Why women’s studies needs an extreme makeover
Emma Teitel on the Janice Fiamengo affair
Janice Fiamengo (Josh Dehaas)
Read more from Emma Teitel on Macleans.ca.
Nothing says free speech like pulling the fire alarm. It was a quarter past seven last night when police emptied U of T’s George Ignatieff Theatre. Keynote speaker Dr. Janice Fiamengo, an English professor at the University of Ottawa, rolled her eyes and adjusted her blouse as the crowd poured out of the building and onto the sidewalk to mingle with the small throng of protesters—pretty girls with big placards and little patience. They wanted Dr. Fiamengo to take her message elsewhere. But firemen came and went, and the professor, once a radical feminist, proceeded to do what the University of Toronto Men’s Issues Awareness Society, and the Canadian Association for Equality invited her to do: denounce women’s studies.
The discipline has devolved into an “intellectually incoherent and dishonest” one, she argued, replacing a “callow set of slogans for real thought.” It’s man-hating, anti-Western, and fundamentally illiberal. “It champions a “kind of masculinity that isn’t very masculine at all,” and shuts down freedom of debate, hence the fire alarm.
This message was quite pleasing to the minority in the room—greying baby boomers of the pro-Fiamengo, Men’s rights camp–and exceedingly distressing to the majority—by the looks of it, gender studies majors and people who would, if given the opportunity, personally execute Rob Ford. It looked like a small contingent of CARP wandered, bemused, into a Bon Iver concert.
Appearances aside though, it was a meeting of truly lunatic minds.
Fiamengo opened the lecture with a recording of a song written by a male friend: a satirical folk number about the need for men to rise up and take back their masculinity from gender-bending feminists. “Stand our ground/defend our den/it’s time we learned to be men again.” And then there was this: “You don’t have to sit down to pee.”
From here things got progressively awkward. She referenced the male to female death ratio on the Titanic, and declared that “self sacrifice and heroism are not exclusive to men,” “but they are distinctive to men.” Students scowled behind their wayfarers. She railed against affirmative action, a family court system skewed unjustly to favour mothers over fathers, and the deep vein of anti-Western sentiment running through academic feminism that makes it okay to decry gender inequality in the West, and keep quiet about vaginal mutilation and honour killings in the East.
The women’s studies crowd looked constipated. Fiamengo’s arguments weren’t going down easy, this one—her best—in particular: women’s studies “can’t be about the pursuit of truth” because it has an “ideological base.” Its goal is to push the ideology that women are victims and men are perpetrators. Therefore, any evidence to the contrary, regardless of its veracity, is unwelcome. In other words, ideology censors truth. “If you believe you are righteous,” she said, “you don’t challenge other views.”
Click here for a photo gallery from the lecture.
But you can try. And many did during the question period. When the professor finished her talk on an inspirational note about being relentlessly inquisitive, students and men’s rights activists filled the aisles to lambast and laud her. One man bemoaned the “feminist dictatorship,” another, the legal system that bankrupted him after a divorce. A stout black man in the corner demanded to know what men’s rights groups were doing to help him, as “a racialized person,” exploring different “gender identities.” When a woman complained that the man who spoke before her got more time at the microphone, another woman stood up and yelled in her defence, something to the effect of “That’s because he’s a man!” A young woman with thick black hair in a yellow coat, irked by Dr. Fiamengo’s “heteronormative” answer to her question about lesbian moms, screamed “That is bullshit!” and stormed out of the lecture hall.
Free speech was alive and well at the University of Toronto last night, but in that moment I’d have welcomed its death with open arms.
It was clear that both the professor’s detractors and supporters were, overwhelmingly, nuts. And Dr. Fiamengo herself, was, standing at that podium, a buoy of relative reason in a sea of everything but. “Any movement can attract hysterical detraction and unsavoury allies,” she would tell me over the phone the next morning. “That is the risk one runs.” She’s right. Take this little Facebook diatribe from an active member of A Voice for Men, one of the men’s rights groups who support her.
There has never been a great female composer. Throughout history there has been plenty of privileged woman, who have had access to pianos, and violins, yet somehow we are expected to believe that men have somehow stopped them for being composers? Woman have the big lovely eyes, big tits, but mean [I think he meant “men”] are far more beautiful, they are more beautiful where it counts. In their wonderful creative souls.
Unfortunately, though, the other side is no more intelligent. They just use bigger words.
