I’m afraid you’ve missed the point of the OP, squeegee. The type of “feminism” I’m complaining about is not about advocacy. It’s about certain philosophies and theories, such as gender feminism, muilticulturalism, and postcolonialism, which I allege are contrived and bogus.
This is the second time in three weeks that you’ve posted the same sort of historically ignorant claim. That’s kind of sad.
None of those groups had to fight for the right to vote.
The Asians did have to fight restrictive immigration and citizenship laws, but they were allowed to develop their own economies, parallel to the mainstream economy, so that when the laws were repealed or struck down, they were financially prepared to merge into the general population. (Of course the Japanese immigrants and heirs did have to put up with that pesky Executive Order 9066, but they never had to actually do anything about it since the U.S. government voluntarily and with no legal or public relations pressure simply reimbursed them for their troubles as soon as the war ended. yeeesh) They were also freed from the need to “create” “asianism” since the white journalists had so kindly provided their own term: the Yellow Peril.
The Irish, Hungarians, and Poles were never “disadvantaged” as groups. The Irish faced periodic discrimination, and the other groups faced anti-immigrant prejudice, but by the second generation, with nice white faces and a command of the American vernacular, none of them were prohibited from participating in either business or politics.
And, of course, there is no such thing as anti-semitism, B’nai B’rith is simply a social club, and the Anti-Defamation League is merely a trademark infringement watchdog group.
Looking at the OP, I can maybe grant you that she makes the point, but not you. And as others have shown, her examples are not the whole history. I think in this case you need to explain how those philosophies are automatically (or totally) ignored by the feminists advocating change.
Oh, Okay, I get it now: You’re complaining about only true Scottsmen.
I just cannot believe you yourself believe this silly fallacy.
As politely as I can: This argument & thread is dishonest and hypocritical. Give it up.
But you clarified that the OP’s claim is that feminist academicians in US and Europe (you added that entire continent as if you know what is going on there!) are not being active in writing about the condition of women in some Muslim-majority countries. Now you say just the opposite. Why don’t you end this sham and start a true-to-heart OP that says: “Feminism is bogus - Here’s why…” and get this thing once and for all out of your system and into the SDMB.
(It’ll save us the energy spent in wading through such dense OPs to figure out what it is you actually want to debate)
—type of “feminism” I’m complaining about is not about advocacy.—
The “type” of feminism you complained about in the OP is “feminism”… without any “type” being given. Your only specification was “as it exists today” which STILL isn’t what you are now claiming to be concerned with, and you didn’t even use it consistently.
Excellent suggestion. I will do so.
While you’re on a roll, change that to “Radical Islamists” and you might be approaching accuracy.
Martin
Why do you all assume conservatism == anti-feminism? Feminism is the status quo, conservatism is a defence of the status quo. Rightist elitists use feminists on the left and feminist traditionalists like Schlafly on the right to minimise dissent.
Evil Captor, equal pay for equal work is a nothing cause, just propaganda, it makes a good slogan. All feminism is nothing but a belief system centred around women, just look at the word and the work of its adherents. Even Cecil debunks this myth, despite spending most of the article obfuscating. Kiplinger’s Personal Finance is more to the point.
Women didn’t exactly have to fight for the vote either, and I don’t think they were ever banned from being members of any western government as real minorities have been. In 1830 hundreds of thousands of men staged protests and riots across England, many men being killed after the ensuing riots by the Dragoons. That’s fighting for the vote, that’s why men got the vote earlier, because they would fight for it.
As for the feminist movement, it is anything that seeks to benefit women to the exclusion of all else, and is easily criticised. Funny how it’s so quick to step foward to claim credit for its “victories” but as soon as anyone tries to criticise it becomes ephemeral, the rank and file deny that it is monolithic and therefore that it can be criticised, no matter how united the screeching harpies who control to political clout given by the rank and file - the AAUW, NOW, FMF, etc. - are. It is as monolithic as any movement. It can be criticised as much as multiculturalism, socialism and any other *ism. It makes me mad!
Perhaps if you had any real familiarity with feminism, and didn’t really on gross distortions of feminism like that idiot article linked in the OP, you might be aware that feminism is justly and constructively criticized by lots of people, many of whom are considered to be within the realm of feminism.
Geez, I go on vacation for a week, and all hell breaks loose on two of my favorite debate topics…december, please explain who you are including within the rubric of feminism, because this “debate,” such as it is, will make absolutely no sense until you do.
Is a feminist to you anyone who believes that men and women are equals and deserve to be treated as such? Or does one have to be a raving man-hating lesbian who thinks that all men are oppressive patriarchal rapists to join the feminist club? Or are you restricting your ravings to anyone who has a Ph.D. and teaches Women’s Studies at a women’s college, and/or writes for Ms.? (I’ll look at your other thread next, but a brief synopsis here would only be polite for the convenient reference of other posters.)
That’s not the type of feminist I mean to address in this thread. (Although those are the real feminists. I am one of them.)
I didn’t mean to address these people, either, although they would be a juicy target.
Yes, that’s the one’s I’m after. My thesis is that they have developed a group of theories, with little basis in fact.
My confusion, Eva. The description in my post above was meant to apply to the other feminst thread. In this thread I’m implicitly using the same definition as the author I cited in the OP. I’m think her definition of feminist would include both academics and activists. Of course, these groups have considerable overlap.
Sorry to be so long,
Well, obviously “unfortunately” is a judgement on december’s part. In academia, to be present is, sooner or later, equates to power. If a significant portion of a faculty thinks Foucault is important, Foucault will find his way onto syllabi, course offerings, comprehensive exams, academic conferences, etc.
