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svnsettiai'm in a fourth year practicum course for what is now called women, gender, and sexuality studies (when i enrolled, it was called women and gender studies. this was a recent change). the professor of this course is a man, and so is the department head. there are only eight students in this class, so the prof made a whatsapp group chat with all of us in it. i've already complained about this course before [see it here]. so you might remember me blogging about it.
the professor sent a message to us mentioning a different prof who he needs to report to. i asked "is he the head of the wgs department?" and he said yes. so i responded to express my disapproval: why is the department head a man?"
one student responded with a link to the department head's profile on our university's website, and said that they found it very impressive. so i clicked on the link and skimmed his four most recent publications. only one of then centered women... while two of them centered men. the fourth didn't even seem to be about gender at all. i brought this up in the group chat, saying that i was disappointed but not surprised. i said that the women's studies department head should center women in all their publications. then it was just me, up against three other students who were disagreeing with me. and no wonder they were disagreeing with me! they spent the last three or more years being taught about feminism by an institution that thinks it's totally acceptable to have a male wgs department head.
i'm sure you can already guess what their arguments were: that feminism is for all oppressed people, that i'm "hyperfocusing on the sex portion and not including the other lenses", that we should be more inclusive, that it's "women, gender, and sexuality studies" and not just "women's studies." i can't say i'm that surprised, but you'd think that at least one person would agree with me, no? every time i've told someone outside of the wgs department that our department head is a man--i've told my friends, parents, coworkers, therapist--they've reacted with outrage and disgust. as they should! which just goes to show that the men in power in the university have fucked with wgs students' minds so severely that they don't even see feminism as women's liberation anymore.
here's the thing: i'm all for using an intersectional analysis in feminism. but if it's going to be called feminism, it must center women and female people, and analyze the identities that intersect with womanhood/femaleness and are affecting their experience of misogyny/sexism. wgs has completely forsaken class consciousness in favour of what they call intersectional feminism. making broad statements about the ways in which all women and female people are oppressed is frowned upon. i know because i've been frowned at, accused of essentialism, dismissed, argued against, and told i'm not intersectional or inclusive enough. why are we, as self-proclaimed feminists, refusing to acknowledge that all women have one thing in common: that every single one of us is oppressed by men in very similar ways?
anti-racism, anti-classism, and anti-homophobia have completely taken over women's studies, at the expense of feminist analysis. the people who see no problem with this are forgetting something: we have a sexual diversity studies program at our university. we have transnational and diaspora studies. many other universities in our city have indigenous studies, asian studies, black studies programs. these programs also lack a feminist analysis. so why are they seeping into wgs, while remaining unaffected by wgs?
imagine for a moment that you used the "intersectional feminist" arguments in any other context: we should talk about how accessibility benefits abled people too, because everybody is differently abled. we should talk about how socialism benefits rich people too. you know, anti-racism should include white people, because racism harms everyone!
feminism has a barrier around it that's only permeable from the outside. every other anti-oppression ideology has seeped into it, pushing women aside and claiming feminism as their own. but when has feminism ever seeped into some other discipline, and pushed other minorities aside for the sake of a women-centered analysis?
the professor sent a message to us mentioning a different prof who he needs to report to. i asked "is he the head of the wgs department?" and he said yes. so i responded to express my disapproval: why is the department head a man?"
one student responded with a link to the department head's profile on our university's website, and said that they found it very impressive. so i clicked on the link and skimmed his four most recent publications. only one of then centered women... while two of them centered men. the fourth didn't even seem to be about gender at all. i brought this up in the group chat, saying that i was disappointed but not surprised. i said that the women's studies department head should center women in all their publications. then it was just me, up against three other students who were disagreeing with me. and no wonder they were disagreeing with me! they spent the last three or more years being taught about feminism by an institution that thinks it's totally acceptable to have a male wgs department head.
i'm sure you can already guess what their arguments were: that feminism is for all oppressed people, that i'm "hyperfocusing on the sex portion and not including the other lenses", that we should be more inclusive, that it's "women, gender, and sexuality studies" and not just "women's studies." i can't say i'm that surprised, but you'd think that at least one person would agree with me, no? every time i've told someone outside of the wgs department that our department head is a man--i've told my friends, parents, coworkers, therapist--they've reacted with outrage and disgust. as they should! which just goes to show that the men in power in the university have fucked with wgs students' minds so severely that they don't even see feminism as women's liberation anymore.
here's the thing: i'm all for using an intersectional analysis in feminism. but if it's going to be called feminism, it must center women and female people, and analyze the identities that intersect with womanhood/femaleness and are affecting their experience of misogyny/sexism. wgs has completely forsaken class consciousness in favour of what they call intersectional feminism. making broad statements about the ways in which all women and female people are oppressed is frowned upon. i know because i've been frowned at, accused of essentialism, dismissed, argued against, and told i'm not intersectional or inclusive enough. why are we, as self-proclaimed feminists, refusing to acknowledge that all women have one thing in common: that every single one of us is oppressed by men in very similar ways?
anti-racism, anti-classism, and anti-homophobia have completely taken over women's studies, at the expense of feminist analysis. the people who see no problem with this are forgetting something: we have a sexual diversity studies program at our university. we have transnational and diaspora studies. many other universities in our city have indigenous studies, asian studies, black studies programs. these programs also lack a feminist analysis. so why are they seeping into wgs, while remaining unaffected by wgs?
imagine for a moment that you used the "intersectional feminist" arguments in any other context: we should talk about how accessibility benefits abled people too, because everybody is differently abled. we should talk about how socialism benefits rich people too. you know, anti-racism should include white people, because racism harms everyone!
feminism has a barrier around it that's only permeable from the outside. every other anti-oppression ideology has seeped into it, pushing women aside and claiming feminism as their own. but when has feminism ever seeped into some other discipline, and pushed other minorities aside for the sake of a women-centered analysis?