It’s an outrage!

The only solution is to make Ross Douthat a professor of women’s studies.

One need only look at Penn State’s 100,000-seat football stadium to know that unequal distribution of resources is a canard.

“Is anti-racism leftist?”

Yes.

“The only solution is to make Ross Douthat a professor of women’s studies.”

I believe this comment officially wins the internet for this week.

Any discipline with “Studies” in its title is bogus. (Especially if the discipline has no other words in its title.)

Study Studies?

No, ologyology. (What a fun term to google!)

Wow, thank goodness Fitz has set me straight. All my life I’ve suffered from the delusion that scholarly fields of inquiry are supposed to be studying reality, and that, since imbalances of power and resources between the genders obviously have existed and maybe, just maybe (that Penn State stadium?) continue to exist, that would certainly need to form part of an inquiry into gender. And I held the equally naive belief that such imbalances, equally obviously, are at least potentially exploitative, so that possibility certainly couldn’t be excluded when trying to understand them. But now the scales have fallen from my eyes, and I realize that Dr. Pangloss should be the model for the modern university, whose real function is to demonstrate that all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds! Thank you, Fitz, for this profound insight.

“Blindingly obvious.” Hmm. Interesting choice of cliche.
I’m going to be turning that over in my head for hours.

Fitz, that statement simply assumes that, somewhere and sometime, there was an “unequal distribution of power and resources by gender.” That there may be gender inequality in (say) Afghanistan or Victorian England is utterly non-controversial, and therefore something that can be studied in an academic setting.

That’s because it has no substance. HTH. HAND.

BTW, acquiring some basic degree of literacy would increase your credibility. Just saying.

OK, we’re now 2 for 2. Any bets that Fitz’s next post on “Women Studies” departments will also include the word “naked”?

Also Verbatim Mark Bauerlein: “Consider the Women’s Studies department at Penn State. Its Web site proclaims, “As a field of study, Women’s Studies analyzes the unequal distribution of power and resources by gender” (quoted, 93). Political inequality, then, is not one of many aspects of women’s history, literature, art, employment, etc., to study, but instead the basic premise and purpose of the field.”

Political inequality is the purpose of the field of Women’s Studies? And this guy is an English professor?

Maybe the Horowitzian agenda could be served by hiring Men’s Rights Activists like this guy.

Rich, my octagenarian father once said “The Left used to be about labor and racial equality: how’d the feminists and homosexuals get involved?” I’d say to your question, yes, if you characterize “Left” broadly enough to include liberals, feminism is indeed a Left movement, and anti-racism too. Apologies to those libertarians who disagree.

Look: the Academy is a bunch of leftists who protect their own: Its an orthodoxy now as is the knee-jerk demand to dismiss that reality.

Reality has a well-known Liberal Bias.

““The only solution is to make Ross Douthat a professor of women’s studies.””

Ever since reading that quote DeLong dragged up, there’s been a old flickering silent film playing in the boarded-up theatre of my mind, entitled Ross Douthat and the Brides of Dracula, just looping over and over.

I wish it would stop. Please, make it stop . . . .

he he. gratuitous naked women.

does Horowitz know his target audience or what?

Excuse me for interrupting the sarcasm and evasion of the subject at hand. It was all very funny and condescending and so forth…

Let’s approach it this way.

At what period of history did women studies departments first appear and what is there justification as a distinct discipline?

I maintain that while often interesting and fruitful intellectually (I’m being generous) This is not enough to justify their existance.

Women Studies Departments

#1. Act as ideological enforcers of feminist orthodoxy throughout the university disciplines and within their own “scholarship”.

#2. They act as a political patronage system to like minded ideologues. (Thereby increasing the clout of feminism & leftist gender doctrine amongst the nations intellectuals)

By Example: PETER (wrote)
”Well, there needs to be some academic department to balance the gratuitously and nakedly right wing propaganda mills (acting politically as patronage systems & orthodoxy enforcers), such as most university departments of Economics.”
Very well… I have heard this referenced often. If true, then it would seem to confirm the contention that (a) Departments can show a pronounced bias (b) Ideologues seek to perpetuate & protect their own.

John Emerson (writes)
“The idea that women have more resources and power than men is laughable, and the idea that they have resources and power equal to those of men is easily refutable.”
This is an example of the mindset we see as rigidly pervasive in academia in general and WSD in particular. – We generally don’t view human history and human relations simply as a war for “resources and power”. Indeed such a reduction seems ominously (and relentlessly) like a Hegelian Master/Slave dialectic. Hence the stench of deep Marxism and the moniker “leftist” (as distict from classical “liberal” )

Fitz’ comments are hilarious. This is how trolling is done folks. Fitz may be the legendary troller who posted to rec.pets.cats recommending masturbating your cat with a Q-tip if it went into heat.

So anyway, Fitz, why does it infuriate you that there’s a discipline studying power inbalances between men and women?

In confidence, does this have something to do with wife-beating?

In theory, an academic discipline or a program like this should be viewable independent of any political framework.

In practice, every sentence containing the word “gender” comes from the mouth or pen of a far-left liberal.

Look, Horowitz and his band of crazies aside, the proliferation of ‘-studies’ programs–women’s studies, African-American studies, queer studies, gender studies, Amerian Indian studies, and so on–does represent a problem, just not the one we keep hearing about.

The problem is that the existence of these programs, and their associated administrative units, faculty lines, majors and minors, and courses, represents failure: the failure of interested parties successfully to insert their concerns and research interests into their respective disciplines/fields (sociology, history, anthropology, literature, political science). Or, if you like: the failure of people who dominated those disciplines/fields to recognize the importance and credibility of those concerns and interests.

Horowitz’s problem–okay, one of Horowitz’s many problems–is that he thinks these programs were and are nothing but attempts to pursue political programs through academic institutions, and he has a knack for sometimes finding scholars who think exactly that about what they do. Stopped clocks are right twice a day, after all. But even though most of these programs are rigorous academic pursuits, their existence is an administrative fix to intellectual disputes–with political significance, obviously, but intellectual disputes all the same.

Moreover, it’s a fix that depended on the largesse of the postwar American academy that was willing to spend money to smooth over divisions among their faculty. That turned out to be a very precarious solution, as the days of the schools and governments dumping money into the humanities and social sciences are over. I fear that people who settled for, say, a LGBT studies program at their school in place of continuing a frustrating battle with the folks in their sociology or political science departments who wanted nothing to do with those issues may find this out the hard way.

But this fix has a history over a century long (as John E. above suggested). The separate disciplines (at least in American universities and colleges) of political science, economics, sociology, and anthropology are all four of them, with all their institutional and professional trappings, artifacts of a similar intellectual disturbance in the late 19th century. They are all also institutional fixes to intellectual disputes (with political significance, obviously, etc.). I think you might be able to say the same thing about psychology and philosophy.

The problem with the fix regarding these newer programs is that I think it lulled everyone, if not exactly into complacency, then into distraction. The upside to renewed challenges to their existence from asshats like Horowitz and threats from slashed budgets in a down economy is that it might revive and make explicit the arguments that led to their existence in the first place. And maybe there’s a chance that they can be framed properly this time: the problem surrounding the creation of women’s studies programs in the early 1970s, for example, was not that we needed new academic units called ‘women’s studies’. The problem was that established scholars in ‘traditional’ disciplines like sociology and history were ignoring the experience of women as a category of experience worthy of study, attention to which was critical for getting things right in sociological and historical research. There is no intellectual reason for the institutional division.

