I'm actually not that thrilled
with the direction of feminism on
campus these days.
And I also think this focus on
vulnerability is perversely disempowering
to women.
I'm a feminist, no ifs, ands, or buts.
I would call myself a left-wing feminist,
meaning I'm probably more interested
in issues of say redistribution and
distribution toward women's needs,
for example, subsidized childcare and
that kind of thing.
Issues that have dropped off
I think the face of the earth
on campus these days where the focus
is far more on women's vulnerability.
And the attention to sort of minor slights
has just gotten crazy and out of hand.
I was reading something the other day,
a professor at Berkeley in
the sociology department wrote an article
where he mentioned that in a class
of his he was talking about a midterm,
and nobody had any questions.
So he said something like I'll
take your silence as assent.
And after class a bunch of women
students came up to him and
said the phrase I'll take your
silence as assent was offensive to
them because it was
reminiscent of date rape.
There's a lot of attention to
the issue of sexual assault on campus.
And obviously any amount of sexual
assault is too much sexual assault.
What's happened since 2011 when the
Department of Education expanded Title IX
regulations to encompasses things
like a hostile environment is that
you have more and more people being
brought up on charges on campus over
issues like somebody thinking they're
making the wrong kind of eye contact.
Or a passing remark in class creates
a supposed hostile environment,
and I have to say I think
this has gone too far.
And the focus on vulnerability,
particularly women's vulnerability is not
the direction we want feminism to go in.
I mean, I'm interested in a form
of feminism that would be about,
I guess to use an old fashioned term,
liberation rather than vulnerability.
And women's freedom and
autonomy rather than in protecting women,
which I think is actually weirdly
a return to traditional femininity.
I think one of the problems with
the former feminism that's prevalent on
campus is that women are coming
to see themselves as vulnerable.
So you've got I hear from other
professors, women complaining
in classes about professors
bringing up subjects like rape or
abortion, or other things that
might be upsetting subjects and
asking the professors not to
speak about these things.
So this is not I think the direction
we want feminism to go in.
It's leaving women feeling
like they can't even
deal with the social
realities of life off-campus.
