Feminism and a lack of objectivity in academic fields

ProgressiveDudebro · 2023-01-23T12:39:50+00:00

Part of the problem is that the feminist movement within the academic world has constructed entire disciplines they can gatekeep so it can create the impression of a monopoly on expertise vis a vis gender, sexuality and issues relating to them.

If you write egalitarian and/or pro-male stuff in an undergrad assignment you'll be failed. If you propose a critique of feminism for a master's thesis you'll be told to do something else. If you want to do a PhD criticising core feminist concepts you won't find a supervisor. If you submit articles or books advocating for men's issues you'll be rejected by peer reviewers and editors.

This makes it very easy for badly evidenced, poorly constructed theories (which most feminist theory is when you unpack it - most iconic feminist texts don't even read like academic books) to be laundered as authoritative takes on gender that other disciplines should learn from, and which feminist activists in other disciplines can use to back up their insertion of ideas into other disciplines.

Tedfordshire · 2023-01-23T11:53:42+00:00

This stuff is pervasive outside of STEM fields. I'm doing a masters in Chemistry so I avoid most of it (it's hard to squeeze feminist talking points into a discussion about statistical thermodynamics), but I still get bombarded by "encouraging women in STEM" emails. That's despite well over half of my cohort already being female.

I know lots of people that do humanities degrees and honestly it seems like they're just gender studies in disguise. I know people in Philosophy, in Sociology, in Psychology, and they all have whole modules focused on feminist propaganda presented as if it's factual.

Your_Agenda_Sucks · 2023-01-23T18:21:55+00:00

Feminism is an industry. The product is grievance and the collective wage is the ability to gatekeep over higher education in an effort to promote female supremacy.

If I showed that sentence to my 20-year old self I'd have laughed, but today it seems like a good description that explains why feminism is promoted: it's the propaganda that justifies the existence of the jobs of many feminist ideologues in academia.

Feminists do not want to solve problems. They want to have the appearance that they are interested in solving problems because no young person wants anything more than social media clout.

Millennials are now the professors at your schools, and they were raised on social media. They do not understand that solving actual problems is objectively better than complaining about imaginary problems. You can't continue to make Instagram/Twitter/Reddit posts about problems that no longer exist.

This is why feminists are continuing to pretend that women are at some kind of disadvantage, it allows them to continue to complain, which is all they really want to do.

Women already won all the rights they are entitled to. If they believe they deserve more, or have legitimate legal complaints about their existing rights, they need to engage with the legal system to solve those problems in an objective, analytical manner, and not run Twitter witch-hunts and state-sanctified brainwashing programs disguised as humanities degrees.

zaph239 · 2023-01-23T22:03:15+00:00

Feminism in academia represents the worse of the post modern movement. In which lived experience trumps evidence and all narratives are equally valid. They have moved out of Gender Studies, a laughable subject that has appalling academic standards, to poison the rest of academia.

Though fortunately they have failed when it comes to the hard sciences. Feminists really hate the sciences because most scientific discoveries were made by men and science keeps undermining their claims. So they went on the attack and fell on their collective backsides.

I studied physics and feminists attacks on physics were hilarious. Feminists who could barely count to 10 tried to prove that relativity and quantum physics, areas of study far beyond their limited intellects, were sexist. Of course they failed because it is proved impossible for them to attack a subject they didn't comprehend.

Their woo and bulls**t worked in the humanities but fortunately the hard sciences have proved largely immune to their worthless non-sense.

Alataire · 2023-01-23T17:09:15+00:00

I always find it hilarious when I look at all these feminist "sciences", and see that they are filled with mostly women, with a couple of men sprinkled between. Especially among the students. Then those people go to the STEM fields, and tell them they have to work harder at accepting women in their fields, and that they must be hostile and have an anti-women mentality, otherwise they would have had more women working there.

My usual conclusion is that it is all projection: the feminist fields are hostile towards men (this also agrees with my experience talking to them) and they project that hostility on STEM fields, and assume that in the STEM fields they have to be equally sexist, unwelcoming and hostile towards 'the other sex'.