Almost every pro-women’s studies person who approached the mic last night, spoke another language, a jargon you might misconstrue as scientific–only the words they used weren’t shortcuts meant to simplify or summarize complex concepts, they were used to make simple concepts sound complex: Hegemonic, racialized, problematic, intersectionality. It was pure obfuscation, 1984 with tattoos and septum piercings. Some of the students couldn’t even string together a single lucid sentence. All they had were these meaningless, monolithic words. I felt like I was on a game show, the exercise being how many times can you say patriarchal, phallocentric hegemony in 45 seconds or less. It was frankly, for a feminist, depressing.
Slogans don’t make scholarship and being self-righteous does not make you right.
Going into the talk last night I wasn’t convinced women’s studies needed overhauling. Now I’m positive that it does. Not because I believe fighting misandry is a legitimate humanitarian cause (LOL) or because Dr. Fiamengo’s speech was particularly insightful, but because her detractors—presumably, women’s studies’ finest—were so profoundly, not.
Happy women’s day, everyone.
I took a Women’s Studies course in university, and found it very engaging and insightful. I wasn’t taught to hate men, and it didn’t try to convince me that women are “victims.” It DID teach me to ask questions about gender, the “traditional” roles of men and women, sexuality, etc. I think it would be a terrible idea to remove Women’s Studies.
Many people seem to have a very wrong idea of what feminism actually is, and I wonder how many of the men’s rights activists and baby boomers in the audience have actually taken a Women’s Studies course? Issues like the family court system favouring mothers over fathers are tied to larger things. For instance (and this is a simplified version of this), traditionally men worked and women stayed home with the children. It was assumed that being “feminine” meant being caring, nurturing, and a good mother. To be “masculine” meant to be a good provider, etc. These views haven’t entirely changed, and that could be why courts favour moms to dads. Feminism pushes the idea that both women and men are capable of being great parents (stay-at-home dads, etc.), and challenges these traditional gender roles. As this become more accepted, I think things like courts favouring moms will change.
A nice, reasoned comment.
Re: “It was assumed that being “feminine” meant being caring, nurturing, and a good mother. To be “masculine” meant to be a good provider, etc. These views haven’t entirely changed, and that could be why courts favour moms to dads.”
So why don’t the courts favor men in the workplace? They don’t. They favor women in both the world of work and the world of children. That’s a primary fuel for men’s anger today.
Ideological feminists should be sitting down when they read this commentary, which reveals the need for men’s studies to give balance to women’s studies:
“The Doctrinaire Institute for Women’s Policy Research: A Comprehensive Look at Gender Equality”
http://malemattersusa.wordpress.com/2012/02/16/the-doctrinaire-institute-for-womens-policy-research/
It’s funny that the explanation that you give for the family court system favouring mothers is based upon the gender roles that are put on people; women as nurturers and men as providers. It’s funny because about 50 or 60 years ago, in cases of the separation of a family, children would more often to go the man BECAUSE it was assumed he was in a better position to provide. It wasn’t until the feminist ideologues started pushing their special interests that things seemed to switch to being vastly in women’s favour.
You have been been misinformed by womens studies pseudo history. Family and divorce law is controlled by feminist jurisprudence, a feminist called Caroline introduced the tender years doctrine and the presumption of maternal custody and feminism has been actively obstructing reform to a presumption of shared parenting using negative stereotypes about fathers. This is way father rights is inherently anti feminist and feminism attacks and slanders father rights.
One course is fine … but imagine majoring in that … then you’d get into the weeds of it where the man hating we are victims nonsense gets taught …
lol – well presumably you saw the protest of Dr Warren Farrells talk. And boys are failing in education, we do have a chronic fatherlessness problem, we do not recognise domestic violence against men – and laws like VAWA do come from a place that says men are abusers and women are victims – without exception. In an enviroment where women are both the majority of students and graduates – and where women do earn MORE than men in their 20′s – in this enviroment feminists complain of the wage gap, the glass ceiling, feminists push for gender quotas in both education (STEM subjects) and employment and politics.
I think many are scratching their heads and asking .. what gives ?
“And boys are failing in education, we do have a chronic fatherlessness problem, we do not recognise domestic violence against men – and laws like VAWA do come from a place that says men are abusers and women are victims – without exception. In an enviroment where women are both the majority of students and graduates – and where women do earn MORE than men in their 20′s…”
I will agree with the following: violence against men by women certainly DOES exist and it absolutely isn’t acceptable, and boys must be as encouraged as girls are to go to school.
However, MOST violence towards women IS by men. The fact that violence against men by women exists doesn’t change this FACT (there are countless studies, police stats, etc. to back this up). It has been proven that men are physically assaulting women more than women are physically assaulting men. That’s why people generally talk about domestic violence as if women are the victims (they usually are). It’s important to remember that not all men are like this, however, and that feminism isn’t saying all men are bad or abusers (we know that some are, and there are reasons for this).
