Professional Identity of the Feminist Scholar

Currently, I’m reading “Professional Identity Crisis: Race, Class, Gender and Success at Professional Schools” and it has gotten me to think more about our identities  as feminist scholars in training and how our schooling is preparing us for these roles. I do not think we have been re-socialized in terms of clothing and body in the same way that students at professional schools change their clothing and bodies. I however, believe we are being re-socialized by the readings we have been assigned and the discussions we have in class. All of us have admitted to being challenged by the long list of things we must do when conducting our research. I would argue that these challenges are the women’s studies version of forming professional identities. Are there any other traits we should be re-socialized towards obtaining? And is re-socialization necessary for us to become good feminist scholars? 

Us and our Research

Harding and Noeberg explored the bias inherent in any research since the researcher lives in society and has focused their life on completing their research project. This contradicts the academy’s view that all research should be unbiased and the researcher should be a neutral object. Feminist research understands this to the extent that we should be reflexive in our research and include our interactions with the research subject in our research. I believe this is very important as we do not research in a vacuum and our personal impressions or biases are important to the reader as they read our research.

         
 I believe there are many advantages to conducting this kind of research, among them is the insider relationship we can form with our research subject. By sharing part of our life our research subject may be more apt to share with us their life. At the same time, this can backfire if we are studying a subject that has very different beliefs then us. Even then, its human nature to try and convince others of one’s view so our research subject may share their life story even more passionately in an attempt to convert us to their views.

By including our perspective and life in our research, our research is only helped. Why other disciplines do not understand this is beyond me. 

A New Framework for Looking at Gender

Instead of looking at gender issues from the perspective of women I am starting to believe you must also look at gender issues from the perspective of men. Before everyone screams, that is what the academy has always done please hear me out. Instead of exploring privilege from the perspective of the disadvantages of women and what has lead to those disadvantages. We need to look at privilege from the perspective of the advantages of men and why they have those privileges. By doing this, we can show men how their privilege is structural and is unearned. In addition, we can motivate men towards working to end male privilege and maybe more men will become interested in accomplishing this goal. Yes, I understand we cannot lose sight of women because historically women and their issues have been ignored by the academy but at the same time an exploration of privilege from the perspective of the dominant group will help further our understanding and hopefully help us end the structural and other oppression that exists for the subordinate gender group.

Inspired by Karyn Loscocco and her framework for exploring racial privilege from the perspective of the dominant group. 

How To Study Men

I recently came across the webpage’s for the “American Men’s Studies Association” which was founded in 1993 and the “Foundation for Male Studies” which was founded this year. Both organizations explore men and masculinities but have different foundations. The aim of the American Men’s Studies Association is to “to encourage the refinement of the parameters of men’s studies, to generate theory, and to develop methodologies of the study of masculinities from an ethical perspective that eschews oppression in all forms (namely, sexism, racism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, classism, etc.).” while the Foundation for Male Studies focus on “misandry” and “the presence of an unacknowledged underlying theme of misandry in popular culture”.

While I believe both organizations have interesting contributions to make to the field, I have trouble understanding the foundation that the foundation for male studies is trying to stand up on. To me it sounds like they are saying that feminism has achieved all of its goals (in the United States) to the extent that men are now oppressed which we know is not true. I’d personally rather be a member of the American Men’s Studies camp which has its foot more in women’s studies and study men in that fashion.

What do others think about these two organizations, especially the formation of the Foundation for Men’s Studies? 

Difficulty of Men Conducting Feminist Research

In McDowell’s article, “Doing Gender”, she outlined the fears of every graduate student, especially those of us who study outside of the norm. She describes students in the geography department not studying feminist issue due to the perception that studying those issues will not lead to academic advance. I, as a man studying women’s studies, fear the same thing and believe McDowell did a disservice by only addressing women studying feminism in her article. I was practically shocked when she stated in describing qualitative research popular in women’s studies that, “it is often argued that qualitative, small scale, and case study work is ideally suited to women studying women” (406). I realize she is critiquing the assumptions made about female feminist scholars but the entire tone of her article seems to ensure that gender studies become “female ghettos” which she states needs to be addressed (403).  

