turpin@cs.utexas.edu (Russell Turpin) (03/28/91)
----- In article <1991Mar18.173443.23918@aero.org> nriley@bootes.unm.edu (Natalie Riley Osorio) writes: > I am studying comparative literature and I have encountered something > in a couple of my classes that I wonder if anyone can make some sense > out of. I have found that many women don'r objectively evaluate or > critique women's literature. Now, I fully understand that women have > been grossly underrepresented in the world of literature throughout > history. Only now are we starting to unravel the clarity of the woman's > voice in literature. However, I don't feel that underrepresentation is > an excuse for giving women's literature a softer treatment in terms of > critique. ... Obviously, Ms Osorio does not yet understand the correct feminist perspective. > ... We should be breeding an atmosphere that enables a man to give > a woman's work negative criticism without being labeled "sexist." And, > likewise, we should strongly encourage an environment where a woman > can give negative criticism to a woman's work and not be labeled > "anti-woman." More seriously, what Ms Osorio points out is the tip of an iceberg that threatens to send academic feminism into the Marianas trench of history. There is a very thin line between advocating greater attention to the works of particular groups whose experiences have been largely ignored, and dismissing any white man's criticism of a black or woman writer on the grounds that he is neither black nor female. A related error is to canonize writers merely because they attempt to give voice to the experience of their group. In short, it is very tempting to pass from the desire to include more voices, to ad hominen, racist, and sexist criteria of what voices to include. (Ultimately, of course, the criterion is not who the author is, but whether the author voices the "right" politics.) An example of this clap-trap is found in this month's Ms, in an article by Kathleen Barry, titled "New Scholarship: Deconstructing Deconstructionism (or, Whatever Happened to Feminist Studies?)". Despite its title, it has only the most tenuous and naive ties to deconstructionism. Instead, it is a complaint that feminist studies has become (gasp) more scholarly and that the "right" political stance less often goes unquestioned. Ms Barry is quite open about this. She writes: ... Inevitably, theory became divorced from politics; research narrowed itself to "objective" science, which distanced itself from women's experiences. ... What has actually happened, of course, is that as more people came to work in areas related to women's studies, the shallowness of an *unquestioned* politic stance became embarrassing, and so they did in fact try to work and write in a more objective fashion. Research did not narrow, it merely made open to question and criticism the politics that Ms Barry would prefer to leave an unquestioned dogma. (Curiously, a white male philosophy professor could always include the reading of Dworkin in a class on pornography, but there have been times and places when a woman professor of feminist studies would be castigated for including, say, Gayle Rubin. A lesbian voice wasn't acceptable if it supported pornography and S&M.) What Ms Barry fails to realize is that there have been many academic fads (often tied to political fashion) that flourished for three or four decades, and that then disappeared when the shallowness of their analysis and the dogmatism of their assumptions became clear. The trend she criticizes is the only hope that scholars thirty years from now will look back on today's womens studies and find something worth reading between their chuckles at the quaintness of antiquated political rhetoric. Russell One reason American feminism is so mediocre is that these women can't think their way out of a wet paper bag. They have absolutely no training in logic, philosophy, or intellectual history, so they're reduced to arguing that we should throw out Plato and Aristotle because they're dead white males, or some such nonsense. That's so dopey and ignorant. -- Camille Paglia
chris@psych.toronto.edu (Christine Hitchcock) (04/06/91)
In article <18589@cs.utexas.edu> turpin@cs.utexas.edu (Russell Turpin) writes: In response to comments by: <1991Mar18.173443.23918@aero.org> nriley@bootes.unm.edu (Natalie Riley Osorio) about the reluctance of women to tolerate criticism of female work, various comments and a further example >An example of this clap-trap is found in this month's Ms, in an >article by Kathleen Barry, titled "New Scholarship: Deconstructing >Deconstructionism (or, Whatever Happened to Feminist Studies?)". >Despite its title, it has only the most tenuous and naive ties to >deconstructionism. Instead, it is a complaint that feminist studies >has become (gasp) more scholarly and that the "right" political stance >less often goes unquestioned. Ms Barry is quite open about this. She >writes: > ... Inevitably, theory became divorced from politics; > research narrowed itself to "objective" science, which > distanced itself from women's experiences. ... I too found this article to be faulty in a number of ways. In particular, the author ridiculed deconstructionism in the same way that tabloids ridicule any academic research: by making it seem silly without fairly outlining its objectives or evaluating its effects. I'm not in a position to evaluate deconstructionsism myself. However, I did find something interesting and valuable in this article. Let me also quote her: [in the wake of academic feminist studies beginning:] Almost immediately, reaction set in: *feminist* studies started to become "women's studies". Many academics drifted away from political action as their research began to move away from a feminism rooted in women's real lives, and they no longer wanted to be called feminists because it might jeopardize their careers. I think her point (or at least, what I took from her article) is that there are very real consequences of sexism in our society which we may neglect to address in favour of safer topics because to rectify the ways in which women suffer is to demand changes from society and from men which will be opposed. Let me start with the issue of hiring. Let me lay out my argument clearly: i> men are disproportionately represented in some professions, ii> there are at least some women who are qualified as well as some men who currently hold some of these positions, iii> the consequence of calling for justice in hiring here is that iv> some of those men will