@97 Ridiculing someone's major is not "being critical." It's ridiculing, which is close to bullying.

However, I don't think the plight of asexuals is at all comparable to gays, blacks, latinos, etc. And I don't think LW has any kind of valid argument when she says we should stop using "abnormal" because of stigmatization. We can't keep making words illegal.

@97 - no. Bullying doesn't become OK if someone "has it coming." That's why I pointed out that I'm sure the bullies of LBGT teens would point to their behavior -"weird", "queeny", "wants to be center of attention" etc. - as a "reason" for their bullying as well.

FWIW, I think Dan is right and HC is wrong - but that's just no reason to insult, ridicule and belittle them. It's perfectly sufficient to do just what Dan did - and tell them that they're wrong and why. That's particularly true since HC is a young adult who has clearly struggled in the past.

I think there's a lot of potential value in Gender and Sexuality Studies. Look around you and see how gender and the behavioural expections affect so many facets of life -- dating, love, friendships, sports, fashion, careers, everything. Gender studies is about thinking critically about human behaviour, just as in psychology, sociology, anthropology, etc. It's just a little more focused on one area is all.

The problem with some (not all) gender studies courses is that they end up promoting gender inequality, what with all the radical man-hating feminism that goes on (Dear world: sexism against men is also wrong, and happens alllllll the time). I've only taken one first-year course in gender studies, and I dropped it halfway through. At first it was really enlightening and thought-provoking, but eventually it all started to sound like today's Letter of the Day.

Still, it helped teach me to examine the world. A few months after I dropped that course, I switched from a psych major to computer science. I'm also now the only girl living in a house with five guys. Now THERE's some gender studies for you.

@20: Word.

I'm an academic who teaches a film studies programme, and I have to admit that I lolled a bit when I saw the sign-off. Earnest undergraduates are earnest. I was an overearnest, slightly pompous, well-meaning undergrad once, and it's fine to have a have a little giggle at the indiscretions of youth.

Here's some tl;dr, sloggers: I'd also like to add my own perspective on the "what use is women's studies?" debate. Over here in the UK, you don't pick a random major, but pursue a degree programme in a pre-determined subject with modular options that can go broader. IMO, Women's Studies is too over-specialised to make a strong undergraduate degree. I teach feminist and queer theory and criticism - and it's applied, to give undergraduates a new perspective on the film/media/literature that they're studying. An undergraduate degree in humanities should leave you with a broad range of perspectives on culture, not a hothoused sensibility. Narrower specialising is what graduate study is for. What use is women's studies? Like any kind of political philosophy, it should sharpen you intellectually and give you new perspectives on culture and society. What use is film studies and literary studies? A good humanities degree isn't vocational like an engineering degree, but it should leave you with intellectual skills that make you employable - and that you know how to sell to employers, a part many unis neglect. Theory and philosophy, including women's studies, should be a part of this imo in that it sharpens you intellectually and makes you a better critical thinker. No theory course should be an easy A.

I'd also advise a bit of self-deprecating humour and an open spirit in the classroom as very helpful for encouraging over-earnest undergraduates to mature intellectually (i.e. among other things, turn into people who deliver their opinions in a way that makes you see them as less annoying and doctrinaire, more interesting and likeable). If students feel censored or policed, or worse, try to censor and police each other, you are in danger of the spirit of enquiry and questioning that's the lifeblood of humanities education. Obviously I insist that my students treat each other with respect, don't allow slurs, etc. But a bunch of students sitting around bullying each other about "unlearning" each other's "privilege" and "appropriating" each other's positions are really just name-calling with fancy intellectual labels attached. Name-calling is not debate, and it doesn't help you learn anything about others' perspective or indeed, grow up. Again, I say this as a feminist academic, not someone broadly sceptical about the whole enterprise.

Crap, I think folks are getting lost here - missing the forest for the trees. All Dan ever says is to be honest about who you are and what you need, and if you have a different viewpoint to your partner(s), you should work it out together till you reach a compromise. If you can't find a compromise, you split up like grownups and look for more a more compatible partner (or partners, if you're into the poly thing).

@105 Oh well, if you're going to be all *accurate* and stuff...

....so how come women's studies majors don't shave their legs?

(Need to borrow a book, Erica P? ;)

@106: I always wondered why women's studies majors did shave their legs, then complain that they "had" to.

@82, 83: If you're interested in asexuality, you'd probably enjoy reading the AVEN forums at asexuality.org. Some asexuals have a sex drive, some don't. Some masturbate, some don't. They think about all sorts of things when they masturbate.

The name 'asexual' is confusing, and in hindsight, it might have been better if they'd chosen a different one. (Some) asexuals are still sexual sometimes, just not attracted to anyone else. The name was chosen by analogy with 'homosexual' and 'heterosexual' to describe the group of people asexuals are attracted to (that is, no one).

The only conclusion I can come to after reading the letters and some comments is that asexuals are feeling left out as victims and therefore had to get together as a group and remind us that gay people aren't the only people who are victimized for their sexuality. They can't be serious. Yes, there are jokes about "40 Year Old Virgins" and I'm sure it's a tad hurtful if you are one but so what? The only way anyone knows you are is if you tell them. It's not something you need to announce to anyone unless you're a) planning on actually having sex with someone or b) looking for attention as a victimized minority. It's bad being victimized or marginalized (and yes I know from experience) but it's also bad to use that as an excuse not to get on with your life or to blame other people for your life not turning out the way you planned. Your illusions about how wonderful everyone else has it are just that - illusions. Slapping on a self-defeating label doesn't do anyone any favours.

@101 Ridicule has been a perfectly acceptable form of criticism since the dawn of culture.

@102 if somebody wants to bully other people into using certain words, they can become a target themselves. Being a dictatorial bully with a passive voice still makes you a bully. Are you saying we can't do tit for tat? Or are you saying being a dictatorial bully is OK if you've had a hard history?