Allow Horowitz to frame the discussion, though, and we get nowhere. And in case anyone thinks it’s easier for me to make this argument because political science departments would probably survive most budget crises and Horowitz isn’t calling for their destruction, then let me say for the record that as far as I’m concerned, I can’t think of much intellectual reason why they ought to continue to exist, either.

Bless your crazy little heart, bjk, for bringing up an important argument: that folding the ‘-studies’ programs back into ‘traditional’ disciplines would mean to submerge and forget them.

Two responses. First: the way we do things now, students go over here for their sociology, and then they go over here for their study of women’s experiences in society, and then they go over there for their study of Native Americans’ experiences in society … you get my point. I’m not sure this way is working out terribly well, either, cross-listing courses notwithstanding. It’s great for administrators, though, who are needed to keep straight things like general education requirements and course attributes and faculty appointments and enrollment-based funding. It’s the bureaucratic gift that keeps on giving!

Second, sure, there’s an institutional risk of assimilation. But there’s a chance of not being assimilated, too, of actually making a difference in the intellectual lives of people who never thought they’d see the relevance of these bodies of research to what they study. Nothing comes without a risk. Right now some of these programs are facing hiring freezes and budget cuts; if the recession hangs around, the cuts may become severe, and the programs may even face extinction. Then what? Holding on to your academic unit on (misguided) principle and $2 buys you an Americano.

Michael, I am totally stoked that someone agrees with me that political science should be abolished. (Just not until after I retire or find another job.)

Maurice @47: very interesting, but how would one go about trying to get, say, the African And African-American Studies department abolished and including the relevant issues under history, sociology, etc., yet still maintain departments of Middle Eastern Studies and Medieval Studies? Is it really the case that all of academia should be organized along the lines of “ways of thinking about things” and not along the lines of “things that exist in the world”? Would the science faculties of a university really be trying to get the Forestry Department eliminated and have the relevant issues considered as part of the Chemistry and Biology departments?

Anyway, everyone in Penn State’s Women’s Studies is probably also in another department as well. Most places Women’s Studies is an interdisciplinary program that draws on faculty from various departments–and often is not a tenure-initiating unit. In other words, you have to get your tenure through the normal process in English, History, Anthro, or whatever your “home” department is. This tends to diminish the institutional power of Women’s Studies, despite their iron grip on football seating. You usually cannot get a PhD in Women’s Studies either. At Penn State it looks like you can get it half in that and half in another discipline.

John, I’m not looking for additional reading, but do I detect a hint of Imre Lakatos in 54?

“Research programs” is, according to Deborah Redfield’s “Economics and the Philosophy of Science”, is a Lakatos codeword which was especially beloved by economists, because it allowed them to make their discipline immune to outside criticism and empirical refutation. But I’m not asking you to read Redfield.

I haven’t read Lakatos himself and don’t claim to know anything about his thinking; I don’t cite or reference him, just Redfield.

I find that fantastically unlikely. Economists basically stick to warmed-over Popperism. I’ve never seen the term “research program” used to justify anything. Instead, they refer to “theory”. “Theory tells us” that the minimum wage destroys jobs, etc.

Despite that, Lakatos’ description of science fits how economics works remarkably well. Economics is full of research programs that proceed on the basis of their own internal logic.

Matt: not that I have anything like a fully-thought out plan (or else why would I be commenting on blogs?), but I think the answers to your questions are, in order:

— I don’t know that I would be going about trying to abolish any departments, but it’s likely that forces external to the schools and from inside the administration feel more empowered and less constrained;

— I don’t see why in the context of this discussion that African-American Studies differs in any interesting way from Middle Eastern Studies and Medieval Studies, save for differences in the level and nature of specific political significance of the questions and scholarship and the mixed political motives of some of the people doing the scholarship;

— at an abstract enough level, the epistemological differences between thinking about things and thinking about ways of thinking about things would become irrelevant;

— and once you start talking about forestry, you might as well start talking about law and medicine–which is to say, about professional programs, not liberal arts departments.

That last sounds like a dodge, I know, but on the other hand, I don’t know of anyone arguing for women’s studies departments, for example, who claims that defending the disciplinary or administrative boundaries of those departments is going to get anyone a job–well, anyone but scholars of women’s studies.

John E.: thanks for making that point about disciplinary thought. Political science grad students at least through my generation were exposed to the Popper-Kuhn-Lakatos-Feyerabend material as well, and largely for the same reasons as economics grad students were/are: to persuade us that all we need is a research program, a paradigm, in order to be doing ‘normal science’ and hence to deserve the same amount of respect/money/faculty lines as those folks over there in physics. (And, I daresay, to convince ourselves that our methods and programs made our knowledge more authoritative than what passed for scholarship over in the newer upstart programs and departments.)

I tend to suspect that economics ruins everything it borrows — Popper, Lakatos, whatever. IIRC Redfield didn’t offer a full interpretation of Lakatos, but just said that he made economists feel good for the reasons I’ve stated.

As a former political science grad student, I’ll second Maurice’s comment on “Popper-Kuhn-Lakatos-Feyerabend” except that we never did the last one.

MH: Feyerabend we read for an ‘only a crazy person would think like that’ moment.

Zamfir: The way that paradigms work in Kuhn, there’s nothing positive or negative about them. They’re just how ‘normal science’ (as I recall, ‘puzzle solving’) gets done. They collapse when their proponents all die and new textbooks get written, etc.

But when you read Kuhn through the eyes of a group of scholars who very much want to be a Real Science–like political scientists–you see paradigms, not as a sociological account of science, but as a blueprint. If you want to be a science, then you need a paradigm. Then yours is the university and everything that’s in it.

Is there a field of study that analyses the equal distribution of power and resources?

Is there a field of study that analyses the equal distribution of power and resources?

(shrug) An entire field? Probably not. In some sense, that’s one exceptional case, so what would there be to study with sufficient depth and variety to support an entire field of study? There’s just not sufficient variety or diversity, in that hypothetical, to justify an entire field / department / etc. Surely plenty of individuals in philosophy, for example, specialize in developing theory which in the ideal case entails equal distribution of resources and/or opportunities, as a pure case which one may contrast with actual, unequal distributions.

Also, by studying inequality, doesn’t one inherently study the corresponding meaning of equality? Some subset of studies of inequality is likely to investigate specific changes that would result in a more equal distribution of power and resources. Another subset, by analyzing and understanding inequality, makes it possible for us to envision the complexities involved and better understand what “equality” would comprise and entail.

I recall a moment, long ago when I was young a naive, complaining, heatedly, in a Woman’s Studies class one day that it’s absurd that an academic subject matter which is literally 52 percent of the population was segregated into an academic ghetto, far away from the Humanities departments and out-of-sight and out-of-mind as one of a small collection of modest buildings stuck at the edge of campus.

The prof responded: “But that’s exactly how we like it.”