lose their jobs. And this is a direct threat to them. It is not surprising that men are threatened by the prospect of women being hired fairly on their merits. It is not surprising that there is pressure on women not to rock the boat. And since society has produced women who feel that their men should support them, and men who feel they have to support a woman to earn a relationship with her, this threat affects more than just financial success. What I took from Ms. Barry's article was a call to academic feminists to not give in to that pressure. I heard a call for academic feminists to also study the problems that directly influence the quality of women's lives. I agree with Russell that there are some feminists who would throw out the infant science with the bathwater of patriarchy. As a scientist myself, I disagree with their views, although I do think that there are other ways to look at things which are also valid. (For example, the study of ethics is outside of science.) Chris. -- Chris Hitchcock, Dept. of Psychology chris@psych.toronto.edu University of Toronto Toronto, Ontario UseNet: I only read it for the CANADA M5S 1A1 .signatures
gazit@cs.duke.edu (Hillel Gazit) (04/06/91)
In article <1991Mar28.154345.12953@psych.toronto.edu> chris@psych.toronto.edu (Christine Hitchcock) writes: >And this is a direct threat to them. It is not surprising that men are >threatened by the prospect of women being hired fairly on their merits. First you (feminists) demand that every candidate to job/university education will write his race/sex in affirmative action forms, and that *women* will get a priority because of their sex. It went on for 20 years, and now you ask for (at least) 20 more years. Now you tell me that you want to be hired on your "merits"... Well Christine, will you give up your AA advantage (or the Canadian equivalent)? If you are so sure in the quality of your merits then why are you so sure that you need affirmative action? Take a look in my .signature and learn how other people advance by their real "merits", no by their sex. >Chris Hitchcock, Dept. of Psychology chris@psych.toronto.edu Hillel gazit@cs.duke.edu "...13 of 17 valedictorians in Boston high schools last spring were immigrants or children of immigrants." -- US. News & World Report, May 14, 1990
jls@ncar.UCAR.EDU (Jim Showalter) (04/10/91)
>It is not surprising that men are >threatened by the prospect of women being hired fairly on their >merits. It is not surprising that there is pressure on women not to >rock the boat. Hint: avoid overgeneralization, which saps your argument of credibility. SOME men may feel threatened. I do not. Indeed, as an employee of a small Silicon Valley startup, it is in my best interest that all coworkers be hired on the basis of their merits and on their merits only. As a struggling young company, we cannot afford anything less (my biggest argument against AA is precisely that it robs companies of the ability to MAKE this choice and hire only the most qualified). P.S. I was puzzled in the extreme by the complaint in the referenced article that women's studies were becoming more of an objective science and less of a political agenda. Isn't this precisely what any discipline that wants to be taken seriously as a science must do? Or would you place ideology over common sense? -- * The opinions expressed herein are my own, except in the realm of software * * engineering, in which case I borrowed them from incredibly smart people. * * * * Rational: cutting-edge software engineering technology and services. *
gazit@cs.duke.edu (Hillel Gazit) (04/12/91)
In article <jls.671252345@rutabaga> (Jim Showalter) writes: >P.S. I was puzzled in the extreme by the complaint in the referenced > article that women's studies were becoming more of an objective > science and less of a political agenda. Isn't this precisely what > any discipline that wants to be taken seriously as a science must do? \begin{sarcasm} But should not there be a quota for feminist studies? Can't you see that demanding women to follow the same criteria as men is just a form of discrimination against women? \end{sarcasm}
chris@psych.toronto.edu (Christine Hitchcock) (04/15/91)
>In article <jls.671252345@rutabaga> (Jim Showalter) writes: >>P.S. I was puzzled in the extreme by the complaint in the referenced >> article that women's studies were becoming more of an objective >> science and less of a political agenda. Isn't this precisely what >> any discipline that wants to be taken seriously as a science must do? Jim, While you may be right about the article in question, I'd like to address your point about "objective science" vs. "political agenda". Yes, to be "taken seriously as a science", a discipline should be done like a science. However, the choice of what to study is, to some extent, independent of the quality of how well the work is done. What I read in the article (among other things I *don't* agree with) was a call for people in women's studies departments to also study things like the mechanisms by which girls choose not to take science and math in school, or the way in which women's earnings remain around 64% of men's, on average, or the psychological mechanisms which keep women and men in battering relationships. Granted, the choice to study such topics will likely come from a political agenda. However, these are all phenomena which affect women's lives, and a better understanding of them will permit us as men and women to change them. They can be studied objectively. Hypotheses can be made and tested, rather than woven out of intuition and left to stand on their plausibility. Whatever your arguments may be about the way in which the issues are addressed, it is clear that on average, women are poorer, less recognized and less powerful than men in our society. Men are, on average, under more pressure to succeed, lonelier, less "in touch with their feelings", and discriminated against in issues regarding child custody. Most of us agree that it would be better if both sexes were no longer victims of sexism. Surely women's studies programs ought to have at least some people who study areas which have some hope of changing some of these facts, as well as people who study the form and content of literature. That, I think, was the author's point in the Ms. article. I wish she hadn't made fun of the study of literature in the process. Chris. -- Chris Hitchcock, Dept. of Psychology chris@psych.toronto.edu University of Toronto Toronto, Ontario UseNet: I only read it for the CANADA M5S 1A1 .signatures