Apos, a brief word to say that I look forward to responding to your last; may as soon as later today.
Apos (and indirectly astro), thanks for your substantive posts.
“[Gilligan’s] conclusions also face serious and still unanswered challenges from several threats to internal and extenal validiy. Worse, criticism of her ideas and methods is pre-emptively attacked as being, as usual, the reactive, octupussian patriarchy at work.”
No doubt some would respond that way. Take this as you will.
The day after the first mention of Gilligan on this thread I had occasion to phone up an older friend (about Gilligan’s age) who teaches in women studies at a large university --someone with an established reputation in that field. I asked her what she thought of Gilligan. She responded that Gilligan had been influential in the early 80s but that her work had been superceded many years since. (She did add that G. is still cited.) She said that G’s work was intuitive and that her results weren’t found to be reproducible. To wit, she said basically what was said by you and by astro. Indeed, she was surprised to find me asking about G.
Of course, you have nothing but my word to go by but I do want to add that it has, by and large, been my experience that people in WS are as eager as anyone else to keep up to date. (Repeat proviso: I’m not an expert on WS; though I do qualify as “feminist academic” under the official december definition of same).
“[G’s thesis] is that girls are universally at risk for being “silenced”: their voices taken away from them, their unique girlness quashed by society. She doesn’t come out and say that this “unique girl spirit” is genetic, but there are strong implications that it is superior to whatever she happens to be setting it in contrast to, and indeed, when her attention turns to boys, she is quite explicit in the idea that boys could benefit from being more like whatever it is she thinks girls have (prior, of course, to being “silenced”).”
See now those assumptions are bound to raise major eyebrows for feminists of my generation (and training). Indeed, ideas about innate moral difference between the sexes are centuries old. They originated during the Enlightenment–for very interesting reasons.
That’s why I’m not surprised to hear (from astro) that female scholars are the ones who’ve been challenging Gilligan. Would I wrong, astro, in assuming that at least some of these female challengers are themselves self-identified feminists?
There are, let us remember, huge and complicated debates within feminism–inside and out of academia. On the whole I think that’s not a bad thing (though I always like to be agreed with!). I can only say that the atmosphere of intimidation–i.e. you can’t criticize a certain position without being accused of this or that–is simply not central to my personal experience.
" Gilligan’s work has been fundamental in creating a perceived psychological, social, and academic crisis among the fortunes of American teenage girls: despite the fact that, if gender is even a good way to break it down at all, it is boys that are in serious crisis (from almost four times the dropout rate, failure to pursue higher education, much higher incidence of psychological problems, criminality, etc.) Indeed, one of Gilligan’s favorite statistics: that boys recieve more teacher attention than girls, actually points in the direct opposite of her preferred conclusion. Boys get more teacher attention largely because they are almost always doing worse in class, and are more likely to be disrupting the class or haveing other disciniplinary problems. "
Not too long ago The Nation published a review of about three different books focusing on boys–each of which took a different position on the matter. None of this is surprising to me as someone who devotes a considerable amount of energy to contemporary gender issues. Personally, I believe that there are major problems in the way both boys and girls are socialized and I also believe that the invidious distinction made between them is a big part of the problem. (I speak here as a parent too.)
I’m not sorry that Gilligan’s work is being questioned so vigorously. Although some of the “boys crisis” rhetoric I’ve heard seems like going from one problematic position to another: no it’s not girls who are being exploited, its boys! Um, maybe there’s something larger out there that a battle between the sexes?
“Full disclosure: I considered myself a feminist until I decided that such a term was too ideological, or, at least, too generalized.”
That is an interesting statement, Apos, since “ideological” and “generalized” are rather different characterizations, no?
As to your disillusionment with the feminist movement–thanks for offering that. I actually have had a somewhat opposite experience: from less to more identification with gender issues. That said, as far as political involvement goes, I’m most attracted to areas where social justice is sought broadly. I do think, though, as in development studies in the Third World, that one must pay very close attention to how gender plays out in quest for universal justice, equality and so forth.
At the risk of infuriating people by repeating myself: focusing on gender is a very different enterprise than focusing on women qua women.
“[Feminist scholarship] has made grander and grander conclusions about all of society on less and less evidence, many of these claims self-sealing (i.e. arguing that criticism only demonstrates the truth of the claim of how pervasive, say, patriarchy is).”
Can you provide some examples? This sounds like very dated stuff. I haven’t heard anyone use the term “patriarchy” in an unqualified way in years.
" The result [of extreme political activism] has been, by and large, the marginalization of feminism in the political discourse, allowing people like Rush and O’Reily to basically write off many of its more legitimate beefs by pointing to some of its outrageously silly extremes."
I’m sorry Apos but this seems a little naive. There isn’t and has never been a level playing field between the resources available to the voice of “reasonable” feminism and the kind of material and structural factors that support Rush and O’Reily. I don’t want this to devolve into a media thread, but, FWIW, the changes in the broadcasting/entertainment since the 60s have been monumental. And they were far from perfect back then.
Katha Pollit is, to my mind, one of the most reasonable and intelligent of feminists; and she has made plenty of criticisms of postmodernist theory etc. (many of which I’ve found compelling). She and people like her have always been there and continue to be there. If the Fox network had any interest in placing such a figure in a place of prominence they could.
I’m sorry, but I’m simply not willing to believe that the left has lost out because of feminist rhetoric. (Though I do have a lot of thoughts on the matter of identity politics; hence my purpose for reading the Yale article mentioned in this thread.) Indeed, I think the publicization of some of the most conroversial positions to emerge from feminism–Dworkin’s for example–is entirely owing to rightwing dissemination.
“The commonly cited figure of how much women make compared to men is one example. This statistic is SO easy to pick apart as highly deceptive by any intelligent critic: and yet it is used without good analysis (it’s not a totally useless comparison, it just needs to be explained that sexism just isn’t the only factor, or even directly the key factor, but is definately A factor) time and time again by feminist speakers and academics.”
First, I take it as a given that that statistic speaks for a very complex reality. And I don’t in the least hold “sexism” to be the culprit. (Have I said otherwise?). In fact I hardly ever use the word “sexism” at all.
The kind of gender studies position that I hold doesn’t see women as men’s victims. It sees individual women and men both as subject to complex forces–but with the possibility to work for change. This is an increasingly prevalent position, IME.
“I don’t think by any means that all feminist scholarship is bunk, though I do think that an uncomfortably large part of it involves sloppy scholarship with a very uncritical academic atmosphere (in sharp contrast to, say, disciplines like intellectual history).”
First, what discipline are you talking about (where sloppy scholarship and uncritical atmosphere prevails)? Second, would you agree that intellectual history is/was an area where people working on gender have a lot to contribute?
