Academic attainment and feminism?

[suwoo]

I have wanted to start this thread all day but have been scared that it is stupid or I will be flamed. I want to ask if people feel there is a correlation between academic attainment and feminist principles. Is that a valid question?
I had no idea that I was a feminist. I knew I had these thoughts and principles but didn't know what they were or the significance of them until we did feminist literary theory this semester- it was like an epiphany and my whole world made sense

Had I not gone to uni at the grand old age of 35, maybe I would never had these revelations.

What do you think? Those of you that identify as a feminist, what level of education do you have?

Aye, I don't agree. What you read can have a huge impact. I don't know what kind of person I would be without it. I'd probably still be with my wanker ex who thinks women are there to be domestic, or accepting like my mum that women are generally thicker and more useless than men. It may not seem that 'practical' to you but all I could say is, my experience tells me it's important.

This is where I get a bit befuddled by all of this. I update the Victims of Violence thread on a regular basis (sadly). When I read the news on-line and see yet another murder of a woman by a man, my second thought is to record that fact on that thread.

If the main feminist work is being done in the field of lit crit, how the fuck does that help to stop men murdering their current or former partners? Or is there an unknown feminist hotbed in Criminology departments?

Aye Robot, a lot of practical things done that work with women will be in subject areas where the researchers work with women - Geography, Anthropologists like Dettwyler, Social Policy, Nursing, International Development and so on. Then there will be feminists fighting a tiny corner in disciplines like Economics and Medicine.

I don't think the main feminist work is being done in lit crit! Of course not. But that doesn't mean it's not important.

aye - you don't think men ever look to texts to sanction how they act? You don't think lit. graduates (who go into journalism in huge numbers) have any impact on how crime is viewed and reported?

Would that it were as simple as saying 'I'm practical and I stop men hitting and raping women'. But it's not, is it? We don't all go around with tazers seeking out unruly men, do we?

Another x post, sorry.

LRD - I agree that words are important. I have said that a lot on here, or more usually on nonsense AIBU threads. And my route into feminism was a long one from an abusive ex and my healing from that experience. That healing was massively aided by words, in specific (non literary) books but more importantly on forums for people (mainly women) with a shared experience.

Why I got into that situation was because of societal expectation/norms and my own early life (and, of course, the fact that I met an abuser). Is media studies a hotbed of feminism, given that film/tv/newspapers/magazines/music/gaming/the internet are massively more influential than literature these days? Or rather, that literature is a small part of a larger picture for many people outside of academia?

I am not seeking to knock lit crit. I am interested why feminism seems to be clustered in that way when there are loads of other areas where I would expect to find it.

I'm off now, but I pause to note that if anyone who disagrees with you is not a real feminist then no wonder so few people are willing to use the name.

I now turn to your incessant references to the crass, bludgeoning works of later Dworkin, since you insist. No, I do not think ALL MEN ARE OPPRESSIVE, nor that ALL HETEROSEX IS RAPE or that BANNING PORN WILL DECREASE THE RAPE RATE. By contrast, both Freud and Foucault produced much more intelligent, complex and sophisticated bodies of theory even though both of them were wrong about gender, and it's really very small-minded of you not to see their virtues and uses. However, since I have argued many times with your kind of backward-looking feminist i know all of this will fall on deaf ears. I've said my say. Have as many last words as you feel you need.

I'm too slow tonight

I like the way you think proles ....

Lit Crit is also important because the kind of theorising that goes on in it has a habit of making its way into other disciplines - ones that do have immediate practical implications. I think a lot more feminist thought in lit crit would have a knock on effect in other research areas.

Sorry aye, I went OTT - obviously time to take myself to tesco and do some soothing veg shopping.

I do see what you're saying - it's just I'm crap at not taking things personally and feeling as if I'm not doing a lot of good for feminism by being a very junior, very fed-up-with-sexism would-be academic.

I'm really sorry to hear about your rotten ex.

I will just ask why the fuck Freud and psychoanalysis are still being discussed at all?

Isn't it like taking David Icke's worldview and applying it to Shakespeare? Was Macbeth a lizard?

I'll leave you all to it now. The whoosh of it all going over my head is making my hair blow all over.

MI, it was Carter that set in motion a discussion about Sade (thanks Bonsoir ) and the reason I gave them Dworkin to read.

Diane Purkiss, The Witch in History, is interesting on the idea of witch-burning.

Yes, Dittany, it was problematic. Could have heard a pin drop.

sieglinde: that is something of a caricature of Dworkin. Poor show.

Aye: from my point of view, I read and teach Freud because he has been influential, and I feel it is important to go back to the beginnings of things. This foes not preclude saying that he was, er, wrong...

Ah, Dittany got there first on the persistent misinterpretation of Dworkin.

And lol @ foes instead of does. Freudian slip much?

I find it so weird the way people who are quite comfortable reading complex stuff like Butler or French feminists refuse to get any of the complexity in Dworkin.

I can see why 30 years ago, people who had never read any of that or been used to thinking in that way, might have read Dworkin as 'penetrative sex = rape' but it is fairly clear that she is talking about the cultural meaning of penetrative sex and the way rape is implicated in it, and that she is not essentialist about men. And yet people have apparently missed all that.

Actually I'm being disingenuous, it's quite clear what's going on - people slag off Dworkin without having actually read her.