Gender Study Ban

[nlaguie]

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

I also think it's coming from social sciences

One of the characteristics of science is that it attempts, however imperfectly, to discern facts about reality. Yes, it's nothing like as objective or dispassionate as it pretends, and over the years science has allowed itself to be used to support ideologies (and has a pretty bad track record on racism, in particular), but at least it knows that it should try to do better and generally improves over time.

The Social "sciences" are essentially a bunch of people talking about their feels. Fact are inconvenient, hypotheses are generated to support ideology, and journals will publish any old shit so long as it supports the doctrines of the moment.

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0966369X.2018.1475346 ("incredibly innovative, rich in analysis, and extremely well-written and organized")

Following an investigation into this paper, triggered by the Publisher and Editor shortly after publication, we have undertaken a number of checks to confirm the author’s identity. These checks have shown this to be a hoax paper, submitted under false pretences, and as such we are retracting it from the scholarly record.

If I remember correctly, the investigation only came about because the author of the paper admitted that it was written as part of an attempt to highlight the lack of oversight on the part of academic journals.

kesstrel it was a mistake! I can understand why the term was adopted, but it has led to ambiguity and some very dubious scholarship.

Saskia - I did my first degree in English too, but am in another discipline now. The problem I’m finding is that most academics are gender critical, but not “out”. My colleagues were studiously avoiding talking about trans activism until I stuck my head above the parapet. At that point they all told me they agreed with me, but they won’t say so publicly.

Orban is simply saying that people are born as men or women, and that they do not consider it acceptable to talk about socially constructed genders, rather than biological sexes, and that people can live their lives as they see fit, but that beyond this, the Hungarian state will not use public funds on education in this area.
It is George Soros who is funding a lot of these gender studies, plus "Open Society Foundations" who advocate the use of puberty blockers on children.

4thwavenow.com/2018/05/25/the-open-society-foundations-the-transgender-movement/

sputniknews.com/europe/201810191069043445-hungary-men-women-gender-studies-ban/

Whilst I don't agree with Orban on a lot of matters, I think the word "fascist" is a bit strong.

It is somewhat pathetic that our choices pretty much across the Western world are between the postmodernist, globalist crazies, who think societies can and need to be engineered top down. and patriarchal strongmen who want to reinforce traditional gender roles. None of the two sides stands for democracy, social responsibility and solidarity within a society. The Left is pretty much dead.

If you think that anything Viktor Orban does is grounded in progressive, feministic, liberal thinking, you're insane. He's a fascist.

This!

And, yes, it does matter. Because my enemy's enemy is not always my friend. Orban's vile government is not doing this due to put an end to the excesses of postmodernism. They're doing it because, like any pretty much any populist far right movement, they're rabid lying anti-intellectual. And that would be because intellectuals might have the brains to dissect their ideology and therefore are a threat.

You know who else is a threat in the eyes of these people? Uppity women!

First they came for the socialists, and I stood by the side of the road and cheered them on because, as a communist, I knew what bleeding idiots socialists are, anyone?

... and, yes, Orban is a fascist. The definition of fascism works perfectly well without concentration camps.

so the choice is between fascism (a form of totalitarianism) and what Sheldon Wolin called inverted totalitarianism then. (Difference: in the former the corporations are in service of the state, in the latter the state is in service of corporations). Why is there never a genuine social democratic option these days?

State funded learning can at least be accountable to public scrutiny. I'd be concerned that a privatley funded course would be able to get away with peddling anything they liked.

Yeah, not sure. Big Private money does bring problems, but I would see the primary problem in censoring. US uni administrations have kicked out professors for ‚wrong‘ positions on middle eastern conflicts, even though colleagues and students were happy with them - cause donors. On balance I‘d give freedom of thought and research preference and expect silly esoteric crap to collapse on its own weight. (Don’t think it takes outside intervention to see Gender studies collapse). What the state can always do is not validate the degree from some private education path that does not qualifY as being ‚state of the art‘ or so.

they do not consider it acceptable to talk about socially constructed genders

This is in no way a good thing. The analysis of socially constructed gender is absolutely central to feminism.

Just because the idea of innate gender identity is regressive bullshit, doesn't mean the entire concept of gender is bullshit. Gender is a tool of oppression that we really need to be able to name and discuss.

Otherwise we're left with only sex and all the differences between men and women in society are just sex - biological, innate and unchangeable. Which is traditional anti-feminism in a nutshell.

Perhaps sex roles was a better term but I think gender is a really useful word when applied correctly.

State funded learning can at least be accountable to public scrutiny.

Paging Mr Lysenko...paging Mr Lysenko...

I thought Gender Studies was the archetypal feminist degree choice?

Or does he mean 'studies about gender'?