           

Scott in “Evidence of Experience” reminds us of the difficulty of studying the other. She reminds us that experience affects our research. In other words, my experience as a man will always affect any feminist project I undertake. I need to be careful in my work to ensure that I am not only studying women in terms of their oppression but I also need to look at the privilege of men which my experience will be both helpful and a hindrance.  

           

Miraftab in “Can you Belly Dance”, shows us that the research subject can be an equal partner in our research and we should engage them as such. We need to pay particular attention to the power imbalance inherent in the research relationship and if I am to study women I need to be particularly careful.

           

As a man in the women’s studies field I will have to be careful at all times to ensure I use feminist research methods at all times and do not let my male privilege affect my research. Even though this research will be quite difficult it will be both personally and intellectually rewarding.

Work Cited:

McDowell, L. (1992). Doing gender: feminism, feminists, and research methods in human geography. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers New Series, 17(4), 399-416.

Scott, J. (1991). The evidence of experience. Critical Inquiry, 17(4), 773-797.

Miraftab, F. (2004). Can you belly dance? methodological questions in the era of transnational feminist research. Gender, Place and Culture, 11(4), 595-604.

  

Exploring Five Things Men Must Do

I thank the.strenuous.briefness for taking the time to respond to my open question regarding what feminist men should teach other men about feminism even though I “shouldn’t expect [women] to want or be ready to discuss where [men] fit in or what role [they] should take” I applaud her work because it moves beyond the call for and joy for by feminists for men to join their movement and offers practical facts and warnings for men as they head on that endeavor. She lists five things that men should do which I explore below:

Teach men humility:
This recommendation points to the difficulty that the men will have as he becomes a feminist and points to what I have encounter as a feminist. Yes, feminists are happy when men join their movement but one cannot see this as a congratulatory sign. All people should be feminists and work towards the end of feminism. We must listen to feminists that came before us, reflect on their work, and only then can we add to the feminist discourse.

Teach men that they have unearned privilege:
This recommendation will also be difficult for men to internalize. Yes, racist, gay, female jokes are bad and unfortunately are also a big part of male culture. Male culture needs to change and one’s masculinity should not be questioned if a man rejects a part of male culture. When men question why they should be part of the feminist movement and all the things they claim they will lose illustrate for them what they will gain with the ending of gender binaries and all that they will be able to do when they are not constrained by their masculinity.

Teach men to account for their unearned privilege:
Men need to be careful when teaching/learning about women’s studies as it is impossible to check our male privilege at the door. We need to listen more then we speak. We can’t expect to have women council us through our emotions and we cannot assume we know the oppression of women just because we are also oppressed in some way in our lives. For the most part, we are on this journey only with other men and we need to counsel ourselves and take advice from each other on how to adopt to this feminist world view.

Teach men they are not the first, nor the only:
Yes, there are other male feminists that are out their. We need to not only read and discuss their work but we need to become unified to learn about how the feminist struggle will affect us as men and find concrete ways to incorporate feminism into both our own lives and into masculinity. When we do this we need to make sure men of color are included in this conversation as they have important insights to share.

Teach men to work with us, not for us:
All of humanity is in this together and we need to treat this endeavor as such. We need to listen to the conversation that is already in progress and work towards fulfilling the goals of the conversation. Only after completing this step can we fully be true partners in the feminist movement.

Getting Away from Generalizations under Western Eyes

Mohanty teaches us that we need to be careful when doing research that we not make assumptions about people who do not live in the west. We need to see the world through a global lens and not a western lens. We cannot assume that religious women are not progressive, family oriented women are traditional, illiterate women are ignorant, or domestic women are backwards (Mohanty: 1984, 352). We need to take into account all the complexities and history of a particular group and not let our pre-conceived notions (read western) effect the conclusions of our work.


