From soc.men Mon Feb 15 23:09:20 1993 Xref: utcsri soc.women:65265 soc.men:62074 Newsgroups: soc.women,soc.men Path: utcsri!rpi!usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!ames!pacbell.com!att-out!cbnewsl!cbnewsk!noraa From: noraa@cbnewsk.cb.att.com (aaron.l.hoffmeyer) Subject: A SISTERHOOD OF SCHOLARS? [long] Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories Date: Mon, 15 Feb 1993 05:54:48 GMT Message-ID: <1993Feb15.055448.6251@cbnewsk.cb.att.com> Lines: 658 I found this over on soc.feminism. >From: jmc@sail.stanford.EDU (John McCarthy) >Message-ID: >Newsgroups: soc.feminism >Approved: tittle@ics.uci.edu >Date: 4 Feb 93 23:30:05 GMT This is another posting with permission of an article from the newsletter _Measure_. All articles are posted to alt.activism.d, and certain of them are posted to other newsgroups that seem relevant. University Centers for Rational Alternatives _Measure_ Number 112, January 1993 A SISTERHOOD OF SCHOLARS? Christina Hoff Sommers (An abbreviated version, entitled "Sister Soldiers," appeared in the October 5, 1992 issue of _New Republic_.) In theory, the National Women's Studies Association is a central professional academic organization like the American Philosophical Association or the American Chemical Society. It holds annual meetings, and chose the Hyatt Regency in Austin, Texas, a pleasant hotel, as the site for its 1992 conference. In practice, though, the missionary nature of Women's Studies makes for some striking differences. Not all of the 500 participants in this year's NWSA Conference were happy with the chosen milieu. One woman from a well-known southern college complained to me about the weddings being held there throughout the weekend. "Why have they put us in a setting where that sort of thing is going on?" Dissatisfaction was a conference motif. The Keynote Speaker, Annette Kolodny, a feminist literary scholar and (until recently) Dean of the Humanities faculty at the University of Arizona, opened the proceedings with a brief history of the "narratives of pain" within the NWSA. She reported that ten years ago the organization "almost came apart over outcries by our lesbian sisters that we had failed adequately to listen to their many voices." Five years ago sisters in the Jewish Caucus had wept at their own "sense of invisibility." Three years later the Disability Caucus threatened to quit, and the following year the women of color walked out. A pernicious bigotry, Kolodny confessed, persisted in the NWSA. "Our litanies of outrage ... overcame our fragile consensus of shared commitment and the center would no longer hold." At past conferences oppressed women accused other women of oppressing them. Participants met in groups defined by their grievances and healing needs: Jewish women, Jewish lesbians, Asian American Women, African-American Women, Old Women, Disabled Women, Fat women, Women Whose Sexuality is in Transition. None of the groups proved stable: the fat group polarized into gay and straight factions, and the Jewish women discovered they were deeply divided: some accepted being Jewish, others were seeking to recover from it. This year concern extended to "marginalized" allergy groups. Participants were sent advance notice not to bring perfumes, dry- cleaned clothing, hair spray or other dangerous irritants to the conference out of concern for allergic sisters. Hyper-concern is now the norm: At the first National Lesbian convention in Atlanta flash cameras were outlawed--they might bring on epileptic fits. Eleanor Smeal, the former president of NOW, was scheduled to be the first speaker on the NWSA "Empowerment Panel," but her plane had been held up in Memphis. To pass the time, we were introduced to an array of panelists who were touted as being experienced in conflict resolution. One woman was introduced as a member of the Mohawk nation who "facilitates anti-bias training." Another, an erstwhile dancer, was described as a Black lesbian activist who was "doing an amazing, miraculous job on campuses building coalitions." A third, who had training as a holistic health practitioner, headed workshops that "creatively optimize human capacity." The moderator told us "These women have agreed to come to us as a team and work together to help us figure out how we might begin to deal much more effectively ... with issues of inclusion, empowerment, diversity." To keep our spirits high, we were taught words to a round which we dutifully sang: "We have come this far by strength, leaning on each other. Trusting in each other's words. We never failed each other yet. Singing Oh, Oh, Oh. Can't turn around. We have come this far by strength." After several minutes of singing, and still no Smeal, panelist Angela (the former dancer) took the microphone to tell about "ouch experiences." An "ouch" is when you experience racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, ableism, ageism or lookism. One of Angela's biggest ouches came after her lesbian support group splintered into two factions, black and white. Tension then developed in her black group between those whose