"Normal" connotes healthy and implies the other is "abnormal". You can look it up.

HA! I had a feeling about halfway through that the writer was an Undergraduate in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. She sounds exactly like every person I've ever met that was majoring in that garbage. Same tone, same vocabulary, same ignorant victim bullshit.

WRT 'bullying' of the LW. I think its pretty much an accepted standard that if you write to an online blog, there will be some trolls who will bash your opinion. This is as inevitable as Godwin's Law, and any 20 year old college student should realize this. If not, hopefully readings these comments will inform the LW that people in a consequence free environment like to make inflammatory statements.

I would never advise my daughters to take "women's studies." Nor would I advise them to take any liberal arts degree. Any degree where you can learn the same thing by joining a book club at the local B&N is not worth thousands of dollars a year. I would rather give them the money I have saved for tuition to use backpacking in Europe or something.

I'm also curious about what asexuals would think about while masturbating.

LW forgot to mention that all white males are oppressors, even the poor, uneducated, underemployed ones just scraping by. I thought that admittance into a Women's Studies degree program mandated mentioning this "fact" in every conversation (lecture) about anyone or anything.

I'm sorry, this kind of thing really frustrates me, honestly it kind of frustrates me from sexual queers as well. I'm a gay guy who dated a straight woman when I thought I was bi, and did horrible horrible things to her self esteem before I got my head out of my arse, and then dated a straight boy who for very unusual reasons thought he was bi, and then he did the exact same things to me. As a result I'm in from what I can tell and almost completely unique situation of having experienced both sides of this general dynamic within 2 years time. The only reason I put my girlfriend from High School through the pain I did is because no one ever talked to me about sexual compatibility, because we aren't allowed to talk about those kinds of things.

The simple truth is, looking at someone who is asexual and telling them to find another asexual and to completely disclose IS reasonable. It's reasonable because the problem that many asexual people from previous generations had was that the idea of asexuality wasn't part of the lexicon, no one taught them to self inspect their own sexuality, so they never realized they were asexual. So basically what you are saying is "In the past no one talked about asexuality, so no one would say if you're asexual you should disclose, so saying they have to disclose is unfair, so don't tell people if they are asexual they have to disclose because it's unfair". This is a simplification of sorts, but the general logic does apply.

People who grew up in previous generations are completely entitled to a grandfathering clause if you will until they do discover themselves. The same way I think gay men and lesbians who married straight people because they were expected to, and come out in their 40's deserve a freebie, even though many of them crush their spouses self worth in the process. The simple ugly fact is they didn't know any better. Here's the thing about that though, the up and coming generation doesn't get that same freebie card. Asexuals now certainly still have more leeway than gays and lesbians now, but I'd say only about as much leeway as gays and lesbians had back in the 90's. If you're asexual and you bust up a couple hearts in your teens and early twenties figuring out that you don't have an appreciable sex drive, well that's what those years are for. But someone who's just entering college now, who gets married, and 8-9 years down the road comes out to their partner as "asexual" doesn't have a lot of cultural cover to fall back on to explain that process. The same way a gay man or a lesbian getting married to a stragith person and coming out in 8-9 years as homosexual doesn't really have any cultural cover to fall back on at this point. We are past that point.

So truth be told we have every reason to look at asexual individuals and say "hey, you have a responsibility, live up to it". I have a acquaintance I play with sometimes, and his long term boyfriend has a very low sex drive, while he is a raging slut. They understand that they have very different sex drives, but they want to grow old together and love developing a life together. I kind of hate all the "come to an arrangement" euphemisms in this conversation. If you're asexual, and you fall in love with someone who is sexual then the question "are you comfortable cutting someone you love off from an incredibly important part of their life?" is poignant. If someone is asexual, then they should reach a point where sex really isn't important to them, and accept if they fall for a sexual person "exclusivity" isn't reasonably to put on the table. It just isn't.

This makes me happy that I'm studying physics. Sure, it's also a useless degree, but at least I can feel like I'm intelligent at the end.

So...we really need a guide (maybe as a part of the pretty well written FAQ on that site) about the difference between someone who id's as Asexual, someone who has medical/psychological issues they want to fix, someone who just has a different libido level than their partner or circle, someone who's just stressed out, etc.
The person above who mentioned the permanent ink label is right.

@ 113 - So you see, Women's Studies degree programs aren't all as bad as you think they are.

There was another problem with Mr. Savage's advice to NSNA: He treated the guy like dirt. People with all different sorts of sexual peculiarities get Mr. Savage's usual mix of snark and courtesy, but give us someone who is less into sex rather than more into it, and we start to see Mr. Savage's own prejudices.

@106 Thanks, Canuck, but I've got the Kinsey surveys for my light reading today :-) (see the MisterMix on Christopher Lee thread...)

Chiming in late, but I think 104 brideoffrankenstein, and 114 cigan, pretty much rock.
I'd get into it further, but I have 67 valentines to address, sign and mail. Because I am not asexual.

Pastaefagoli, your comments like
"actually, I took enough classes to have a Women's Studies minor, but I never applied for it because I didn't want it on my transcript."
make me cringe from their prentension. Chill out.

That said, I have a double major in Gender Studies. Which is on my transcript. It was interesting, but ultimately useless. However, any job you apply for is happy to see a double major in anything (especially from a prestigious university) because it show dedication to learning and work ethic. So, in that sense it's worked out pretty well for me.

117, regardless of the color of your skin, I doubt the rural poor ever oppressed you. The uneducated white never were placed in a position you were more qualified for, they never even got to your position. There is an abundance of discourse about race, but hardly anyone talks about the great equalizer -- cold, hard, cash. Or should I say, assets, because all the money is imaginary now anyway.