I became a lot more cynical that day. However, that experience notwithstanding, I’m not sure I endorse Maurice Meilleur’s suggestion. I would have twenty years ago. Today, I’m even more cynical and realize that it’s probably true that the subject would never get the attention it deserves within the context of the mainstream until, ironically, after it is no longer urgent.

Nevertheless—and I very much don’t intend to support the anti-feminists in any way—I think that it’s either ignorant or disingenuous for anyone to claim that most Women’s Studies departments are not extremely ideological and rigid. I think the academic quality of these programs would be much improved were this less the case. Right now, they primarily are serving a political, and not academic, purpose. I support that political purpose wholeheartedly, but I think there’s a large amount of worthwhile research that’s not being done because these programs are primarily political.

I am aware that this is a very old argument and that the critical response to my comment will be that education is inherently political and that’s as it should be. I disagree.

Still, I want to emphasize that I’m a feminist and I support the political effect that Women’s Studies programs has in the US. It’s a very sad fact that these programs are not only the greater part of the feminist movement in the US, they are today almost its entirety. I do think that anti-sexist and feminist ideas have slowly made their way into popular culture—but, even so, there’s very little explicit popular feminist political activity.

And here we return to Maurice Meilleur’s complaint and suggestion: it’s arguable that by allowing themselves to be put into the academic ghetto and becoming comfortable there, academic feminists are doing less for feminism than they should, were they promoting feminist in the mainstream academy. I don’t know. I do know that I’m disappointed in the reduced visibility of feminism in popular culture and civic life and I’ve never been comfortable with the strong ideological conformity and rigidity that is common in Women’s Studies departments. We could be doing better, I think.

Keith, in fairness to feminism, feminists are hardly the only ones to have embraced the professional and institutional trappings of what Russell Jacoby called the ‘academic left’.

I do take slight issue with the idea that women’s studies departments should be ‘promoting feminism’ in the academy, or that it’s the job of such departments to promote feminism in society generally. I don’t mean to sound like Stanley Fish, but the vocation of scholarship is the disinterested pursuit of truth. To the extent that pursuing truth means insisting that (to keep this example) women’s experience seriously in social, historical, biological, etc. research, and further to the extent this is part of the broader cause of feminism, then ‘women’s studies’ as a program is inherently and necessarily political. (As is, for another example, institutionalizing the idea that there can be such a thing as ‘policy science’, as political science departments and public policy schools do.) But the point of the programs should not be to get students or scholars to agree with feminist arguments beyond that point. As it happens, taking women’s experiences seriously would and did and does challenge the ‘scientific’ basis of many arguments in favor of discrimination against women. But scholars as scholars should think in that order: first insist on getting things right, then let the political and social and cultural consequences be as they may.

The continued existence of women’s studies programs (or political science departments) I agree in practice is a matter of prudential judgment negotiated under circumstances not all of which we get to choose. I can see why people who support any of the ‘-studies’ programs might accept the risks of the academic ghetto (ideological rigidity, loss of scholarly rigor, institutional marginality) to avoid the risks of disciplinary submergence and institutional annihilation. I happen to think the risks of the former outweigh the risks of the latter, especially in a time when all scholars should concern themselves with larger trends in higher education that threaten us all–well, all of us who can’t draw a direct line between studying our subject on the one hand and getting a job or developing some obviously useful technology that brings in grant money on the other.

Maurice Meilleur

Does not take[ing] a lesson from David Horowitz , Mark Bauerlein or Tom Wolfe say anything about your willingness to maintain an “authentic liberal environment”

That quote from Wolfe is interesting. He either knows nothing of contemporary philosophy, or nothing of Kant and Hume.

Cripes, Keith M, did you miss the part in college about not making vast generalizations from one poorly-understood experience? If you or Bauerlein want to read the current literature in women’s studies and make the case on that basis for “primarily political” or “extremely ideological and rigid” that would be great. Truculence does not make an argument by assertion more persuasive.

Fitz: Yes, it does. It says that I know how to tell the difference between intellectual honesty and intellectual dishonesty. And just because John Stuart Mill didn’t build that distinction into his argument in On Liberty doesn’t mean I have to follow him down that rabbit hole.

By the way, Horowitz and Bauerlein do not benefit from comparison to Wolfe. Charlotte Simmons was crap (and a bit nauseating), but Wolfe is generally smart and perceptive, has a sharp eye for detail and incongruity, is a wicked satirist, and often quite funny even when he’s wrong–all qualities conspicuously absent in Horowitz and Bauerlein, not to mention in most of the people who quote his essays and novels as definitive proof of their assertions.

No snark here, honest question: is there any theory of significance in any department that was dismissed solely on the grounds that it was a conservative theory? I keep asking this question when people like Fitz pop up, and have yet to receive a satisfactory reply. Some of the loonier types will be up front and say racial inequalities in intelligence fits the criterion; similarly others will point to biblical or moral theories.

But aside from that, I haven’t heard of anything serious.

Otoh, as someone points out, ‘conservative’ theories playing out to the detriment of ‘liberal’ ones on purely ideological grounds seems to happen with some frequency in economics departments across the land.

Got anything for us in that vein, Fritz?

John, how about this idea? Organize the liberal arts university into eight ‘departments’: mathematics, philosophy, history, languages and literature, physical sciences, life sciences, human behavior, and human society. Strip them of the institutional and professional expectations that they will be ‘disciplines’ with fixed methodological assumptions and research programs. They act as poles of attraction and organizational bases of resources for students and scholars of various interests who take courses and work with faculty such as they find affinity with.

Each school would have a different constellation of scholars with appointments in and support from different ‘departments’: in one school, the American Indian studies scholar works in history and human society, the molecular biologist works in the physical sciences, and the person studying politics works in philosophy; in another school, the American Indian studies scholar works in languages and literature, the molecular biologist works in the life sciences and mathematics, and the scholar of politics works in history.

One thing that I seriously did decide on was merging history and the social sciences. Paul Veyne said that the social sciences are all ways of studying history, or particular collections of tools used in the study of history. He chickened out and granted economics the status of True Science, but I don’t follow him in that.

Otherwise I generally agree.

I really hate “interdisciplinary” books which begin with boring summarizations of Paradigm A from one discipline and Paradigm B from a different discipline, followed by the author’s development of his composite paradigm. Of course, for me interdisciplanry work would be a way of escaping the paradigms, and transparent evasions of that type are quickly squelched.

They really need to start cutting football funding at the following schools: Oklahoma, Texas, Michigan, Penn State, Miami (the one in Florida), and Florida State.

Fitz: Even if your somewhat circuitous explanation is genuine (I quote Wolfe to illustrate the view that Horowitz and Bauerlein claim is a common one), you’ll have to forgive a reader for assuming that what follows the leading rhetorical question and the assertion of doctrine must be the citation of scriptural authority in support.

For future reference, Aquinas usually inserted all the straw-horse objections he could think of between the question and the assertion.

ScentOfViolets (asks)
Is there any theory of significance in any department that was dismissed solely on the grounds that it was a conservative theory?”

Your language of “solely on the grounds that it was a conservative theory” seems a bit loaded, or at he least a rather high burden of proof.

