Читать книгу Feminism: The Ugly Truth - Mike J.D. Buchanan - Страница 20
15| FEMINIST THEORY: BUILDING CASTLES IN THE AIR
ОглавлениеI, on the other hand, have a degree from the University of Life, a diploma from the School of Hard Knocks, and three gold stars from the Kindergarten of Getting the Shit Kicked Out of Me.
Captain Edmund Blackadder (Rowan Atkinson): Blackadder Goes Forth (1989)
Feminist academics have been busy building castles in the air, and they have little option but to work hard to stop us noticing how ludicrous those constructions are, mainly by inventing mind-numbingly long treatises which no normal person with a life would be prepared to read. You and I, dear reader, along with the other long-suffering taxpayers in the developed world, are financing those constructions. Most of the building work is undertaken by the feminists – generally but not invariably women – who design and teach Women’s Studies and Gender Studies courses, about which I shall have more to say. Let me just say at this point something which may not surprise you. Feminist ‘academics’ have minimal intellectual curiosity; they focus on developing and disseminating propaganda for the feminist movement.
In 1978 I was awarded a Bachelor’s degree in Chemistry by one of the three most prestigious universities in the United Kingdom: Oxford, Cambridge, Reading. Exactly which one, need not detain us. I vividly recall the first lecture on the first day of the course, given by one of the four departmental professors. In those balmy far-off days (summers were warmer) professors were usually of advanced years, unlike the twenty-something professors of the modern era. The professor started his talk with something along the following lines:
‘Because you will be studying chemistry, a physical science, one that has a long and noble history, you probably believe that all you will learn over the next three years will be held to be equally valid in 30, 40, even 50 years’ time. This is a delusion commonly held by science undergraduates. Many of the theories I myself learned as an undergraduate have been discarded or refined, and this is how science progresses. I’ve been responsible myself for some of that discarding and refinement, I’m not too modest to say.
Political theory, however, does not progress in this way. This may explain why a depressingly high percentage of you are Lefties. With luck, most of you will in the fullness of time grow out of that dismal philosophy. My sole purpose in telling you this is to recommend that you be wary of believing theories asserted as facts by academics, including scientists, and to assume that anything uttered by a political theorist is the product of a deeply disturbed mind.
What’s the difference between an academic and a village idiot? The academic will calculate the speed at which an elephant needs to flap its ears in order to fly like a bird, and he will – as surely as night follows day – find support for his theory from some of his colleagues. The village idiot, meanwhile, knows elephants have never flown, they don’t now, and he will hazard a wild guess that they never will.’
Feminist theories will reflect the realities of the world we live in, and the realities of human nature, the day we have flocks of elephants soaring high above us. That’s just a personal opinion, however, so on your behalf I thought I’d research what’s currently taught on Women’s Studies and Gender Studies courses at universities in the United Kingdom.
I emailed five (female) leaders of Women’s Studies and Gender Studies departments in the UK, asking for details of course prospectuses and associated reading lists. I mentioned that my book The Glass Ceiling Delusion had recently been published, so I wasn’t trying to hide the perspective I have on feminist matters. Only one academic responded, and that was to refuse to supply the materials, ‘in the light of the probably anti-feminist nature of your next book.’
I then wrote letters to the five women, and still had no response. I emailed them again, invoking the Freedom of Information Act, requiring the materials to be supplied within 28 days. I had two responses. The first was polite, from a lady writing on behalf of Professor Stevi Jackson of York University, who we shall come to shortly.
The second was from Professor Marysia Zalewski, Director of the Centre for Gender Studies in the School of Social Science, University of Aberdeen. We had the following email exchange. Ms Zalewski isn’t one to exchange pleasantries with people like me, clearly. No ‘Best wishes’, no ‘Mr Buchanan’, nothing like that. The following email exchange is shown in chronological order:
From: mikebuchanan@hotmail.co.uk
Sent: Thursday, July 28, 2011, 11:40 AM
Subject: Women’s Studies / Gender Studies
Ms Zalewski, I hope this finds you well. Following the publication of my latest book The Glass Ceiling Delusion, which focused on men and women in the world of work, I am embarking on a wider critique of feminist thinking and campaigning in the modern era. I wish to give the book’s readers a real sense of what is currently taught in Women’s Studies / Gender Studies courses. Would it be possible to mail or email me (before the end of September, i.e. nine weeks off) details of your courses in these areas, and associated reading lists for people undertaking them? Also, could you please inform me of the gender balance among the people undertaking the courses in the last academic year? Thank you.
Best wishes,
Mike Buchanan
<contact details>
[Author’s note: in the absence of a response a month later – to be fair, the good lady might just have been on holiday over the period – I tried again.]
From: mikebuchanan@hotmail.co.uk
Sent: Saturday, August 27, 2011, 4:27 PM
Subject: FW: Women’s Studies / Gender Studies
Dr Zalewski, good afternoon. I emailed you on 28 July (see above) and wrote to you on 11 August (see attached). Having not even received acknowledgement of these items, I am forced to conclude that you are simply unwilling to provide the information requested. I’ve taken legal advice on this matter and am therefore requesting this information through invoking the Freedom of Information Act 2000. I understand that this leaves you a maximum of 28 days so I look forward to the information by Friday 23 September latest. Thank you.
Best wishes,
Mike Buchanan
<contact details>
From: mikebuchanan@hotmail.co.uk
Sent: Saturday, August 27, 2011, 6:36 PM
Subject: FW: Women’s Studies / Gender Studies
Dr Zalewski, would you please be so good as to acknowledge receipt of the email I sent earlier today (above)? Thanks.