I made the mistake once of saying in my intro to women's studies class (of course it was), when the professor was trying to assert that whites had the privilege to a better education, that school districts (at least here) are directly funded by property taxes. Nicer areas have higher housing costs and higher taxes. People who make more can afford to live in these nicer areas go to better funded districts that can afford to hire better teachers and have more resources available. I wasn't quite sure what that had to do with race. Nobody said "oh, sorry, you might live in the district, but you're a minority, go over there to the poor school where you belong."

I got chewed out for that.

122 - after taking the courses to pad my GPA, I wanted no affiliation with the "discipline." Nobody cares about a well rounded chemist.

But really, I congratulate you on being able to afford to attend university for a degree which served no purpose other than to bestow you with the sense of superiority necessary to point out others privilege and to be the PC terms police. How ironic the upper middle class is.

@123: I had a similar experience in my intro to women's studies class, where I was one of 6 dudes among roughly 100 women. This class never devolved into "blame men for everything"-- there was a definite recognition that men also suffer from rigid gender roles. I never felt singled out, and I was never called upon to justify my sex. My complaint isn't so much what was being taught (at least in my classes) as the lack of academic rigor in the whole discipline. I'll give an example.

We spent about a week reading and discussing the benefits of instinct/emotion as opposed to reason. (This was before Bush's presidency showed just how maladaptive the "gut" approach was.) As a scientist and an empiricist, the whole concept appalled me, but I was willing to listen to the evidence. There was none: no experiments on problem solving, no demographic profiling, no statistical analysis. Just a bunch of "you go girl" papers and anecdotes.

The consensus was that instinct/emotion had been devalued because they were associated with women, and logic/reason had been overvalued because they were associated with men. On Friday, after sitting out the entire week and doing my best to understand, I raised my hand and asked the question that everyone seemed to have missed: "Are instinct and emotion considered inferior approaches because they're traditionally associated with women, or are they actually inferior and that's why they've been traditionally assigned to women?"

I swear to fucking god I heard crickets chirping. And then the class went on like nothing had happened.

Maybe I'm just an old-school academic with a "masculine" viewpoint, but IMO you don't get to good theory without trashing bad theories. Not everyone's viewpoint is valid. Gender studies apparently refused to acknowledge that and refused to test anything, whether through experiments, studies, or argument. That's why I have a hard time taking it seriously.

pastaefagoli @ 124: "point out others' privilege"

I honestly think this is why Womens' Studies or Gender Studies faculties and grads get such a bad rap and rep. There's a huge pile of majors which educate as to our failings and prejudices as individuals and as societies (anthropology and psychology to name just two). But I look back on my years in postsecondary and I can recall no discipline which produced people almost vibrating with eagerness to tell you how horrible you were .. save for WS or GS produced them not as single spies but in battalions. Anthro or psych or arts or science majors didn't seem to be triumphal and happy to denounce your linguistic failings or lack of comprehension or perceived received horribleness, yet the WS and GS types seemed to live to do so.

I grew up in a pretty retrograde time and very conservative culture, and what --on this issue -- strikes me most looking back is that gay men didn't give me static about me trying to understand them and their challenges, or launch into pejoratives at the first opportunity. no, they helped me become straight-but-not-narrow through friendship and shared ideals. The WS crowd seemed to be even more pissed off with men trying to become more feminist than they were with the dinosaurs. Looking back a quarter century+ later \I still don't know why.

Thanks for sharing, HC. Coming from a different perspective, I'd like to take a moment and say "fuck you".

@125: I guess scientists are a bad fit for gender studies what with our whole world revolving around questioning everything.

@125 & 128 - yes, if you start from the assumption that testing is the way to answer your questions, you will find that rationality & logic are far superior to instinct & emotion.

But, conversely, if you start from the assumption that how you feel about something is empirically important, then you might find out that instinct & emotion are more valid than rationality & logic.

In either case, you haven't seriously questioned your assumptions, just used them to build a circular argument.

Personally, I think both are useful. I like rationality when it is used for building airplanes & the internet; less so when it is used for eugenics or putting women in their "place" as obviously inferior scientists, architects, composers, etc.

I like emotion when it is used for acknowledging the humanity of those who are different from ourselves, and recognizing how hard it is to ever truly appreciate someone else's point of view. I don't like emotion when it is used to build support for jingoistic political campaigns...

I went to high school with the David Jay she mentions! When I started reading this letter, I was expecting his name to show up eventually.

@ 123 - What the hell does that have to do with what I said @ 117 ?

I was just pointing out that, since the LW "forgot to mention that all white males are oppressors", maybe they don't teach that crap in all those programs.

One thing you fail to understand, and maybe some useless liberal arts program would have helped you to learn about this, is that, in the US and many other countries, socio-economic factors such as WEALTH correlate extremely highly with RACE.

One other thing you fail to take into account is that many countries other than the US have free (or cheap) higher education, so your whole point about wasted money is only relevant in the US. A useless liberal arts degree might also have helped you to learn to think about the rest of the world.

Just saying.

PS: And by the way, the "uneducated white", i.e. my parents' generation, had it a lot easier than mine and were paid a lot more with just a middle school diploma than I'll ever get with a degree. They're also getting nice fat governement pension checks that I'll never see half of, even though I'm paying proportionally twice as much in premiums as they did.

It seems that you have absolutely no idea of what's happening to people who aren't part of your own, I would say rather priviledged middle class group. (Yes, middle class, coz no matter what you say, YOU could afford an expensive education.)

@129: I think when rationality "is used for eugenics or putting women in their "place" as obviously inferior scientists, architects, composers, etc," what's actually happening is that "logic" is being excused a justification to enact emotional or ideological bias.

Although rationality falls apart when we don't have all the facts or incorrectly operationalize abstract concepts, as is the case with a lot of biased intelligence testing, for instance.

@129: My point wasn't to extol the benefits of logic/reason-- although I find that approach superior in all circumstances-- but to criticize the lack of filtering that goes on in gender studies. IMO, this makes gender studies useless to anyone outside the field.

