december: Please provide an example or two of any respected feminist academic(s) who is/are defending repressed memories in the face of evidentiary problems. Indeed, please provide an example or two of any feminist academic doing any work at all on repressed memories so we can familiarize ourself with this issue in a more substantive way. If you can’t do that, please admit that you’ve failed utterly to connect this particular issue to your otherwise completely unsupported assertions about a) feminist scholarship and b) today’s universities (which you now seem to imply–preposterously–are, as a group, against truth and for ignorance).
FTR, according to your definition of a “feminist academic” I am a feminist academic. Speaking, therefore, as a feminist academic who at various points in her career, has worked at different kinds of institutions in several US cities and in the UK I believe I can say with a sense of conviction that I have never in my life seen evidence of–to cite from your post "[a]n unwritten law in the women’s movement [which] dictates that we must accept every claim of sexual abuse by another woman, or else we are not being supportive of survivors."
Personally speaking, I take it as a matter of course that some people who claim sexual abuse in childhood will be mistaken.
The issue of sexual abuse is, of course, grave as the current church scandals will remind us. But, speaking as one example of a feminist academic, sexual abuse is in almost every respect as tangential to my interest in feminist work as is, say, child abuse. To wit, contrary to your tacit assumption, feminist scholarship is not unified by some monomaniacal crusade against sexual abuse and still less by a hatred of men.
I must also point out that in my published work on feminist issues and in every other regard, I strive for factual accuracy; if someone were to discover factual inaccuracies in any work of mine I would immediately take steps to correct them.
If you have any evidence of any feminist academic who, unlike me, recognizes the so-called “unwritten law” attributed (vaguely) to “mainstream” feminism, or who, unlike me, disregards factual accuracy in his/her work, please cite them here. Otherwise I think you’ve shown again and again and again that you have nothing at all to say on the subject of academic feminism that qualifies as legitimate debate.
astro: * With respect to the issue of “unique tools” etc. I will reiterate my previous observation/opinion that methodologically I do not believe there is a discernable difference between “feminist” investigative tools in the furtherance of knowledge and that of any of the other sociological/historical/economic branches of academic endeavor. I think the question is more one of the utility and/or desirability of focusing these gender centric endeavors under the umbrella of a separate department, versus letting them be investigated within the boundaries of existing departments and their associated disciplines.
IMO it’s really (or should be) more of an organizational issue than a battle over the investigative power of a unique feminist theoretical perspective. This is really turning into a snark hunt.*
astro, I’m sorry but I can’t really follow your logic here. I agree that, as a cross-disciplinary endeavor, feminist research has much in common with the sociological, historical and other disciplinary methods on which it draws and does not offer a discrete set of unique tools. However what is original to feminist research is precisely what you’re calling “gender centric endeavors”–which is to say, what makes feminist research identifiable as feminist research is the focus on gender.
What feminist researches are very often arguing is that the focus on gender adds something that wasn’t understood before. Hence, Scott’s chapter on Thompson’s The Making of the English Working Class changes the way that class is understood by removing the unintentional assumption that that working class was composed of men; it thus enriches understanding of the working-class history. Hence Kabeer’s study of gender in development policy in the third world shows how the UN and other well-meaning organizations inadvertently make counterproductive moves because they insufficiently attend the social reality of women in these countries. Hence Willis’s study of American culture shows how gendering–for men and women both–is central to our understanding of ourselves as consumers, as citizens, as Americans and so forth. The common thread here is what gender adds to understanding.
Now if your point is that such an understanding can be added simply by having researchers interested in gender working within various disciplines, I don’t disagree. The great majority of feminist research is being conducted in precisely that way: outside of Women Studies departments and within more traditional disciplines, as well other kinds of cross-disciplinary programs (e.g., area studies, development studies).
Now it’s quite possible that you’re actually saying what I just said–I can’t really tell. Because some of what you’re saying sounds as though your suspicious of the importance of considering gender, while some of what you’re saying sounds as though you simply feel as though it’s best done outside of Women Studies departments.
If the latter is your point I think there are some good reasons (some of which have been said in the other thread) for why their should be programs combining researchers from various disciplines whose common interest is the focus on sex/gender. As I said before, I’d prefer for such programs to be called “Gender Studies” rather than “Women Studies” but, again, I wholeheartedly support any kind of program that gives place to feminist scholarship which I continue to find illuminating, important and, where empirical claims are being made, factually accurate.
