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?

Personally I have a real problem with postmodernist feminist theory and much of academic feminism because it intellectualises to a point of elitism and consequently the exclusion of so many women.

I think feminism belongs all women - regardless of their education or literacy level.

Intellectualising a grass roots political movement just seems wrong to me on so many levels. Of course it is important to develop theory and analysis but there is no need to do so in a convoluted abstract way. I would tend to describe such thinking as philosophy and not feminism. I think such thinking has a tendency to navel gazing and pomposity, and it is of little or no relevance to real life female oppression.

It is wrong PRolesworth, spectacularly wrong, as you say,

This is not my strongest subject and so I've stayed out of it to let dittany and SaF to take the floor but the bare faced lies keep popping out at me.

Dworkin was one of the only people who actually did listen to women's accounts. In her memoir she wrote wrote of the women who would talk to her, (about their abuse, or experiences in prostitution)... what else could she do but listen to them? Her entire life was spent listening to the real experiences of women and somehow trying to reproduce those experiences on paper so the world would listen. Meanwhile the the academy ( if they noticed women's experiences at all) were sticking their fingers in their ears going lalala by the sound of it, if the academics on this thread are anything to go by.

Beachcomber - but don't you think that highly educated women have a much greater skill set for navigating the world than less educated (or uneducated) women, and are therefore relatively at a much less significant gender disadvantage?

Late again here, but replying to you on the other page, sakura:

I do teach writers in political/historical context - I'd have little to teach if I didn't. I've found that I often need to spend a lot of time explaining what the position of women is, because students often think that because women were oppressed, they therefore didn't 'do' or think anything, and therefore it's a bit of a false exercise to study writing by and for women in the period I teach, which is medieval. What I really want to get across is not only, yes, they did do and say important things, but also - when will we decide women are sufficiently un-oppressed to be worth listening to? Aren't the two things connected? (!). And so it goes.

I don't think I'm underestimating them. But studying characters as examples of feminism has a lot of potential to elicit basic answers or stunningly insightful ones, not much in between. I didn't manage to get this out last night as I was sleepy, but the problem as I see it is that if you study characters as if they're real people, not creations by a writer, you run a big risk of taking on the writer and whatever manipulative strategies he/she is using, on trust, and not examining those strategies enough. You also run the risk of suggesting that characters can be analysed like real people, and some people will then think that therefore that real people can be analysed like characters - it's not logical to come to that conclusion, but it happens.

It's not that I think students can't be subtle, it's that I think that particular exercise wouldn't give them a lot of room to be subtle. I just wanted to explain because I do very much want to think about my teaching.

Sorry, I'm going to repeat myself because I asked this before and didn't get a response, and I really think this might be a good thing to do:

How do you think it'd be if I took a passage from Dworkin and gave it to students to study in prac. crit. style, with the name/gender/date removed until the end of class? I bet some of them would be really surprised about how different it is from what they 'expect' - do you think that would be a good thing to do? We did it during undergraduate with all sorts of DWM writers so I don't think it would come across as erasing her name, but might interest some people in reading more?

I can't do this immediately as I don't have any teaching this term or next, but I'd like to know if you think it might be interesting or not.

As I say, I'm not the expert here but LRD that sounds like a really good idea.

I think it depends on the individual. I have feminist friends who left school with no qualifications and who don't put up with patriarchal bullshit and who are very good at perceiving it, describing it and analysing it. Highly educated women can still be the victims of domestic abuse or rape or other forms of male violence. There would appear to be many highly educated female academics who write in a sexist way and or experience a great deal of sexism in their work environment.

Education in feminist analysis without a doubt does help women to identity and counter sexism. It also helps women to develop a group identity and consciousness. I don't think one needs to be highly educated to understand feminist analysis at all. Feminism is about real life - all women know what real life is because they experience it.

Writing philosophical 'feminist' texts that the reader needs to have a degree to understand all the references therein, is elitist and alienating.

I repeat - feminism belongs to all women. I think education is important but I don't think a lack of it excludes a woman from the political movement that is feminism. No woman has been disadvantaged in their ability to grasp the notion of sexism just because they hadn't read Judith Butler et al.

Gosh, lots of X-posts. That was in answer to Bonsoir.

beach - I agree education isn't necessary to grasp feminism. But I think there is a need for feminist texts, footnotes and all, to show people that feminism is just as natural in an academic context as in any other. If misogynists get to write books full of footnotes, so do we. Maybe that is too simple?

sakura - Thanks, I was wondering what other feminists would think of it (eg., if you'd think it was disrespectful/inappropriate to take Dworkin's name off her work, even temporarily). I think you're as much an expert in judging that one as anyone else here, since Dworkin herself can't comment any more.

I hope so.

Did you have a particular passage in mind, LRD?

lion - I thought maybe something from 'The Unremembered'? It's a short enough article I could send them away with full copies afterwards (I always wanted a full copy of whatever we'd read in prac crit). What do you think?

By strange coincident I've just been looking at an essay on second wave feminism and Butler. From a course taught by a male colleague.

That we should go back to Friedan, Millett, Hanische and Firestone in order to read the devlopement of American literary and cultural history (bit flimsy on Butler!)

That looks interesting.

new publication from current academic feminist working from matrocentric position

she started as an eng lit student iirc from chatting, now prof of women's studies at york (toronto). just look where you could end up, suwoo!

not recommending the book - haven't read it, but pre-ordered as i do like a o'r.

Sakura

I suspect I am banging my head against a brick wall, and you will take anything I say as complete BS.

But since no one else has done you the respect of pointing out the gaping hole in your logic and asking you to think again, I'll give it a go.

Simply; If you are going to look at the impacts of something (science) on something else (women) you need to look at both the benefits and the harms. Otherwise you are not looking at the whole picture and you are likely to come to the wrong conclusion.

Science isnt for the benefit of men or women, (although technology and policy can be) it is a system of knowledge that enables us to understand something of the way the way stuff in the universe works.

I am shocked that in this highly educated and erudite debate, someone can write off our whole system of knowledge and no one bats an eyelid.

proles, thanks for posting that, it sounds really fun - shame Edinburgh is so darn far!