If a sociologist tells me something about sociology that I didn't know before or that contradicts something I thought I knew, I'm inclined to give it some consideration. I can safely assume that the new fact/theory has been tested, peer reviewed, and argued, that any obvious counter-arguments have already been raised, and that the fact/theory has withstood some serious scrutiny by people who know a lot more about sociology than I do.

If a gender studies major/academic tells me something about their field, that's worth nothing to me. Their fact/theory hasn't been scrutinized or tested, so it's just some random person's opinion. I have my own opinions as well, and I'm not inclined to substitute some random person's thoughts for my own.

Let me put it another way: every discipline generates bad ideas. Other fields have measures in place to remove the bad ideas, so casual observers like me can rest assured that we're getting the good stuff from that field. Gender studies (to my knowledge) lacks those filtering mechanisms, so anything I hear from a disciple is no more likely to be valid than stuff I make up on my own.

131, my education cost me 30 years of debt. But thanks for the assumption.

Really, there are no uneducated white people anymore? They only existed in your parents generation? Really?

And while I'm quite aware that WEALTH frequently corresponds with RACE the example I gave sought to point out that WEALTH (and eduction) can frequently supersede RACE. Especially here in the USA, which, incidentally is the only place really relevant to this discussion since we all in thus forum pretty much live here. I'm glad you're concerned about the plight of others all around the world though, as if we didn't have enough problems of our own.

133 is correct, there are no dissenting voices in gender studies.

As for 129, being a female scientist myself, I can say that I wasn't always taken seriously right off the bat, so I cried, called everyone a misogynist, and quit.

Just kidding, I worked hard to prove my worth through publication (just like the men!) and have no problem ever since.

After reading this entire comment thread, I now have a very weird mental image of the average asexual. They are horny as hell, and constantly getting off to thoughts of… shoes? White walls? The sight of their own arousal? But they never really want contact with another human being, even though they might find them aesthetically appealing.

I am more confused than ever.

@133, just because propositions in gender studies haven't been "tested" to your standards, only means what it says, that it hasn't been tested to your standards. So, naturally, since you think that testing is important, your mind can't be changed without such testing.

If, however, you were a different sort of person, one open to having an emotional, subjective appeal change his or her mind, then you might find that gender studies has debates (about rape culture, say), where people disagree with each other, and authorities in the field decide (by allocating scarce resources) which opinions matter more.

You still won't care about that decision, since you only want hard facts to matter, not emotional appeals. Also, the losers in the debate probably won't be persuaded by the authorities to admit that they were wrong. Still, the field, like all fields, has scarce resources (jobs, publications) to dole out, and it does so. Just not to your taste, or the taste of the losers in the field. In that, it is much like all other academic fields.

@137: Voting is not a test, and the majority is often wrong-- particularly when they don't think through their decisions. Ironically, that's one of the premises of gender studies, so long as the "majority" is limited to "people outside gender studies."

I don't suppose it's a surprise that defending gender studies on emotional/subjective grounds does nothing to convince me that the field has any value. Kinda the opposite, actually. Ah, well.

@136: I know, right?

Can an asexual who indulges in masturbation kindly inform the rest of us what they think about while masturbating? Unlike HC, I think this is actually an opportunity to inform curious and sympathetic people about the particulars of your (a)sexuality. Make use of that internet anonymity!

I'm happy to describe what I think about when I masturbate as a quid pro quo, but I don't think anyone will find that interesting. If you've ever seen mainstream porn, you're in the right ballpark. :)

@138 - I never said "voting" - where'd you get that from? God only knows how the authorities in gender studies decide which studies are worth funding and promoting people for, but I doubt voting has anything to do with it.

As you say, no surprise that you (who say proudly that you find "logic/reason... superior in all circumstances") are not persuaded by arguments on subjective grounds.

How ever do you pick what movies to see, I wonder... Or do you let Netflix's algorithm take the decision out of your hands?

@140 English, do you speak it?

Try again without wrapping your ideas into an incomprehensible knot the size of which is only seen in Chistmas Lights stored in an attic.

24/sarah68: @16: Asexuality is the lack of sexual attraction to other people, not lack of libido. It has nothing to do with hormones.

So a person who is "asexual" would (or could) be very sexual with their own body, just not with anyone else's body? If that's the case, then "asexual" doesn't seem to be an appropriate term.

@141: I usually pick movies based on Rotten Tomatoes reviews, or what my girlfriend wants to watch, or what happens to be playing at the time I get to the theatre. Same as anyone else, I'd wager.

I'm not saying that there's no place for emotion in our lives, or that everything has to be a structured algorithm. I'm saying that whenever there's a conflict between my reason and my emotions, I always pick reason. Doing anything else strikes me as immature and (frankly) weak-willed. Children and animals are controlled by their emotions; adults are supposed to be stronger than that.

@145 ...and proud of it?

Really, WTF?! You write something incomprehensible then comment that any response to your incomprehensibility is racism?! Now, I'm attributing it to your being mentally-handicapped because your leaps of logic are astoundingly retarded.

No offense to the mentally-handicapped people reading this, as I don't mean to insult you by comparing this asshat to you.

P.S. That was a Pulp Fiction quote, if you didn't recognize it...

Mike Leung @145:

1. Your post was indeed incoherent.
2. "English, Do You Speak It" is a movie quote, spoken by one American character to another.

But, hey, if you want to accuse somebody of racism just you post an confused mess of words, go ahead, I guess.

129/Erica: But, conversely, if you start from the assumption that how you feel about something is empirically important, then you might find out that instinct & emotion are more valid than rationality & logic.

I'm sure that's the case. For example, I'm sure that conservative religious people who feel that same-sex love and attraction is wrong, or feel that we did not evolve from other creatures, consider their beliefs to be more valid than any rationality or logic.

141/Erica: As you say, no surprise that you (who say proudly that you find "logic/reason... superior in all circumstances") are not persuaded by arguments on subjective grounds.