" While not much of a conservative myself, I also think it is scandelous that feminist academia is essentially still a left-wing enterprise with high-barriers to conservative viewpoints based on, in my opinion, very political, rather than academic biases."
Well what form do these barriers take? And what is the difference between a political and an academic bias. Consider that the desire to devote one’s life to teaching in the humanities is a very self-selecting affair. My high school friends who went to business school or law school all earn at least 2x what I earn. Most earn much more than that. This is just one reason why one tends to find liberal or other leftist perspectives amongst academics, esp. in the humanities. Another–although a much more contentious one–is that the more you know, the more reasons you find to dispute the Republican Party agenda and, increasingly, aspects of the Democartic Party agenda. Academics tend to read a lot more than most people. (I feel as though I should duck!)
“However, I do think that the eventual goal in liberal academia should be for the elmination of explicitly feminist studies: what we need in the end are not more “feminist” readings of various social phenomenon, but better, more thoughtful and inclusive readings in general. Feminism as a movement has done much to fix terrible assumptions and disciniplinary neglect in many areas: but I do not think a particular ideology should have an established place in a discipline of knowledge.”
As I said early on in this thread, it would be great if the word feminist could be replaced. Women studies could easily be replaced by Gender Studies and in my places it has. But what would “feminist” be replaced by? Egalitarianist? It’s an interesting question and one I’ve often pondered.
Consider this though: it’s one thing to feel as though “a particular ideology” shouldn’t have an established place in a knowledge-producing discipline. Unfortunately, many such disciplines are very driven by a particular ideology.
Self-identified feminist work is more susceptible to this criticism, mainly because the ideology is stated. At its best though, that ideology is a belief in justice, fairness and equal opportunity. I wish I could say the same for all disciplinary biases.
I am glad that we think alike on the matter of Adam Smith. If you wish, I can dig out a link to a recent thread (actually one of the Marx threads), where Smith ended up being the major subject of discussion.
I have no particular axe to grind. You seem to think I am hostile to feminism. I am most certainly not. On the contrary, I am hostile to bad feminist scholarship because it tarnishes the entire discipline and provides an opportunity for those who are hostile to feminism to create a public perception that modern feminism is ridiculous, dangerous or both.
The long-running controversy over Carol Gilligan’s work isn’t even, really, the kind of thing I’m talking about. Consider the following examples, all gleaned from a very brief review of the agenda of one academic conference.
**
Disruptive Diets: Vegetarian Performance and Discourse as Feminist Praxis
Now there is, of course, nothing whatsoever wrong with vegetarianism. But feminist vegetarianism as serious scholarship?
**
Quilting: A Feminist Metaphor for Scientific Inquiry
**
Perhaps there’s a good reason why they don’t. My first reaction, on reading this was to want to laugh thinking this had to be some sort of a send-up. My second reaction was that I dare not laugh because this person may be in deadly earnest that her personal journey towards a feminist epistemology of cooking was a serious scholarly work. The stereotype that feminists have no sense of humour is untrue. It’s just that they can’t always tell when colleagues are making a joke and when they’re serious.
**
The Colonizing Male Gaze: The Female Body as Metaphor for Space in Popular Science Fiction
There was, by the way, also a Star Trek paper.
**
Masculinist Expansion and the Shrinking of the Feminine in Star Trek: Insurrection
Sometimes a villain is just a villain.
Now you may find all this worthy of the most serious consideration. Some of it may not even be as daft and trivial as it appears. Nonetheless, it makes me wince. Not so much for the papers themselves, but for the climate that allows them all to be treated as serious scholarship.
This is more than just a bone to pick regarding content or style. This sort of thing suggests a lack of norms with respect to what constitutes good scholarship and good research. Inclusiveness is a vital part of the academic enterprise for many reasons. But inclusiveness should not mean that every perspective is equally valuable merely because it is different. Now I am well aware that “value” is a potentially loaded – and some would argue thoroughly subjective – term. Assuming for the moment, that it is, some functional definition of value is, nonetheless, necessary in order to advance the academic enterprise. If value in academia is to be purely subjective, it becomes nothing more than a kind of entertainment with value determined by the popular academic tastes of the day. I know, Mandelstan, that you maintain this simply isn’t a problem in feminist academia, however, there are other thoughtful people who disagree.
I’m glad you feel this way but, once again, not all of your colleagues do. A quote by Prof. Gilligan from the material provided by astro
**
Now there’s a basis for making a policy decision! In some disciplines, a researcher making an admission like this would be at risk of losing her tenured position. What does her ability (and willingness) to make this statement and still have an academic carreer say about the intellectual atmosphere in which she operated?
With respect to your personal views on objectivity, would you agree with the following? “There is no gender bias in the laws of physics. They are objective and do not depend on the researcher.”
** Perhaps by some radical perspectivist scholars, but is certainly shouldn’t be. If my ideas are being studied as data then, of course, my background is relevant. If my ideas are interpreting data, then my background should be completely irrelevant. The only relevant question is whether my theory fits the data.
You asked for evidence of the significance of feminist postmodernism for science.
**
An Overview of Feminist Perspectives as They Relate to Science and Mathematics Education The Mathematics Educator Vol. 6, No. 1.
Apos
As you’ve probably gathered, I share many of your concerns. I’m distressed that many feminist academics do not.
Oh, dear lord. America is already a nation of scientific illerates, statistically speaking. Do we really need this nonsense? I’ll say one more time: has feminist academia produced anything yet? anything valuable? Anything that a man couldn’t produce?
—That is an interesting statement, Apos, since “ideological” and “generalized” are rather different characterizations, no?—
Sort of: not in the cases I face. The problem with identifying oneself with a particular ideology is that both perceptions of it, and the reality of the other people professing it and explaining what it means and does, changes. So after identifying oneself, I find that sometimes I end up spending even more time explaining what I mean by it. It can be both too vague AND too specific. As a fond fan of communication, it’s been easier to just explain what the hell I care about and dispense with the titles.
—I’m sorry Apos but this seems a little naive. There isn’t and has never been a level playing field between the resources available to the voice of “reasonable” feminism and the kind of material and structural factors that support Rush and O’Reily.—
Obviously, but that wasn’t my point. My point is that too much of the feminist left seems determined to make itself an easy target for these clowns, providing them with endless yuks and pokes. Dworkin was indeed held up by the right: but nowhere near enough people on the left took her to task in her heyday for her outrageous claims. And it wasn’t just her. People like Faludi and Wolf (mangling the spelling of their names) made major forays into the public arena: and both got out of hand.