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

Absolutely. There is some good work being done by scholars at the CEU on women and labour and women and health, etc. Yes there are also some 'woke' scholars rabbiting on about queer theory - but there is some good, solid women's studies being done too and integrated into the teaching programs.

The Social "sciences" are essentially a bunch of people talking about their feels. Fact are inconvenient, hypotheses are generated to support ideology, and journals will publish any old shit so long as it supports the doctrines of the moment

Oh fuck off. I was waiting for the first anti social sciences post. There is always one. Need I bother to say that the comment above is asinine, untrue and deeply offensive?

*Just because the idea of innate gender identity is regressive bullshit, doesn't mean the entire concept of gender is bullshit. Gender is a tool of oppression that we really need to be able to name and discuss.

Otherwise we're left with only sex and all the differences between men and women in society are just sex - biological, innate and unchangeable. Which is traditional anti-feminism in a nutshell*

Yes. I think that 'gender' does make sense in a conceptual way when paired with words like 'power' and 'hierarchy'. This was the way it was initially used in feminist theory and women's studies. I'm not sure of it's genesis and how it came to be used alongside terminology such as 'sex-role stereotyping' and similar, but I do remember at the time that I found it useful to explain the way that women and men were socialised so that patriarchal power relations were preserved and reproduced. I also use the term 'gendered' to explain the process of gendering, which I think extends well beyond childhood and into adulthood.

The word gender is now a lost cause. Its meaning has become too contested.

This is the right wing backlash that was always likely to happen. It's not just happening in Hungary. Last November right wing christian protesters in Brazil and waved banners depicting her as the devil and telling her to 'go with your ideologies to hell.'

It's tempting to blame the gender ideologists for jumping the shark because they have jumped the shark. Doubtless the genderists will blame us because we happen to agree with the right on this one specific topic, although obviously for completely different reasons.

I'm no Judith Butler fan and I think gender studies is a pile of bull but this isn't OK. This is terrifying. It's not just the gender ideologists the far right are gunning for, it's LGB, women's rights, migrants ...

The problem is authoritarianism and censorship from both the far right and the far left.

I’m so glad that we have a thread on this issue, i had been meaning to start one. This is obvious fascism. Politicians banning university subjects is an exceedingly fucking scary place to be.

And people should leave individual academics the fuck out of it. Don’t agree with some of Judith Butler’s ideas?- fine. Argue your points.

When we are getting into people burning effigies of academics for having ideas they dislike, that’s totalitarian horror.

Judith Butler hasn’t written about any of this stuff for decades, as far as I know (not an academic, happy to be corrected) and I would expect she is every bit as fucking angry as the next woman about the misogynistic shit being perpetrated in the name of TRA-led genderism.

Also Skull you are spot on. If there was ever a ‘first they came..’ situation, this is absolutely it.

I think that JB's scholarship is pretty much obtuse, poorly written clap-trap. However, I disagree with the violent protests against her and also wonder if these would exist if she were not female and Jewish.

YY. And a lesbian.

Who exactly are ‘genderists’?

Transgender activists draw on queer theory as much as anything else, I think. And a lot of it is highly untheoretical, or even anti-theoretical, it is just a statement of belief.

A lot of the language and concepts used to describe the structures of oppression come from gender theory. And the problem with calling it ‘sex roles’ is that absolutely sounds innate and biologically determined. The point of gender is precisely that it is socially constructed and malleable, and can be changed. I agree that the concepts of gender themselves have become almost an immutable category, but that shows the way in which gender norms are enforced. It does not make the theory wrong.

So the end point is that feminine gender norms become something men can wear too - nothing wrong with that. Where it falls apart is the next step that this makes these men women and the huge commercialisation of hormones and surgery as part of this. Which piece of gender theory argues this, as oppose to queer or transgender theory? I am asking a genuine question. Did this actually come from gender theory or another discipline, such as psychiatry or endocrinology?

For every person who has argued that we live at the level of textual and discursive symbolism, there has been another who had argued for material reality. Once you start taking about ‘genderists’ then you are lumping together a diverse set of scholarship and ideas and I am not sure how that is different from people who dismiss ‘feminists’ (also a diverse body). I think it is helpful to be clear who is meant.

I would expect she is every bit as fucking angry as the next woman about the misogynistic shit being perpetrated in the name of TRA-led genderism.

Then she should bloody well say so, loud and clear.

And if her work has been misinterpreted by TRAs as justification for their batshit notion that sex is socially constructed then she should make it clear to them that this is not what she meant. She does talk a bit about that here when discussing the Brazil protests but it's the right wing who she says have misinterpreted her and it's still not clear exactly what she meant in the first place.

I don't want her silenced, I want her to explain herself. I want her interviewed on Woman's Hour by Jane Garvey -

'For our listeners, Judith - what do you mean by that?'