There's nothing wrong with subjectivity, or emotion. But they are not good bases for public policy, whether it's anti-porn feminists wanting to ban porn because they believe it's bad, or whether it's religious conservatives wanting to ban same-sex marriage because they believe it's wrong.

125: The consensus was that instinct/emotion had been devalued because they were associated with women, and logic/reason had been overvalued because they were associated with men. On Friday, after sitting out the entire week and doing my best to understand, I raised my hand and asked the question that everyone seemed to have missed: "Are instinct and emotion considered inferior approaches because they're traditionally associated with women, or are they actually inferior and that's why they've been traditionally assigned to women?"

A very good question and I tend to think it's the latter situation in your question.

Ah, so I'm a racist, now, too, is it?

Everybody who disagrees with you is a racist. Everybody who quotes a line in Pulp Fiction (no matter what the line) is also racist because that film also uses the N word. Got it. (Carefully writes this down.)

It is an amusing accident of placement that you choose to take these positions at a point in the thread where people are discussing the reality that assuming something to be true does not create or verify truth, no matter how intense the feeling. Facts are needed.

150, I agree as well. But then again, I'm surrounded by calculating, logical, rational, and fucking smart women.

I think emotion and feelings are great, when I'm being romantic. Not when I'm making important decisions. The people who tend to run only on feelings tend to be the ones that are, well, less intelligent.

@150 and @152: As do I. Had the class actually discussed my question, I would have pointed out that most societies have traditionally assigned child-like qualities to women (innocence, purity, vulnerability, etc.), and that emotional decision-making is also a quality of children. But alas, the conversation never got there. :)

@146, @151: Good luck with that one. Mr. Leung seems to believe that if anyone has any difficulty understanding what he writes, it is their fault and not his. If anyone expresses to him that his posts are poorly written and difficult to understand, he calls them haters and racists.

Not sure what his damage is, but from experience - he's worth ignoring.

Roma @148, we're not talking public policy. I've never heard of any policy makers overtly relying on gender studies for their analysis. But if one is interested in studying the idea of rape culture (as a meme in our society), say, it would be very hard to do a serious study without engaging with what has been written within gender studies. But since you bring up rationality and public policy, let me ask you a question. What is the rational reason why gay marriage must be allowed? If we take sentiment and emotion off the table, why isn't civil union (everything except the word) sufficient?

Also, note that although I concede that emotion is considered a valid aspect of argumentation in gender studies (not everyone in gender studies would agree with me about that), that is not to concede that rationality is irrelevant to the field. It's just not the only thing that matters.

1) Yes, this letter is dumb. The LW didn't address any of the things Dan actually says about asexuality (and has said before) and disclosure, which is really important. Also it is way too long.

2) I think some asexual people, especially when they're first figuring out how to talk about asexuality, come at this from the same egocentrism the rest of us do. Since they have little/no interest in sex, some of them have trouble understanding that sex truly is important for others. They simply don't see what the big deal is with a sexual person dating an asexual person, because it's just sex! And sex is completely unappealing! (Note I said "some.")

3) Anyone on hear talking shit about Gender/Women's Studies in a remotely sincere way is a douche and should stop. Just stop. It's dumb. We might indulge in a little joke or two, but anyone who's gonna DEFEND that position is really just a waste of brain matter and lung tissue.

Done. You're welcome.

@155: You're full of shit.

Racism would have been TheMisanthrope looking at your "ethnic name," assuming you didn't know how to speak English, and patronizing you by patting you on the head and slow-talking his way through his earlier points. Instead, he may or may not have noticed your name, assumed you were a fluent English speaker, and called you out for writing like shit.

Being treated like anyone else when you fuck up is not racism; fuck, that's exactly what I wanted when I was growing up with my ethnic name. You apparently have no idea how infuriating it is when people assume you're an idiot just because of your name and how you look, rather than giving you justly deserved shit because they assume you're competent and just fucked up.

Also, let me say that when I Hate Screen Names (IHSN) dismisses a field of study because his or her classmates in an intro level course and the poorly paid instructor didn't meet the proper standards of argumentation... that indicates emotional over-reaction, as does IHSN's recent insistence that people who appreciate emotional arguments are like children.

Personally, I believe one should evaluate a field based on the writings of people with prestige in the field, not based on the ill-considered reflections of an intro-level class at one particular college.

For anyone who is open-minded on this subject, but doesn't feel like paying for a course, I recommend reading Judith Butler's Gender Trouble and her further clarification in Bodies that Matter. They're dense, but worth the trouble.

If you're truly asexual, just date really religious people.

This was the longest, most boring letter ever written. I'm glad I don't have to proofread her undergrad essays.

@159: My college is one of the top 10 in the country, and the professor was highly respected in the field (or so I was told). I saw no reason to doubt that: she certainly knew the material backwards and forwards, and all of the tenured professors are generally superstars anyway.

It's certainly possible that gender studies becomes more rigorous at higher levels. However, it's worth pointing out that I took a lot of courses in various fields (I'm a big believer in a well-rounded education), and none of the rest of the intro courses suffered from this problem. I only have so much time to allocate to academic pursuits outside my field, and your emotion-based defense of gender studies does little to convince me that I should give that area another shot rather than, say, brushing up on Middle-Eastern history and politics.

I think that part of the problem with being an emotional person-- or at least in allowing emotions to occasionally dictate your actions-- is that you assume everyone else is the same way. I suppose that gives a certain latitude when faced with logical arguments: the person making it must be emotional, so it can be disregarded. This is an ironic conclusion given your argument that we should consider emotional inputs, but whatever.

Let us simply allow that I am a robot and thus gender studies (as practiced) is worthless for me, and that more emotive individuals may find it valuable. I certainly don't disagree with the latter point: most of the people in my gender studies classes seemed very happy with the field.

@161: No, I've just actually been harassed for being different. I can only assume that you live in the more accepting world that my generation and the generation before mine helped to create, and thus have not experienced real racism.

You're welcome.