I approach it more in the sense that sacred cows of the left prevent multiple points of view from gaining traction in university environments. This ‘traction” includes references in published work, wide(er) dissemination and discussion, publication in university presses, – Indeed, plain old respect and generosity of spirit.
I can venture to answer your question, but I hope you can clarify.

For instance, I will concede your point about Economic departments and X or Y theory.. If only to establish that indeed ideas have adherents and enforcers.

Also
“Some of the loonier types will be up front and say racial inequalities in intelligence fits the criterion; similarly others will point to biblical or moral theories.”

Here we have phenomena I see quite often, the inclusion of racism in with other subjects of a less definitive ethical clarity. I see this as an often used tactic of the left. As in “racism –sexism –homophobia” I find the latter two infinitely more complex and in legitimate contention than the first. Indeed; it seems racism is always included in such lists to co-opt the moral authority of Americas tortured racial past.

So when you above say “loonier types” and then say “biblical or moral theories” – I see something clearly morally repugnant intentionally grouped with a vast array of different phenomena that could include the breadth of the western humanities experience & learning.

So— Please clarify and I will attempt a serious and sincere answer.

And you know what else—psychology! I’ve talked to psychologists (my father is one), and I’ve found that many of them assert—just like that!—that individuals and organizations can be dysfunctional! And their whole profession is predicated on this assertion! And is aimed (sometimes very indirectly, it’s true) at trying to cure or managed these dysfunctions! Well, I say (assuming these dysfunctions even exist), what if we don’t WANT to do anything about them?

Josh, I don’t believe the entire profession of psychology is predicated on the assertion that individuals and organizations can be dysfunctional. And a university department of psychology that limited its studies psychological dysfunction would be absurdly truncating the discipline. If Fitz’ argument regarding Women’s Studies is that it shouldn’t be limited an analysis of the unequal distribution of power and resources by gender, I would agree. I don’t expect that many Women’s Studies departments really are limited that way, but I don’t know much about them and may be wrong. I don’t even know why the name of the discipline is possesive.

The funding of universities is a can of worms, what with tax breaks, bequests, foundations, government contracts, unpaid labor, etc. Parents and students should bargain harder, though.

I refuse to let Horowitz destroy the university. That’s my job. Out of my way, motherfucker!

Again the point, Keith M, is that claims based on evidence would be more persuasive than assertion. Read and critique the literature. Rambling autobiography does not bolster assertion any better than do preemptive accusations against those who don’t share your views.

And your weird assertion that “these programs are not only the greater part of the feminist movement in the US, they are today almost its entirety” does not, ahem, reinforce your claim to vast personal knowledge of contemporary feminism.

I had a pox on my house, or at least that’s what it looked like. Turns out you just need to paint them from time to time.

just to agree with something emerson says at 104 — I read Radical Son (don’t ask why) and the lack of self-reflection is amazing (it is a very interesting, and revealing book, but please don’t pay for it). He displays exactly the same self-certainty, intellectual; dishonesty, and thuggish attitude that he attributes to his previous self. It’s as if he wrote the book, then didn’t bother to read it.

Also on 104: are you just saying that DeLong is a smart conservative, or that we are too?

Colin, you are simply denying my assertions while criticizing my lack of evidence. Also, you are being uncivil. Were I to argue as you do, I’d have attacked your ability to reason, the rhetorical quality of your comments, and your honesty—while simply denying what you’ve asserted. I really don’t think you’re in a very good position to be critical of the quality of my arguments.

At any rate, my sense is that in another, more congenial context where you were assured of my commitment to feminism, you’d take my point-of-view seriously, even if you disagreed. But in this context, you took an automatic adversarial, even belligerent, stance and there is probably nothing I could say that you wouldn’t simultaneously dismiss as false while suspecting (and implying) that I’m either dishonest or badly-intentioned. There’s no point in continuing our discussion.

1. Re Keith M. (a) large assertions about the world *need* evidence, (b) for someone who is allegedly decrying Women’s Studies’ politicization, you seem awfully eager to convert this into a discussion about your political commitments. This is not about you. (c.) re civility, your #78 stated “it’s either ignorant or disingenuous for anyone to claim that most Women’s Studies departments are not extremely ideological and rigid”

2. Sleepy’s rant, by contrast, is at least entertaining and informed.

3. While I am usually on the other side of the econ question from John, I have to say that Tracy’s answer is inadequate with respect to Keynes — this is the standard textbook version of JMK, not the _General Theory_. And the “allocation of scarce resources” bit is also a narrow, undergrad-textbook version of what the larger tradition does. I think I can defend, against John’s ongoing jabs of the pitchfork, a larger version of econ / political economy which studies material life — production, allocation, consumption — and make a case for neoclassical econ as part of that larger tradition. But if you pull Tracy’s move and insist on a very narrow construal of the field, John’s criticism gathers a certain force.

Prof. B,
Again, from the Women’s Studies department at Penn State, quoted by Bauerlein.
“Examining your own previous values and knowledge, have you consciously or unconsciously participated in one or more of those oppressive ideologies and discourses [sexism, racism, classism, ageism, heterosexism and ablebodism]?” Another course description prompts students to “challenge the nature of power and privilege as it relates to gender, race, class and sexuality.”

It’s stupid. And not stupid because it has to do with Women’s Studies but because it’s founded on a specifically academic and false radicalism: intellectually and morally lazy liberalism behind a fog of self-justifying verbiage.
Bauerlein, Horowitz, and you, none of you see the falseness.

“Also, we need more men in this thread.”
And more academic experts.

But how many of us are liberals? (Politically, as opposed to philosophically). Not me.

Also, we need more men in this thread.

You seem to be male, and you posted on the topic in the first place and have made numerous comments in your own thread.

Also, your comment itself is evidence disproving the claim that WS’s isn’t more about politics than it’s about scholarly research. In the context of feminism as political activism, male participation is problematic. In the context of an academic discipline and a subject of intellectual inquiry, it shouldn’t be, any more than that we require literature professors and students to be writers of literature.

Colin, while my “ignorant or disingenuous” comment was risible, it wasn’t uncivil because it wasn’t directed to anyone in particular. Yours were directed specifically at me. I do understand you may have been pissed-off by my risible assertion. Even so.

Also, there’s a difference between countering an unsupported assertion by asking for evidence, and countering an unsupported assertion by denying it without evidence and then asking for evidence for the initial claim. You can demand evidence from me, or you can make your own argument without evidence, but you can’t do both.

Finally, and similarly, if it’s “not about me”, then why do you keep correcting what you see as my personal flaws? It is from this that I suspected you were reacting to what you perceived as my motivations and so that’s why I clarified them.

By the way, I despise Horowitz and do not mean to agree with or defend him in any way. The man is deranged and his campaign is more about his own self-glorification in seeing himself a persecuted martyr than it is with any supposed failing in academia.

You continue to try to evade it the point. It’s not about women’s studies, it’s about power relations.
If you want to learn about that, go have a coffee or a beer with the people who mop up after you and your students. A lot of them are women.
Talk to the people who lived in your college town before the school was built.
But history begins with you, and the world begins with your perceptions of it;
after that all is logic. And you’re a leftist, because you say so. Self-reporting is problematic unless you have a graduate degree.

I’m done.
I’m banned here anyway.
bored here anyway.