—I’m sorry, but I’m simply not willing to believe that the left has lost out because of feminist rhetoric.—
Well not JUST feminist rhetoric. It’s pandemic to many areas on the left. Look at the sorry state of what’s left of the mainstream civil rights movement. But it’s not totally controversial to note that when feminism retreated deep into convoluted and controversial “theory,” conservative politics and public policy advocacy exploded in a very successful backlash that really has stayed in place to this day.
—Katha Pollit is, to my mind, one of the most reasonable and intelligent of feminists; and she has made plenty of criticisms of postmodernist theory etc.—
She’s certainly interesting and worthwhile.
—First, I take it as a given that that statistic speaks for a very complex reality. And I don’t in the least hold “sexism” to be the culprit. (Have I said otherwise?). In fact I hardly ever use the word “sexism” at all.—
It’s good that you think it reflects a complex reality: but you aren’t the public face of feminism today, which continues to quote this figure as if it were a straightforward account of discrimination.
—Second, would you agree that intellectual history is/was an area where people working on gender have a lot to contribute?—
Not in that sense. I would say that more and better perspectives on gender would be a welcome contribution. But it isn’t everything, and it can’t stand on its own forever.
—The kind of gender studies position that I hold doesn’t see women as men’s victims. It sees individual women and men both as subject to complex forces–but with the possibility to work for change. This is an increasingly prevalent position, IME—
Perhaps I am behind the times then. But what I am talking about certainly wasn’t out of bounds before, when I was more on the up and up with modern feminist scholarship.
—This is just one reason why one tends to find liberal or other leftist perspectives amongst academics, esp. in the humanities. Another–although a much more contentious one–is that the more you know, the more reasons you find to dispute the Republican Party agenda and, increasingly, aspects of the Democartic Party agenda.—
Far too contentious to be a useful point, I’m afraid. I think reasonable people can, and do, support either party’s agenda, or neither, or parts.
I think conservative critics have some very valid points when they draw attention to the extremely leftist bent of most college campuses, that sometimes litterally beats and protests away anyone with political opinions or academic work that is out of favor. I went to Wesleyan for undergrad school, and can definately confirm that just such an attitude prevailed. I’m not a conservative, but I definately think that this made the college’s political and academic experience insular and one-sided. People spent their careers attacking straw men: and when these proud young activists got out into the real world to combat the forces of evil, they get the snot kicked out of them.
—Unfortunately, many such disciplines are very driven by a particular ideology.—
The goal, at least as I see it, is that these things come and go, fresher ones sweeping out the lousy parts of the bad, keeping what was valuable. A discipline, to me, is a wide area of possible knowledge, not necessarily any specific body of knowledge.
—At its best though, that ideology is a belief in justice, fairness and equal opportunity.—
Those are values almost everyone can agree with. And, I think what could be said about the “at best” of most disciplinary biases (most of which tend to be “when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail” problems)
Truth Seeker: Once again, though not quite as egregiously as your foray into the philsophy dept. at Union, you give a very incomplete picture of a complex whole.
You’ve googled across a huge conference devoted to “Feminist Rhetorics” in which 150 different papers were given over the course of a few days. Now first, the study of rhetorics–in other words of language–is probably something that you would find uninteresting (given your apparent views) whether its bent were feminist or not. Second, these are abstracts. Even very good papers don’t sound like much when they’re boiled down to abstracts. Abstracts are designed to allow conference participants to choose which papers they want to hear.
The idea with a large conference like this is to include as many people as possible to create a large forum for the featured speakers and just for the general social experience. The non-featured panels, running simultaneously, will only be attended by a few people who are interested in that topic. So if you proposed a paper or put together a panel on any related topic the organizers would most likely include you just to let you participate in the conference. So some people who don’t write books, who publish very few articles, and/or who publish only in journals that very few people read come to conferences like this to take part in a conference like this one so they can have the experience of taking part, and hear the featured speakers.
Bear in mind, Truth Seeker, that many academics have a huge teaching load and are not expected to do any research. People who study rhetoric often teach composition–a very hard job that involves grading tons of student papers. There are people who, after getting their doctorate publish a couple of articles, and then teach the same course load for years at a time. They may teach Sociology 101, or “Writing about Gender,” or Introduction to Rhetoric, or Survey of Literature many semesters in a row. They will not teach graduate students at all unless their institution is large and prestigious enough to have a grad program. If that’s the case, they will have few or no opportunities to keep up on research. If they’re not expected to do research for teaching purposes then they won’t get any institutional support for it. Working under such conditions its inevitable that some people fall behind.
Speaking purely for myself, the lameness award goes to the vegetarian diet stuff because of the trite and out-of-date use of “patriarchy” (which actually sets my teeth on edge). But not all of the other stuff, even though you chose it for specially for its presumed risibility, had that effect on me.
I don’t want to make any claims for any these papers–I don’t study rhetoric, and I won’t make judgments about abstracts–but not all of them strike me as inevitably risible. The epistemology of the kitchen could be interesting, depending on how it’s handled. Will it cure cancer? No. But then neither would another paper on Kant, Hegel, or Heidegger, and I can easily find abstracts for papers on any of the latter that would seem incomprehensible to must of us.
When it comes to cultural studies (and I do think the papers you singled out fit under that rubric) I think the value has to be
if the paper is thought-provoking or not. Its possible to imagine the epistemology of the kitchen being done well despite it’s corny premise. Same with the quilting metaphor. Yeah, it sounds corny and I’m sure, since you dislike science studies, that one bugged you. But the person who wrote it is a biologist and one, apparently, who’s interested in the rhetoric of science: in other words, in the way that the language of science affects its culture and perception. Is there no truth to the idea that the idea of science “boldly going where no man has gone before” has become a cliche? I myself have no personal or professional problem with penetrative language but, it has to be said, a lot of scientific activity probably is more like quilting than like lone penetrative activity. That is, most of the scientists I’m friendly with work in teams, labs, etc. In any case, I think it’s just possible that this paper had some interesting thoughts about an alternative metaphor for scientific inquiry and I’d not want to make any conclusions about its worth without hearing it.
Now I notice that you passed over a panel that I thought would have had strong interest for you: “Women in Science: Then and Now”
This person teaches at the kind of inst. likely to evaluate her on the basis of her research, and to give her some support for it. From her abstract:
“What does it take for a woman to succeed in science? It appears to take more than intellect and hard work. According to Gerhard Sonnert (1995), the answers fall into two general categories: 1) how women are treated and 2) how women act. First, it is the structural obstacles within the system of science that keep women from succeeding. Although the United States outlawed structural barriers, resulting in some reduction of gender disparity in the sciences, impediments to women scientists’ achievement continue to exist in ever-increasing subtle configurations. The subtler, informal barriers within the institutional and social system of science still handicap women. Second, obstacles to success lie within women themselves due to gender-role socialization and cultural values. While some feminists would embrace women’s difference as positive and develop a “woman-centered perspective” (Eisenstein, 1983, xi), they would still agree that the current social system of science disadvantages women.”