Also, have you looked at how many women are actually holding positions in government? Or how many are CEO’s of large companies? There are many more men in these roles, and sexism in politics/business still exists. Look back at some news articles on Hillary Clinton (especially when she was running for the democratic nomination), and you’ll notice the sexism.
I suggest you read some of the writing from men about feminism/father’s rights/sexism on this website: xyonline.com.
“Also, have you looked at how many women are actually holding positions in government? Or how many are CEO’s of large companies? There are many more men in these roles, and sexism in politics/business still exists. ”
That’s called the Apex Fallacy, Jackie. Since you claim to be a writer, you should be familiar with this particular silencing tactic.
So, even if it were true that women are more often the victims of domestic violence and men are most often the aggressors (and by the way, we’ve known that it isn’t true for years from multiple studies showing that domestic violence is symmetrical and largely reciprocal), why is it that people jump to the conclusion that the woman is the victim BECAUSE she is a woman? Why isn’t it violence the same as any violence where the woman happens to be the victim?
Women are the predominant aggressors of domestic violence in cases where children are the victims, but I’m not sure anyone is arguing that the violence occurs BECAUSE the person is a child.
“However, MOST violence towards women IS by men. ”
and most of violence towards children is by mothers. Children don’t abuse their mothers as much as mothers do children. So what’s your point again?
“That’s why people generally talk about domestic violence as if women are the victims (they usually are). ”
They are not, and the main problem is that they get hit back. Where are the PSAs to tell women not to hit men? oh noes, victim blaming!! *runs away*
“(we know that some are, and there are reasons for this). ”
a 1 in 4 women are raped statistic is ‘some’?
“Issues like the family court system favouring mothers over fathers are tied to larger things. For instance (and this is a simplified version of this), traditionally men worked and women stayed home with the children.”
and which would explain why a feminist got default father’s custody changed, back in the 19th century?
“Also, have you looked at how many women are actually holding positions in government? ”
Does the sex matter if they all cater to women? How many men hold positions in a brothel?
“Look back at some news articles on Hillary Clinton (especially when she was running for the democratic nomination), and you’ll notice the sexism. ”
The War on Women is fresher in our minds.
Hi Namae. It’s perfectly fine to disagree with everything I’ve stated, but you provide no evidence to contradict it. Where, for instance, does it show that women AREN’T being abused by men more? There are countless studies and reports that show that they ARE, so I’m curious to know where you found this opposing proof?
To me, the tone of your post is very defensive. I think men need to realize that feminism isn’t attacking them and saying that they are all terrible. It’s saying that this system of patriarchy is hurting both men and women, and causing patterns like violence toward/sexual objectification of women. Feminism is saying that men are capable of self-control (not all raging rapists), and aren’t bad, etc.
The Martin Fiebert bibliography is a list of 286 separate empirical studies and analyses that clearly show that women are just as violent to the their partners as men are. that is close to three hundred different pieces of proof. Do a Google search.
“Does the sex matter if they all cater to women? How many men hold positions in a brothel?”
This is just silly.
I thought that the article was very interesting, but I found the last section to be quite confusing. After laying out a reasonable argument regarding the extreme stances taken at the presentation, the writer appears to link the women attending with the entire field of Women’s Studies. Honestly, I think you are overgeneralizing a bit! Women’s Studies, as a field, has a great diversity of individuals and perspectives. It is a little unfair to attend one presentation and link the reaction of the crowd to every Women’s Department.
With regard to the ‘jargon’ that the writer complains about, words like “…Hegemonic, racialized, problematic, intersectionality” are all academic terms that would make sense to those who have studied the discipline. I’m not well versed in the fields of Biology, Chemistry, etc., and they are full of terms that sound like gobbledegook to me. But I’m sure that they mean something, and are very useful, to the individuals who study those sciences.
It is clear that Women’s Studies, and the humanities/social sciences in general, do not garner the same amount of respect as the ‘hard’ sciences, and this might be one reason why these terms illicit such a negative response. It could also be that we all experience gender to some degree and feel we can claim a certain amount of knowledge about it. But, much like Biology and Chemistry, gender also works in seemingly invisible ways and is just as valid to study academically.
“Women’s Studies, as a field, has a great diversity of individuals and perspectives.”
Yes, all the way from man-hating feminist to fat-ugly-lesbo-butch-man-hating feminist.
Women’s studies is not a field of study aimed at the truth or at increasing knowledge. It is a political project where young minds are brainwashed to become cannon fodder in a cultural war against the west. You would be better off being a heroin addict than a women’s studies grad. I certainly would hire a heroin addict before a women’s studies grad.