lovers were black and those whose lovers were white. "Those of us in the group who had white lovers were immediately targeted .... It turned into a horrible mess .... I ended up leaving that group for self protection." A weary Eleanor Smeal finally arrived and was pressed into immediate service. She confided that she was feeling discouraged about the feminist movement. "We need totally new concepts .... In many ways it's not working .... It is so depressing. We are leaving ... the next generation [in a] mess." Smeal's liveliest moment came when she attacked "liberal males on the campus," saying, "they have kept us apart. They have marginalized our programs. We need fighting madness." Despite the call to arms, Smeal's talk was a downer, and the moderator acted quickly to raise our spirits: "What we want to do now is to dwell for a minute on success .... Think about the fact that we have been so successful in transforming the curriculum ...." It was soon time for another song. "We are sisters in a circle. We are sisters in a struggle. Sisters one and all. We are colors of the rainbow, Sisters one and all." As it happened, I did have a real sister (in the unexciting biological sense) with me at the conference. Louise and I were frankly relieved to have group-sing interrupted by a coffee break. Half and Half was available, but perhaps not for long. The eco-feminist caucus has been pushing to eliminate all meat, fish, eggs, and dairy products at NWSA events. As the break ended Phyllis, the panelist from the Mohawk nation, holding two little puppets, a dog and a teddy bear, came round to inform us, "Teddy and his friend say its time to go back inside." Louise, who is a psychologist, was beginning to find the conference professionally intriguing. Phyllis' Native American credentials, it turned out, were not all that solid. In addition to Mohawk, she was French and Irish with traces of Algonquin. Having established her unique racial persona, she said, "Let us take a moment to give ourselves a big hug. Let me remind us that the person we're hugging is the most important person we have in our life." Phyllis continued: "Let's do it again! Each and every one of you is my relative .... We are interconnected. We are interdependent. And we have respect. Those are principles. So, what would I need from you in a loving relationship, the reminder that I have gotten away from my principles here; and to help me get back to my principles. Even if I have to say "ouch" and hug my puppets--or whatever I have to do." To conclude the Empowerment Panel session, a "feminist facilitator" led us in a "participatory experience." We were told to turn to our neighbor and tell her what we liked most about the NWSA. Louise turned to me and asked, "Have we accidentally stumbled into a convention of borderline personalities?" After that debilitating morning session Louise and I visited the "Exhibition Hall." There, dozens of booths offered women's studies books and paraphernalia. Witchcraft and goddess worship supplies in aisle one. Adjoining aisles contained handmade jewelry, leather crafts, ponchos and other peasant apparel (which, for Louise, solved the mystery of where many of the participants did their shopping). One booth offered videos on do-it-yourself menstrual extractions and home abortions for those who want to avoid "patriarchal medicine." Lack of substance was compensated by action: the conference was strong on workshops, and movies. My sister and I were especially interested in two films: _Sex and the Sandinistas_ and _We're Talking Vulva_. Unable to locate the screening rooms, we asked two shocked Hyatt bellhops for help. They turned out to be fans of the conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh: "Is this a conference of 'feministas'?" they asked. They were perceptibly scared . The philosopher Paula Rothenberg (from William Paterson College) spotted me and approached. She knows I am a skeptic. "What do you think of the conference so far?" she asked. Two of her comrades approached. I was cornered. "Few scholarly papers, sing-a-longs, chants, teddy bear hugs. It's not your garden variety academic conference." I replied. She took this badly and went on the offensive. "I am very uncomfortable having you here. We are in the middle of working through our problems. I saw you taking notes. I feel as if you have come into the middle of my dysfunctional family, and you are seeing us at our worst moment." But Professor Rothenberg's "dysfunctional family" has had many bad moments. Ouchings and mass therapy are more the norm in academic feminism than the exception, and often appear as desperate attempts to "save the family." Last year, at a meeting of Women's Studies Program Directors, everyone joined hands to form a "healing circle." They also assumed the posture of trees experiencing rootedness and tranquillity. Consequently, victim testimonials and new age healing rituals crowd out the reading of academic papers at NWSA conferences. I do feel a little sorry for Professor Rothenberg. She is a veteran Marxist feminist. In the past year or so she