Book: Professing Feminism, Daphne Patai & Noretta Koertge

[Mykeru]

http://books.google.com/books?id=Qz8pAA ... jaCXQTYMpc

Feminists have often called Women's Studies the 'academic arm of the women's movement.' But Daphne Patai and Noretta Koertge charge that the attempt to make Women's Studies serve a political agenda has led to deeply problematic results: dubious scholarship, pedagogical practices that resemble indoctrination more than education, and the alienation of countless potential supporters. In this new and expanded edition of their controversial 1994 book, the authors update their analysis of what's gone wrong with Women's Studies programs. Original chapters feature interviews with professors, students, and staffers who invested much time and effort in Women's Studies, and new chapters look primarily at documents recently generated from within Women's Studies itself. Through critiques of actual program mission statements, course descriptions, newsletters, and e-mail lists devoted to feminist pedagogy and Women's Studies, and, not least, the writings of well-known feminist scholars, Patai and Koertge provide a detailed and devastating examination of the routine practices found in feminist teaching and research.

Just started reading Professing Feminism, Kindle Edition. When I did my "now reading" Tweet, Skep Tickle tweeted that she's just started reading it as well.

So, it might be fun and informative to use this thread to post running observations, comments and questions

[Stretchycheese]

I read this book earlier this year and it's very good. It does quite a good job in explaining the mindset within Women's Studies programs, and by extension, the FTB/Skepchick/A+ crowd (their behaviour, rhetoric and dogmas are nearly identical).

I'd be happy to repost a few comments I made earlier, regarding the book.

[Stretchycheese]

My earlier posts:

I finally got Professing Feminism: Education and Indoctrination in Women's Studies by Patai and Koertge through an interlibrary loan.

It's quite a good read so far and I highly recommend it. The dogmas and behaviours we're seeing from FTB are often eerily similar to what's been happening in Women Studies programs. Ideological policing, political correctness conformity, maliciously smearing dissenters, shutting down of free inquiry, seeking power by contantly trying to appear the victim, appeals to outrage and emotion rather than logic and reason, assuming the worst possible intentions from those who disagree, and other things.

Throughout the book, just replace "Women's Studies program" with "FTB/Skepchick/A+ (FSA+) crowd" and you find an uncanny resemblance. If you want to a better understanding of their mindset, the book explains it quite well. I'd be curious to know how many people from the FSA+ crowd were enrolled in Women's Studies courses to see how much indoctrination has took place. Unfortunately, they've had much success in passing along that indoctrination to a good portion of the skeptics' community to gain converts. However, free inquiry and dogmatic ideological feminism don't sit well together, and therefore they've been unsuccessful at gaining a dominant position.

From a post about how the Benson, Hensley and others attack women who dissent with their views and use terms like "sister punisher" or "chill girl":

Interesting, it's like right out of Patai and Koertge's book "Professing Feminism" regarding radfem strategies against women who disagree with them: (p. 46)

"...what we see in Women's Studies is an intellectual and personal preoccupation with with the tasks once assigned in Victorian women: to keep the language pure, to act as guardians of morality (feminist morality, now), and to spread tales about those who do not measure up to the prevailing norms (whether it be questions of etiquette or political correctness). From this point of view, Women's Studies as theory reflects the traditional location of women in domestic arrangements, while Women's Studies as practice derives from the sort of tribal/consensus/shaming strategies that work best in family-sized groups."

[Mykeru]

Well, I'm just about to crack it over lunch (after the gym) and it looks like a good follow up (I know that's the wrong term for something that stands on its own) to Who Stole Feminism as I get the sense that it's more "fly on the wall" and less about ideological complaints and more about how academic feminism cashes in as a culture of indoctrination into a totalizing system.

Really, mostly I want to know how some women can go from zero to "misogynist!" in 5 seconds flat without being aware it's just a thought-stopping tactic.

[Stretchycheese]

A few more comments and quotes:

It's almost like some cultish religion, isn't it? I mentioned this quote from Patai and Koertge's excellent book Professing Feminism in another thread, but it bears repeating here:

Page 78:

"Any undertaking involving the wholesale substitution of group norms for individual experiences, feelings, and ideas ought to be suspect. But doctrinaire feminism is particularly worrisome because it blocks the individual's ability to evaluate fairly and reasonably the causes of an remedies for her own personal unhappiness or lack of fulfillment. There are many barriers to a satisfactory life - some surmountable, others not. But the one thing all of can aspire to is self-knowledge, along with some understanding of the constraints placed on us by our situation and of reasonable, along with some understanding of the constraints placed on us by our situation and of reasonable prospects for overcoming them. Feminist indoctrination inhibits women's ability to reach for this objective.
Feminism begins with the promise of liberating women from the distortions of gender under patriarchy. Unfortunately, however, contemporary feminism also fits women with blinders that keep them from seeing the varied possibilities present in their individual lives."

What a load of awesomeness, seeing the Horde unravel like this, Lord of the Flies style.

It's all fun and games conducting ideological dogpiling purges and witch hunts against dissenters and heretics, until one day they declare you the heretic and they come after you!

They continue to show all the signs of a religious sect with increasing signs of orthodoxy.

Again, from Patai and Koertge's "Professing Feminism", from the chapter on Cults, Communes and Clicks (p. 187):

"In the later phases of a movement, therefore, declarations of faith tend to be much less inclusive than they had been during the movement's earlier years. Those who do not agree to them quit, or they are expelled or at least silenced. Means of identifying and separating deviants are implemented so that discipline can be enforced. Deviance itself is demarcated by defining heterodoxy as well as orthodoxy. Proselytizing usually wanes at this stage, as energies are absorbed in the effort to unify and purify the movement internally and as intellectual homogeneity comes to matter more than diversity of ideas and the free discussion of them."

