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?

madwomanintheattic wrote - "i crossed over to social science later, and was visibily shocked that the overwhelming majority of post-grads didn't see any gender inequalities. at all."

That implies that their social science undergraduate studies left major gaps in their understanding of society. I suppose we know we are in trouble when the patriarchy can't even be bothered to engage with feminism.

Even if things were as "equal" as they thought, it is disappointing to find that it wasn't even worthwhile studying how this apparent sex equality utopia that they thought they were living in came about. It wasn't always as equal as they think it was in the 1990s and presumably now. A comparison with the 1950s would show to most people that something in society had changed. The patriarchal status quo would have kept us in the 1950s, so it had to be something else that brought about change. What did they ascribe social changes to if not feminism? Even MRA anti-feminists think feminism has had a big impact on society! It sounds like parts of academia can be so worryingly lacking in curiosity. Unless it was thought that equality had always existed?

The more I hear about feminism in academia the more depressing I find it.

I am heartened by the number of feminists who find feminism from non-academic routes.

'what did they ascribe social changes to' - i suspect they saw feminism as a historical concept rather than a current one. i assume that gender inequalities were covered on the undergrad course (would be really weird not to). so they were mildly interested in it as a historical account, but their focus was very much on contemporary research, and initially, gender didn't feature much in the research interests of those present. i should say, to be fair, that over the course of a couple of years, and having to grapple with societal norms face to face through primary and secondary data, gender inequalities couldn't really be ignored.

but the disregard of feminism as a valid contemporary concept on entry was staggering. so i don't know what the undergrad focus was...

i'm not sure how many have gone on to policy work. a fair few, i suspect.

Prolesworth wrote - "plenty of airtime given to the likes of Butler and Haraway. Far and away the most-often-cited theorist in my degree has been Foucault.Butler and Haraway. Far and away the most-often-cited theorist in my degree has been Foucault."

Can anyone tell me what positive practical improvements these three writers have brought to women's lives?

dittany - I agree that the article does give the impression that Kristeva is talking solely about feminist, gay, and ethnic groups; however, I would like to know exactly what she said or wrote, as the mentioning of those groups is done by the interviewer in an apparent paraphrase of their conversation. This is not to say that she did not say/write it; I just want to have it from the horse's mouth, particularly in an article which begins in such an unpromising sexist way, and is gunning somewhat for the political correctness she's claimed to have originated.

Anyway, I think I will leave the thread now, since, as saf suggests, academia contributes little to modern life, and I don't want to waste anymore time, yours or mine.

Sorry, been out all day.

swallowed - of course I have to teach my students to critique their own field, I agree that's the most important thing.

But I think characters need to be taught as an element of literary work, not as examined to see how far they conform to radical feminism - I just don't see what that would teach about literature, characters or feminism really, because you'd end up treating characters as if they were real people unless your students were very subtle, I think. What is interesting is seeing how women who're really interested in challenging the patriarchy as they see it (Christine de Pizan, I love her!) are coming up against the same power-struggles and the same ingrained, marginalizing structures in politics and tradition and religion and all sorts of other areas. My impression is from what I've read, which isn't enough, that radical feminists can show you the things you didn't notice were sexist because they're so ingrained, and object to things you somehow hadn't realized you were allowed to object to - and I can look at someone like Christine writing in the fifteenth century and see that, at a very basic level, even the language she is writing on insists on erasing her gender from any general statement about men and women. So in that way, I can teach her a bit the way you said, by showing how she is really pushing against the patriarchy but still hitting up against the same things we're still seeing in 2011.

Hope that wasn't too rambly - it's late!

perhaps more generally what positive practical improvements have academia (save the sciences)

before we look at any improvements science has made I think we need a list of all the ways 'science' has damaged women and destroyed the earth, starting with lobotomies, compulsory sterilization etc of women, all in the name of science.
Here in japan we are going to be facing a lot of birth defects due to the "science" of nuclear energy; 20 years ago here mercury from companies leaked into the water supply creating malformed foetuese. Or the way asbestos is still legal in the construction industry even though it's known to cause cancer, or pesticides and their effect on breastmilk and the world is still fucking starving because men refuse to use any science available to distribute resources; they prefer to play war games. Oh and then we have "neuroscience" i.e evolutionary psychology i.e men can't help but rape it's in their genes

So all in all, I would say science has done nothing for women

[although I am rather pleased we can use hard science to shut up the trans activists when they say there's no such thing as women )

I think perhaps your problem with Austen and Villette is that she didn't write Villette. Charlotte Bronte did.

Yes, I do happen to think it's important to differentiate between different nineteenth century women writers, given that they both made separate inroads - enormously significant ones - into a whole novelistic tradition. Robert Southey wrote to Bronte that 'literature is not a woman's business, nor should it be': Austen was denigrated, for years, as 'Miss Austen' and a minor writer (interestingly, it was Leavis - in many ways a great white monolithic male- who did a lot to recognise her in the twentieth century). Great women who should both be recognised, separately.

oh MI, you don't want to let a pesky attention to accuracy get in the way of slating the patriarchy and all the academic anti-feminists who spend their lives as misguided pawns of the system.

No, frankly I have other things to do. I could talk at length about my long-distant and putative PhD on Bronte (E) and Bronte (C), which might well have extended to Bronte (A), but although I would find this fascinating, I doubt if many other people would (because you all have a boredom threshold) and I don't think it would fit the narrow parameters of Correct Feminism as defined on this thread, and I really ought to go and be a pawn of the patriarchy and earn a living.

I do think there is a relationship between attention to accuracy (a close reading of the texts, a detailed examination of all the evidence available) and a rejection of some of the claims and tenets of Radical Feminism. I would suggest that many feminists in the academic system who do not adhere to Radical Feminsm are doing so at least in part because we/they do not feel that the claims and belief system of rad fem is grounded in our wider experience of the world.

And so, in my view, there are many active feminists working within academia, trying to change both understandings of the world, and of literature, etc, and also doing research in the wider world trying to change things for the better for women - in the courts and legal system, in the workplace, in policy and other areas. Few of these feminists would call themselves radical feminists, not many would call themselves liberal feminists either. But I'd say yes there is a reason why the femininst women in academia TEND to not sign up to the whole Rad Fem agenda, and I think it is related to a close attention to accuracy, scholarship, a belief that you should try and examine things in detail, listen to people's stories and accounts. Not just slate everything automatically if it doesn't seem to fit to your preferrred agenda.

saf, your description of what you can do with the novel sounds like the kind of discussion that might well take place in a university department.

But, equally you might want to discuss these questions about power and gender in terms of Victorian ideology etc, the point being that there are lots of different ways in which that novel could be viewed from a gendered perspective that are outside of the liberal/radical 'divide'.