has had to contend with the rapid and unexpected dissolution of the Soviet Union, the fall of the Sandinistas, the campaign against political correctness. Now she finds herself in a "dysfunctional family" whose faddish "therapies" she must find fatuous. Still, she has her consolations. She is Director of something called the "New Jersey Project: Integrating the Scholarship on Gender." With New Jersey tax dollars and federal funds, she is, in the best tradition of Marxist revolutionary activism, hard at work "transforming the curriculum"--to purge it of all patriarchal, Eurocentric, racist, sexist and homophobic biases. Later that day she would be boasting to some fellow work-shoppers how "deeply committed" the New Jersey Chancellor of Higher Education, Edward D. Goldberg, is to her goals. * * * Does it matter that a bunch of high-strung, anti-intellectual, chronically offended, "dysfunctional family members" get together for a conference and say and do a lot of odd things? It does because on more and more campuses these consciousness raisers are driving out the scholars. Within the past fifteen years the academy has witnessed the inception of more than 500 Women's Studies Programs and more than 30,000 courses, along with the formation of some fifty major feminist institutes. Most of the women attending the conference are in the academy in one capacity or another: either teaching women's studies, directing programs, or in the administration. Others head women's centers. These women run the largest growth area in the academy. Though their conferences may be untidy, they are politically astute on their campuses. They have strong influence in some key areas, most notably in English Departments (especially freshman writing courses), French Departments, History Departments, Law Schools, and Divinity Schools. They are disproportionally represented in the Dean of Students' office, in the dormitory administration, in the harassment office and various counseling centers. They are quietly engaged in hundreds of well-funded governmental and "philanthropical" projects to transform a curriculum that they regard as unacceptably "androcentric." Their moral authority comes from a widespread belief that they represent "women." In fact their version of feminism falls far short of being representative. Most American women subscribe philosophically to an older "First Wave" kind of feminism whose main goal is equity. A First Wave or "equity feminist" wants for women what she wants for everyone: fair treatment, no discrimination. The equity feminist crusade that was initiated over a hundred and fifty years ago called for constitutional changes to guarantee equal opportunity especially in politics and education. The equity agenda may not yet be fully achieved, but by any reasonable measure equity feminism is a great American success story. Women's Studies practitioners still ride the First Wave for its popularity and its moral authority but most adhere to a more radical "Second Wave" doctrine: that women, even modern American women, are in thrall to "a system of male dominance" variously referred to as "hetero-patriarchy," or the "sex/gender system." According to one feminist theorist, it is "a system of male-dominance made possible by men's control of women's productive and reproductive labor." (Note the Marxist lingo.) Another describes it as "that complex process whereby bisexual infants are transformed into male and female gender personalities, the one destined to command, the other destined to obey." Every human achievement is said to bear its impress: philosophy, science, music, language itself. One professor at the City University of New York expresses the widely felt enthusiasm for the new perspective when she says, "Now that the sex/gender system has become visible to us, we see it everywhere." "Gender oppression" is invading the political stage previously dominated by "economic exploitation." Heady claims are made for the new way of looking at society and its impact on scholarship. According to the philosopher Elizabeth Minnich "What we are doing, is comparable to Copernicus shattering our geo-centricity, Darwin shattering our species-centricity. We are shattering andro-centricity, and the change is as fundamental, as dangerous, as exciting." The sociologist Jessie Bernard compares the explosion of research in women's scholarship to the storming of the Bastille or "the shot heard round the world." "Academia will never be the same again." Gerda Lerner, Professor of History at Wisconsin, cautions that attempts to describe what is now going on in women's scholarship "would be like trying to describe the Renaissance--ten years after it began." Of course, like so many other worthy intellectual endeavors, some feminist scholarship is innovative, sound and necessary. Literary scholars have discovered and rescued many gifted women writers from undeserved oblivion. Women historians and social scientists have found that much previous research did not apply to women. The best research on women does not use the radical feminist prism, but unfortunately a