“Out with the NOW, in with the NeW!” is the motto of a new conservative womens’s group formed at the University of Virginia.
Karin Agness, a fourth year (UVa’s term for senior) history major, became fed up with Womens’s Studies as it exists at UVa and other campuses, and decided to form her own group, which has now spread to several other campuses.
The result of the virtual invisibility of conservative women at UVA, she and others argue, is the perpetuation of harmful gender-based myths, such as the assumption that women can find success only in the workplace– not in the home– and that the traditional family headed by a heterosexual couple is “dead.”
They say a liberal orthodoxy in women’s studies classes unfairly paints men as evil and society as an oppressive patriarchy, and ignores differences between the sexes.
“In the women’s studies department, they’re not focusing at all on children,” Agness says. “Simply put, they say all women should be CEOs and presidents and lawyers and doctors. They don’t include anything about children and husbands. They’re not talking about how to balance work and family.”
Agness hopes the group will serve as a sanctuary from college Republican and other conservative clubs, which she says tend to be male-dominated, career-oriented, and not focused on issues of concern to women.
Ms. Agness (ironically?) hopes to become a lawyer. I’m sure she’ll be a good one.
“Agness hopes the group will serve as a sanctuary from college Republican and other conservative clubs, which she says tend to be male-dominated, career-oriented, and not focused on issues of concern to women.”
Can’t wait till she becomes a lawyer.
Yes, thank God, the feminist era is dead and currently in the process of burial.
Michael at 2Blowhards reports that even in Manhattan feminists are losing the power to dictate the terms of discussion and that young women are sick of them.
A more dour, pious and evangelical bunch than the Marxist feminists cannot be imagined. How in God’s name did we manage to take them seriously in the first place?
The answer: the innate chivalry of white men. When a college educated, prosperous white woman in the suburbs complained in 1969 that she was oppressed, just like blacks in the Jim Crow south… what did her husband or boyfriend say? “Oh, that’s horrible, honey. Yes, you should have anything you want.”
So, we all pretended to make the gals happy.
I Fought the Law
Cecilia writes to tell me that she doesn’t understand my ranting about politics. She’s way over there in Hyderabad, India, studying Indian film and trying to get to the U.S. on a Fulbright scholarship. Read Desipora to get the story.
“The answer: the innate chivalry of white men.”
nice one to add to the ‘discriminations’ blog.
Thank you, actus, for your constant watch for any heresies to the Marxist dogma.
Have you ever thought of becoming a Catholic priest? You’d do much less harm, and you’d actually be contributing to a spiritual tradition that has more positives than negatives.
“Thank you, actus, for your constant watch for any heresies to the Marxist dogma.”
Whats the marxist dogman on innate white chivalry, and its relationship to ‘discriminations’?
Y’all need to take this show on the road.
I, too, am sure she’ll be a successful attorney. She already has the skills of rhetoric and manipulation, no? This – “Simply put, they say all women should be CEOs and presidents and lawyers and doctors. They don’t include anything about children and husbands. They’re not talking about how to balance work and family.” is just not the case.
UVa’s more “liberal” departments, and here I am speaking to Women’s Studies and Sociology in particular, do talk about children and husbands, and they do talk about balancing work and family, and they do say that women have options other than to be CEOs and presidents and lawyers and doctors.
Of course the “facts” should neither stand in the way of Ms. Agness’s assault against an imaginary foe nor interfere with her tarnishing of a real department (a department, I might add, that presumably has real faults).
I do like that Republican women need a sanctuary from Republican men – at least they can agree with Democratic women on that front!
Much as I hate to admit it, but I’m with actus on Stephen’s “inate chivalry of white men” comment.
While I do lend much credence to evolutionary psychology, the idea that human psychology was, at least partiall, shaped by evolutionary forces including the effect of living is social groups, this is absurd on its face.
Is chivalry inate only to white men? Only to men?
Besides, who took them seriously anyway? Don’t include me in that we.
Women’s Studies departments truly do have their faults, but Miss Agness does seem to be in the same mold as some other conservatives who exaggerate the case. The one class I had (not at UVa) that mentioned balancing work and family was titled “Gender and Society” and it was taught by a very feminist professor. She was very much for balance in life and she was not anti-family, and I’m guessing there are classes like that at UVa. I never encountered the rabid feminists that hate men and never discuss children. Frankly, I wonder if Agness’ group won’t go hyper-conservative as some conservative women’s groups seem to–men are wonderful, and to the extent they aren’t it’s because women aren’t virtuous; women can’t ever be raped by a date; women were never really oppressed; women working in thinking professions makes them too masculine–better to just live through intuition. Anyone read Carolyn Graglia? Anyone read Debbie Schlussel complaining that physics and math aren’t feminine and no normal girl would want to major in it?
I don’t doubt extremists exist, but I hope Ms. Agness’ groups isn’t trying to replace one extreme with the other. As long as it’s a voluntary club, great, and I hope it is thinkingly conservative instead of the mirror-image of leftist stupidity.
“rabid feminists WHO hate men”, I believe…