And I would sooner hire a heroin addict before you, with the crushing ignorance and lazy, anti-feminist, band-wagon jumping. I’m quite confident the average heroin addict would have more intelligence than to spew empty invective without a trace of argument.
“That’s why people generally talk about domestic violence as if women are the victims (they usually are).”
Considering that most inter-racial crime is black on white, does this mean that when we refer to “inter-racial crime” we can flat out ignore the times whites beat up blacks?
“Or how many are CEO’s of large companies?”
And how does this benefit the average guy who works in a factory? Do I get Super Power Points every time one of “my own” reaches a certain salary?
“It is clear that Women’s Studies, and the humanities/social sciences in general, do not garner the same amount of respect as the ‘hard’ sciences, and this might be one reason why these terms illicit such a negative response.”
There’s a HUGE difference between scientific terminology and feminist jargon. Although to the layman, scientifc terms may seem confusing, to other scientists they help to clarify what’s being described. “That thing that sticks out of the whatchamajigger” isn’t going to help a biologist figure out what’s going on.
Social science jargon does the opposite, it confuses. They’ll write some impenatrable paragraph using zillions of words no person in their right mind would ever learn to say something no more complex than “Society’s views on gender can interact its views on race in such a way that it makes things especially difficult for minority females.”
But if you simply say what you mean without using code, every idiot who listens to you will realize within ten minutes that you’re doctorate is useless; you’re nothing more than an expert on how to view the world through a leftist frame. However, if you use big words that nobody understands and use the suffix “-ative” a lot and we all think you’re brilliant.
So perhaps the reason that certain “sciences” don’t garner as much respect as others is that they don’t deserve it.
Yes, gender should be studied, but I bet there’s more wisdom about gender in the fiction of Jane Austen or Stendahl than in the entire Womyn’s Studies canon.
You’ve sort of made my point for me. I wrote that scientific terms are useful to people within the science community. You are right, it wouldn’t make much sense to say “That thing that sticks out of the watchamajigger”, would it. Scientists are constantly probing deeper into various processes to figure out how things work, and developing new terms to describe these processes
Social scientists are doing the exact same thing. They are constantly exploring the way that the world works, just at a different level. When I learn a new term like “cisgender” (an individual who identifies with the gender that they were assigned at birth), I do not squeal with delight at the prospect of confusing discussions and sounding smart. I don’t think anybody would do that. That is ridiculous. No, it simply allows me to view and discuss a topic in a way that I might not have before, thereby allowing me to have a more complete understanding of gender, and gender relations, as a whole.
It is also a lot easier to use a single term than to write out a long drawn out sentence describing a concept every time I want to use it. I imagine that both social and natural scientists can agree on the usefulness of discipline specific terminology. It simply makes things a lot easier for those involved in those specific areas.
Maybe it is not the job of those within Women’s Studies, or Gender and Sexuality Studies, to stop using confusing language. Maybe those who criticize these departments on such feeble grounds as being ‘too confusing’ should actually learn a little more about topic that they are condemning. If you truly think that the breadth of knowledge developed around gender can be eclipsed by a Jane Austen novel, then you are missing out on some really fantastic scholarship!
The neo-hegemonic functionality of Women’s Studies terminology is self marginalised by its tenuous intersectionality with the culture in general. This is inevitable, given that, in Women’s Studies, the object of study is simultaneously the subject of change. It’s like standing on an ice floe to which you apply a blowtorch.
Can you say that again? Maybe in English this time?
“Not because I believe fighting misandry is a legitimate humanitarian cause (LOL)”
Of course. Whatever overhauls women’s studies may require, contempt for males must never be abandoned.
Best to just declare everyone objectively “nuts.” It spares you having to humanize the Other.
she betrayed her sex, and we will punish her for such insolence! How many women suffer from men? how can she hide truth about evilness of men and boys? i hate her and all these women-hating people!!!!
Are you serious? It’s comments like that that cause division between genders. You cannot generalize like that about any group of people. I know many men and boys that would be incredibly hurt by those statements. They are people like you and me, not animals. This is an attempt to dehumanize a whole group of people based on the actions of a few. These types of comments and behavior lead to horrible outcomes. See: European Jews 1930-1950
“You cannot generalize like that about any group of people.”
I think you mean ‘should not’.
Julie,
How so very, what is the word I am looking for here. I know feminist fascist of you.
Got your brownskirt(tm) on there Julie?
You Julie, betray your own sex not Dr. Fiamengo.
In fact the last 50 yrs of feminism has betrayed your sex by infantilizing women as a sex.
But you go grrrrrl, twit power to the rescue.
Ya wol!
I notice a lack of actual rebuttal to AVfM’s point about the lack of female composers.