Word: genderism
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...response to Marc Ambinder's "Here Come the Gender Theorists," (Opinion, March 11, 1999), I would like to point out Ambinder's basic misunderstanding of gender theory. Deconstructive gender theory, which includes the writings of Michel Foucault and Judith Butler, but also scholars such as Diana Fuss, Eve Sedgwick and Kaja Silverman to name a few, examines the social meanings attached to categories of masculinity and femininity. It does not deny that anatomical sex determines whether one is male or female but suggests that the value placed on these categories is culturally determined. In the first page of Bodies That...
...Gender is linked to both biology and culture, and, whatever the exact relationship is, it is not a "natural" or inherent property of individuals. In demanding that women's studies concentrators take "a half-course in basic human physiology," Ambinder implies that biology is truth--that there are genes and enzymes that make people the way they...
...However, such arguments do not explain why we value masculinity but not femininity; heterosexuality, but not homosexuality. In a society in which Ambinder considers women, gay men and lesbians as "oppressed peoples," gender theory demonstrates that such "oppression" has a social, rather than a fixed, biological basis...
...Harvard without Radcliffe" would not have such an exemption, and Lewis stresses that the College's non-discrimination statement forbids gender distinctions in most programs, especially academic ones...
...Radcliffe's nondiscrimination statement--which notes that Radcliffe makes personnel decisions "on the basis of an individual's qualifications to share in the College's educational objectives and contribute to its institutional needs"--mentions neither sex nor gender explicitly. The statement seems to allow Radcliffe to steer politely away from including men in all its programs--a policy that has remained unchanged since its founding...