Outside of postmodernism, there are a lot of other schools of thought which are loosely described as feminist. If you read enough you can probably find some insights, but I don't think that it's a particularly intellectually rigorous field even broadly construed.
I'm not a gender studies major, but the women's studies classes that I took ranged from thought-provoking to laughable.
Outside of postmodernism, there are a lot of other schools of thought which are loosely described as feminist. If you read enough you can probably find some insights, but I don't think that it's a particularly intellectually rigorous field even broadly construed.
I'm not a gender studies major, but the women's studies classes that I took ranged from thought-provoking to laughable.
The study of gender, sex, and sexuality is not feminism. Feminism is a relatively small, ideologically charged group of loosely connected (if at all) scholars who overall haven't accomplished much. Not zero, but not much.
If you made a list of the best scholars on gender, the best philosophers, the best writers, there wouldn't be many people on that who would be recognized as feminists (and even the ones who are would likely not comport with any 21st century use of the term). To take a subject as broad as human sexual dimorphism and reduce it to feminist theory does the subject a disservice.
And as my original post stated, the issue is that it's a lie. If your degree is in gender studies, you should study gender.
“Feminism is a relatively small, ideologically charged group of loosely connected (if at all) scholars who overall haven't accomplished much. Not zero, but not much.”
Wow!
That’s a er interesting take, but I admire your confidence in summing up of the history of feminist thought.
My null hypothesis, in scientific terms, would be that if you take every recognizable feminist historical figure from history and eliminated them, the world would look exactly as it does, women would have exactly the status in society that they do, etc. My women's studies classes did nothing to refute this hypothesis (and in the case of cross-cultural studies, strengthened it considerably).
The term for this view is called "progressivism"; the idea that social change is downstream of intellectual and technological progress. The academic fascination with academics is narcissistic and unrealistic in many domains, feminism included.
One of the first feminist writers was John Stuart Mill who with his wife wrote "On the subjugation of women", a foundational feminist text. Do you think that if JS Mill was removed from society that "the world would look exactly as it does"?
My guess is your rebuttal would be that well no JS Mill (and his wife) is not a feminist historical figure, he's an actual serious thinker so is important. Which is silly. It's a logical fallacy to define everything about feminism that you don't like as "not actually feminism".
It’s also fallacious to talk about something that predates the term “feminism” as being feminism. There is certainly a recent trend in academia to try to colonize history with modern ideas; what you’re talking about isn’t that different than saying that Joan of Arc was really transgender. People who don’t have great ideas of their own often try to appropriate the work of others.
The definition of feminism is not anything that anything that pertains to women.
Arguing against no true Scotsman is pointless I know, but sorry, suggesting that saying that Mill, Harriet Taylor & Mary Wolstencraft are part of the long history of feminist thought is somehow the equivalent of saying Joan of Arc was transgender because the literal term Feminist was used yet is one of the silliest things I’ve read in a long while.
Outside of postmodernism, there are a lot of other schools of thought which are loosely described as feminist. If you read enough you can probably find some insights, but I don't think that it's a particularly intellectually rigorous field even broadly construed.
I'm not a gender studies major, but the women's studies classes that I took ranged from thought-provoking to laughable.
Well good, then they did provoke some thought what’s the problem?
The study of gender, sex, and sexuality is not feminism. Feminism is a relatively small, ideologically charged group of loosely connected (if at all) scholars who overall haven't accomplished much. Not zero, but not much.
If you made a list of the best scholars on gender, the best philosophers, the best writers, there wouldn't be many people on that who would be recognized as feminists (and even the ones who are would likely not comport with any 21st century use of the term). To take a subject as broad as human sexual dimorphism and reduce it to feminist theory does the subject a disservice.
And as my original post stated, the issue is that it's a lie. If your degree is in gender studies, you should study gender.
“Feminism is a relatively small, ideologically charged group of loosely connected (if at all) scholars who overall haven't accomplished much. Not zero, but not much.”
Wow!
That’s a er interesting take, but I admire your confidence in summing up of the history of feminist thought.
My null hypothesis, in scientific terms, would be that if you take every recognizable feminist historical figure from history and eliminated them, the world would look exactly as it does, women would have exactly the status in society that they do, etc. My women's studies classes did nothing to refute this hypothesis (and in the case of cross-cultural studies, strengthened it considerably).
The term for this view is called "progressivism"; the idea that social change is downstream of intellectual and technological progress. The academic fascination with academics is narcissistic and unrealistic in many domains, feminism included.
One of the first feminist writers was John Stuart Mill who with his wife wrote "On the subjugation of women", a foundational feminist text. Do you think that if JS Mill was removed from society that "the world would look exactly as it does"?
My guess is your rebuttal would be that well no JS Mill (and his wife) is not a feminist historical figure, he's an actual serious thinker so is important. Which is silly. It's a logical fallacy to define everything about feminism that you don't like as "not actually feminism".
It’s also fallacious to talk about something that predates the term “feminism” as being feminism. There is certainly a recent trend in academia to try to colonize history with modern ideas; what you’re talking about isn’t that different than saying that Joan of Arc was really transgender. People who don’t have great ideas of their own often try to appropriate the work of others.
The definition of feminism is not anything that anything that pertains to women.
Arguing against no true Scotsman is pointless I know, but sorry, suggesting that saying that Mill, Harriet Taylor & Mary Wolstencraft are part of the long history of feminist thought is somehow the equivalent of saying Joan of Arc was transgender because the literal term Feminist was used yet is one of the silliest things I’ve read in a long while.
I guess it's a good thing there's no such argument for you to oppose.