I didn't have any feminist courses myself, we didn't have time for that kind of nonsense, fortunately.

NeonCityNights · 2023-01-24T17:59:12+00:00

Yes, it's basically like this in 100% of universities in Western countries AND in government too.

I know it's crazy to say but feminism is literally the establishment. Want proof? Watch what happens to you and your job if you publicly speak out against it at work, at school, or in government.

SuperSupremeKai · 2023-01-23T11:46:30+00:00

Thankfully I enrolled in a university not infiltrated by the ideology yet (although it was starting to at the time I was there), so I didn't encounter any such examples at the time.

However, I do wonder what exactly does one have to do to entail helping women specifically. Doesn't everything that help humans in general also help women since women are humans? Or are there such things that only help either sex?

NegotiationBetter837 · 2023-01-23T12:54:14+00:00

I am in social studies, so maybe I can talk a little bit about that.

First to note that feminism is the new milking cow of the inteligencia, in the past at some point it was for example psychoanalysis, that should explain the world completely and at beast easy to fix. Second I think you mixed something up here. At least in social studies every goal you set can be argued to be subjective. Because why should we do something against poverty, why should we do something against racism, why should, why should we something against climate change? There needs to be a premise in the first place, the solutions to that problem can be objective as the best solution. And third you don't have to use feminist methods, in most cases constructivism is used. For example I am openly Hegelian in my college and don't even have a problem with that. With that I can argue with objective truth, something constructivists deny exciting and there are still debates.

Moist-Quiet-647 · 2023-01-23T19:19:06+00:00

The worst problem isn't academic feminism's lack of objectivity, it is their embrace of subjectivity. Most feminists do actually think objectivity is a bad thing because "everything is political, being neutral is like siding with the oppressor", etc...

I suppose it's too late to hope for a non-politicized academia, but we can at least make academics more transparent about their own political and philosophical values, so we know how they reason. Fact-value distinction is THE most important part of intellectual honesty.

Scientists who work for pharmaceutical companies or other industries have to declare a conflict of interest. The notion of "conflict of interest" should be extended to politics.

SentientReality · 2023-01-23T12:20:58+00:00

I think part of it is that people aren't very creative or original and people like to follow the herd. So, when the herd is all saying "DEI" or "BIPOC" or "communities" or whatever, you're going to hear those talking points everywhere.

However, I'm not saying that stuff is bad, or that people promoting it have inappropriate reasons. I mean, it's good if something can especially help disadvantaged women. But people get kind of blindly overzealous. I think it just shows up because it's in vogue, it's trending, and people are trying to go with the flow. The same way people have been doing since gradeschool.

sofi-ribe · 2023-01-23T19:53:44+00:00

Well. I agree and I disagree with you. I minored in Geography, but in Brazil. From what you describe it seems each country takes quite different Academic approaches to the science.

(Off-topic, just out of curiosity - did you read Milton Santos at any time during your degree?)

I agree that a lot of what's written in Academic circles regarding Feminism often implies too much of a value judgement. I think it can come with the territory when you're talking about sciences like sociology, philosophy, geography, history and so on and so forth. The scientific method you use to analyze society can drastically change your perception of it. Just as in all subjects, the hegemonic ideology manifests itself in Feminism too. And Liberal Feminism is absolutely hegemonic in Academia and in Media. And it's hegemonic because it's not really disruptive or critical of the hegemonic ideology, but rather complimentary to it, and also very easily co-opted by the market to generate profit, under a guise of rebelliousness. Liberal Feminists have been screwing things up for all of us since the women's suffrage movement, imo. I personally don't subscribe to it, though they did get some of their speculation and metaphysical analysis right. But it's like the saying - even a broken clock is correct twice a day.

I disagree that there's no place for a statement such as "it is important to include government institutions to focus on gender equality" in a scientific paper. If that statement is said in context that proves that, for example, in societies with more gender equality, the quality of life, happiness and the economy of that society are improved, it's not really a value judgement. It would then be an objective statement. And a valuable one.