As an example of this Mohanty briefly looks at the veiled Arab women an example I will further expand upon comparing western ideas of the veiled Arab to reality while comparing this image to the non-veiled western women (Mohanty: 1984, 342). In the western world we see the American women as having a lot of choice. Our western eyes see this woman as having the option of choosing a partner of either gender, choosing whether she wants to cohabitate before marriage, choosing whether is even going to get married and choosing if she will have children. Our western eyes tell us that everything the western woman is allowed to do the Arab women is not allowed to do. Because of this many see the Arab women as being more oppressed and less “happy” then the western women. But by looking at it from another point of view where sexual violence and divorce (50% divorce rate) runs rampant in the western world we see the Arab women as having a more stable life.

Even the above analysis while flipping some beliefs on their head does exactly what Mohanty tells us not to do. She tells us not to generalize (Sexual violence, and divorce exist in the Arab world) and to take into account history and location (different practices in different countries, what exactly does Arab refer to? What exactly does western refer to?) We need to escape from these categories and study specific peoples.

In Mohanty’s attempt to revisit her original work she is able to further revise and refine her thinking (Mohanty: 2002, 500). In this article she challenges us to rethink how women ’s studies teaches students about global women. She suggests that we incorporate global women into all of our courses and not just courses that have a global focus (Mohanty: 2002, 518-523). This will allow future scholars of women’s studies to be global in their thinking and not make mistakes of looking through the world through a western lens of generalizations and assumptions.



Work Cited:

Mohanty, C. (1984). Under western eyes: feminist scholarship and colonial discourse. boundary 2, 12(3), 333-358.

Mohanty, C. (2002). “Under western eyes” revisited: feminist solidarity through anticapitalist struggles. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society , 28(21), 499-535.

Teaching Men About Feminism

I’ve thought a lot about this idea of having men teach other men about feminism and I’d like to pose to you the question of what specifically do you think these feminist men should teach other men about feminism?

Breaking Down Concrete Walls

Interdiciplinarity is a buzzword in women’s studies departments. So much so that in my program we are required to take a course in a discipline new to us (the interdiciplinarity requirement), and we are constantly told that one of the cornerstones of feminist research is interdiciplinarity. Because of this I found Davis critique of interdiciplinarity to be very interesting. In his article he suggests that administrators see interdiciplinarity to be a cost cutting and reorganizing measure and that many scholars use interdiciplinarity as an excuse to teach a class in a discipline that they are interested in but only an amateur of. If this is how interdiciplinarity is seen in the academic community then why does women’s studies hold that interdiciplinarity is so important?

Using Davis’s definition of true interdiciplinarity (which he believes not everyone in the academy subscribes to), “being willing to let go of what you know so well and free fall into what is only beginning to be formulated” I would suggest that this definition is also the definition of what women’s studies has done and continues to do in the academy. Women’s studies imagines a world where we let go of the patriarchal structures and beliefs that the academy (and the world) so strongly subscribes to and discover a true knowledge without patriarchal undertones. Because of this, women’s studies seeks to be revolutionary and forget about the concrete walls that separate disciplines to allow knowledge to be created. I would suggest that women’s studies is one of the “new disciplines” that Davis calls for the creation of and I only wish other departments and university structures as a whole be broken down to allow for more true interdiciplinarity to occur within the academy.

Work Cited:
http://chronicle.com/article/A-Grand-Unified-Theory-of/13328/

Lessons from Today

Today I had the awesome experience of hearing from two founders of the Women’s Studies Program at UAlbany, Joan Schultz and Judith Fetterley. They had a lot to say on a multitude of subjects ranging from how they awakened to feminism to how they stuffed hiring and promotion committees to get feminist professors hired and promoted.

What struck me and the rest of the audience was their opinion on the interchangeable use of the words sex and gender and their assumptions that the words are fundamentally the same. Further they questioned how “sex/gender” can be socially constructed if they are in face based on biology.

As any good 21^st century student of women’s studies knows sex is between the legs and gender is between the ears. This means that while sex is a biological fact, gender is a social construct. Judith Butler further taught us that gender is a performance and that those who do not perform the correct gender are punished by society.

