How meaningful is "women's studies" intellectually?

I remember coming across this article once, and it seemed to sort of reinforce what I had somewhat suspected about the field... that it isn't really as scientifically objective as fields like psychology or biology, and it's too rooted in specific ideologies.

How meaningful from an intellectual perspective is this field?

I find it odd that there is a 'women's studies' and yet no 'men's studies'. Perhaps men just don't like talking about men.

People talk about men all the time. They've dominated culture for so long.

Not sure if serious...

edited 14th Feb '11 5:46:26 AM by SoberIrishman

@OP: Are we just talking about the effect on "women studies" (and could we say gender studies instead? I kinda find that more impartial) on (nature) science or all academic studies? Because if we talk about science alone, no it doesn't make sense. But for lit crit or history, so called social science, they also produce pretty important work.

edited 14th Feb '11 6:04:24 AM by myrdschaem

The idea of weighing the importance of events differently based on who did them seems foolish to me.

Observing those trends from a historical standpoint makes sense but it's unlikely to contribute to any research on say physics or maths.

Well yeah, history is pure trivia for the most part.

For the record, my university only offers "gender studies" classes, not women's or men's studies.

And it's a humanities subject, anyway, and I'd say it's just as relevant as classes in Jewish studies or African-American studies or whatever, all of which do exist and are considered entirely valid fields of acdemia.

Mistakenly considered valid.

If you could elaborate on that? Presenting arguements to explain your opinion would help that statement. It sounds a bit offensive for me.

I'm sorry, but I don't think the opinion of one man is enough to dismiss the many thousands of people who've studied these fields in the last few decades.

Deboss doesn't really consider any subject valid that isn't in science or math.

Because apparently no-one needs to hear any history outide of that which involves white heterosexual men. Ammerican history is just one continum of Anglo Saxon Protestants building the nation.

But you shouldn't need specific classes to focus on the achievements of one minority. That's discrimination in itself.

A course plotting the history of an individual group seems more efficient than a course plotting every single group at one particular snapshot in time. With limited resources per course, I'd prefer to cover one perspective per course, retreading the same timeframe in subsequent courses, than to study, say, a single decade in depth and cover absolutely everything that was going on.

Below university level, of course, they do neither - they cover all of history in such cursory overtones you never understand any of it.

And it's not like studying one subject doesn't lead to crossovers with others because their relationship is important? No man is an island holds true for cultures even more so.

But you shouldn't need specific classes to focus on the achievements of one minority. That's discrimination in itself.

I haven't taken "Minority Studies" myself, so I don't know what it's about. Is it about achievements or their history/culture in general? 'Cos I think knowing the latter in-depth would be useful for some occupations. If we're going to be mucking around in another country trying to rebuild it or whatever I think it would be nice to know something about the place >___>

I don't see why specific classes focusing on whatever minority counts as discrimination, anyway. It's simply impractical to try to squeeze in every detail and viewpoint into a general history course. I... I don't think I can take any more material @____@

edited 14th Feb '11 8:38:39 AM by melloncollie

Maybe 'discrimination' was too strong a word, but I still think focusing on one group downplays the importance of others. It's hard to be inclusive of everyone, but we should try.

@Sober Irish, penultimate post. I see. And when people want to add minority viewpoints on general history lessons, it's all "liberal brainwashing" and, oddly enough, again "discriminatory".

Ethnic studies, gender studies and queer studies are courses meant as subjects for those interested in them, not something to replace regular history and civics. Is it discriminatory to have separate religious studies courses for Christianity, Islam and Buddhism? The point of separate courses is to get indepth with these kinds of things.

And then there' top-down versus bottom-up discrimination. When the hegemonical position discriminates, the discrimination is much stronger. The majority can exclude a minority with much more force, than the other way around. If you can't tell the difference between the two, then you clearly haven't experienced top-downn discrimination.

[ed.] Yes, main classes should be more incllusive, and at some point, minority studies wouldn't be necessary. And they're not about how some minority is better (well, depending on the teacher, of course, but that shouldn't be the point). It's mostly to say that "we are important too" "we also have our own culture". And it helsp to understand why things are like they are now, instead of just accepting that that's how it's always been and will always be.

edited 14th Feb '11 8:45:50 AM by JethroQWalrustitty

Um, I live in Northern Ireland and I'm Catholic. I've experienced quite a lot of discrimination.

I agree. The point of this sort of things is specialisation and that's a method every academic discipline uses. Biology, chemistry and physics are also interconnected and could be thought as one but people divide them even further because it's so much material and the devisions itself are whole topics of their own.

Well then, which do you think is worse, when people tell you that Ulster belongs to Britain and Protestants, and Catholics should fuck off, or when your uncle says that the bloody prods shouldn't be holding a Orange Walk through a Catholic neighbourhood?

I'm not sure I get your point. Is this the top-down Vs bottom-up thing?

Forgive me, I'm not very smart. :/

edited 14th Feb '11 8:53:41 AM by SoberIrishman

It's the toop-down, botom-up thing. The pooint is, in the hypothetical I posed, that British Loyalists and Protestants have a stornger stand in Northern Ireland. If they, for example, decided that protestant employers only employ protestant employees, that would lead to more economical damage to catholics, than it would for protestants if Catholics in N-Ireland decided to employ only Catholics. That's the very simple, economic model of it.

But there are other forms of discrimination than economical.

[ed.] Heh, I just noticed that your location. Antirm is a country of Northern Ireland, as google just told me, yet you marked it to be "Ireland". Is that a political statement?

edited 14th Feb '11 9:01:47 AM by JethroQWalrustitty