If I attended to this conference, I think I’d hit this panel and give vegetarian anti-patriarchy a miss. I’d also want to hear several featured speakers: Judith Halberstam’s work on gender and cultural studies is really first-rate. Fox Keller, though I know her reputation rather than her work, is probably the kind of science studies figure you should base your evaluations on. She is, I think, a trained physicist as well as a philsopher. Butler is a serious philosopher.
The decription of the Star Trek episode, btw, could lead anywhere, possibly to something interesting. Are you against all literary criticism and film criticism? Just when it’s devoted to popular lit like sci-fi and movies? Just when it’s feminist? Or just against it when its bad?
If the latter is your position, I don’t like reading bad work either; and I’d be surprised to find it in the places that are peer reviewed and command respect. A good press academic press will publish the best cultural studies work; as will top journals in the field (I can name some if you’re interested). The University of California has a very good film series. As I said earlier, I think writing about popular culture can be interesting and important. (I do some of this kind of thing myself so here, unlike with science studies, I’m reasonable up to date and in the know.)
Your “Overview of Feminist Perspectives” excerpt, btw, wasn’t linked to anything. The excerpt on its own wasn’t sufficient to make clear for me what the argument was–i.e. what kind of masculine bias in science is being addressed?
" With respect to your personal views on objectivity, would you agree with the following? “There is no gender bias in the laws of physics. They are objective and do not depend on the researcher.”
Truth Seeker, I’m sorry and even ashamed to have to insist on this point, but I simply don’t know “the laws of physics.” I never took it in high school or in college. (I did go out with a physics major as an undergrad and he was very nice.) If you are asking me if gravity has a gender-bias I am happy to proclaim my deduction that it does not. But, though I know almost nothing about science studies, I’d be surprised if anyone were saying that gravity had a gender bias.
From what little I can glean from the excerpt you posted, the claim seems to be that there’s a built-in middle-class, masculine bias in science and math education, but on what grounds the claim is made I don’t know. It could be something as simple as that the textbooks draw on examples that wouldn’t be familiar to students of some backgrounds; or that they bunequally represent boys vs. girls, etc. Or it could be a claim–as is often made vis-a-vis the SAT–that there’s a deeper cultural disadvantage built into the way science is taught. The claim seems to be that as science is taught it’s not “pluralistic” (which is to say tolerant of many different beliefs) and its “hierarchical.” I have no idea whether these claims are plausible or not, or well argued or not. What I will say is that I personally am not sympathetic to the kind of position that says, “women think this way and not that way and therefore a different kind of science would think the way women do.” I believe that position is dated and counterproductive. I noticed that the author of the abstract cited above seemed to distance herself from a 1983 position of that kind.
This may or may not be of use. In political philosophy claims about universality are often questioned because they are formal. Therefore the form (equal rights for all) can stand as a kind of masking device for a less rosy substance (e.g., special privileges for a few; substantive deprivation for many). That said, formal rights are a very important first step (see my link to the NYT below). There are several other criticisms of universality that one comes across a lot, none of which are at all risible if one is genuinely interested in such topics.
You seem to think I am hostile to feminism."
No, not really. I think you are hostile to academia and I imagine that you have had some frustrating personal experience with it which explains that hostility and makes it harder for you to judge it in what I would deem a balanced way.
As to feminism, I think you are complacent rather than hostile. Here’s a column from yesterday’s Times by Nicholas Kristof. (You may need to register but it’s free.)
Some excerpts:
" An international women’s treaty banning discrimination has been ratified by 169 countries so far (without emasculating men in any of them!), yet it has languished in the United States Senate ever since President Carter sent it there for ratification in 1980. This month the Senate Foreign Relations Committee got around to holding hearings on it, but the Bush administration, after shyly supporting it at first, now is finding its courage faltering."
Powell was in favor but not Ashcroft. Another excerpt:
:" I wish Mr. Ashcroft could come here to Pakistan, to talk to women like Zainab Noor. Because, frankly, the treaty has almost nothing to do with American women, who already enjoy the rights the treaty supports ? opportunities to run for political office, to receive an education, to choose one’s own spouse, to hold jobs. Instead it has everything to do with the half of the globe where to be female is to be persecuted until, often, death."
Further down: *" Critics have complained that the treaty, in the words of Jesse Helms, was “negotiated by radical feminists with the intent of enshrining their radical anti-family agenda into international law” and is “a vehicle for imposing abortion on countries that still protect the rights of the unborn.”
That’s absurd. Twenty years of experience with the treaty in the great majority of countries shows that it simply helps third-world women gain their barest human rights. In Pakistan, for example, women who become pregnant after being raped are often prosecuted for adultery and sentenced to death by stoning. But this treaty has helped them escape execution."*
See, this is what bugs me about blind backlash against “radical feminists.”
What I hope that you’ll take away from this thread is my strong belief–for whatever it is worth–that a lot really valuable, intellectually demanding work is being done by self-identified feminists with respect to the study of gender in a very diverse range of fields across the humanities and, I think, the social sciences, inside and out of departments earmarked for the study of gender issues.
Yes, you will be able to find things on the internet that are out of date but, by and large, these will not be by authored by people in a position to influence others; and they will not appear in respect journals or books by respected presses. And they will be a minority. So I don’t find the feminist academic culture overall to be mired down. And I don’t believe that the work is, by and large, “extreme” (unless you’re Jessie Helms). I think that this is actually a very dynamic period, well beyond reflexively rehearsing what seemed insightful and important in the 70s and 80s.
Apos, you’ve raised some interesting issues that I’d like to respond to. I will get back to you when I can.
I apologize: I seem to have forgotten to post the link itself:
Why did Captain Kirk urinate on the ceiling?
Based on the book Profscam, I’d say most academics teach no more than two courses each semester. Common is 2 courses one semester, 1 course the other semester, and nothing in the summer. That’s true of my wife, who, tons of medical research. How many courses do you teach, Mandelstam?
Note that this sort of excuse could justify anything at all.
This sounds like an honest statement. I do not agree that this is sufficient, but I appreciate a clear enunciation of this principle.
That was the Starship Enterprise. And, it’s also the punch line to the thread title. 
Being married to a WIS and having a number WIS friends, I’d agree with passing over this panel.
*"What does it take for a woman to succeed in science? It appears to take more than intellect and hard work.”*Not only is statement false today, it was false 25 years ago when my wife was a graduate student. At that time, relatively few women wanted to be in certain scientific fields, but intellect and hard work were indeed enough to succeed as a student. There were still restrictions on women getting hired; these were overcome about 15 to 20 years ago.