Julian and EllenBeth's departure are the result of "purification". Freedom From Thought Blogs, indeed.

[Mykeru]

I'm going to post some notes on the first chapters of Part 1: Cautionary Tales from the Strange World of Women's Studies, but at the moment I'm enamored of the fact I can link my Kindle to Twitter:

It's not just that I'm easily amused but I think it will be boring as all fuck interesting to live-tweet particularly salient and succulent passages.

[Skep tickle]

Ooh, that's a nice feature.

I got a few pages into chapter 2 today. Pleased that though the focus is on academic Women's Studies, the observations of the authors and their interviewees (in the prologue & chapter 1, anyway) seem broadly applicable to "3rd wave" feminism (though the authors haven't yet, as far as I've noticed, used that term yet).

[Stretchycheese]

Back in May, I posted this comment in Ron Lindsay's thread:

A really good book that I think provides a lot of context behind this schism is “Professing Feminism: Education and Indoctrination in Women’s Studies” by Daphne Patai and Noretta Koertge. I believe Patai was part of a speaker series for CFI in the past. I highly recommend the book.

Patai/Koertge’s book essentially documents the ideological dogmatism, anti-rationalism, and questionable pedagogy that pervades much of Women’s Studies academic programs. The kind of dogma, rhetoric, and behaviour they document from WS programs is very similar if not the same as what we’re seeing from the FTB/Skepchick/A+ crowd (this isn’t surprising, given that the former have had significant influence on the latter). This includes ideological policing, treatment of pet social theories as indisputable fact, a destructive callout/witch-hunt culture, labeling outside criticism as “intellectual harassment”, vilification of dissent, character assassination of dissenters, use of postmodernist rhetoric, infantalization of women, the use of identity politics dogmas to justify stifling dissent/debate, and lots of other things.

[Matt Cavanaugh]

Oh yeah! This book was recommended to me a while back, and I'd read some excerpts online. I'll pick up a copy, too.

[16bitheretic]

Even though I still haven't cracked open my copy of the new Lawrence Krauss book yet, I'll give this one a read.

[Skep tickle]

I'm almost through chapter 3 (piecing together time for reading here & there). It's all there: identity politics, "ideological policing", "oppression sweepstakes" (aka "oppression Olympics"), etc.

[Skep tickle]

stretchycheese, I'd noticed your comments on the book previously, now finding it very useful to read.

Now well into chapter 7. Though the book examines Women's Studies in colleges/universities, it remains amazingly relevant to what we've seen from feminists & in the A+ forum. For example, personal experiences and group identity are emphasized and must not be questioned, nor must this construct be questioned.

Quotes below are from chapter 7, 2nd edition:

p 170:

First, in feminist pedagogy, students are expected to structure any and all inquiry in terms of overarching concepts such as gender, race, and class.... Second, and more important, students are encouraged not only to begin their investigations with personal reflections, but also to continue throughout the stages of their education to make tight connections between what they hear or read and their own day-to-day lives. Third, they are expected, and sometimes required, to voice their personal reactions to their classmates, as well as to listen receptively to the personal comments of others...

p 176 in 2nd edition (about a national evaluation of Women's Studies published in 1992, and having just said that Women's Studies programs claim they are developing critical thinking skills, and having just commented on the lack of introspection of "religious fanatics" into their own views):

The skill of Women's Studies students at repudiating all traditional knowledge as socially constructed and their ingenuity in ferreting out the hand of the devil patriarchy in every sin and crime of society are not an exhibition of critical thinking at a very significant level. The fact that students have abandoned received views (and have some good reason for doing so) is no indication that they have not, at the same time, uncritically locked themselves into another framework, which is at least as deeply flawed. What needs to be investigated is whether students are at all receptive to reasoned arguments against the basic tenets of their own framework or, to the contrary, have learned to deploy various criticism-deflecting strategies in an effort to keep their acquired ideas inviolate.

[Stretchycheese]

Mykeru, Skep tickle, or anyone else who's reading the book. What do you think are the strongest similarities between Patai/Koertge's descriptions of Women's Studies (WS) programs and the culture, rhetoric, or dogma of the FTB/Skepchick crowd? What are some good examples?

For me "ideological policing" stands out the most. A good example was Ellen Beth Wachs treatment at the hands of the PZombies (the "Horde" at Pharyngula). Patai/Koertge describe a culture in WS as people who are "ready to pounce" and smear anyone within WS who expresses dissent or a more nuanced perspective that differs from the ideological party line. Similarly Ellen Beth received such treatment for having a dissenting view regarding the Adria Richards fiasco.

[Matt Cavanaugh]

The thought policing was the most prevalent -- and disturbing -- aspect of the rad fems I encountered in political discussions in the past. (All SJWs seem prone to it.) They flat-out refused to permit anyone to dispute the existence of Teh Patriarchy, Rape Culture, or Privilege. Denial of the thing was further proof of the thing. Certain words were also declared verboten (with the typical double-standard found at FtB.)


The "Party Line" tyranny is pervasive, as well. Last Fall, I supported Cherokees Demand Truth From Elizabeth Warren, who were critical of the then US Senate candidate for her false claims of Cherokee identity. Of the four women who founded the group, three were registered Democrats, the fourth a liberal independent. Yet they received copious invective for "breaking ranks." Comments included, "The Democratic Party has always been good to Indians -- how can you betray us like this?" & "You're just a bunch of hate-filled tea-baggers!"

Regardless of how y'all personally feel about Warren, everyone has the right to form their own opinion about each separate subject, a la carte, and to have that opinion challenged on the merits. What the rad fems and SJWs practice is nothing less than fascism.

[goaty]

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