Actually, p.barebones, Paul Feyerabend was the author of Against Method (1975), among other things a direct response to Imre Lakatos’s arguments about the sociology of science.

There was a lot in Feyerabend I disagreed with, but Feyerabend stands out in my mind as one of the most generous critics of someone else’s work I ever read. He and Lakatos went at it hammer and tongs, but Feyerabend praised Lakatos’s work genuinely, and as I recall included some very thoughtful and friendly remarks in the intro to Against Method about his intellectual adversary, who died before the book was published and before they could write a joint volume on their debate. (Feyerabend himself passed away in 1994.)

“You know, even the lefter-than-thou trolls… ”
Who says I’m a lefty. Maybe I’m just a janitor.
Or maybe my mother was.

Talk to the people who lived in your college town before the school was built.

Tricky for some of us, as I think they were mostly dead by 1350.

/snob

Yeah, but Mr Fancy Time Guy, what if you *did* travel back in time, would you then talk to the janitors of the buildings that hadn’t yet been built? Huh, would you? I bet not, you elitist progressive, you.

Also, liberals are the real racists.

My bad. I was remembering the anger in Bloomington. I was working blue collar jobs and wasn’t a student there (ever). Old locals talked about it had been like before the university took over the town. But IU has been around for a while. When did the takeover begin? WWII? Sputnik? The 70’s? I was there in the mid 80’s. Remember the feud between Gubar and Lentricchia? My girlfriend told me all about it.

So when did universities start becoming expansionist corporations? And how does that tie into the professionalization and bureaucratization of academic discourse? Does radical theory somehow overcome neoliberal practice. Or does practice, human behavior day t0 day, even matter? Or is the debate within one class? I remember a strike in one of the last factories near town. Non union sub for RCA. My boss’s wife worked 30 years there on a machine wrapping wire for small electric motors.

“Examining your own previous values and knowledge, have you consciously or unconsciously participated in one or more of those oppressive ideologies and discourses [sexism, racism, classism, ageism, heterosexism and ablebodism]?”

Look, sleepy, you may not believe it, but University profs come from a range of social backgrounds (including my own upper lower-middle class / lower middle-middle class) and have a range of political beliefs. I just don’t see how it’s our fault we weren’t able to stop de-industrialization. If you want to read something by an English professor about work conditions in US universities, including the work of the janitors, you could do a lot worse than How the University Works, in a series edited by the author of this post. There’s also a blog: http://howtheuniversityworks.com/wordpress/. I wouldn’t advise you do the more blue-collar than thou bit there, though.

John I grew up in and around academia. I know what it was, and what it is.
Hypocrisy and honest contradiction are not the same thing.
Posing is easy. Honesty is hard.
I’m pure as driven sludge. I deal with it.

Your bad-faith aside, your comment is implicitly arguing that the male viewpoint about the academic discipline of Women’s Studies is less valuable/relevant/appropriate than the female.

You’re not so good at this “reading” thing, Keith. You should give up now.

My apologies for responding to such prolixity with such brevity. But the simple fact remains that my little remark about this thread just doesn’t imply all the many many things you attributed to it, Mr. Ellis. You know what you’re doing, right? Making up a lot of stuff to get angry about, then posting a bunch of blog comments about why you’re so angry. That’s a strange kind of behavior, and I can’t say I understand it. Surely you have better things to do with your time.

Throughout this entire conversation nothing no one (except myslef) have come close to even discussing the thesis that Mark Bauerlein & David Horowitz’s presented.

Women’s Studies departments are the most narrowly ideological of all academic “disciples”. Given the breadth of their mandate (anything having to do with “gender” essentially, which means everything practically) they have been able to compel orthodoxy and effectively stifle (and corrupt) scholarship throughout the University.

Shorter Keith M Ellis:

OK, I give up, I got nothing. Apparently there *is* no shorter Keith M Ellis.

OK, I give up, I got nothing. Apparently there is no shorter Keith M Ellis.

No, that’s a wishful misreading of what I wrote. But thanks for attempting to summarize me to “help” those who need clarity.

I’ve got plenty.

Criticizing the extent of male participation in this discussion is a normative declaration. The normative declaration is political, it’s clearly predicated upon a feminist view of correct civil behavior. Yet this declaration is applied to behavior in the context of a discussion that is not about feminism, but about Women’s Studies and in which the claim of those defending WS is that it’s not primarily political, including the person making that normative declaration. Therefore it’s evidence that WS is more political than it is scholarly. It doesn’t prove it; I didn’t say that it proves it.

What should be taught in a Women’s Studies department is not something that inherently requires predominantly or exclusively female input any more than what’s taught in a History department is. If what is taught is oppressive to women, then certainly women should have a voice in addressing this injustice—but even though the topic is women, that doesn’t mean the topic belongs to women. If the discussion was an anthropology program’s specialization in aboriginal peoples, we wouldn’t criticize a discussion that contained few, or no, aboriginals. Insofar as the program be legitimate in the scholarly sense, it should probably exist in a context in which aboriginals interact with it in some fashion. That is to say, it should be truly informed about aboriginals, obviously; and the people themselves are often (though not always) the most trustworthy sources about themselves. Even so, this is a functional argument, not a normative argument. It is not, in itself, unfair for aboriginals to be unrepresented in teaching about aboriginal cultures; it’s only unfair if it results in unfairness.

In contrast, a lack of participation by women in civil discourse about women’s place in civil society is inherently unfair, whether or not the outcome produces unfairness. It doesn’t matter if a group of men argue about and devise a civic structure that is completely equitable and just for women; the exclusion of women from the discussion is itself unfair.

In other words, the scholarly context is quite distinct from the civic context.

When people argue about feminism itself, or anything that explicitly relies upon women’s experiences (such as, say, what is the best kind of female birth control or how best should a mixed gender group of people conduct a conversation), then exclusion of women or domination by men is inherently unfair, regardless of the outcome. There’s lots of topics in which male domination of the discussion is inappropriate or even flat wrong.

But this isn’t one of them. Unless. Unless you take it as a given that Women’s Studies is not like other academic disciplines and it is more like, say, normative discussions about society or individual behavior. If WS exists primarily to correct an unjust, sexist society, then a discussion of the appropriate role of WS requires at least equal participation by women, or it’s itself unjust, just as a predominantly male discussion about abortion is unjust. But if WS exists primarily to correct an social injustice, then it’s political more than it’s scholarly.

On the other hand, if it’s primarily a scholarly investigation of women in a socio-historical context, then it really doesn’t matter whether the people who are arguing about it are male or female, any more than it matters if the people arguing about the scholarly discipline of studying aboriginal cultures are themselves aboriginal.

I’m repeating myself, but I’m not sure how that is unavoidable when someone’s response is to summarize me with “OK, I give up, I got nothing”.

Michael, it’s not clear to me that heated debates within WS excludes a general characterization of WS as being ideological and rigid. I can think of lots of subcultures/organizations that, within their own context, there’s diversity yet in the larger context in which they exist, they are ideological and rigid. That’s pretty common, actually.

In particular, these examples and WS take outside criticism very badly and respond to it in an ideological fashion and are not flexible with how they engage in discourse with the larger context.