I would like to respond to other interesting points, but have run out of time. Back Sunday afternoon.
[/QUOTE]
Apos: I now understand what you mean when you say that “feminism” can be “both too vague AND too specific.” And I am also “a fond fan of communication.” 
FWIW I tend to explain myself along these lines: I’m a feminist; because I believe that inequality and misunderstanding between the sexes hurts men and women both; and I believe that even here in the West, where many forms of substantive equality have been won, that our culture remains unnecessarily divided and divisive on issues of gender, making it harder to work as a society towards common goals (the raising of happy children not least amongst them), and making us more prone to consumerism, materialism, demoralization, apoliticism, etc. In addition, many if not the majority of women living in the world today don’t yet enjoy basic human rights and I believe that the extension of such rights is crucial to development in the Third World.
Admittedly, this is a mouthful and dead boring at parties.
"My point is that too much of the feminist left seems determined to make itself an easy target for these clowns, providing them with endless yuks and pokes. Dworkin was indeed held up by the right: but nowhere near enough people on the left took her to task in her heyday for her outrageous claims. "
I’m sorry, Apos but I think if there were only one person on the left making controversial claims the yuks and pokes would continue unabated. Look at Jesse Helms’s calling a human rights treaty “radical feminism.” Do you seriously believe that if the number of ultra-controversial positions dropped by, say, 85% (which I honestly believe has happened) that the attention given to what remained would drop by a corresponding number?
If you do, I think you know very little about the right or, for that matter, the media.
Are you sure that “nowhere near enough people on the left took [Dworkin] to task”? What exactly should the left have done about Dworkin (who has not, if I recall correctly, ever held an academic appointment)? Should they have tarred and feathered her? Started a massive anti-Dworkin petition drive?
I’ve never actually read any of Dworkin’s books, but I’ve talked to people who say that aspects of the book on intercourse are interesting; that Dworkin doesn’t deserve derision, howevermuch may one disagree with her most controversial premise. Do you believe the left should intimidate people’s free expression by staging organized displays of derision against those who voice a politically inconvenient idea, in the hopes that CNN might pick up the story?
Absent all the right-generated hype do you think that Dworkin would ever have become well-known and embraced by the left based on the appeal of her ideas?
" People like Faludi and Wolf (mangling the spelling of their names) made major forays into the public arena: and both got out of hand."
Would this be Naomi Wolf, author of The Beauty Myth. Here’s Amazon’s synopsis of that book:
“In a country where the average woman is 5-foot-4 and weighs 140 pounds, movies, advertisements, and MTV saturate our lives with unrealistic images of beauty. The tall, nearly emaciated mannequins that push the latest miracle cosmetic make even the most confident woman question her appearance. Feminist Naomi Wolf argues that women’s insecurities are heightened by these images, then exploited by the diet, cosmetic, and plastic surgery industries. Every day new products are introduced to “correct” inherently female “flaws,” drawing women into an obsessive and hopeless cycle built around the attempt to reach an impossible standard of beauty. Wolf rejects the standard and embraces the naturally distinct beauty of all women.”
Does that strike you as a radical or extreme thesis?
And then Faludi; here’s Amazon’s Backlash summary
:"A Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for The Wall Street Journal , Faludi lays out a two-fold thesis in this aggressive work: First, despite the opinions of pop-psychologists and the mainstream media, career-minded women are generally not husband-starved loners on the verge of nervous breakdowns. Secondly, such beliefs are nothing more than anti-feminist propaganda pumped out by conservative research organizations with clear-cut ulterior motives. This backlash against the women’s movement, she writes, “stands the truth boldly on its head and proclaims that the very steps that have elevated women’s positions have actually led to their downfall.” Meticulously researched, Faludi’s contribution to this tumultuous debate is monumental and it earned the 1991 National Book Critics Circle Award for General Nonfiction. "
Is that radical and extreme?
“But it’s not totally controversial to note that when feminism retreated deep into convoluted and controversial “theory,” conservative politics and public policy advocacy exploded in a very successful backlash that really has stayed in place to this day.”
No it’s not controversial in the least; but that doesn’t mean it’s accurate. I don’t say that Faludi’s version is the entire story, and I’m willing to say that theory has been a liability of sorts. Certainly feminist theorists who are politically active should make certain to translate whatever political insights they’ve gained from their theory into language that ordinary people can understand; and into goals that concerned people are likely to want to embrace. It sounds as though you’ve experienced a failure in this regard.
That said, I’m still not ready to believe that theory has been a major cause in the swing to the right; or even in the backlash against feminism. If the right can’t deal with goals as sensible as daycare for poor US women and human rights for Third World women do you really think they need Kristeva or Foucault to fuel a backlash?
Camille Paglia forwards completely irrational and outrageous ideas; this hasn’t stopped her from being a media darling precisely because her brand of critique serves the interests of conservatives.
"It’s good that you think [the statistic about women’s earnings] reflects a complex reality: but you aren’t the public face of feminism today, which continues to quote this figure as if it were a straightforward account of discrimination. "
Well, I’ve heard the statistic on the radio reported simply as a fact. I assume that most Americans are smart enough to realize that this doesn’t mean that when two teeangers apply to MacDonalds to flip burgers that the female is paid 25% less than the male. I assume people are aware of, on the one hand, the “glass ceiling,” but also, on the other, that womens’ earning potential is impacted by, for example, decisions to raise children. In the latter case, the explanatory power of “sexism” becomes, IMO rather meaningless and unhelpful (though it would certainly be nice to see our culture rewarding men who participate in childrearing more vigorously). But perhaps, to be fair, I take too much for granted here. Or perhaps you’ve heard the statistic used in a deliberately misleading way.
" I would say that more and better perspectives on gender would be a welcome contribution [to intellectual history]. But it isn’t everything, and it can’t stand on its own forever."
Well, by definition gender couldn’t be “everything” to intellectual history, even if were one to write an intellectual history of gender it would have to be about a lot of different things. As to standing on its own forever, I think in today’s work it already doesn’t tend to stand on its own (see Kabeer example below).
“I think reasonable people can, and do, support either party’s agenda, or neither, or parts.”
I don’t want to digress here but just to clarify. I have no doubt that reasonable people support either party’s agenda; but there are many reasonable people who simply aren’t well-informed about what is going on. Lest this sound condescending, let me make clear that our political culture makes it very difficult for people to be well informed. Few perceive the need to look beyond mainstream channels of information; of those few have the time to do so, and once one does so one sometimes feels frustration and even despair.
