In defense of the sanctimonious women's studies set || First feminist blog on the internet

Three Afternoon Reads

Lauren

Cleis outlines why she disagrees with Dr. Crazy’s “Why Women’s Studies Sucks.”

The NYTimes has an interesting article about the risks Dems run if they don’t tow the line on reproductive rights.

An AIDS activist and mother writes on her LiveJournal about raising a gay son in a homophobic world. In part:

Fag: This is what I heard someone call my little boy today. I didn’t ignore it. I asked. I glared. What did you say? The kid muttered under his breath. Nothing. We walked to the car and he was quiet. He’s a boy who takes everything into himself. When he shares, it’s a gift. It has a meaning beyond what it is…

…So here was my golden boy, born at a time in my life when I was acutely aware of the powers of both love and hatred, chewing his nails in the backseat, trying not to cry. He looked up at me with his giant green eyes. I could tell he was phrasing his question very carefully, as he is such a precise little boy. “I’m not a fag if I don’t want to have a girlfriend, am I?” He was so quiet and serious. I pulled over and turned around to face him.

I wanted to tell him about the time into which he was born, how so many people loved him, how so many people saw him as the sign of a good and hopeful future they might not live to see. I wanted to tell him how the woman who came into my office after he was born wept with him in her arms and kissed him all over. I didn’t take him from her until he was sleeping and her tears had been replaced with a soft smile. “No one has ever let me touch a baby since I was diagnosed,” she told me in Spanish, “He’s so beautiful. Thank you.”

One of the scariest things about being a parent is my fear that my child will be targeted for something that ultimately defines his identity. This short post on parenting and homosexuality is beautiful for its complexity and compassion. Thanks for the link, A.

2 thoughts on Three Afternoon Reads

  1. Funny, I actually took more then a few “women’s studies” courses in collage to satisfy social studies credits. The first one I took because thought that it would be good for me to study that which I clearly had no clue about at 19 years old. I was naively shocked to find out that I would be sharing a classroom with about 30 co-eds (shock quickly faded to glee).

    This was a woman’s history class, I also took a women’s literature course and a course on black women. In all cases, I was genuinely surprised that only women took these classes (and not only was I the only white person in the black women’s class I was also, once again the only male). The reason that this surprised me is I really felt that men would get a lot more out of a women’s studies course then women might. I also took a lot of history courses that focused on history from a particular point of view because I learned that normal history courses should really be called the history of war. In addition to Women’s history, I took music history, film history and science history.

    But why are woman’s studies course such a estrogen ghetto? Other then a broad based liberal education, which I firmly believe in, what is it that women get out of these courses exactly?

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