For example, I think that contemporary conservative punditry is extremely ideological and rigid. Yet, they argue, vehemently, among themselves all the time. And they would deny that they are “rigid”. Of course they would. Their strong arguments between themselves is not in the least proof that they are not ideological and rigid. Neither is it proof that WS departments aren’t.

I stand by my statement that those who deny this are “ignorant or disingenuous” because I think it’s true. But I apologize for making that point in such a risible manner. You’re right: it was unproductive in exactly the way that I object to. I don’t claim perfection in this context, I just dislike those who don’t even bother acknowledge that this rhetorical style is counter-productive or apologize for it when they employ it; and especially when it is the predominant rhetorical style in their toolbox.

I’m n0t just sympathetic to feminism, I’m a feminist. (I am painfully aware of the ways in which it’s problematic for a man to be a feminist and I would choose to apply a different label to myself if doing so wouldn’t be misleading. In every practical sense—beliefs, education, activism—I’m a feminist.) I’ve taken women’s studies classes and I’ve known many people who have taken women’s studies classes, and I known a few women’s studies professors. Nevertheless, I stand outside of WS because I’m perceived as an an outsider to WS, and I have an outsider’s perspective on WS (in the sense that, unlike you, I don’t see the disagreement within WS as evidence that it’s not ideological or rigid) specifically because I have disagreed with ideologically necessary ideas within WS and so my personal experience of WS—not assumed for the purposes of setting up a strawman, as the conservatives do—is that it’s ideological and rigid.

Ironically, I think that it’s itself evidence that WS is ideological and rigid that my claim that it is is taken to be prima facie evidence that I must not actually know anything about WS (or even feminism). Criticism is inherently suspect and it’s assumed that those who are critical are acting in bad-faith in some way. That’s not the hallmarks of a non-ideological and intellectually flexible institution.

All that said, my complaints against WS are minor in the context of the big picture. I do think that WS is more political than scholarly but I’m perfectly fine with that. More than fine, I’m glad that it is. I’m glad that in some large segment of institutional America we can still find a vibrant feminism. If we can re-light the fires elsewhere, we’ll be glad that WS kept it burning.

May I make a suggestion?

Everyone who’s left a comment critical of women’s studies without actually mentioning anyone who actually, you know, publishes stuff in the field of women’s studies should refrain from making any more comments that don’t mention specifics.

‘Cause otherwise it just looks like you’re making stuff up.

Or that your view of women’s studies has been formed not by familiarity with the field but by listening to Rush Limbaugh.

Just a thought.

Throughout this entire conversation nothing no one (except myslef) have come close to even discussing the thesis that Mark Bauerlein & David Horowitz’s presented.

We’ve discussed them before many times, and we think that they’re destructive idiots — Bauerlein mostly because he’s associated with Horowitz. Horowitz has a long, nasty agenda and we boycott him completely, except to ridicule him. Some of us, including myself, might be willing to discuss Women’s Studies in a different context.

John, your point is well-taken (by me, anyway) that it’s arguably counter-productive to discuss WS in the context of a Horowitz critique of it. If there’s anyone I think deserves to be taken as unseriously and out-and-out ridiculed and ignored as Coulter and Limbaugh, it’d be Horowitz. Thankfully, he has a much lesser impact on civil discourse than they do.

I also have the misfortune of having read a number of his columns, back when he wrote at Salon. (Hopefully he no longer does; I stopped reading that mag long ago.) I’m not sure why I read him: I guess it was the risible headlines that drew me in from my irritation and incredulity. And then, once reading him, I was inevitably repulsed by his sophistry and his exquisite sense of persecution. He’s instantly recognizable to me as a certain personality type that has little to do with a particular political ideology. It’s no surprise at all that he was a radical leftist in the sixties. I don’t doubt that he was as noxious then, and in mostly the same ways (if not ideology), as he is now.

Seriously, you leave a dozen lengthy comments about an academic field in which you can’t name a single scholar you’ve ever read, while blaming other people for forcing you to be extreme and dishonest? Anyone who disagrees is “ignorant,” but you eventually get around to confessing that you know virtually nothing of the field yourself?

We’ve discussed them before many times, and we think that they’re destructive idiots—Bauerlein mostly because he’s associated with Horowitz. Horowitz has a long, nasty agenda and we boycott him completely, except to ridicule him. Some of us, including myself, might be willing to discuss Women’s Studies in a different context.

Well I can only take you at your word. It would seem to me however, that having read the article an the entire thread, that the dismissal of Horowitz is strategic. The thesis as presented -WS is narrow & ideolgical and does a diservice to liberalism, women and students -(indeed the feild) is true.

In the main, this blog seeks to deride Horowitz preciseley in order to protect that sacred cow. Now there may be multiple other sacred cows that deriding Horowitz helps protect (including the leftist nature of the university in general) – and that is why he is considered a “destructive idiot”.

As I’ve said to Brad DeLong many times: “Be the change you want to see in the world”. Like a lot of people, including the CT crew, he’s always looking for sane, intelligent conservatives to dialogue with. He doesn’t realize, nor do the Crooked Timber people, that he is a sane intelligent conservative for people to dialogue with, and that what he should be looking for is sane, intelligent radicals to dialogue with.

Liberalism really has never escaped the anti-Communist scare of the Fifties, with its resulting purges, “end of ideology”, and forced centrism. The times have changed, but liberals haven’t.

This is one hundred and ten percent correct. John is a smart guy.

John Emerson: “My anti-university bona fides are sterling (ask CT)”

Emerson is, indeed, nigh barking-mad on this point and cannot be brought to see the light of reason.

(I’m Crooked Timber and I approve this message)

…but you eventually get around to confessing that you know virtually nothing of the field yourself?

I confessed no such thing, you’re deeply misrepresenting what I wrote. I have extensive experience with Women’s Studies, but that personal, direct experience is twenty years old. If it were even ten years ago, I could name a number of authors off the top of my head. But it’s not a field I am engaged with anymore and I haven’t for a long time. But, as a feminist, I do engage with many young feminists who are the product of contemporary Women’s Studies departments. In any event, I wouldn’t have expected the culture to significantly change in the last twenty years even if I didn’t have evidence—from younger people who were recently active in the discipline—that it hasn’t.

This sort of objection is a technical “gotchya” that is frequently used to trump an argument one dislikes. You set up a fairly arbitrary yet apparently reasonable standard that you know or suspect your opponent can’t meet; and when he doesn’t, you declare him ignorant and posturing and his arguments instantly dismissable. In a friendlier, more respectful and civil context, my admission of the limitations on my expertise on this topic would have been taken as proof that I’m arguing in good faith, acknowledging my limitations. Here, and everywhere else on the Internet, it’s like blood in shark-infested waters.

I think I am still reasonably well enough informed of this topic that my opinion is valid. I think it is unreasonable to characterize me as someone who knows nothing about it, or that I’ve admitted I know nothing about it. I am perfectly willing to acknowledge that the culture could have substantially changed and therefore I’m wrong; and that anyone with recent and active experience with WS is better informed than I am. But because so few people argue here or elsewhere on the Internet with the aim of actually learning something, as opposed to vanquishing enemies, then I can’t assume that someone with greater experience than I have who opposes my argument is doing so in a fair and productive manner. Usually, people take positions that are somewhat or greatly more extreme than they would take were they arguing with, say, a friend and colleague, and they dig themselves in. In another context—say, a friend and colleague—I’d happily concede (with intent to check for myself) an argument when someone who I believe is more knowledgeable than I says that I am wrong. I don’t have that luxury on the Internet, because anyone on the Internet could actually be a dog.