I do take issue with the notion that you seem to imply, that Feminism in Academia is somewhat of a pseudo-science. If that's true, then you'd have to say the same about all philosophers who used such speculative and metaphysical analysis, that contributed a lot to Humanities.

And reading the comments, I also take issue with your notion that science can be, in anyway, un-ideological and "neutral". I tend to find that kind of rhetoric just as speculative and metaphysical as the Feminists you criticize. It's simply not objectively true. The history and the conjecture of science are and have been, more often than not, a reproduction of the ideology of the ruling class. Because for a very long time, "doing" science was a privilege of the ruling classes. This centrism is very much aligned with the hegemonic ideology. I'm not a fan of this technocratic rhetoric, personally. I think it's depoliticizing. Most science in Academia today, at least where I'm from, is produced by the working class. imo, we should be using that to divulge our ideology, the ideology of the proletariat. Not "their" ideology, if you know what I mean.

hshsgdve · 2023-01-23T13:58:38+00:00

I spent a lot of time in academia. I studied a field where part of it was hard science and sometimes soft science.

Your question plagued me for years, and I spend a lot of time trying to figure it out. Here’s my analysis.

Feminism in academia pursues power because its propagators feel powerless in the world outside of Universities. So, who are these people and why do they want power? Get ready because this is controversial.

Women who don’t want or never achieved a happy heterosexual relationship with a strong upstanding husband. There are lots of happy lesbians, but I’m not talking about them. I’m talking about the resentful straight women that never had the white picket fence. They want to be mothers to the world, and get frustrated that people in their twenties don’t want to be mothered, so they turn them into victims in need of “safe spaces”; close enough.
Students who feel powerless because they’re young and haven’t made an identity yet. Most of these grow out of it when they get a grad position in the “real” world. These are just young adults trying to fit in.
Weak men who often have oedipus complexes. The male professors, yikes. They need a mommy. They’re basically just the same type of kid in high school who still stereotypes “jocks” as dumb because they can’t handle the idea that women don’t want them. Instead of developing themselves, maybe hitting the gym, they continue their resentment.

A lot of this “woke” anti-science is based on a sad attempt at establishing power. You might notice that a lot of this is done under the guise of hyper-compassion. It’s the maternal instinct taken to the extreme, and all those in need of mothering, cling to it.

It’s also about resentment. A lot of the professors resent the fact that they feel so much smarter than their business orientated peers, but make half the money, if that.

If you really want to not be a victim to it, you need to be hyper masculine, quiet and stoic. The feminists will leave you alone because you’re not child-like and they can’t control you. Do your work, do it well, and be quietly confident.

To clarify, I’ve had great professors, men and women alike. This is just a summary of the types that are destroying universities because they’re too narcissistic to address their pathologies.

yehboyjj · 2023-01-23T19:57:26+00:00

It’s a lot of hate for feminism here. Tbh in my humanities degree I noticed much less feminism than in my econ studies. I imagine they might be overcompensating a little. I think feminist fervour will kind-of die down as it there is a growing number of famous female scientists. Kind of like how no one shows off their foreign friends anymore since having friends from abroad has become fairly common.

Chance_Marionberry_6 · 2023-01-23T19:39:05+00:00

I would like to hear why « ecofeminism » is unscientific ?

I personally don’t agree the sentence « It seems to me like feminism has given itself perceived scientific validity by nesting itself in academia like this, almost like a parasite, in between real scientific knowledge. ».

I am curious why you think so? In my opinion, ecofeminism is scientific ( based on scientific method) i.e. They try to guide their feminist based on scientific consesus on the topic of climate change.

LeftWingMaleAdvocates-ModTeam · 2023-01-23T14:24:08+00:00

[permanently deleted]

Digger_is_taken · 2023-01-27T21:15:29+00:00

OK, so what do we do about it?

Yashendwirh · 2023-01-28T10:51:15+00:00

I know this is a diatribe and maybe I'll get slammed but here it goes anyways.

