Gender Study Ban

[nlaguie]

www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/hungary-bans-gender-studies-universities/

💪

It’s not a science
That’s the way to do it

Why would someone do a degree in it?
It's a basic concept surely.

Fantastically grounded decision. No public funding by tax payers.

We need to look at learn.

And

Women's studies were taken over by gender studies because it was more male friendly.

Gender studies is a nebulous field. I'm not sure it should be completely eliminated, but I am sure it should never have been used to eliminate women's studies.

If you think that anything Viktor Orban does is grounded in progressive, feministic, liberal thinking, you're insane. He's a fascist. Hitler and Stalin banned wide ranges of study, too, and for approximately similar reasons.

Does women studies come under philosophy and politics in universities?

GenderIsAPrison - Women’s Studies basically doesn’t exist any more, only in a couple of universities like Oxford and York, where it’s an interdisciplinary centre rather than sitting within a department.

Well if gender studies is being taken over by trans ideology I can't say I'm too disappointed. It's not a ban though, just not funded by the public purse. Poor old George Soros will have to step in. Meanwhile, we get the Loughborough PhDs.

Nobody said they thought Orban's move is grounded in liberal thinking reflectant. Believing sex is binary is pretty traditional! But it's the TRAs who are being totalitarian about things with their #nodebate, Orwellian gaslighting and attempts to compel speech. Orban's going #nofunding in return. Interesting to see two sets of males up against each other on this one.

So if someone wants to study Feminism and politics and philosophy around it, what courses in uni would they apply for...outside of gender studies?

(I’m engineering from decades ago)

Gender - You’d probably be best doing English Literature or History and choosing modules on women’s writing / history (there are usually quite a large number available, so you can easily specialise in this area within a broad BA or Ma programme). I think Sociology is pretty much a lost cause, though there are a couple of openly GC senior Sociology academics.

He's not staying people can't study it, just that tax payers won't fund it so people need to fund it themselves, which for a course that promotes gender as a concept and therefore gender stereotypes is a good thing. This nonsense doesn't benefit society. Gender as a word and concept should be scrapped.

Why is this a good thing? Is it not just #nodebate from a different perspective?

The concept of gender is useful to pick apart the power hierarchies which operate in society along biologically-based lines. It is useful to pick apart that the way ideas of femininity and masculinity or femininities or masculinities shape every day experience and how individuals challenge, negotiate or reject them.

I understand the point that gender studies has de-politicised women’s studies but that is not the argument Orban is making. He is saying there are two sexes, not two genders, which is a fundamental misunderstanding of how gender theory works. There are multiple ways of expressing or presenting feminity, for example, which are social and cultural, and same for masculinity. How can we talk about toxic masculinity without the language of gender, for example? How do we work out why some behaviours are seen as more valuable by society and how this links to biological sex without the language of gender?

I agree that the theories and language of gender can often obfuscate matters and there is a need to be clear about the framework of analysis being used. But simply saying there are two sexes, as Orban does, is not a useful tool for understanding social interaction and cultural meanings ascribed to behaviours of those sexes. How on earth are we supposed to understand power and agency without talking about gender?

I think gender can be used as short hand for different things which is why it is problematic, but the fundamental point about understanding socially imposed hierarchies on biological bodies is important.

Speaking of gender studies, have you seen this?
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/surveys_students_non_profits_and_start_ups/3457221-Final-call-for-all-parents-of-a-3-7-year-old

Backlash, people. This isn't a good thing, but this is what happens when utter lunacy parasites on progressive ideas.

I see your point Katara. It's a shame that the concepts of sex and gender are being twisted and conflated by TRAS to the detriment of such work. I don't know the content of the courses, I only worry the trans ideology seems to be infiltrating everywhere. Where and why did women's studies disappear or be renamed and is it to do with this? Are people working in what is now gender studies able to be openly GC these days in this country?

I'm sure that what is now called gender stereotyping was once called sex stereotyping - certainly in the late 70s and early 80s.

The learning that Katara describes - how socially created hierarchies are imposed on biological bodies - was formerly taught in courses called women's studies.

Socially created hierarchies are imposed on men’s bodies as well, though. Women’s studies became gender studies because men began to write about masculinity/masculinities using the insights of feminist scholarship. It is one of my bugbears that masculinity studies are now shelved in the library before feminism. However, I don’t think we should throw the baby out with the bath water - the way in which gender is inscribed through text, culture, institutions is important to understanding both male and female experiences.

This is not a cause for celebration. Orban is a fascist, he is against gender studies because he believes in good old fashioned sex based stereotypes, therefore, a subject that serves as a means of studying the the causes and effects of those stereotypes along with the power imbalance they create is the antithesis of his ideology.

Are people working in what is now gender studies able to be openly GC these days in this country?

I don't work in gender studies but the subject of gender does come up a lot in my studies, and yes, I am able to be gender critical, and so are my lecturers.

Well, quite Saskia - a decent university will promote critical thinking and protect its academics if they come under fire for this. We should not be celebrating critical thought being closed down.

SaskiaRembrandtWasFramed - can I ask which subject you study? Is it the one suggested by your username? I ask because I’m interested to know which disciplines are currently able to maintain gender critical discussion. For all the grief that the humanities get on these boards, my impression is that there is a large number of gender critIcal academics in the humanities (most of them, like my colleagues, not speaking out) and it’s the social sciences which are pushing the trans agenda.

In this case, the enemy of my enemy is NOT my friend.

GCAcademic I'm studying history, but my first degree was in english - I do have an interest in the history of art, hence my username.

I also think it's coming from social sciences. I can see that it could be an issue in some branches of the humanities, but nature of the evidence historical study is based on means you'd struggle to be taken seriously if you formulated an argument based on perceived feelings in other peoples' heads.

Maybe I should try it - the Romans all wore dresses so clearly they were ladies, even the ones with dicks. The Barbarians kept fighting to stop them invading their spaces - obviously massive TERFs! Therefore, I am arguing that the takeover of the western Roman empire by the Barbarian, Odoacer was actually an act of egregious transphobia.

Before "gender" became used in its current feminist definition, women's studies got along perfectly well using the terms "sex roles" and "sex stereotyping". Those terms had the advantage of being very clear and not at all ambiguous. IMO it was a mistake to adopt the term gender for sex roles, because according to the OED (full length version) gender and sex have been used fairly interchangeably for centuries. Academics using a 'specialist' version of a common term especially one linked to dodgy psychoanalytic ideas) run the strong risk of that term being misunderstood and misappropriated - which is what has happened.