I’m a woman who works on gender history, but I haven’t weighed into this thread because I’m not an American, and the debate here about women’s studies is actually about a specifically US phenomenon (although I think the Americans here have implictly taken it as universal). You can’t get away from a US context in which discussions of the university are an important part of the culture wars (they’re not in the UK in the same way), and in which the conflicts between academic departments are particularly fierce. Any group of academics who feel their subject/department is under threat are likely to subconsciously or consciously huddle together and stick more closely to one ideology. You don’t say that there are weakness in the current ways of studying Assyriology, because that will give comfort to those who think that universities shouldn’t have Departments of Assyriology. You don’t want the Department of Evolutionary Psychology back with the main School of Psychology, because you know that the faculty there hate evolutionary psychology and will quietly kill off all your classes. Instead you end up stressing how evolutionary psychology is the one true way to do psychology, because you need to justify your own choice of research.

I’m barking mad, and I approve Magistra’s message. The American university’s departmental paradigm wars, of which the ideological wars are but a small part, have succeeding in forcing almost everyone to be wrong about most things just to keep their membership in the club. Methodological factions might as well wear colors, carry switchblades, and develop identifying facial tattoos.

Incidentally, I’ve beenreading about the Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy Holy Roman Empire recently, and I tried to imagine Wittgenstein and Trakl sitting in a cafe, eating enormous decadent chocolate pastries, idly half-watching Lehar’s “Merry Widow”, and flirting with rosy-cheeked Viennese society wives wearing frilly, deeply décolleté dresses. My question is, which of the two is the wingman?

If you only follow philosophy and not poetry, you can can substitute Carnap or Waismann for Trakl. Not Popper, because he was not a gentleman, per Wittgenstein. Not Gödel, because he was a middlebrow and might have enjoyed himself.

G

I would love to support the assertion of Mark Bauerlein & David Horowitz’s with reference to and engagement with contemporary published works in the field. This is what I expected a conversation referencing the thesis to be; an engagement of the thesis. Instead I found a thread ladled with simply mockery and derision. When I brought up the thesis I was derided. Latley I am informed that they don’t engage Horowitz or anyone associated with Horowitz because he is a Brownshirt thug.
As to your second point I expect a blog post referencing work critical WS to confront that subject. Not to question the nature of ideology itself, or contemplate the ideology of business schools, or ponder if the subject itself is a means of diverting attention away from the business school cabal.

Fitz does quote approvingly from Tom Wolfe – Because one does find the subtext to be the same. Tom Wolfe and I seem to understand that even though each academic fashion may be distinct in method, they are all are similar in end. The subtext is always the oppressor/oppressed ideology of Marxism.

Likewise with WS – It is neither mine, nor Wolfe’s nor of Mark Bauerlein or David Horowitz’s or Laskin’s assertion that each and every feminist shares the same exact approach but rather….

“One Party Classroom poses a straightforward empirical question to the professorate. How extensive is leftwing bias in classrooms, and to what extent is it systemic? When professors accuse Horowitz of faulty documentation and insufficient evidence, the best reply is: “Perhaps, but hasn’t he produced enough indication of unprofessionalism for you to take up the task of inquiry?”

Or is there never enough documentation, personal antidotes, coarse descriptions, text books, reading lists, Curriculum Vitae, journal articles, or plain old common sense to satiate those who seek to protect their sacred cows by denying the obvious & popularly understood truth?

The thing is, if someone (e.g. Mr. Ellis) doesn’t like a field they are unlikely to stay current in it. A criticism of a field based on “way back when I knew it, I hated it for reasons X and Y” is in part a request for a genuine update on how X and Y might have changed in the intervening time. Just mocking the person for not staying current in something they disapproved of in the first place is not really responsive.

Fitz: “I would love to support the assertion of Mark Bauerlein & David Horowitz’s with reference to and engagement with contemporary published works in the field.”

Then do it, please.

“The subtext is always the oppressor/oppressed ideology of Marxism.”

That is demonstrably false.

The beginnings of an answer. Operetta, in fact, was a guilty pleasure for Schoenberg.

Schoenberg’s mother-in-law Henriette Kolisch was famous for her 12-layered Dobosch Torte, which his daughter Nuria Nono still makes.

Assuming that Keith Ellis hasn’t given up on this thread entirely: it might be more productive to describe something specific you experienced 20 years ago that led you to conclude that WS is ideologically hidebound to a greater degree than other fields. Or describe specific things you’ve seen recent products of WS programs say or do that suggests that WS is still an unusually rigid/dogmatic discipline.

I think we can debate the specifics more civilly. If you just keep making the unqualified assertion “WS is ideologically rigid”, your interlocutors aren’t left with much to say in response except “Is not!”.

John, you’ve got the makings of a Howard Waldrop story. (For anyone not familiar with Waldrop: In “The Ugly Chickens”, we find out why the dodo survived in the American South and why it’s still extinct; in “God’s Hooks!”, Izaak Walton, author of The Complete Angler, and John Bunyan fish in the Slough of Despond for Leviathan; “Mary Margaret Road-Grader” is about tractor pulls after the collapse of Western civilization.)

Not filling a book-length diatribe with lies already disproven to you would be a good start. See also not doing the sort of tactics John described up above. Horowitz is a bad person doing bad things, but if one were interested in being less of a slimeball, one might very well make interesting and useful criticisms, as several folks in this thread have done.

G
What about (say) a family law department faculty at a prominent university?

Would the fact that the entire department takes one side in a currently politically divisive issue (including multiple published works) be evidence of bias? (In your mind)

Bruce Baugh (writes)

“Not filling a book-length diatribe with lies already disproven to you would be a good start. ”

Could you refrence the books or articles supposedly debunking Horowitz.

“It’s nowhere near evidence that the entire field of women’s studies suffers from uncritical, Marxist groupthink.”

Well you have set the bar higher than I might. I would say their biased across the field. That that bias is most often rooted in the belief that gender relations are built on power & that men “have it” & “women don’t”. That is the Hegelian master/slave dialectic. It dominates the field. It is often the accepted definition of feminism.

But you seem to be saying I need to prove that each and every member of each and every faculty subscribes to X in order for bais to exist.

Fitz: Could you refrence the books or articles supposedly debunking Horowitz.

Sure can!
How about Facts Count, a 50 page pdf from Free Exchange on Campus.

G @ “Let me lower the bar for you: Make reference to 3 specific, contemporary (last 5 years) and influential published works in the field of women’s studies. Bonus points if those works help support the thesis you are espousing.”

Fitz @ 190: “Would the fact that the entire department takes one side in a currently politically divisive issue (including multiple published works) be evidence of bias? (In your mind)”

G @ 193: “It’s nowhere near evidence that the entire field of women’s studies suffers from uncritical, Marxist groupthink.”

Fitz @ 194: “Well you have set the bar higher than I might.”