@162, I haven't ever taken a gender studies intro course, so I will grant that your experience may be typical. Perhaps the field uses the intro courses to weed out rigid empiricists.

Who was your professor? Seems unlikely that it would out you in any way to tell us that.

@164: Adrienne Rich.

I can't believe I remembered that.

156/Erica: Roma @148, we're not talking public policy. I've never heard of any policy makers overtly relying on gender studies for their analysis.

I wasn't suggesting a link between public policy and gender studies specifically. I was just saying that subjectivity or emotion have their place, but they are not good bases for public policy.

But if one is interested in studying the idea of rape culture (as a meme in our society), say, it would be very hard to do a serious study without engaging with what has been written within gender studies.

If one believed that such a thing as a "rape culture" exists in our society, how would (or should) one go about making the case for that?

But since you bring up rationality and public policy, let me ask you a question. What is the rational reason why gay marriage must be allowed? If we take sentiment and emotion off the table, why isn't civil union (everything except the word) sufficient?

Reason says that two people of the same sex shouldn't be prevented from marrying if two people of the opposite sex are allowed to marry. It's the emotional attachment religious (and some other) conservatives have to the word/concept "marriage" that makes them want to "defend" it against same-sex couples. Plus you know as well as I do that many religious conservative people are also very opposed to even civil unions for same sex couples and this opposition is completely based in emotion and belief, not reason.

@167, OK, that explains a lot. She's primarily a poet, not a popularizer of complex ideas, so I doubt she's very good explaining theory to intro classes.

@168, I'm not going to proceed here and now to make the case that we live in a rape culture, or explain how one would differentiate that from a culture that glorifies violence more generally. It's not my area of study. I brought it up as an example of a topic which exists, but which one would have no way of studying without the tools of gender studies. If anyone is interested in the topic, there is an important essay at http://fugitivus.wordpress.com/2009/06/2…

Here's one part I like: "People wonder why women don’t 'fight back' [during rape] but they don't wonder about it when women back down in arguments, are interrupted, purposefully lower and modulate their voices to express less emotion, make obvious signals that they are uninterested in conversation or being in closer physical proximity and are ignored. They don't wonder about all those daily social interactions in which women are quieter, ignored, or invisible, because those social interactions seem normal. They seem normal to women, and they seem normal to men, because we were all raised in the same cultural pond, drinking the same Kool-Aid. And then, all of a sudden, when women are raped, all these natural and invisible social interactions become evidence that the woman wasn't truly raped. Because she didn't fight back, or yell loudly, or run, or kick, or punch. She let him into her room when it was obvious what he wanted. She flirted with him, she kissed him. She stopped saying no, after a while."

@Mike Leung 8/10 I got caught, as did a lot of people. Good trolling. :-D

Erica, I didn't ask you to make the case that we live in a "rape culture." I asked" how would (or should) one go about making the case for that [if one believe that it existed]?

for mr Mike Leung, poster 171. You, Sir, are a troll - but you aren't even a good troll. The fine folks at /b/ could perhaps teach you more effective ways to troll.

The problem with your posts has nothing at all to do with your name - the problem is primarily tha fact that you use words in ways that do not correspond with their traditional, literal meanings.

The oversensitivity you show, relating to your (presumably) ethnic name, is indicative of a massive inferiority complex, linked to a rather sad attention-whore behaviour pattern. I couldn't care less what ethniticity you represent, or what discrimination you feel you've been exposed to - they are NOT based upon your screen name - they are based upon your ineptitude in communicating clearly with the English language. I hope that clears things up for you.

tl;dr - you're a lousy troll, and butthurt with it. english, or gtfo, newfag.

@171 you almost made me think you care, Chingchangchong...but your end note of hater rings awesome!

P.S. I AM a hater. Hence, TheMisanthrope.

@174 That's Racist!!

@169: Interesting article. I agree with the concept, though I think that the term "rape culture" is (perhaps deliberately) off-putting. Let me add my supporting evidence, which is naturally in factual form :)

As a young man, I used to teach six-week women's self defense courses. I was astounded to learn that around 25% of the students in any given class were essentially unteachable: they would not strike an assailant under any circumstances, even in our safe little studio surrounded by other women cheering her on. It was so bizarre to me: we had constructed an artificial environment where fighting was unambiguously the right decision, and some women just couldn't bring themselves to do it. And these were gals that wanted to learn how to defend themselves!

I had grown up being taught that men and women were generally the same (except for pregnancy and upper-body strength), and here was clear evidence that what I had learned was wrong. That's actually part of the reason I took gender studies courses in the first place.

[Oh yeah: lest anyone think our self-defense courses were evidence of women being inherently timid: a roughly equal percentage of women in each class really got into the lessons, to the extent that the poor guy in padding (sometime me) was often covered in bruises at the end of the night. And of course, our regular courses had several gals that had no problem hitting people or being hit.]

I WANT THINGS THAT I CAN'T HAVE WITHOUT MAKING OTHER PEOPLE UNHAPPY, BUT I WILL MAKE THEM UNHAPPY TO GET WHAT I WANT, BECAUSE I AM A GREEDY LITTLE BITCH! HOW DARE YOU TRY TO DENY ME MY HAPPINESS!?!?

Reasoning Away my Own Bad Behaviour Major,
B.S. University,
Caralain

@ 134 - Gee, for someone whose "whole world" revolves "around questioning everything", you don't question your own self-serving assumptions much, do you? Or perhaps the key word was "around": you never actually get to it.

1 - You had access to loans to study. You are middle class. By any definition. Poor people are denied access to loans.

2 - Yes, there are plenty of uneducated white people still. But where I come from, which is not the US (and where most people are white), there was a huge leap in the number of people who could and did get an education between my parents' generation and mine. Still, my generation's standard of living is about half that of my parents, which proves that your line "The uneducated white never were placed in a position you were more qualified for, they never even got to your position" is wrong (To make it clearer: I've had them as bosses my whole life even though I could teach them how to do their job, and often had to.)

