But it’s lucrative n prestigious
Gender studies has become a lucrative and prestigious topic at the world’s leading institutions and universities have moved to lure its scholars, not least because of the insights they cast right across teaching and research.
What kind of insights? Into how gendered conventions keep women subordinated? Or into how much fun it is for men to say they are women and join their fellow women in sports and women-only prizes?
St Andrews is to part company with Alison Duncan Kerr, an American philosopher who is director of its Institute for Gender Studies (StAIGS).
People have signed a petition to keep her, the university has said calm down.
Kerr’s redundancy has had resonance, sparking a campaign called StandwithAlison which has attracted specific support from some of the biggest names in gender studies.
Which is like saying some of the biggest names in thumbtack marketing.
Professor Kirstein Rummery of the University of Stirling added: “At a time when gender studies and interdisciplinary feminist scholarship are badly needed, growing in popularity and under epistemic attack, this seems a questionable decision from a prestigious institution that should be leading the way.”
But is gender studies adjacent to and allied with feminist scholarship? Or is it their opposite and enemy?
Supporters of Kerr – including students and colleagues – say she is the guiding light behind the institute and its MLitt masters degree. They say that two men who will now teach the course, while experts in their own field, do not have a background in the subject.
There are fears that stuffy conservatism will mean gender studies – which cross women’s, men’s and queer studies – might end up staying in name only.
They prefer their conservatism to be unstuffy.
They certainly make me cross, anyway.
One problem with education as commodity is the tendency to promote fields of study as popular; that makes them worthwhile in a commodity-driven format. Truth is out of style. Few seem to understand Why Truth Matters. In this case, it matters very much to marginalized groups that are being colonized by their oppressors and being taken over by those who wish them nothing but ill.
Apparently there’s some karma involved here.
So I guess in a way this is a triumph for her, as it tracks with her thesis that “there’s no single such thing as biological sex,” and allows her to be part of the “implementation challenge.”
I don’t get it. The fact that she’s getting fired tracks with her thesis that there’s no single such thing as biological sex?
@GW;
She’s a woman in what used to be “Women’s Studies” being replaced by two men. Given that she’s spent her career arguing that the concept of “sex” is defective, I’m not sure she can object to being part of the consequences.
Well at least thumbtacks actually exist. Gender? It depends. Feminists studying gender stereotypesis going to be like the study of a socioeconomic system and its consequences. Genderists studying gender identity as anything more than a ten dollar word for “personality” is going to be more like studying the migratory patterns of unicorns, perpetual motion machine care and maintenance, or, my favourite, N-rays. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N_ray#:~:text=N%20rays%20(or%20N%2Drays,subsequently%20found%20to%20be%20illusory. )
Would “failure to be convinced of the existence of the subject under study” count as “epistemic attack?” Count me in.
ockquote>They say that two men who will now teach the course, while experts in their own field, do not have a background in the subject.
What background is needed? What background do they have? Are they being recruited from the Physics department or the Business school? Are they random strangers dragged in off the street?They must have some relevant qualifications. Can they not get themselves up to speed in the current literature? Is it a question of knowledge or belief? Maybe they’re Queer. Maybe they’re trans. With no additionaldifference to their backgrounds and training, would either of those characteristicsmake them a better fit?
But she can object that she was replaced by men, a member of the persecuting gender. Because while she thinks that sex is not a useful category, presumably gender is a totally objective and useful one.
Of course, those men could then change then gender to women, at which point she’d be stuck.
I have some questions.
Does that translate into five different sexes? What are the other three? What percentage of all humans fit neatly into the two “traditional” ones? I’m assuming that this “mishmash of five overlapping of criteria” means that one might possibly fall into more than one sex, depending on what factors are being examined. Would this be condition of “intersex” or DSD? Does this “mishmash” mean that one can change sex? Haven’t many people with DSD conditions indicated that their status is clearly either male or female, and have they not asked that their condition not be used by trans advocates to support their erasure of women’s sex-based rights? What about AGP males? Are they part of the “mishmash”, or is that just a cover story that lets them bring their paraphilia into the public arena, in which they can use the language and tactics of trans “liberation” to gain access to women’s spaces, in the course of playing out the gratification of their fetish? ? How exactly do you account for that in the process of “conceptual engineering?”
I’m assuming that she assumes she’s going to be one of those “experts” being deferred to.
The real objection would be if she were to be replaced by a white feminist.
If those criteria are dichotomous, and assuming that they are all more or less independent of the others, wouldn’t that imply that there are 2^5 (i.e., 32) sexes?
And if they’re polytomous, we could be talking hundreds, maybe thousands.
Hmmm. Insert something about Leopards, face eating and regret here.
Iiiiiinteresting… it seems they know the difference between epistemic and actual attacks after all.
The five sexes thing? True, across the entire spectrum of life.
1+2. Distinctly female / male*. Covers the majority of species that reproduce sexually.
3+4. Potential to turn male into female / female into male. Certain fishes and other non-human species. Change occurs just once in an indivual animal’s life and is not reversible.
5. Both male and female at once or sequentially. Plants that self-pollinate, and plants that annually develop male characteristic to spread pollen then lose the male characteristics and develop female characteristics to receive pollen from other plants, so avoiding self-pollination.
Using all five to argue for the TWAW/TMAM mantra is dishonest at best.
*Does not include genetic disorders, foetal misdevelopment, birth defects, which are not distinct sexes as part of the normal distribution within a species.
So .life is a spectrum?
Isn’t this range and sequence you outline more like five ways or sequences of embodying only two sexes? (This part is actually a serious question. Not so many of those in the rest of this post…) However they develop or in which order, there are still only two “dishes” on the menu, correct? There is no third gamete.
Gawd, how BORING!
So what you’re saying here is that Pippa Bunce should be choosing just the one wardrobe and stick with that?
That’s disappointing. I’ve thought on a number of occasions that some trans activists should go self-pollinate.
This is where so-called “intersex” or people with DSD’s show up? So not “another” sex, or “both sexes” at all? But trans activism has assured us that “intersex” people totally explain the “spectrum of sex.” “Dishonest at best” is being very charitable.