“People spent their careers [at Wesleyan] attacking straw men: and when these proud young activists got out into the real world to combat the forces of evil, they get the snot kicked out of them.”
I’m not quite sure what this means. Do you mean they joined protests and got beaten up by the police? Or are you speaking more metaphorically?
*Mandelstam: "At its best though, [feminism’s] ideology is a belief in justice, fairness and equal opportunity.
Apos: "Those are values almost everyone can agree with. And, I think what could be said about the “at best” of most disciplinary biases (most of which tend to be “when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail” problems) " *
Agreed on both points. But that’s precisely why I believe that keeping gender in mind is important. Precisely because of the “everything looks like a nail” problem common to most disciplines.
To illustrate, and in order to give Truth Seeker a clearer idea of the kind of work I’m talking about, I’ll reproduce some excerpts from Kabeer’s book.
Here she’s explaining why the economic indicators (e.g. GNP) typically used to measure develop aren’t as neutral or as comprehensive as they purport to be.
"[T]he value of a ‘good’ is seen to lie, not in its ability to satisfy human need, but in the price that it commands through the interplay of supply and demand in the marketplace. [Once you take gender into account you also recognize that] supply does not refer to the full range of goods and services that satisfy human needs within a society, but only to goods and services which are offered for sale [on the market]. Similarly demand does not refer to the full range of goods and services that may be needed or wanted by people, but only to ‘effective’ demand, or demand backed by purchasing power.
An immediate effect of these selective definitions is that a major section of the working women of the world disappear into a ‘black hole’ in economic theory. A significant proportion of women’s activities, produced as a part of their familial obligations (‘housework’), does not enter the marketplace, does not earn an income, and is therefore excluded from GNP estimates. It has no value as far as planners are concerned. [At the same time since women aren’t remunerated, they] do not command the purchasing power that would allow them to meet their needs through the marketplace and must rely instead on the benvolence and efficacy of non-market forms of provision…Thus, within the market-led framework of development planning [a whole realm of needful and desirable activities] are given secondary status…b/c the market is not capable of assigning a value to them."*
I think this is a good example of how certain limitations of a discipline (here economics, development planning) only come to light through a perspective that takes gender into account.
Source Reversed Realities: Gender Hierarchies in Development Thought, Verso, 76-7.
This one’s for Truth Seeker: "*There are those who believe that all formal methods for gathering knowledge are oppressive, that objectivity is impossible to achieve, and all that can be done is to accept a plurality of views that are essentially incommensurable. As Eichler points out, ‘the logical consequence of such a principled stance is that research, including the implied cumulative knowledge it generates, is impossible,’ a conclusion that is tantamount to throwing the baby out with the bathwater (1991, p.11). It has particularly disastrous implications for those hwo have to take policy decisions, since it denies the possibility of a theoretically informed practice.
Eichler argues that it is possible to be critical of existing definitions of objectivity without sinko into the ‘moralss of complete cultural subjectivism’ (p.13)." * Kabeer goes on to explain how. (82-3)
I hope, Truth Seeker, this helps to concretize what I’ve been trying to say about the direction of gender studies over the last ten years. Note that the 'Eichler study, which is entitled Nonsexist Research Methods, firmly rejects the position that exercises you and advocates a pragmatic approach; it was written more than ten years ago.
december, briefly. Faculty at institutions where research isn’t expected (and even at some places where it is) typically teach 3/3 and sometimes even 4/4. Adjunct or part-time faculty, some of whom work at more than one place, sometimes teach more than that.
Ok, I’d like to have an academic moment here. . .
a) is there some way to separate people’s emotional feelings about the women’s rights movement and related political issues from feminist academic tools so that we don’t continue to conflate the two, please. Would it make ya’ll less uncomfortable if we called feminist theory “gender theory”? Boys count in here as well, and I agree that the ‘feminist’ monicker throws one off base.
b) I have only dabbled in critical theory, but would one trace critical theory and discourse analysis back to Foucault’s “History of Sexuality”? Can we argue that Foucault was heavily influenced by feminist discourse–in a way the first “critical theory.”
No feminist science? A bit theoretical but: Lorraine Daston, Thomas Laqeuer, Martin Jay (historical)? Just because you haven’t read it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
Oh, and did I mention critical theory? Does anyone think that the current trend in polysemy is also unimportant? How about any pluralistic discussion of the canon ? Psychoanalysis? (I’m thinking Lacan, Choderow)? Feminist/gender theory has contributed a lot to theoretical and discursive methods-- those angry ladies were avant garde and a number of related projects are built on its foundations.
capybara I agree that it would be helpful to distinguish between the women’s movement and between feminist scholarship, including esp. gender studies.
I’m pretty certain that the idea of “critical theory” originated with the Frankfurt school, esp. Adorno.
Mandelstam-- you are right-- I get confused by this century. Annales school, right? My point about Foucault still stands.
capybara, I don’t want to seem rude but I’m not sure how much of the previous debate you had the patience to slog through. Most of the people taking part had a pretty negative view of “theory,” some had no knowledge of its particulars whatsoever, and even those who did weren’t too interested in debating the relative merits of one strand vs. another. That said, if you want to start a thread on theory, I’d be happy to view it, and maybe even to post.
Mandelstam, you have an inspirationally dogged tendency to miss the point. My citation to the class at Union was not an attack on the entire curriculum. It was to demonstrate that “feminist physics” is not a figment of the imagination of some fascist misogynist.
Second, I’m perfectly aware of how academic conferences work, the function of abstracts, etc. I must admit that you have provided me with a new spin on how feminst studies conferences work.
**The conference as sort of an academic Special Olympics – everyone competes, everyone gets a prize. Brilliant.
I also note a tendency to equate “interesting” with “scholarly.” I have “interesting” – even thought-provoking – conversations at dinner parties, yet I hardly feel these are appropriate for publication. Indeed, in most disciplines I think you’ll find that scholarly work need not necessarily be “interesting” in a conventional sense.
More to the point, you refuse to admit there is anything the slightest bit rotten in the women’s studies discipline. Instead, you have impugned my objectivity. My ideas are “distorted,” inaccurate, based on no evidence. I must have been frightened by an academic feminist as a child, etc., etc.
I’m sure to the disinterested observer, this is starting to get weird. My thesis is that there is an intellectual climate that allows bad scholarship to flourish alongside good scholarship. Just to be clear, this does not mean there is no good scholarship. It merely means there is a reluctance to vigorously distinguish between good and bad scholarship. You claim that this simply isn’t true and demand examples.
I offer the Sokol fiasco. You say, “Well, that was a mistake. If it wasn’t about science they would have known it didn’t make any sense!” I won’t recap the entire discussion here, but to me, it isn’t particularly objective to assume that this incident has no implications whatsoever for any other feminist scholarly work.
