Word: genderism
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Alas, few practitioners of gender studies are equipped to handle the questions they ask. But academic jobs in English are hard to come by these days. And, an entire industry has arisen to promote gender theory. Mimicking the jargon is a painless and politically correct way of building a resume...
...wonder that the most peripatetic spewers of jargon-laiden gender-studies goo have Ph.D.s in literature? Just what makes a literary scholar so qualified to study sex difference in real life...
...answer for the gender theorists has to do with the value they place on the "text." The "text, they believe, is the alpha and omega of existence; it is through the text--be it a bible, a play, a legal code, even a film--that we mediate our lives. Words and language creates our "subjectivity," not the other way around. So to these fashionable theorists, gender is a mere social construct; no mushy meshing of sex membranes influences sex roles...
Harvard's women studies department does indeed introduce its students to a wide range of theories on gender difference. But by de-emphaisizing and wholly dismissing as a patriarchal fiction anything "natural" or "biological," they misplace the proper emphasis. Most scientific research reveals that biology influences gender roles to a rather large degree. It's not a politically correct conclusion, but it's the one that most aligns with the world we know and perceive. If, on the other hand, gender is mostly a social construction, it is hard to find a legal basis for any law that recognizes women...
...sure, Women's Studies at Harvard is not as radical as it could be. I'm thankful that the classically liberal project of gender equity seems still a goal. Still, I believe that a more rigorous, fair and beneficial program to study sex and gender would be structured as follows: require students to take a half-course in basic human philosophy. Then expose them to the anthropological study of sex differences among different cultures and the psychological differences between men and women. Survey the broad swath of literature and art which deal with masculinity, femininity and sexuality. Save the theory...