good deal of what is assigned in women's studies classes is not disciplined scholarship but "gynocentric" feminist ideology, a damaging parody of otherwise very legitimate concerns. The amenable student learns to unmask the subtle, inimical workings of patriarchy. Committed instructors declare their classrooms "liberated zones" where "silenced women" will be free for the first time to speak out in a safe gynocentric ambience. This is a pedagogy which aims above all to cleanse the academy of masculinism. In 1985, The American Association of Colleges issued a seemingly innocuous report on the importance of the college major. It spoke of "...the joy of mastery, the thrill of moving forward in a formal body of knowledge and gaining some effective control over it, integrating it, perhaps even making some small contribution to it." The NWSA 1991 Report to the Professions saw in this passage a blatant example of "phallocentric" discourse: "A feminist analysis of this rhetoric reveals ... an analogy between knowledge and sexual subjugation ... an idea of learning as mastery or control. Clearly embedded ... are unconscious androcentric assumptions of dominance and subordination between the knower and the known, assumptions that all too readily bring to mind the traditional relationship of men to women; of the colonizers to the colonized; indeed, of the master to the slave. Such phallocentric metaphors ... are not the accidental usage of one report, but replicate the dominant discourses of Western empiricism which women's studies ... critiques." Incidentally, this NWSA report, which acknowledges generous support from The Ford Foundation and the U.S. Department of Education, was authored by four Women's Studies luminaries, Jonnella Butler (University of Washington), Margaret Homans (Yale University), Sandra Coyner (Kansas State University), Marlene Longnecker (Ohio State University), and the former NWSA Executive Director, Caryn McTighe Musil. Faced with this kind of criticism, it is appropriate to ask what sort of approach to learning _would_ satisfy the preternaturally alert authors of the NWSA report? We get an idea by looking at a "model" introductory women's studies course developed by twelve Rutgers University professors. One of the stated goals of the course is to "challenge and change the social institutions and practices that create and perpetuate systems of oppression." According to the prescription, forty percent of the student's grade is to come from: 1) performing some "outrageous" and "liberating" act outside of class and then sharing feelings and reactions with the class; 2) keeping a journal of "narratives of personal experience, expressions of emotion, dream accounts, poetry, doodles, etc."; and 3) forming small in-class consciousness raising groups. The exhilaration of feeling themselves at the cutting edge of a new consciousness infuses feminist pedagogues with a doctrinal fervor unique in the academy. "The feminist classroom," say four professors from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Margo Culley, Arlyn Diamond, Catherine Portuges and Dean Sara Lennox, "is the place to use what we know as women to appropriate and transform, totally, a domain which has been men's .... Let us welcome the intrusion/infusion of emotionality--love, rage, anxiety, eroticism--into intellect as a step toward healing the fragmentation capitalism [_sic_] and patriarchy have demanded from us." Exultation over the new "female ways of knowing" is accompanied by bitterness over sexually aggressive "male ways of knowing" that have intimidated so many women in the past. Catharine MacKinnon, Professor of Law at the University of Michigan, gives extreme expression to feminist anger for having so long been taken in by patriarchal constructions of knowledge: "In the Bible to know a woman is to have sex with her. You acquire carnal knowledge.... Feminists are beginning to understand that to know has meant to fuck." In this manner does victimology add spice to the invigorating idea of a "feminist epistemology." The nonconformist, an often incoherent character of feminist pedagogy, has not impeded its burgeoning growth. Is _anyone_ resisting? Most faculty have been skeptical, but at the same time, passive and permissive. The administration has been cooperative. The one academic estate that resists are the students; but ordinary, non-doctrinaire students have little political standing on the American campus. An undergraduate may take Freshman Composition, Baroque Art, or Egyptology and discover on the first day of class that it will be taught from a "gynocentric" perspective. Students tend to like opinionated teachers who breathe commitment, but even so most are not buying the story of a gender war. Women' s studies professors often describe their classrooms as being in "crisis" because of "rebellious students;" a situation that has been aggravated because, on so many campuses, women's studies courses are now mandatory. Instructors tell of the inevitable "mid-semester blow-up" in which students protest angrily about the one-sidedness of