In a Different Voice comes up, along with a quote wherein Prof. Gilligan publically admits that her “study” wasn’t a “study” at all. You respond by saying “Yes, some people still cite her but she’s not really influential anymore.”
You are offered evidence that some feminst scholars argue for radical perspectivism even in the sciences. First you say that this isn’t true. Now, apparently, you agree that some scholars used to argue for this but no one does anymore. I’ll return to this point below.
You are offered several examples of embarrasing, current feminist scholarship. You respond by saying, “Well, these papers do sound silly, but some of them might be interesting! But you skipped over some, there were a 150 papers offered! Anyway, maybe some of these people don’t publish a lot.”
Well, you’ve convinced me! None of the above is any evidence whatsoever of any bad feminist scholarship or of a problematic intellectual climate. Each one is quite obviously an isolated case. Who could possibly even imagine otherwise?
By the way, I most certainly did not read all the abstracts of all the papers offered at that particular conference. On the contrary, I did only the most cursory review. I don’t doubt that I could find other examples If I wanted to take the time. I think the point has been made, however.
With respect to the impact of radical perspectivism on science, I accept your admission that you have not studied the sciences or the philosophy of science. That’s certainly nothing to be embarrassed about. No one can study everything. Take my word for it that feminist postmodern epistomology is seriously loopy when applied to hard science. There is no “feminist science” just as there is no “Jewish” or “bourgeois” science. That is not to say that in some areas, (e.g. medical research) sex should not be considered as a variable. It is to say that the laws of nature are objective and that they would not be any different whether they were formulated by a man or a woman.
It appears that you now agree that a “principled” understanding of postmodern epistemology makes all intellectual enquiry impossible. You offer a cite indicating that someone realized this ten years ago and wrote a paper on it, thereby implying that everything is fine now.
First, I have trouble believing that everyone read this paper, smacked their foreheads and said “That’s right! What were we thinking!” There are certainly hold-outs, even today, as the various materials on science demonstrate.
More fundamentally, even when not followed through to its logical conclusion, as I’ve already pointed out, this idea creates an atmosphere where personal experience can substitute for data and where people are more tolerant of bad scholarship because “good” and “bad” are merely subjective value judgements. “It’s not important to me, but if it’s important to you, it must be important. Who am I to impose my values?” Enter “My Personal Journey to a Feminist Epistemology of Cooking.” Letting a thousand flowers bloom is fine, but you still need some method of telling the flowers from the weeds.
**
Hostile to academia?!? It is unfortunate that you will never realize how utterly absurd this is. Hostile to academia, indeed!
Rather than attempting to psychoanalyze my alleged bias, you might more profitably examine your own. What does it say that you insist on equating honest, thoughtful criticism of the intellectual climate in feminist academia with unthinking hostility?
I have not suggested that all feminist scholarship is “bad.” But there are motifs within feminist academia that do encourage – or at least do not discourage – bad scholarship. You claim that this is completely untrue and that everything is just fine. There is evidence for this thesis, however. If you take one thing away from this thread, I hope it will be an increased awareness of those motifs.
**Truth Seeker **: “My citation to the class at Union was not an attack on the entire curriculum. It was to demonstrate that “feminist physics” is not a figment of the imagination of some fascist misogynist.”
Of course it wasn’t an attack on the entire curriculum. But anyone with an open mind, I believe, would have conceded the observations I made about the department and, more important, about the course. I never said that “feminist physics” was a figment of anyone’s imagination, only that I had no personal knowledge of it. I would add that I still have no personal knowledge of it since you’ve only demonstrated that it is discussed in a perfectly reasonable-sounding course in what looks to be a terrific philosophy department.
FTR, I want to make perfectly clear that I have not called anyone, not even Jesse Helms, a “fascist misogynist.” That is not a rhetoric I find in the least helpful.
“The conference as sort of an academic Special Olympics – everyone competes, everyone gets a prize. Brilliant.”
I see no problem including a wide range of panels, including even a minority of (what are in my view) outdated papers, in a conference of this size for the following reasons.
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The papers given there neither are nor purport to be published papers; they haven’t been through the rigorous review process required to publish a paper in a respected journal.
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The organization of the conference already gives more weight to the most distinguished participants. The dozen or so featured speakers are singled out for special importance and a large audience. The other panelists will draw only as many listeners as are interested in their topic.
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One may question the inclusion of (what I deem to be) an outdated perspective. Since there are so many debates going on within the sphere of feminist academia, and since there is no single “right” answer in humanities disciplines, I think this is a reasonable approach to a large conference.
Rather than “a special Olympics,” it is a reasonable attempt to be democratic. Speakers whose ideas command little interest will attract few listeners. In the meantime such speakers will, perhaps, hear featured speakers, hear discussions taking place, and consider new ideas.
The current academic environment is actually very competitive, as you may perhaps know. In publishing, in grants, in tenured and tenure-track appointments, competition is fierce. Making large conferences inclusive is a way of offsetting this ultra-competitive tendency and, in doing so, making sure that many people, and not just an elite few, are exposed to new ideas and provided with a forum for discussion and debate.
"I also note a tendency to equate “interesting” with “scholarly.”
“Thought-provoking” is indeed my personal bar for what constitutes a valuable conference paper in a humanities discipline (such as rhetoric). I repeat: conference papers are not the same as publications and a scholarly reputation is built on the former (and to some degree on teaching) rather than the latter.
To qualify for publication under the typical standards for a respected journal a paper would have to be fully annotated and submitted anonymously. It would be read and reviewed by 2 and sometimes more anonymous readers. Often revisions are requested and the paper must be returned to these readers and/or to yet another reader for further review. If positive reports are eventually received the paper is typically then reviewed the editorial board. Sometimes board members call for still further revisions. It is not unusual for a top journal to publish fewer than 15% of the papers submitted through this rigorous process.
“[Y]ou refuse to admit there is anything the slightest bit rotten in the women’s studies discipline.”
Incorrect. I have repeatedly said that I have many bones to pick, on grounds of style or content or both, but that these feelings are not unique to feminist scholarship. (I have also repeatedly qualified my expertise in women studies as opposed to feminist scholarship more generally.)
"I must have been frightened by an academic feminist as a child, etc., etc. "
Hardly, I imagine your experience to have been much more complicated than that. My remark about the “ex-husband” was a joke.
I do not base my evaluation of your arguments on some hypothesis regarding your experience. Rather, I evaluate your arguments–find them seriously lacking substance and balance–and imagine that such flaws in an otherwise intelligent person are likely to stem from some specific experience or set of experiences involving the issues in question.