Of course; I wouldn’t mean to suggest for an instance that feminist theorists are bad teachers, any more than libertarians or Christians (like me) are necessarily good ones.
I’ll admit for the moment I’m somewhat at a loss at the moment; the best I can say is to look up the websites for the English departments at any dozen state universities and see if any don’t have several house feminists. If they don’t, they are essentially not a serious scholarly program; you simply can’t be a credible scholar in 2003 and not take it into account, and the same goes for departments.
I certainly wouldn’t say that feminism is “in control;” but what is in control are a larger set of theoretical approaches that feminism is a part of, which I will generally label postmodernism.
As far as how it affects undergrads, like so much of serious thought, it primarily is in the assumptions. Did you psychology or Sociology prof ever defend the use of scientific method to study beings with free will? Did your Science profs ever serously discuss the possibility that there is an animating intelligence behind natural processes? Likely not; but that lack of discussion reflects their assumptions.
Similarly, the dominant school of thought in the humanities has several assumptions that are more and more being seen as “givens.” Social Constructionism is one. I had a grad school prof remark that “of course there’s no such thing as a ‘self.’ We all know that; Foucault said so.” The attitude is not all that far from “The Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it.”
A lot of influence is subtle. When I give my students a text to read, I present the author as a person that they can listen to and interact with, that there is a grand conversation taking place among humanity, and that you can join in. Other teachers, following the “death of the author” present texts as cultural artifacts, and invite you to study them in essentially a detached, objective way; or some teach from the “one interpretation is as good as another” approach.
For most of human history, all intellectual activity proceeded under a set of a priori metaphysical assumptions: there is a God, the physical universe makes logical sense, human beings are inherently valuable, “good” and “true” are more than just opinions, etc. For the last two hundred years or so, people have been trying out different sets of assumptions. Postmodernism is just the current popular set.
I’m not saying that this is all bad. My own theoretical approach has elements of postmodernism in it. But these are assumptions, axioms … essentially articles of faith; and what I do have a complaint with is the extent to which it is taught/believed in as a given. “We all know that good and evil are cultural constructions…” The implication is that anyone who operates under a different belief system is simply ignorant.
As for how that affects students, I guess you can figure that out.
**
One should. But one often doesn’t. In politics, reelection is never far away, and you need money from the party. In Academia, tenure is a rare thing, and getting it is a political process.
—Did your Science profs ever serously discuss the possibility that there is an animating intelligence behind natural processes? Likely not; but that lack of discussion reflects their assumptions.—
I reflects their disciplines inability to speak to that question. If the answer to a question is “an unstudiable animating intelligence did it/is doing it” then you’ve found an intellectual dead end. That dead end is ALWAYS a possiblity, but to suggest it for anything or everything simply stunts the potential to discover other explanations.
It’s a lot like in economics. If we were to simply accept that a certian behavior is “irrational,” then there is nothing more to say about it from the perspective of economics. Worse, ANY behavior can simply be explained by calling it irrational: even behaviors that seemingly CAN be explained by reference to rational ends. So, we don’t allow ourselves the laziness of concluding that something is irrational precisely because we want to be open to the possibility that there is something constructive we can learn.
December, Camille Paglia has written reams on the (from her POV) evil effects of feminists on academia, and on the evil of Foucault as well. She would be a pretty good well to go to if you want to criticize along those lines, though be aware that she and the feminists hashed out their differences about a decade ago (though they didn’t settle them – they’re still at odds).
Thank you, Evil Captor. She used to have a regular column on the internet (in Salon IIRC), which I always read.
tomndebb, maybe I need to clarify the point of my comparison of women and other disadvantaged groups. What I meant was these other groups worked for equality and advancement and fought discrimination, just as women have done. But, they didn’t create a bogus academic discipline based on how their Irishness, Jewishness, etc. gave them unique insights into history, literature, or other subjects.
I tend to believe in economic causes. My belief is that feminism took off because it pays. It pays in terms of university jobs, book sales, lecturer invitations, etc.
How can you reconcile this with your belief that feminism has nothing unique to offer in terms of a perspective on “real life,” however you are defining that?
Don’t people take courses, buy books, or go to lectures because they believe the presenter’s thoughts may have some useful light to shed on their own existence? Or do you think that the millions of people who have attended courses/lectures on feminism or bought books by feminist authors were doing so merely for a taste of a useless ideology, merely so they could inform themselves before deciding to reject feminism wholesale? For an irrational ideology, feminism sure seems to have quite a few adherents.
Certainly. But the idea that we must avoid “dead ends” itself is reflective of certain metaphysical assumptions.
I’m not saying that every course needs to start from square one. But I think too many professors, and most students, don’t grasp how much of what they think/do is based on their axioms.
Good point. Here’s my answer. First of all, feminism was founded on the battle for equality, which had enormous vitality and relevance. That battle is substantially won, but it still lends vitality to today’s version of feminism. However, that vitality won’t last forever. Successful women I know no longer see themselves as soldiers in a war for the rights of women. They see themselves as people coping with the usual challenges of career and life.
Fads and bubbles can prosper temporarily. Everyone should read the classic Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles MacKay, which explains the process with wit and historical detail. My guess is that modern feminism is a bubble. I don’t see feminist books on the best-seller list any more. Students do still take Women’s Studies classes. Some are required. Some are available. Also, college is a time of experimentation.
How often do young adults spend their own money to study feminism? After college, my daughter and son-in-law used their savings to take computer courses. How many adults save up to take a feminist theory courses?