As I tried to do in my previous post, Butler then tried to apply this theory to race and like me found that race and gender are not interchangeable. Race is not fully a performance because it is difficult if not impossible to credibly perform a different race.    

I also learned tonight the difficulty with the terms gender/feminist/queer studies. Gender studies allow the women to become lost. Queer studies allow the lesbian to become lost. Feminist studies allow the lesbian to become lost. As feminists we need to become careful of the terms we use so that we do not leave any group out of the discourse. Furthermore when interviewing subjects we need to keep in mind our position and location of ourselves so we receive the answers we need.  

Finally, tonight I was praised by Joan and Judith as well as my classmates for being a man in the program. I agree that feminist men need to be included in the discourse to allow research to be valid as well as to teach other men to be feminists. Without this the girls feminists educate will just return to the world of patriarchy with no cross-gender partners to help them change the world.         

Falling to Sympathize: Men and the Feminist Struggle

I am a man. Most men take this statement at face value and do not take the time to examine what it truly means and how to be sympathetic to the female experience. They do not explore statements such as, “I am a man and I have privilege” or “I am a man and I am a member of the dominant gender” Men do not think of themselves as gendered the same way Dalton described white people never thinking of themselves as raced (15). Men as a whole do not “get” gender; they do not understand why gender figures so heavily on so many women’s minds because most men do not choose to critically examine their own gender and how their man-ness affects their lives. They do not need to do this because society does not force them to. They do not get married and have limiting societal expectations placed upon them (unless being unable to sleep around is limited). They do not as a whole need to understand the struggle women go through to decide if they are going to give up their career to have a family or to attempt to have it “all”. Many feminists now even ask what would the pioneers of women’s rights do with the gift of opportunity many women have now received (Lee, 100-101)? Would they attempt to do it all or would they give it all up for the privilege of being a mother, and not having someone else raise their kids, or a housewife and not hiring another woman to do housework (and not having to think about exploiting the women under their employee to do these “feminine” tasks)? And how can I as a man be sympathetic to this struggle. Yes, a man could stay home and raise his children or work the second shift at home by doing all of the housework but is that the man women truly want? Do feminists truly want a man who is constantly examining assumptions about his own gender or do they want a more stable man that they have been taught to desire such as, ”A man who is strong, stable, predictable, and powerful” (Schultz, 118). How can men even try to relate to the examination feminists undertake of their own lives? And how can we get all men to try to relate to this? And is it even possible for the world to become progressive enough to allow for the disappearance of gender binaries, for all of us to only be considered as human?    

Work Cited:

Dalton, H. 2008. “Falling to See” Chapter 2 from White Privilege. Worth Publishers.

Lee, M. 1995. “Pushing Away the Plate” Chapter 9 from To be Real. Anchor Books.

Schultz, J. 1995.”Getting off on Feminism” Chapter 10 ibid.   

Creating Real Feminist Space

In the last two posts, I have in some way attacked the dictionary definition of feminism and went against the definition of feminism that many gave at our graduate orientation that feminism is everything and anything. Being someone that likes tidy definitions that definition never sat well with me. This morning while reading the introduction to Rebecca Walker’s anthology, “To be Real: Telling the Truth and Changing the Face of Feminism”, I found myself agreeing with her views. She describes her life before beginning the anthology as being a world where she carefully considered every decision she made, person she met, word she uttered to ensure that it measured up to belief in what was morally and politically right according to her vision of feminism which she thought was defined as “feminist empowerment”. Because of this she found herself being unable to truly be her self. I believe that many so called feminists suffer from this problem of either thinking that by being a feminist they cannot be themselves or think they cannot be a feminist because they are being themselves. When describing our feminist practices we need to shy away from using “either/or” to describe ourselves but instead use “and” and stay true to ourselves. In doing so we will create feminist spaces in which we can be real instead of trying to live in feminist spaces where we cannot be ourselves. 