I may be wrong about your experience which you choose not to discuss.
[re Sokal again]“I won’t recap the entire discussion here, but to me, it isn’t particularly objective to assume that this incident has no implications whatsoever for any other feminist scholarly work.”
Aside (as my thoughts on Sokal have been said and re-said): I still fail to see why you assume that procedural and judgmental errors made with respect to Sokal’s paper represent an indictment of feminist scholarly work.
As to Gilligan–whose study was published in 1982-- what this debate has shown is that her work is being vigorously disputed. I’m not surprised since Apos’s description was sufficient to point to the likely grounds of dispute.
I also fail to see the importance of Gilligan’s reply in a magazine that she now sees the value of her work as having been intuitive rather than empirical. Letters to The Atlantic Monthly do not undergo scholarly review. Gilligan’s reply will not change the fact that the work is being challenged, and that her analysis, according to my friend in women studies, has been superceded for years now.
Perhaps an historical analogy may be of some use. By the end of the nineteenth century Herbert Spencer’s once influential evolutionary and sociological theories were considered outdated and flawed; but he still had some clout and the allegiance of a few. He was still a cited authority on such matters. That did not prevent his work becoming of purely historical value to those disciplines.
“You are offered evidence that some feminst scholars argue for radical perspectivism even in the sciences.”
By you? What evidence was that? To the contrary, I myself have offered the best evidence for your case: both the 1991 Eichler study, cited and affirmed by Kabeer, and the 1999 article in the Yale Journal of Criticism, described the perspective–in order to repudiate it. My point was and remains that the perspective has been subject to serious critique for at least a decade. You have yet to come up with any published article of recent vintage where the position is being held, unqualified, by a feminist scholar. Mind you, I don’t doubt that you can find one somewhere. But I do suggest that neither the journal nor the scholar is likely to be influential.
“Now, apparently, you agree that some scholars used to argue for this but no one does anymore.”
How can I ever have disputed it when pages back in this debate I offered Yale Journal’s disputation of it. All I have ever said in defense of postmodernism is that it has some valuable insights. I believe that very strongly.
Look, this seems to coming down to a simple question of degree. I acknowledge some outdated and/or “bad” scholarship exists, but I contend that the positions you oppose have long been on the wane, and that recent work is not as you have characterized it.
“Take my word for it that feminist postmodern epistomology is seriously loopy when applied to hard science. There is no “feminist science”… [T]he laws of nature are objective and that they would not be any different whether they were formulated by a man or a woman.”
Truth Seeker, my sense is that you don’t understand the nature of some postmodernist critiques. Here is Amazon’s link to the book jacket of a 1996 book by Fox Keller. (Mind you, I’m not sure that she characterizes herself as primarily postmodernist.)
According to the blurb, she asks, “Why are objectivity and reason characterized as male and subjectivity and feeling as female? How does this characterization affect the goals and methods of scientific inquiry?”
These seem like reasonable questions to me, though I can’t, of course be a judge of how well they are answered since I haven’t read the book. I note only that the questions do not call for risible conclusions. Further down in the blurb the author calls not for “feminist” science but for “gender-free” science. That seems to characterize what I’ve repeatedly pointed to as the difference between an identitarian feminist approach and a gender studies approach.
[Kabeer cites Eichler’s 1991 rejection of the postmodernist position Truth Seeker detests]“There are certainly hold-outs, even today, as the various materials on science demonstrate.”
Of course there are hold-outs. But what have you cited to support the alleged influence of these hold-outs? Makedon’s (non-feminist) website? An excerpt from a series of studies on math-science education, absent a link, that is too truncated to inerpret? Unpublished conference papers doing literary and film criticism (which is, by definition, open to a variety of interpretations)?
“[Postmodernism] creates an atmosphere where personal experience can substitute for data and where people are more tolerant of bad scholarship because “good” and “bad” are merely subjective value judgements.”
That is your opinion, Truth Seeker; mine, as we know, is quite different. According to the prominent feminists I’ve mentioned, personal experience can’t subsitute for data if emprical claims (and real-world policies) are going to be made.
In a humanities discipline, “data” will not be at issue since humanists don’t collect data. The “Epistemology of Cooking,” whether well-done and thought-provoking or not, is a philosophical argument, not a presentation of “data.” I don’t see how we can assume that it didn’t deserve to presented at a conference.
“Hostile to academia?!? It is unfortunate that you will never realize how utterly absurd this is. Hostile to academia, indeed!”
Yes, hostile to academia. And if the putative absurdity of that remark stems from your being yourself an academic of some kind you would not be the first academic I had come across who articulated positions that I deem to be hostile to academia.
“Rather than attempting to psychoanalyze my alleged bias, you might more profitably examine your own. What does it say that you insist on equating honest, thoughtful criticism of the intellectual climate in feminist academia with unthinking hostility?”
It says that we have a strong difference of opinion–though I do want to point out that, by and large, I’ve avoided invective.
I’m not sure how productive this debate remains.
It seems to me that you are most exercised about two things: a) social-scientific studies that purport to be empirically valid but offer only personal impressions for support; and b) postmodernist critiques of objectivity.
On the whole I’ve found that your claims as to problem “a” are long on speculation (the supposed atmosphere of tolerance for the bad) and short on hard evidence (e.g. Gilligan, whose 20-year-old study is indeed being vigorously challenged). To wit your own argument resembles problem “a” since it purports to be empirically valid but offers little more than personal impressions for support (yours and those of the author you cited way back when).
With respect to your argument “b” I’ve shown that the postmodernist critique of objectivity is itself under critique and has been for some time, both in the humanities and the social sciences. I believe that in current work the best insights of postmodernism have been integrated within humanistic scholarship. A kind of Hegelian syntheis, if you like.
As a gesture of respect, I offer you the last word, Truth Seeker. I’m fairly certain that I’ve already said as much to you as you care to digest and I’m not sure that other Dopers are finding anything interesting here any more.
For the record, at least one is. I haven’t got a great deal to contribute, not least because I’m still deciding where I stand on most of these issues myself, but I’ve been following this thread with great interest.
Scylla,
I went to Tulane too. I had Spanish 102 right after a Women’s Studies class in the same room. After all of the women filed out and glared at me and the other male students who were waiting for the room, I always saw a sad, beaten down guy come out last. I always wondered how that guy ended up in that situation. Thank You. Now I know.
Might I ask why, when december links to a website by someone who agrees with him, we get a pigpile.
When Mandelstam does the same with an opinion piece in the NY Times, the silence is deafening.
Regards,
Shodan
Just wanted to say thanks, FP, Shodan, for the interest in such lengthy posts.
Johnny Angel wrote, back on page 1:
We inherited something useful from astrology? 