Dude, I didn’t set that particular bar. You did.

(Fitz @ 176: “The subtext is always the oppressor/oppressed ideology of Marxism.”)

I’m just asking you to make reference to “3 specific, contemporary (last 5 years) and influential published works in the field of women’s studies.”

That’s it for me, folks. This is not a productive conversation.

[WS’s] bias is most often rooted in the belief that gender relations are built on power & that men “have it” & “women don’t”. That is the Hegelian master/slave dialectic. It dominates the field. It is often the accepted definition of feminism.

Judith Bennett’s ‘History matters: patriarchy and the challenge of feminism’ (University of Pennsylvania Press), written by a prominent feminist historian (and which a number of feminist historians are blogging about at the moment, including myself) defines feminism (p 8) as ‘simply the conviction that women, like men, should be afforded the opportunity to realize fully their humanity’. Do you object to that as a definition of feminism as well?

Sorry, I had to go yesterday – I’m well aware that I’m under a charge to produce testimony of the obvious.

John – Thanks for the links.. (I wasn’t doubting, I just wanted to read the rebuttals)

magistra

defines feminism (p 8) as “‘simply the conviction that women, like men, should be afforded the opportunity to realize fully their humanity’.”

Even this definition presupposes the power dynamics of Marxism in as much as it accepts, A priori, that women (unlike men) have not been afforded the opportunity to realize fully their humanity. As such it infers that someone or something (the patriarchy?) has stifled that potential. It also assumes an imbalance (of power?) exists were men are (and have been?) “afforded the opportunity to realize fully their humanity.” (unlike women)

Even this definition presupposes the power dynamics of Marxism nothing in as much as it but simply accepts, A priori a posteriori, the overwhelming and obvious historical evidence that women (unlike men) have not been afforded the opportunity to realize fully their humanity.

Fixed.

Now, your reaction to the detailed and massively documented discussions of the research methodology and intellectual honesty of Mr. Horowitz?

“Now, your reaction to the detailed and massively documented discussions of the research methodology and intellectual honesty of Mr. Horowitz?”

Well – I have to read it first, John. (Is this another charge?)

Am I allowed to charge you with proving and citing “the overwhelming and obvious historical evidence that women (unlike men) have not been afforded the opportunity to realize fully their humanity.”

While negotiating what “realize fully their humanity” actually means?

Did these men get to “realize fully their humanity” if not… Who’s responsible… ?

Fitz, you came in here claiming that not taking Horowitz’s latest book seriously proves ideological rigidity. The reply came that we don’t take him seriously anymore because of having read his previous stuff (simple case of induction — how many bad books do we have to read before we stop taking someone seriously?). You asked for rebuttals. I provided them, and asked for your reaction. It’s not a charge, exactly, but I will say it doesn’t do your reputation much good to champion someone of whom you know nothing of the major controversies in which he’s been involved.

I’ll skip the obvious bullshit in your middle paragraphs and ask you to explain your last sentence. I can’t really see what you’re driving at.

John Emerson (writes)

“WS isn’t very Marxist, but you repeatedly say that it is. That’s goonish and simple-minded. You don’t have to like WS or major in it, but the stuff you’re saying here is crap.”

Feminism is rooted in a Marxist paradigm of the oppressor/oppressed Hegelian dialectic. WS departments are almost exclusively feminist enterprises of this variety. Not every Feminist is an express Marxist feminist. But the majority of feminism is still rooted in this Marxist dialectic. (as I apparently have to prove using 5 yada.. yada..)

Having said that…some feminists & WS produce worthwhile scholarship. Hell…even some Marxist feminism (express or not) is worthwhile scholarship. None of this is to undermine the point that the field is bias toward leftist and Marxist dialectics.

I find you to be “goonish and simple-minded” in your dismissal of Horowitz, Bauerlein and myself. (having said that… this is a blog post – and no one should expect a doctorial thesis)

magistra

YES: (to say) “as a field of study, Women’s Studies analyzes the unequal distribution of power and resources by gender.” Is to presuppose that power & resources are unequally divided…and “by gender” – no less, on that basis alone.

It also strongly suggests that this distribution is inhuman or exploitative.
Now – many agree, (as I do, now & again) – However, it remains the case that this orthodoxy should not be expressly (much less actually) a litmus test for inquiry in the “field”.

In Short: Contemporary academe owes more to Boss Tweed than Antonio Gramsci.
It’s a naked patronage system…

“Then explain to me how the claim that power is unequally distributed by gender is not a factually based statement”

I never claimed that the straw man you just set up wasn’t factually based (how could I -you just set it up!)

What I would claim…is that “top management positions” are not the measure of fully achieving your human potential. That all human dynamics are not reducible to power dynamics. That the divisions of labor within a society reflected in gender are not and have not been necessarily inhuman or exploitative towards women….and so forth.

This very reduction of human history, contemporary norms and gender relations to a dialectic of power relationships – is itself evidence of the very bias within feminism that WS is so famous for.

Fitz #202 Fwiw the definition you quote doesn’t assume that up until now men have been afforded the opportunity to realise their humanity and women haven’t. It defines feminism as the conviction that men and women alike should have such an opportunity. The assumption behind this is more likely to be that at present most men and most women do not have such an opportunity, and that feminists seek a world in which men and women alike will have it, in contrast to those social critics unsympathetic to feminism who are charged with desiring this (unreflectively and unwittingly perhaps) only for men.

Also, do you really think that Marxists believe that “top management positions” are… the measure of fully achieving your human potential? If you do then you really need to read some Marx.

The thesis as presented -WS is narrow & ideolgical and does a diservice to liberalism, women and students -(indeed the feild) is true.

Fitz, in the wierd world of academia, we like to back up our arguments by something called evidence. You back up your argument by saying ‘Horowitz says so’ or ‘Bauerlain says so’ or ‘Tom Wolfe says’ or ‘it’s a commonly held opinion’. The argument from authority only works when you start with authorities with some, well, actual authority. I’ve tried to give you some contrary evidence and so have other posters on the blog, but you just don’t seem to want to provide any evidence yourself.

Feminism is rooted in a Marxist paradigm of the oppressor/oppressed Hegelian dialectic.

I could point out to you the long tradition of feminist writing that exists before Marx (and indeed Hegel), the significant role of Christianity in some strands of feminism, the enthusiastic support for Obama and Clinton (neither actually very Marxist) on many feminist blogs I’ve been reading, etc, etc, but it’s increasingly clear that you don’t want to hear from a liberal feminist like myself, because I don’t fit into your stereotypes. And also that you haven’t worked out that you can talk about power and inequality without being a Marxist.

Fitz is Dave Sim! Whenever someone starts going on about Marxism-Feminism, that’s a dead giveaway. I’d wondered what he was doing since he finished Cerebus.

However, you do have to admire anyone who in the space of one comment can pass from the judgment that contemporary academe owes more to Boss Tweed than Antonio Gramsci. It’s a naked patronage system… to complaints about self-same contemporary academia’s reduction of human history, contemporary norms and gender relations to a dialectic of power relationships .

To say Carl Marx has been an extremely influential thinker

This is SO HARD TO RESIST.

Sorry – wrong site… (really)