good line. Classic.
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Wymyn
http://www.rmdglobal.net/she-stole-my-voice/
A Documentary about lesbian rape - when will we see this in "Women's Studies" classes??
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The franchise will never go away...
...because nobody, especially some professor of a liberal arts/social science department, will ever acknowledge we've arrived at a point where we can safely cut off her gravy train.
Viewed at from another angle, these non-producing academics are fighting for resources that might go to fund something useful: scholarship for women, perhaps, or lab equipment or updated periodicals in the library. All of these would serve aspiring women much more than some professor without private sector skills telling them how difficult the world is, because they're women. How out-of-touch. Today's women achieve the feminist dream by doing, not bitching.
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@cdunlea - Why the SEXISM given that more women than men are now in college?
cdunlea wrote:
Viewed at from another angle, these non-producing academics are fighting for resources that might go to fund something useful: scholarship for women, perhaps, or lab equipment or updated periodicals in the library. All of these would serve aspiring women much more than some professor without private sector skills telling them how difficult the world is, because they're women. How out-of-touch. Today's women achieve the feminist dream by doing, not bitching.
I agree completely apart from your suggestion that money saved from excising womens studies could be diverted to "scholarship for women"! This is an opportunity to end an extremely biased and sexist program and now with substantially more women entering colleges and universities than men it is ludicrous to suggest that sexist exclusionary programs should be maintained.
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Gender mainstreaming
I'll support doing away with Women's Studies when "women's issues" are everyone's issues. When there's no more "Iron My Shirt."
Obviously, that day has not yet come.
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Given all the anti-women assholes who post here, it's no surprise women's studies is alive and well.
As for making a living off it, besides teaching it, Electro-Robot is right. They still teach ancient Italian poetry and other subjects which won't necessarily land you a job, but education isn't only about getting a job. There's that whole learning for the sake of learning angle, remember?
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Italian Poetry Can Be Enjoyed By Everyone, Not Just Women
Sorry, but I'm just more interested in solving the problems that affect EVERYONE, not just spoiled, middle class American women. If you think that being in favor of universalism over sexism (or, in the case of women's studies, exclusionary reverse sexism), makes me an asshole, then so be it. Meanwhile, I've worked for NGOs in East Africa that worked to remove landmines in Mozambique and eradicate Malaria in western Tanzania. Last time I checked landmines and mosquitos don't discriminate based on gender. I've got no problem with women's equality, but women's studies is an academic ghetto that does more harm than good.
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I majored in Women's Studies
I was a computer science major. I'm a woman, I studied it, so as far as I'm concerned, it was women's studies.
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@ BabyGrumpus
how could you have wasted your time removing land mines and eradicating malaria when there are people out there who are starving to death? Isn't that more pressing?
You can always say that to any pursuit other than helping people who are starving to death. So, saying, how can you care about representations of women in Disney films when there are bigger problems, it's really not an argument.
Sorry, but I'm just more interested in solving the problems that affect EVERYONE, not just spoiled, middle class American women.
Land mines and malaria don't affect me. It's true, with respect to problems in MY life, I'm more worried about sexism.
but women's studies is an academic ghetto that does more harm than good.
How so, other than with its mere existence, which seems to bother so many people?