I'm more critical that academia is now the new company town, the only difference is instead of a soot covered beard on the pamphlet, it's 3 shades of lipstick too bright for her hematocrit. The gendered lingo is the logical manifestation of academia's target demo, women, to plug them into the dominant hegemony. Women are the replacement batteries of the men of the nuclear age. What makes you think you'd be happier using different language getting to the same conclusion---broke/alienated/exploited? The flowery "this is for the women" "Women will benefit" blah blah blah, isn't novel, it was also said back in the nuclear era to motivate men to plug in, march and/or buy the house and/or the barons auditory seats and plane tickets, I was there, only at that point you were flanked by two white men instead of two white women.
___________

Importantly I am not saying college is meritless, friends/experiences aside, I don't want to go to a doctor without the some sort of legitimate backing, nor am I saying men don't suffer the short end of the stick when it comes to college, what I am saying is that the costs have gone parabolic compared to value and supply, which is nothing and free---no amount of gender fenagling will alleviate this level of exploitation inextricably linked to societal participation. You were all told to borrow against your future with the promise you'd be able to afford the future and you were lied to summarily. The cost of learning should never be more than the cost of doing, especially for a geographer.

We need doctors and lawyers and geographers, but the only thing stopping at LEAST citizen lawyers and geographers from practicing and studying and publishing is academia's stranglehold on demarcations of legitimacy and plenty of dummies come out of college that have malpractice insurance to cover for them. We can't even say college provides rigorous competency when so many classes especially in STEM are graded on a curve anyways or half of us would be dropouts because it hurts like hell to spend thousands repeating a course. I don't have the answers tbh. Free college may be a start, but we already have that in our pockets, I just finished a zoom meeting scooping stenosis out of a corpse and its free on yt right now.

We haven't yet found a way to bypass degrees as a signifier for legitimacy, but for sure executives and hiring managers and HR are not fooled by our thesis papers or our minors except as an icebreaker, nor are they convinced of our competency, hence the internships and learning residencies even after BCEs, so when more than half of the classes that are available and at least as many that are "necessary" credits for a degree are merely titles and all the information was free anyways, you should all sue for breach of contract.

This is also combined with the inability to access startup funds to establish your own practice (or other business types) without establishment vampires latching onto your carotid and tattooing a 30 year ledger onto your chest, driving most graduates to not even attempt independence or to take their skills back to their hometowns to prevent braindrain and ghost towns, but to search for literally any firm/team/startup/sharktank that will take them as soon as possible, perpetuating the cycle of intensifying atomization and alienation.

All this is to say college is not and never was somewhere you go to unplug or subvert the dominant hegemony especially not when girl bosses are now holding the whip of perpetuity, it's where you pay to participate in it, with ･ﾟ: * ･ﾟ:\*accreditation.･ﾟ: * ･ﾟ:\*
____________

The academia party bus is teaching women to want "careers"-- more precisely, to want to draw more of their identity from their careers. This did not make men happy in the nuclear era, it will not make women happy now, but it is by design for peak extraction. Before you seize on this as a biological flaw in women's character, let me remind you that they want work to validate them because their family and relationships have failed them in this regard, because the system already atomized them and alienated them from any notions of interdependency, hence this sub. Women now, like the men of the nuclear yesteryear, are being told that the only time they can be happy and be themselves is when they are at work or plugged in, and to resent anything and anyone who might make them pause.

Which means men are effectively chopped liver, more now than when they were literally canon fodder. The purposeful exsanguination of men in all spheres is not an accident, neither is it feminism. It is despair.

Title	Feminism and a lack of objectivity in academic fields
Author	Maffioze
Upvotes	155
Comments	53
Date	January 23, 2023 11:17 AM UTC (3 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/comments/10ja40s/feminism_and_a_lack_of_objectivity_in_academic/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/feminism-and-a-lack-of-objectivity-in-academic.1149254 https://theredarchive.com/post/1149254

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