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?

Absolutely not. Anybody who had come into even the tiniest contact with actual radical feminsm, would not be passing off the nonsense that is currently promoted in academia as feminism e.g. postmodernism, choice feminism, pro sex industry, pro BDSM etc etc

Come into contact with and studied are two very different concepts. What I have actually said is that the patriarchy male friendly ideas within liberalism have coloured their views. Please read all of what I said before pouncing on me

I'm not slagging off any academics! but if the vast majority of accademics were putting forward radical feminist ideas and this was consistently influencing economic and social policy then we could tackle the inequalities. But they aren't and the inequalities remain.

I'm saying that the ideology you mention doesn't seem to me, from my background, to be the dominant ideology in feminist academia. It's one strand of various approaches. And not the dominant strant in the social sciences, say.

I'm not personally offended at the tarring of all feminist academia as sold-out anti-women, anti-feminst. I just don't agree.

I'm not saying they don't make mistakes but they are struggling against the system, in various different ways, trying to make a difference to women's lives

Do you not think that the pervasive liberalism that influences people including academics actually creates apologists. Many people incl academics believe that women are actually being empowered to sell sex. I don't think that economically and educationally disadvantaged women selling sex is empowering. Rather than undermine mens advantage over women they seek to find equality in the process of comercialising womens bodies. Just one example of why most current academic research and thinking is not actually tackling inequality.

I teach feminist theory at a university, and am always surprised by how many of my students don't see feminism as relevant to them, or even as still existing in any way. Certainly there are often several female students who aren't interested in equality in the jobs market, for example, because they are planning to find a wealthy husband after university. Sometimes I have to remind myself that I am there to teach the theory, not to influence their personal beliefs...

sheba - I don't know about liberalism. I do think there's a lot of misogyny, both casual and institutionalized, in academia, and that must make it hard to be a woman academic, or a feminist and an academic, let alone someone whose academic subject is feminism. I wish we could tackle that.

Cross-post - Aurora, that must be incredibly depressing! Makes you wonder why they bothered to go to university.

Sorry Dittany but in the 90's we covered Daly! What was written in the late 60/70's was taught in the 80s

It's the 90s that seem to be the problem. I haven't read any Butler from what you have said I might add it to the fire when the whether changes

I agree that what is probably being taught is not feminist but passed off as such. A little like the lies that liberalism spreads about choice and empowerment. It actually encourages inequality through the guise of free choice for all. Is is because men usually hold the most senior positions in universities or is something else going on?

I am very much a feminist and would encourage any woman to find herself a partner/husband with plenty of cash. There is nothing clever or feminist about having a partner who doesn't pull his weight.

Agree with fennel in that I don't perceive there to be a 'dominant' strand of feminism in academia. Certainly, queer theory has been very popular over the past twenty years, but it hasn't crowded out feminist thought or eclipsed patriarchal analysis. In my experience, feminism and queer theory are taught to undergraduates as related but definitely separate movements.

LRD it is depressing, but I am used to it now...
Bonsoir indeed, nothing wrong with marrying someone who has money (my husband's generosity largely funded my PhD) but I don't think setting out to find someone who is wealthy is necessarily a good idea; and assuming that therefore you can devote your life to shoes and nail polish, rather than getting a job, is something I find a bit difficult to swallow.
Anyway, I generalise - some students don't think it's relevant because they think we have complete equality already; other students believe that women should be subject to men.

weather, even! need to go to bed earlier, very tired.

You might want to use your university education in order to bring up your children, and to use your wealthy husband's cash to fund all the ambitious plans you had for them. More fun and useful IMO than working like a dog outside the home to see your salary swallowed up in taxes and childcare.

My PhD largely funded my husband's lifestyle ... nice, that. You don't mention, bonsoir, but plenty of ways of 'pulling weight' don't involve being paid cash, but I would't be without them.

That Rutgers link also mentions a class in 'Women and the Law' which doesn't mention any texts but says that it is firmly rooted in 'sex-based discrimination'. Potential for second-wave ideas there, I hope.

Bonsoir absolutely, and I have no problem with that. I'm talking about people who aren't interested in having children, or a career. Which is their prerogative; I'm just saying I don't understand it myself and don't think marrying for money not love will generally make people happy. Money and love, absolutely!
dittany I cover patriarchy, male violence, etc, but also include gender perfomance and masculinity (although there's relatively little available on that). But my course is primarily literary anyway - including Wollstonecraft and Woolf. And Radcliffe Hall.
On the other hand, I think applying feminist theories retrospectively to some writers can obscure genuine issues (eg 'feminist recoveries' of very religious women writers from the past tends to assume they were repressed by their religion, when it seems it was in fact liberating for many of them).

Bonsoir, so all men work like dogs but we know they don't. Why is it when women work all their money is swallowed up in child care and tax. Same could be said of men's wages surely. Or at least it needs to be.

Dittany
We only covered selected readings in relation to women and family life, in particular marriage. It made me question the common idea that the traditional family is always best! I do remember some of it but not a great deal. What really stood out for me is how she made the point that so much of womens labour is undervalued. (I may actually stoop so low as to put father in nursing home one day) I came away thinking that marriage and family actually served to undermine women unless women's labour was valued in line with that of men and not just expected as some sort of natural process of living.

dittany Yes, Wollstonecraft is very political but also had a huge influence on literary figures.
In terms of religion being liberating, historically it permitted women to write and publish - particularly poetry, biblical exegesis and commentaries, and articles in magazines, in a patriarchal culture which would not otherwise permit their voices to be heard. Some of them say some quite surprising things in apparently conformist works (for example, strategies for exonerating Eve from blame and shifting a share of blame for the fall of mankind onto Adam).