courses. Feminist pedagogues call it the "blame the messenger" reaction, or the "denial" stage. Ordinarily, instructors facing persistent student protests would be moved to reconsider their own methods and arguments. But in the feminist classroom opposition, counter argument or complaints about methods serve primarily to convince the instructor that she is encountering backlash, and thus should become more aggressively persistent. At the Austin conference the "White Male Student Hostility" workshop was packed. It was led by two female assistant professors from The State University of New York at Plattsburgh. What to do about young men who refuse to use gender neutral pronouns? Most agreed they should be told they would be graded down. One of the Plattsburghers told us about a male student who had "baited" her when she defended a fifteen year old's right to have an abortion without parental consent. The student asked: What about a 15 year old that wanted to marry a 30 year-old? She referred to this as a "trap." (In philosophy, it is known as a counter example.) Did we have any advice to offer? For this particular young man the agreed strategy was to say to him, "I am trying to figure out why you are asking this kind of question." Someone noted that female students in the class can usually be relied upon to keep male students in check. One woman got a big laugh when she told of a feminist student who silenced an "obnoxious male" by screaming: "Shut up you fucker." The group was more perplexed about what to do with recalcitrant females. Now that women's studies courses are required courses on more and more campuses, they expect more troublesome resistance. One workshopper triumphantly concluded, "If the students were comfortable, we would not be doing our job." To succeed as they have, feminist academics needed strong support from friendly administrators. They got this in two ways: First, by entering themselves into administrative positions in disproportionate numbers. Second, by doing all they could to get cooperative people into positions of power. Increasingly, aspiring presidents, deans, professors and program directors in all academic fields have to pledge allegiance to feminist educational agendas if they want to get hired. The American Association of Colleges disseminates a widely used questionnaire entitled "It's All In What You Ask: Questions for Search Committees to Use." Among the questions asked: "How have you demonstrated your commitment to women's issues in your current position? (lead question) What is your relation to the women's center? How do you deal with backlash and denial?" This kind of screening was used at the University of Maryland in their recent search for a president. According to an enthusiastic report by a Ms. Betsy Schmitz, who now assists the new president, all candidates for the position were prepared for the questions and many, including, President Curwin, had the right answers. The screening procedure proved effective. President Curwin has come through with $500,000 of University funds for a politically correct curriculum transformation project. In allocating that sum, the President obligingly bypassed the faculty senate. Now, Ms Schmitz, a specialist in curriculum transformation projects, reports that many Maryland faculty are outraged and that the president is taking the heat for "a lot of backlash." The proposition that "the knowledge base" must be radically "transformed" on feminist lines is now asserted by prestigious mainstream educational organizations such as the American Association of University Women and the American Council on Education. According to the ACE, the feminist challenges to "conventional ways of knowing and thinking" sets a new agenda: "What has yet to happen on all of our campuses is the transformation of knowledge, and therefore of the curriculum... ." At the root of all transformation projects is the thesis that not just people but also ideas and disciplines are gendered. But, as the academic promoters of the politics of sexual identity are beginning to learn, gender is not sacrosanct as a principle of social division. Why should identity politics be stabilized at two? A woman can be simultaneously a victim, and, depending on her race and physical status also a white, able-bodied oppressor of Latinas, black males, and the disabled. The middle class educated women who discovered the sex-gender system are now being forced to regard themselves as oppressors in a complex ecology of domination and subjugation. But perhaps "ecology" is too orderly a concept for a manipulative victimology. One would normally expect that more objective and less partisan academics would quickly demolish the outsize claims being made for feminist theory and its transformation projects. That they hold back is a tribute to the reputation feminists have for their ruthless _ad feminam_ ways of dealing with unfriendly comment. Adverse criticism is never examined with any seriousness. Instead the critic is denounced as reactionary or worse. Few disinterested scholars have been willing to take on the unrewarding