That's what I was pointing out. Don't try to bring the discussion in another direction now that you've realized your arguments are stupid.

3 - I don't live in the States, neither does Canuck, and, I think, from previous comments they made - and their avatar - Canadian Nurse and Backyard Bombardier (and many others, I suppose). We are all very frequent "contributors" here. Someone wrote from the UK about her experience in Women Studies in this very thread. HELLO! This is the INTERNET! The whole world is reading. And commenting.

So to set the record straight, I wasn't talking about "the plight of others", quite the contrary. I was saying that if you
really do believe the US has enough problems of its own, you should once in a while try to look outside of your very, very small world. You'd find that there might be different and interesting viewpoints on the same situations, and often even SOLUTIONS.

But that's what's wrong with the US nowadays (and with you personally): this unflinching belief that there is nothing good to be learned from people/countries who have different opinions and experiences (think drug legalization, gay marriage, medical insurance, gun control...).

Furthermore, a useless liberal arts education might have taught you (although you don't sound like you want to learn anything) that there is statistically no such thing as upwards social mobility in the US. For every 1% of the population that moves up a social class every generation, 3% move down (my stats are a bit old, but I believe that's only worsened since, as the percentage of poor people in your country increases steadily).

In other words, if there's a correlation between wealth and race (and there is), it's highly unlikely to change. Why? Because those most likely to go down are those who just moved up. You may find individual examples to the contrary, but in reality, they are few and far between.

You pride yourself on your being a scientist, but if you really had a scientific, inquiring mind, I wouldn't have to tell you all this.

Now, who was it that said Women's Studies were for "those with inferior intellect and superiority complexes"? I'm surprised you didn't get a PhD in it.

@172, depending on one's perspective, one might provide evidence that aspects of our culture lead to more rapes being committed than in other cultures. Or one might argue that all current cultures are rape culture, compared to some utopian culture feminists are trying to build. Since I am new to the idea myself, I don't know which version is more accepted in the field. And of course there are no guarantees that any particular person outside the field would find the evidence persuasive. But the topic is there, and people are writing about it.

@176, yes, I think "rape culture" is deliberately provocative. Sometimes that helps an idea spread. Wiki says the term started as "rape-supportive culture," but of course "rape culture" is more punchy. And thanks for sharing your experience teaching the course. Very interesting.

@172, also, re-reading our exchange, I want to say that I proposed (@156) that gender studies would be useful for studying "the idea of rape culture (as a meme in our society)." To which you replied (@168) "If one believed that such a thing as a "rape culture" exists in our society, how would (or should) one go about making the case for that?"

I said the "idea of rape culture" might be worth studying, and you said "how would one make the case that rape culture exists." I can prove that the idea of rape culture exists by pointing at the wiki page about it. You changed the topic from one where gender studies would be uncontroversially useful, to one where Slogsters would have a field day tearing apart any argument one might make.

Caralain @ 179 put into marvelous sarcastibitch words something that had been niggling at me and I couldn't put my finger on: that a lot of asexuals seem to feel that they're entitled to have a sexual as a partner -- look at the whining on numbers -- and then they get pissy when people call them on it, as if there was prejudice. I think that's what pisses off a lot of 'em about disclosure, frankly|: they want to reserve the right to deceive to increase the mate pool.

Funny thing, though. I spent ten years in divorce practice and I can tell you for a fact that there's way more asexuals and minimally sexual people out there than folks -- including asexuals and minimally sexuals -- realize.

Thanks Erica. I would agree that providing evidence would be a good way to go about it.

@183: I would go broader and say that a lot of people seem to feel that they're entitled to have a partner, and want the right to deceive to increase the mate pool. We've gotten used to calling out people who deceive about their marital status/occupation/emotional state/etc. to get what they want. Asexuals are a newly gathering group, so most people haven't been exposed to the same "entitlement" argument in asexual form yet. Except for sloggers, who are willing to trash deceitful asexuals.

Asexuals: this is what equality looks like. If you lie and bullshit to get the relationship you want, people will call you an asshole and tell your partner to DTMFA, just like anyone else.

@167/169: Adrienne Rich was/is a big deal BUT her feminism is considered more second wave and fell out of favor with many (most?) within academia with the arrival of more inclusive(?), postmodern third wave feminism. Obviously all these terms are super subjective, but I think she isn't cool in women's studies circles anymore for being a little too old school and a little under-theoretical. See also: Andrea Dworkin. (Not my favorite feminist.)

I'd recommend Simians, Cyborgs, and Women, by Donna Haraway, to all the scientists in this discussion. The essay feels a little dated/prescient, but if you bring your mind back to when it was written, it provides an excellent intersection of feminism and "science and technology" studies.

@184, fine, now that you've declared victory, are you heading home? Evidence doesn't mean neutral facts. http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/evidenc…

@188: I believe @184 was trying to be gracious. I think agreeing to disagree is the best you both can hope for. You're coming from completely different perspectives: It can be hard to bridge that gap.

I'm really sorry if this reads as "mansplainin'." It's not really my business, but it seems like you're both moving from sincere/non-trolling places and it seems like a shame for their to be conflict. Anyway, I'm sure I'm just digging a deeper hole here. Stopping now.

Erica, as you correctly pointed out, evidence doesn't mean that people won't have an emotional reaction to facts, but it does mean more than merely having an instinctive feeling that something (like, for example, a "rape culture") exists.

@191, it depends what one is trying to show. When you did your sneaky jujitsu rhetorical move (which I pointed out @182), you asked how one would demonstrate that rape culture exists. But that was *your* question, not a real Gender Studies question. I'd be willing to bet that no one in Gender Studies is going around trying to prove the existence of rape culture. They don't try to prove that there are men and women, either, or transgendered people. If I were in Gender Studies and wanted to study rape culture, I wouldn't waste my time trying to prove to you or anyone that it exists. I would go talk to men and women who used the term "rape culture," and try to understand its utility to them. Their "instinctive feeling" would be interesting to me, even if that doesn't look like evidence to you.

