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From: chris@psych.toronto.edu (Christine Hitchcock)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: The problem in academia
Message-ID: <1991Mar28.154345.12953@psych.toronto.edu>
Date: 5 Apr 91 18:42:01 GMT
References: <1991Mar18.173443.23918@aero.org> <18589@cs.utexas.edu>
Sender: ambar@ora.com (Jean Marie Diaz)
Organization: Department of Psychology, University of Toronto
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Approved: ambar@ora.com

In article <18589@cs.utexas.edu> turpin@cs.utexas.edu (Russell Turpin) writes:

In response to comments by:
<1991Mar18.173443.23918@aero.org> nriley@bootes.unm.edu (Natalie Riley Osorio) 
about the reluctance of women to tolerate criticism of female work,

various comments and a further example 

>An example of this clap-trap is found in this month's Ms, in an
>article by Kathleen Barry, titled "New Scholarship: Deconstructing
>Deconstructionism (or, Whatever Happened to Feminist Studies?)".
>Despite its title, it has only the most tenuous and naive ties to
>deconstructionism.  Instead, it is a complaint that feminist studies
>has become (gasp) more scholarly and that the "right" political stance
>less often goes unquestioned.  Ms Barry is quite open about this.  She
>writes:

>    ... Inevitably, theory became divorced from politics;
>    research narrowed itself to "objective" science, which
>    distanced itself from women's experiences. ...

I too found this article to be faulty in a number of ways.  In
particular, the author ridiculed deconstructionism in the same way
that tabloids ridicule any academic research: by making it seem silly
without fairly outlining its objectives or evaluating its effects.

I'm not in a position to evaluate deconstructionsism myself.

However, I did find something interesting and valuable in this
article.

Let me also quote her:

         [in the wake of academic feminist studies beginning:]
	Almost immediately, reaction set in: *feminist* studies started
        to become "women's studies".  Many academics drifted away from
	political action as their research began to move away from a 
	feminism rooted in women's real lives, and they no longer wanted 
	to be called feminists because it might jeopardize their careers.  

I think her point (or at least, what I took from her article) is that
there are very real consequences of sexism in our society which we may
neglect to address in favour of safer topics because to rectify the
ways in which women suffer is to demand changes from society and from
men which will be opposed.

Let me start with the issue of hiring.  Let me lay out my argument clearly:

	i> men are disproportionately represented in some professions,

	ii> there are at least some women who are qualified as well as
           some men who currently hold some of these positions,

	iii> the consequence of calling for justice in hiring here is that

	iv> some of those men will lose their jobs.

And this is a direct threat to them. It is not surprising that men are
threatened by the prospect of women being hired fairly on their
merits.  It is not surprising that there is pressure on women not to
rock the boat.

And since society has produced women who feel that their men should
support them, and men who feel they have to support a woman to earn a
relationship with her, this threat affects more than just financial
success.

What I took from Ms. Barry's article was a call to academic feminists
to not give in to that pressure.  I heard a call for academic
feminists to also study the problems that directly influence the
quality of women's lives.

I agree with Russell that there are some feminists who would throw out
the infant science with the bathwater of patriarchy.  As a scientist
myself, I disagree with their views, although I do think that there
are other ways to look at things which are also valid.  (For example,
the study of ethics is outside of science.)

Chris.

-- 
Chris Hitchcock, Dept. of Psychology     chris@psych.toronto.edu
University of Toronto                  
Toronto, Ontario          UseNet:  I only read it for the  
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