job of critically examining feminist arguments. When the respected Shakespeare scholar Richard Levin took issue with some of the more fanciful feminist interpretations of Shakespeare's tragedies, he was denounced and ridiculed in the _Publications of the Modern Language Association_. One particularly nasty letter boasted 24 signatories: signing in groups is a standard feature of feminist critical response. * * * Academic feminists are easily as accomplished at squelching and "silencing" uncooperative women as others out there in the "hetero- patriarchy." After somehow learning that I had been commissioned to write an article on feminism by a popular monthly, a radical feminist from the University of Illinois wrote the editors urging them to suppress its publication. Later, in _The Chronicle of Higher Education_, she justified her action comparing herself to someone combatting holocaust revisionism. "I wouldn't want a nut case who thinks there wasn't a holocaust to write about the holocaust." Group censure of Camille Paglia is now routine and the "_reductio ad Hitlerum_" has also been used against her: in one attempt to get it removed from a reading list, Paglia's scintillating and erudite _Sexual Personae_ was compared to _Mein Kampf_. To invite Paglia to your campus is to invite a lot of in-house trouble. When someone in the Brown University English Department asked Paglia to give a talk, outraged faculty feminists wrote a memorandum asking for an explanation and requesting that the English Department meet to discuss its procedures for inviting speakers to the campus. That Paglia would be blackballed by her detractors had been predicted by Yale professor Harold Bloom: "[T]hey are totalitarians, they are sanctimonious, they are self- righteous. They are, in fact, truly illiterate people. They are _careerists_." Bloom noted that "someone as brilliant, as learned, as talented, as ferociously burning an intellect as Paglia" belongs in the Ivy League or at someplace like Berkeley or Chicago. But the "bureaucrats of resentment who are appointed in the networks because they are politically correct" will continue to do their utmost to make sure that this does not happen. "They will blackball her everywhere." Few academics are prepared to trigger the ire of zealous colleagues in constant agitated communication. There is, therefore, an appalling dearth of critical scrutiny of feminist theory and little resistance to the spread of its anti-intellectual influence. But the faculty's incapacity to impede the radical feminist colonization of the liberal academy cannot be ascribed to mere timidity. The deeper reason is that a confused academic community has persistently failed to distinguish between the traditional "First Wave" equity feminism, which is responsible for the main achievements of feminism in this century, and the Second Wave gynocentric feminism which, since the early Seventies, has taken center stage in the universities. A befuddled liberalism has provided fertile soil for the growth of an intolerant, powerful gynocentric academic feminism. Even now the studied posture of affront and victimization keeps a liberal academy permanently off balance, giving a scholastically weak group of academics power far beyond their numbers and abilities. As a result, the highly successful feminist effort to transform the American academy is going virtually unchallenged. Gender feminists sometimes boast among themselves about the way they use naive liberal sentiment to gain their ends. Paula Goldsmid, a former Dean at Oberlin College, muses "You might wonder ... how we managed to generate a Women's Studies program that has a catalog supplement listing more than twenty courses, that offers an Individual Major in Women's Studies, that has been able to involve several committees in really working to transform the academy in various ways." She then notes with cozy candor, "There is great reluctance to say or do anything publicly that goes against the liberal and 'progressive' Oberlin stance. Oberlin's liberal values can be turned to our advantage. [Her emphasis.] Paula Rothenberg seconds that explanation. How did she and her sister feminists get William Paterson College (New Jersey) to require all students to take women's studies? "Our surprising success was due ... to the presence on the curriculum committee of ... some old style liberals who found it difficult to disagree with the idea of such a requirement, at least in public." Two years ago I wrote to the British novelist and philosopher, Iris Murdoch, asking for her views on some recent trends in Women's Studies. In her judgment: "Men 'created culture' because they were free to do so, and women were treated as inferior and made to believe they were. Now free women must join in the human world of work and creation on an equal footing and be everywhere in art, science, business, politics etc. ... However, to lay claim, in this battle, to _female_ ethics, _female_ criticism, _female_ knowledge ... is to set up a new female ghetto. (Chauvinist males should be delighted by the move...) 