(no subject)

[highlyeccentric]

Apparently I'm using my SRS blog for feminist rants now. About Oxford University Press texts, too.

Comments

[xxlucyferxx.livejournal.com]

As you do, as you do.

Nice article, too, although feminism has never been a huge fascination of mine.

[highlyeccentric.livejournal.com]

Feminist ranting appears to have crept up on me sideways. It's a bit bemusing...

Start the discussion up here, too!

[cursor-mundi.livejournal.com]

That's quite interesting! Can I put in my two cents?

From my perspective as a scholar who works on violence, issues of sovereignty and authority, and the impact on popular culture texts, feminism must, by default, deal with men. There are t-shirts, made for men, that read "This is what a feminist looks like," and it's true--because of the way women have been historically positioned, "the other side" has to help remove the oppression. That worked (is still working) with slavery, etc., and yet it rankles--why can't we (women) do this on our own?! But still, yes, men and women need to work together to develop acceptable methodologies and theories to guide the work that still needs to be done, and it's remarkable that this isn't reflected in that sort of reader.

Or is it? To offer more fuel to the fire and to explain that last sentence: I attended an all-women's undergraduate college (Smith College), and our faculty bias was 60% male, 40% female, and that enraged people because they wanted the breakdown to reflect gender statistics across the country, which is something like 52% female. However, our alumnae group includes a huge range of ground breaking women, like Julia Childs, Gloria Steinem, Nancy Regan, Barbara Bush (the first; the mother of W.). The majority of the women serving in the US Senate are the product of all-female education (which in my experience means female students, and a large percent of male teachers), and I've always wondered whether or not those teachers were the key or if it was the student body. Do we need women around us to reformulate the "official" word that our teachers pass down, and thus reclaim it, or are we absorbing the official word and passing it on to other women?

I'd be very interested in your thoughts!

Re: Start the discussion up here, too!

[highlyeccentric.livejournal.com]

Do we need women around us to reformulate the "official" word that our teachers pass down, and thus reclaim it, or are we absorbing the official word and passing it on to other women?

Honestly? I don't know. I'm very new to this whole feminist thinking game. I... don't really object to the idea that in order to achieve real progress, we have to work with men. I've never found men hard to work with - although I'll grant that I was never asking them to work on anything particularly challenging.

It just struck me that, for a book which was advocating men and women working together for change... Feminism and masculinities really foregrounds men's analyses. Which is a natural way to go about it, in a book on masculinity. Problem is that the 'natural' way we do things is pretty much always going to privilege men's ideas.

Coming back to your point about your undergrad... my university was co-ed, all Australian universities are. But my residential college was all-female. I thought I didn't take much from there, but I'm starting to wonder just how much being there for four years *did* change the way I see things... *shrugs bemusedly*

Re: Start the discussion up here, too!

[cursor-mundi.livejournal.com]

Problem is that the 'natural' way we do things is pretty much always going to privilege men's ideas. Yes, exactly, and I think it's an issue that's really wide open at this point, despite all the advances in our thinking in the last, eh, 100 or so years. The question of whether or not a book like that, that foregrounds male analysis of the issues, is going to help or hinder is really interesting in the context you found--it's aimed at students, yes?--and whether the help or hinder questions I'm thinking of are even relevant or whether we need to yank our thinking sharply to one side. It also raises the question, particularly relevant on LJ given the infamous (and apparently ongoing) RaceFail stuff, on whether or not the group in the dominant position can truly cede that dominant position. I think it is clear that (contrary to what some feminist and race scholars have claimed) the subordinated can indeed subordinate others. (No joke--people try to argue that oppressed races can not oppress other races, and they do the same with gender, and I'm always deeply confused by those statements.)

I firmly believe that all-female education--at the very least residency, because we had males coming in from other schools to take classes in an exchange, and we could take classes with them, too--has a major influence on students, and it's usually NOT to make them toe the line; it usually makes them think, at least from my experience, because it's not a typical social situation. There's a sort of critical mass effect, and suddenly conversations that your mother would shush you for starting are OK, and you learn a lot because women are finally talking to each other without direct interference. (Cultural interference would require another book!) And only private colleges and universities can do this, at least in the US, because taxpayer funding does not go to that sort of practice, nor should it.

And feminism's all about the freedom to make choices, at least my brand of it is, and hey, if a woman chooses to fulfill a more "traditional" role, as long as she's had a viable chance to chose some other path for her life, I think we as feminists have to be accepting. (Mind you, I also think every woman born is a feminist, so I have a very broad definition of the term in mind!) In this vein, I was just poking through comments on the InsaneJournal version of dearly departed Scans_Daily and found some comments by a professional sex worker. She/he/it was rather rude and foulmouthed and intolerant, but she/he/it did raise valid points about how feminism assumes that sex work is Bad, No Questions Asked. Really made me think, you know, and that sort of thing isn't what I necessarily expect from a comic book forum. (Which is another cultural assumption, but one usually validated by the commentary over there...)

Sorry for going all "yay! discussion *pounce*" on you here; it's a topic that fascinates me and I'm always curious regarding different perspectives, particularly from women who don't share my own nationality.