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The National Post’s Joke of the Day
This has got to be a joke. This National Post article decries Women’s Studies programs in post-secondary institutions as having “done untold damage to families, our court systems, labour laws, constitutional freedoms and even the ordinary relations between men and women.” This article is so radically right-wing and reactionary that it seems, to me, to smell suspiciously of tongue-in-cheek humour, but it’s not April first, and this is the National Post we’re talking about.
Ideas like these – which are more widespread than I would like to believe, and which, sometimes, enveloped in my liberal bubble, I forget exist at all except on the raving crazy edges of society – are the reason that, while feminists have won loads of territory in past decades, we are still watching things creep backwards. Like a rising tide, every advance comes with a matching recession. There are still leagues of rabid anti-feminists out there who can feel their privilege being contested and don’t like it.
But seriously, this does sound like a joke. I find it hard to believe that anyone could write this with any sincerity:
Their professors have argued, with some success, that rights should be granted not to individuals alone, but to whole classes of people, too. This has led to employment equity — hiring quotas based on one’s gender or race rather than on an objective assessment of individual talents.
February 2nd, 2010 at 6:26 am
The National post like most newspapers isn’t worth the paper its written on. Its great, because people are starting to figure that out and the old media is dying.
However as I mentioned before, progressives really need to learn how to play the language game a bit better. Whoever came up with the idea of the word feminism as being synonymous with gender equality wasn’t thinking too clearly. Seriously if one is to promote gender equality and anti-sexism why use a name that invokes and focuses on well… sexism? Literally it is a sex (feminine)-ism. No brainer right? Its like promoting gender equality under the banner of chauvinism, but for females and in some cases it is, but in most cases it isn’t, which is why frankly progressives of all stripes need to be a bit more clever with language.
My two cents.
February 2nd, 2010 at 10:30 pm
first, I’m all about women. All about men. A happy, hippy world where everyone stops paying attention to silly things like gender is my ideal state. Feminism filled a real need in society and has accomplished many fantastic things to advance women.
That said, the movement has lost it’s way. They’re advancing women, yes, but they stopped paying attention to gender equality a while ago. Men comprise the vast majority of the homeless, suicides, the prison population, victims of prison rape, job fatalities, victims of the “glass cellar” (blue collar jobs. How many garbage women do you see?), victims of the female
dominated “spending gap” (women spend way more than men on average), victims of the scientifically proven “pay gap myth” (when you compensate for part-time jobs, working women made only 5% less then men in britain. Not great, but not terrible), military draft bias, restrictive “big boys don’t cry” brainwashing, domestic violence bias (I’ve known 2 men to lose their kids because the women cried abuse. Really. And they LOVED their kids), sentencing disparity bias, sexist female-only government programs, unfair custody/divorce laws, the longevity gap, and victims of violence in general. Hell, my uncle was bruised by his wife regularily and a) he was afraid to leave because she’d get custody of the kids, and b) he had no place to go. No women’s shelter (WOMEN, not “abuse survivor”) would accept him.
There is a lot of unfairness all around, and the feminist movement aren’t making it any better. I’d imagine none of the above topics are covered in “gender studies”, though I haven’t checked. We need gender equality, not preferential treatment.
Something to think about.
February 2nd, 2010 at 11:31 pm
have you taken a women’s studies or gender studies program? it doesn’t sound like it. the pop culture myth of feminism doesn’t match up with what i’ve been taught in the classroom, and i think a lot of critics don’t realize that. it’s not just about advancing women; it IS about gender equality, about racial equality, about recognizing and working on issues of sex, race, class, and oppression in general. certainly there are other important issues, men’s issues being some of those (like those you discussed above), but i don’t think that shitting on feminism and ending women’s studies programs is the best way to get the word out about everything else that’s going on. i think expanding our social justice programs is absolutely necessary, but i also know that in my first year women’s studies classes, a lot of my classmates were introduced to vital concepts that had never occurred to them in the past, and which opened their eyes to a whole new way of looking at their lives.
February 3rd, 2010 at 2:03 am
I haven’t, though i’ve looked at the literature they study. You’re right in that I have very little direct knowledge as to what they teach.
If ” it’s not just about advancing women; it IS about gender equality, about racial equality, about recognizing and working on issues of sex, race, class, and oppression in general.” then it shouldn’t be called womens studies or gender studies. It should be called “Social Justice Studies”. Womens studies themselves are only a portion of the greater issue, but they tend to drown out the other stuff. Womens shelters are a fantastic example. They’re based off of the women’s studies ideology, but they completely miss the point that it’s not a gender issue, it’s an aggression issue – half of domestic violence is initiated by women. But the people running and supporting shelters under the guise of “feminism” see any critisism as a direct attack against All Women Everywhere, and refuse to change. It’s behavior like that which actively harms the cause of equality in favor of “advancing women’s interests”.
February 3rd, 2010 at 7:40 am
I believe 100% in gender equality, but if people want to be taken seriously about gender equality they need to drop the word “feminism,” seriously its literally the linguistic equivalent to “chauvinism,” there is a terrible irony there, that should perhaps be raised at your women’s studies class.
The term “feminism” is essentially a gender based form of exceptionalism.
February 3rd, 2010 at 7:34 pm
i get where you’re coming from, and as i was formulating my previous reply, it occurred to me that i do believe “social justice studies” would be better – and of course feminism would be included in that, but wouldn’t be the be-all and end-all. most of the respectable feminist literature i’ve delved into is very specific to avoid defining a “universal woman” or speaking for all women everywhere, anyway; and lots of it is trans-inclusive. but that that point, i do think it ceases to be feminism and starts being social justice. so, point taken.
February 3rd, 2010 at 7:35 pm
re: the term “feminism” – naming is a big problem. the names that are given things can be terribly misleading, and in that way, “feminism” is probably as bad a name for a movement for equality and social justice as “history” is for the story of humankind.
February 3rd, 2010 at 10:01 pm
Cool and I agree. If there is a class called “social justice studies” I’d attend it. By not being so exclusive much of the other 50% of the population would be more apt to get involved and then gender equality would be able to be pushed much further without the unnecessary and misleading polemical debates and arguments caused by poor terminology.
Regarding history: History is a fine name for the story of humankind, provided you aren’t an English speaking person who sees it as meaning “His Story.” We in the English speaking regions tend to Anglopomorphize foreign words. In fact the word history etymologically has nothing to do with “His Story,” but comes from the Greek historia meaning ‘knowledge’ from the proto-Indo-European base “wid” origin of the words wisdom, wizard, vizier, vision, video, veda etc.
The word and the base have nothing to do with gender at all, except it may look as if it does to us modern English speakers. Now don’t get me started on why the French and Germans feel the need to genderise their words in 3 different ways!