Best wishes,
Mike Buchanan
<contact details>
From: m.zalewski@abdn.ac.uk
Sent: Tuesday, August 30, 2011 5:29 PM
To: mikebuchanan@hotmail.co.uk
Subject: FW: Women’s Studies / Gender Studies
No information is available as these courses are currently unavailable.
[Author’s note: I then returned to the University website and spotted a course which, it seemed to me, was very much of the type I was enquiring into. So I emailed again.]
From: mikebuchanan@hotmail.co.uk
Sent: 30 August 2011 17:37
To: Zalewski, Marysia
Subject: Re: Women’s Studies / Gender Studies
Thank you. Is the following course being run over 2011/2?
Abdn.ac.uk/prospectus/pgrad/study/taught.php?code=sex_gender_violence
Best wishes,
Mike Buchanan
<contact details>
From: m.zalewski@abdn.ac.uk
Sent: Tuesday, August 30, 2011 5:38 PM
To: mikebuchanan@hotmail.co.uk
Subject: RE: Women’s Studies / Gender Studies
This is not a gender studies course.
From: mikebuchanan@hotmail.co.uk
Sent:
Fw: Women’s Studies / Gender Studies
Thank you, but that wasn’t what I asked. I asked if the course was being run.
Best wishes,
Mike Buchanan
<contact details>
Writing these words in late January 2012, four months after the nine week deadline I originally offered, I have yet to receive a response to that last email, and I have no idea if the requested materials will ever be forthcoming, despite my having invoked the Freedom of Information Act. In case the reason for the non-supply of information was my failure to satisfy some obscure protocol that a citizen would struggle to discover, I think it not unreasonable that Professor Zalewski might have informed me of the fact.
The leader of another Gender Studies course passed my request on to the office responsible for handling such matters. The lady in charge of that office supplied the requested materials but said they were subject to copyright restrictions and I would have to apply for permission to use them, as the academics running the Gender Studies course were concerned I might use them in a ‘misleading’ manner. I would have to present them with the material I sought to duplicate, as well as any commentary concerning it. I wasn’t even permitted to divulge the book titles on the recommended reading lists without prior written permission: copyright was claimed on these lists. But I could, she added generously, state the number of books on those lists. You couldn’t make it up.
Onto the Centre for Women’s Studies at the University of York. On 14 September 2011 I received a letter from Professor Stevi Jackson which started by apologising for the lateness of the response, and continued in a polite and informative manner. I rapidly concluded she’d attended a superior charm school to the one attended by Professor Zalewski.
The letter included the following table showing the headcount for all full and part-time students on Women’s studies courses over the academic years 2005/6 to 2010/11:
| Academic year | Female | Male |
| 2005/6 | 35 | 0 |
| 2006/7 | 30 | 0 |
| 2007/8 | 30 | 0 |
| 2008/9 | 30 | 0 |
| 2009/10 | 40 | 0 |
| 2010/11 | 40 | 0 |
Assuming the courses were completed within single academic years, that works out at 205 females: 0 males. A strong contender to win a coveted Harriet Harman Award for Gender Balance in Further Education.
What of the course prospectuses, which were mostly for MA courses? Taking a random sampling approach, I opened the ‘Handbook for MA Women’s Studies and MA Women’s Studies (Humanities) 2010 – 2011’ at page 22, which is the first page concerning an optional module, ‘Gender and Diasporic Identities (5080006)’. The course description:
‘The module centres on the ways in which diasporic identities in their intersection with gender are constructed in contemporary cultural production, in particular in film, performance, and fiction. It explores the impact of (dis)locations on perceptions of self and other in the context of diaspora as a continual negotiation between past and present, movement and stability, visibility and invisibility, tradition and transformation. It asks about the changing and diverse experiences of diaspora across generations, how diasporic experience shape gendered identities at local levels and in global contexts, and what socio-cultural issues emerge from the cultural construction of diaspora.
Following on from a session on conceptualising diaspora where we shall compare the personal experience of gendered diasporic identities and their theorisations, we shall analyse the ways in which contemporary cultural production engages with the diverse manifestations of diasporic identity to explore issues such as micro-migration, dreams and realities of ‘motherlands’, ‘first-generation’ migrants, ‘lost generations’, reverse migrations, nomadic identities in the global world, fragmenting and integrating identities, women’s roles in global diasporic economies.’
Little to argue with there, I think you’ll agree.
On the positive side I noticed on one of the course reading lists some papers produced by Dr Catherine Hakim, a sociologist formerly working at the London School of Economics (now with the think-tank The Centre for Policy Studies) whose work is mentioned favourably in The Glass Ceiling Delusion. There’s also a session on women who commit violence so maybe – just maybe – such courses (or at least those at the University of York) aren’t quite as woefully imbalanced as I’d anticipated. I should really investigate the matter further but I find that if I spend more than a brief period reading feminist literature I lose the will to live. The absence of male students on the courses suggests I’m not alone.
What is the reality of Women’s Studies and Gender Studies courses beyond what we might deduce from materials such as prospectuses and recommended reading lists? I’m not aware of any books which provide an ‘insider’s guide’ to such courses in the United Kingdom, but there’s a remarkable book which lifts the lid on courses in the United States: Daphne Patai’s and Noretta Koertge’s Professing Feminism: Education and Indoctrination in Women’s Studies (second edition, 2003). It’s an excellent but also disturbing read, partly because it depicts a world of men-hating women determined to denigrate men at every opportunity and to isolate women from men as far as possible.
The world these women dream of creating would be a depressing one for the vast majority of men and women. I came to the regrettable conclusion that I couldn’t do justice to the book without using a substantial number of very lengthy extracts, so I leave you with the suggestion that you read it for yourself. Americans might be well advised to have a stiff drink to hand, to help calm their nerves when they realise the true nature of the programmes their taxes have been funding for many years.