'Women's Studies' can mean that women are led to read mediocre or peripheral books by women rather than the great books of humanity in general.... It is a dead end, in danger of simply separating women from the mainstream thinking of the human race. Such cults can also _waste the time_ of young people who may be reading all the latest books on feminism instead of studying the difficult and important things that belong to the culture of humanity." [Her emphases.] At the Austin conference, however, the universal ideal of a culture of humanity was not the theme. On the contrary, the self-imposed segregation of women was everywhere in evidence. The best feminist scholars proceeded to do their work within their established disciplines and meet the expected traditional standards of those disciplines. But they come under fire from the gynocentrics. Eminent researchers like the classicist Mary Lefkowitz of Wellesley, the literary critic, Cynthia Griffin Wolff of M.I.T., the historian Elizabeth Fox-Genovese of Emory, the sociologist Rita Simon of American University, or Jean Bethke Elshtain of Vanderbilt write and teach about women, but they are reproved for failing to stress male hegemony and women's subjugation. While these outstandingly competent women were gaining "mastery and control" over their fields of study, the gynocentric feminists who find fault with them were busy networking, workshopping, forming councils and committees and joining governmental commissions. Many are now deans; some are university presidents. Many were at the Austin conference. As the conference wore on, the summer solstice was acclaimed while Father's Day came and went without comment. Attendance at the scheduled events languished, increasingly giving way to informal groups griping about the insensitivities of the NWSA. Many of the scheduled events and workshops were being video-taped and the tapes were available to us for a small price. The tapes convey the spirit of a movement that inspires its adherents to hunt ceaselessly for real or imaginary bias and insensitivity in both men and women, and to find it in the most unexpected ways. The zealous extirpation of phallocentrism and sexist bias is a growing preoccupation of colleges large and small. Faculty members at Middle Tennessee State University are now asked by the "Campus Committee for Curricular Transformation" to analyze all of their assigned readings, their lectures, and their audio- visual material for gender bias. One question asks instructors to tally the number of male and female pronouns in their assigned readings. The document is typical for the bland confidence of its authors that the faculty will not find it offensive. At many colleges and universities students now evaluate their professors on their sensitivity to gender issues. At American University in Washington D.C. students are asked whether "The course examined the contributions of both women and men". Salaries are directly linked to how well professors fare on these forms. One political science professor told me he often used the term "congressman," and got penalized on that question by two angry women students. Virginia Polytechnic issued to its faculty a sixty page guide called _Removing Bias: Guidelines for Student-Faculty Communication_ that presents "tactics for attitudinal change." (It was taxpayer-funded by the U.S. Department of Education.) Among much else of an edifying nature, the guide offers suggestions on how to avoid offensive humor. Professors are advised to read _Free to Be You and Me_ by Marlo Thomas for help on how to be funny while "eliminating gender stereotyping." The conference received a warm letter from Governor Ann Richards welcoming us to the Great State of Texas. The governor called the assembled feminists "the vanguard of the latest incarnation of the women's movement" praising their leadership as essential. The NWSA audience broke out into thunderous applause as the letter was read aloud. It is possible, however, that Governor Richards was unaware of the witchcraft booths, the menstrual extraction videos, the teddy bear puppets, the paranoid exposes of "phallocentric discourse"--let alone the bullying of students and the implacable hostility to all exact thinking as "male." Less innocently benighted are such government agencies or foundations as the U.S. Department of Education, The Ford Foundation and The Mellon Foundation--that keep groups like the NWSA "empowered." Officers of The Ford Foundation estimate that it alone has funded women's studies projects to the tune of some twenty-four million dollars. Those who irresponsibly abet the spirit of Austin have much to answer for. Perhaps, for penance, they should be made to view all the tapes of the conference and then asked to hug themselves till they "ouch." __________________________________________ Christina Hoff Sommers is a Professor of Philosophy at Clark University. She is writing a book on the future of feminism for Simon and Schuster. -- John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305 * He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.