@190-192 -- Roma, I apologize for using the term "sneaky jujitsu rhetorical move." That's how I experienced the move, because I didn't notice it as it was happening, and only realized later that I was explaining something I hadn't volunteered to explain.

But I grant (as judgmentalist points out) that you were operating in good faith and not trying to trip me up.

@187: If Adrienne Rich is old-school, under-theoretical, and has fallen out of favor with academia, then that's exactly the kind of information that should be conveyed in scholarly works rather than "off the record," anonymous internet posts. That's precisely my point when it comes to utility.

I'm certainly willing to admit the possibility that my professor was behind the times, but it's kinda hard for me to verify it. That wouldn't be the case in other disciplines.

EricaP @ 192:
Isn't that post kind of Exhibit A for the perception differential between yourself and those with whom you are debating? You take as a given, for example, that "rape [supportive] culture" exists, but your debating partners would argue that you have to prove that it exists subject to the defined standards of academic rigour.

Put alternatively, you are taking the position that an in-group assumption that a given characterization of our society is so obvious that it need not be examined, and then expects that others around you accept that assumption, at least in the way that you characterize it. I've never taken GS/WS so I don't know how exhaustive the work is; for all I know the academic foundation for identifying and assuming a rape culture is as unassailable as that for a consumer culture. Where the debate between you and the others on the thread runs into problems -- from what I can see, anyway -- is that you seem to be taking the position that with such WS/GS frames that those frames are so obvious that they exist in a category all their own which is exempt from the usual proof rules -- even when they move outside the four corners of the group where they have been proven to that group's satisfaction -- a position naturally anethema to empiricists. And, if I might be so bold, it should be anethema to others in the society including policy makers because it appears, on the surface and at least as presented in this debate, as generally equivalent to theology or religious or ideological doctrine: it's true because it's true, and your questioning it is wrong because we've already proved it. We're dealing with a social science, here, not engineering, and different people of good faith will draw differing conclusions and theories and suggested change from the same data, so why should WS/GS get a bye that, say, sociology does not?

Just my two cents on how the argument is proceeding, rather than taking a position on the issues themselves.

I feel perfectly ambivalent about the conversation over gender/sexuality studies. Perhaps that ambivalence may prove useful. Perhaps not.

I have a PhD in American Studies, also from a "top 10" school, in a program that house ethnic studies, media studies, queer studies, and women's studies. BUT, and this is the key point, I was a biology major as an undergraduate, which perhaps guaranteed this ambivalence I'm about to describe:

Having taught many many classes on racism, I would not discount the power of confirmation bias in folks who insist that said classes are not "real" because they lack academic standards rooted in reason and evidence. I've learned that said folks are often deeply threatened by the course material, but distance themselves by that sense of threat by faulting the classes rather than exploring their own assumptions. So, when a man says that gender studies rely on emotion over evidence, dismissing an entire interdisciplinary field while doing so, I smell confirmation bias. To learn that it's poet Adrienne Rich, I wonder would said male dismiss a "traditional" poetry class as too "emotional?" Hello, welcome to poetry?

On the other hand, when the opposition recommends Judith Butler and Donna Harraway as antidotes, I burst out laughing. As someone with a science background, I had a really hard time with the "protectedness" (i.e. exaltation) around a subset of cultural theorists who were "above" emperical testing and who wrote in circles and needlessly obtuse jargon--and, at the most basic level, were just piss poor writers. I've attended Butler's talks on Israel/Palestine that were so theoretically obtuse that a lay person wouldn't have had any ability to know that they were on Israel/Palestine. So, on the flip side, I think folks that are academically trained to evaluate, for lack of a better phrase, "hard data" react against this dense theory as a load of self-inflating bullshit. And I say that as someone who has studied and taught this very stuff for many many years.

My two (opposing) cents.

@196: While it's possible I'm deluding myself, I am not threatened by the course material. I think gender studies is definitely worth studying; I just don't like the way it's currently studied within gender studies programs. For instance, I acknowledge that women as a class are undervalued by society-- not because I read essays from women saying they felt undervalued, but because I've looked at the statistical data on salaries as well as the distribution of women within power hierarchies. My impression of gender studies is that it would insist that the essays are sufficient evidence and forgo any further analysis.

Similarly, I think that the notion of a "rape culture" has some merit-- not because I read essays insisting that it is so, but because of my own experience teaching self-defense classes and through my own consumption of popular culture. I would love to see "harder" evidence-- psychological experiments/studies, for example. But it seems that women's studies departments are not interested in conducting those.

I am an empiricist: I always follow the data, even if the data leads somewhere I don't like. Having discarded a religion I loved because it opposed this guiding principle in my life, I don't think I'd have difficulty coming to grips with whatever blame/privileges my masculinity has granted me. Indeed, the statistical data I referenced earlier means that I must be privileged, even if (or perhaps because) I cannot directly sense it.

As an aside: while I never took a poetry class, I did take a class on writing fiction, and was quite comfortable with prevalence of emotion in that class. Fiction without emotion would be boring indeed! But fiction and poetry are not meant to form the bases of decisions...

Oh, wow. At least when I get my PhD, I'll get to play with telescopes and shit.

@195 - you are precisely missing my point. I'm saying that once the "idea of rape culture" exists (which it clearly does), then we can deduce from its existence that the idea is useful or interesting to people who are spreading it. Then we can study the idea, its permutations, and their spread. People outside the field (like you) might get all hung up worrying "is there a rape culture"? As if, like quarks, that's something that could be decided, once and for all. If you determine that there's not enough evidence that we live in a "rape culture," so you decide not to believe in it, does that change the fact that other people see it as a useful frame of reference?

In comparative religion, one doesn't start by proving the existence of the different gods in each religion.