Pushing the Boundaries of Feminist Research: Reflectivity: The Importance of Qualitative/Quantitative Hybrid Research

Reflectivity- the quality of being reflective is an important part of the feminist literature. Fonow and Cook identify that almost all pieces of feminist research contain some kind of reflective quality in them (2218). Because of this feminist research has been accused of being biased and only reflective of the author’s opinions or experiences. I believe the opposite to be true. All work is in some way reflective of the author even if it is fiction. It is impossible not to let your own opinions drift into your work and by being reflective and telling your audience what your standing is to the issue they can better understand the value in the conclusion you have drawn. This is especially important when one embarks on empirical research. As Presser shows us, something as simple as one's gender can affect your findings and by being able to reflect on her interviews with convicts and ex-convicts she contributed an important finding to the field: that “stories are constructed situationally” (Pressor, 2087).
        

While reading Pressor’s account, I could only find myself agreeing with her belief that stories are constructed situationally and that if someone of a different gender was interviewing the subjects in a different environment and gave different responses to their answers the subjects would tell their story in a different way. This then calls into question empirical research and fields such as women’s studies that rely so heavily on work that is based on empirical research. This is why as feminist researchers we need to also base our findings on quantitative methods. This will help us create convincing arguments that will in turn help our political activism and create social change (Fonow and Cook, 2226).  

  

When doing global research in the developing world it is especially important to use this hybrid model. An example of this is when measuring women’s participation in government we need to look at both the number of women that are in parliament in addition to the quality of their participation and its impact on society (Beetham and Demetriades, 205). If we were to just look at the number of women in parliament (quantity), it would not give us significant information because those women may not be allowed to have their voices heard. On the other hand if we only looked at the quality of their participation, their might be just one women in parliament who makes quality contributions. This quantity/quality model then is used to determine that we are looking at the most accurate picture as possible.   

It is important that we as feminist researchers continue to challenge the traditional methodologies that constrain traditional disciplines. At the same time I believe that we need to expand the definition of feminist research. Feminist research cannot and should not be just defined as research by a woman seeking to end the oppression of women. It should also include men that do research on ending gender binaries in a way that challenges the status quo. When reading the articles that are cited in this post, I was deeply frustrated by their unstated assumptions that feminist research is only done by women (Negotiating Power and Narratives in Research: Implications for Feminist Methodology) or that the only feminism worth studying is to advance the status of women in the world (Feminist Research Methodologies and Development: Overview and Practical Application, and Feminist Methodology: New Applications in the Academy and Public Policy). Feminism needs to open its tent not only to include nontraditional research methods but also to include research that challenges the basic tenets of feminism.       

Work Cited:
Beetham, G, & Demetriades, J. (2007). Feminist research methodologies and development: overview and practical application. Gender and Development, 15(2), 199-216.

Fonow, M, & Cook, J. (2005). Femenist methodology: new applications in the academy and public policy. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 30(4), 2211-2236.

Presser, L. (2005). Negotiating power and narrative in research: implications for feminist methodology. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 30(4), 2211-2236.

My Thoughts on Feminism AKA Why am I Studying Women’s Studies

Today marks the end of the first week of classes in my first year as a student in the Women’s Studies Master’s Program. During the week, I’m sure some of my classmates (and maybe some of my professors) have thought to themselves “what is this man doing in my Women’s Studies class” or “isn’t this my safe space to bash men”. And if not, on Sunday a less progressive women asked me what I was studying in Graduate School and when I answered “Women’s Studies”, she looked at me like I was an alien.

Many think that feminism refers to the movement seeking equal or greater rights and involvement in society for women. I however view feminism as a political project meant to liberate both men and women from the conventions of a binary gender system. In this framework it should not be surprising that a man such as me who feels constrained by the gender roles constructed by society to be interested in this discipline. But alas, society has constructed itself to think of a man studying for a Master’s Degree in Women’s Studies to be deviant and I’m thus looked at like an alien when explaining what they I am studying in Graduate School. Here’s to awkward stares at Doctor’s Offices and Cocktail parties during the next two years after I’m predictably asked what I am studying in Graduate School.