radical take on student politics

[femaleinacademia]

The most prevalent social justice issue of the last term has probably been the ‘Decolonise the curriculum’ campaign. 

I think those who run and support this campaign have realised a crucial fact about the public sphere: that it is by no means endless. Inevitably, by paying more attention to certain questions, we spend less time on others. Based on this notion, academics and students alike have urged the university to introduce new, reformed curriculums. Curriculums that move away from the canon of ‘dead white men’ and include diverse voices from all around the globe.

However, if we really consider the stated aim of the campaign – that of “decolonisation” – we’ll discover a fundamental issue with mainstream liberal student activism. Colonisation is widely understood as a political or as an economic project. It involved (involves?) exploitation, slavery, genocide, rape and so on. We still live in a world-system where the power-dynamics of colonialism are influential but anti-colonial movements and recent developments in the global economy have fundamentally challenged longstanding center-periphery relations. In contrast to the radical independence struggles of the past, today a vocal minority of university students - not just in Cambridge, of course - believes that they can shift these global power relations by introducing new curriculums. The material struggle has been left behind and the cultural war has begun. 

Unfortunately, it’s crusade-like cultural war. I cannot even count how many times I’ve heard the phrase ‘dead white men’ since my time in Cambridge, usually used as a criticism to lump together thinkers from Plato through Descartes to Marx. I am not willing to pretend that we could have had radical politics without the canonical male figures of Western thinking. Those who argue that we should study their texts accompanied by feminist and postcolonial commentaries are on to something, but those advocating for their total replacement have a skewed, postmodernist view of history. They promote the understanding of academic disciplines only as fields for the struggle of identity groups over recognition not as scientific projects with internal set of rules. We must not forget that light-skinned people did not merely create colonialism but are responsible for many things we value as progressives today. ‘Dead white men’ have introduced, amongst other ideas, secularism, community and personal freedom, anti-essentialism, etc. to our thinking, millions of light-skinned men have fought against fascist regimes throughout the last century.   To sum up this point we have to recognize that: “Although, in the past, the majority of scientists were middle-class white men, the knowledge of the world they uncovered transcends their identity group.” http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/the-war-on-deadwhite-dudes/

Many would say that I only think this way because of my ‘white  privilege’, to this argument I can only answer by highlighting that as I am from Eastern-Europe - from a country that hardly participated in colonialism or the global slave-trade - terms as white/black fail to describe the power relations of my socialisation. (While other terms such as non-Roma privilege would of course make sense.) And I think One can make the argument that forcing an assumed ‘white’ identity on light-skinned Eastern-Europeans is the manifestation of the Anglo-American hegemony over our discourses of social justice.

[femaleinacademia]

No-platforming of Linda Bellos

Not long after arriving in Cambridge, a certain angst started to build within me – incited first of all by the no-platforming of Linda Bellos, a long-time anti-racist activist and a radical, lesbian feminist. Based on her record, any Feminist Society hosting her should feel proud and grateful for the opportunity. As it happened, Peterhouse’s feminism and gender society – the Beard Society - had a different idea. 

There have been a lot of articles written online on this issue so I do not want to repeat what has already been said: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/oct/06/feminist-linda-bellos-women-trans-male-violence. And those interested in what Linda Bellos in the end did say in Cambridge can watch her speech on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ec0mG6B6b9M&t=3s (Could we plausibly argue that this is hate speech or that it could deeply upset students?) 

I do however want to use this particular case as a stepping stone to explain some ideological premises of radical feminism. So, let’s take a look at Beard Society’s self-conception as a society for feminism and gender – a troubling description, because it suggests a misunderstanding of basic feminist theory.  Feminists started to use the gender as an alternative conceptualisation of notions such as sex-roles, sex-based oppression and similar ideas, meaning to explain the difference between biological reality (the sexual dimorphism of humans) and the superstructure of female oppression that was built on it. The Women’s Liberation Movement was, by definition, against women’s subjugation and they located the source of this oppression in the socialization of the sexes.  We usually understand socialization as a process through which boys and girls are made to learn the attitudes, behaviour, etc. that are associated with their sex-group (i.e. gender). By using gender, we try to highlight the difference between being born into a sex and then being socialized into a gender. Gender is thus a useful conceptual framework by which feminists can debunk the sexist idea of the existence of an innate female (or male) nature. Moreover, gender, in contrast to sex, doesn’t describe the sexual dimorphism of humans but a hierarchy. Non-liberal feminists widely share the understanding of gendered socialization as the means of perpetuating male-superiority.

Just like there is no radical account of class without exploitation, there is no radical understanding of gender without seeing the relations between the sexes as they are. It would be odd to have a Marxism & Class Society, since Marxism itself is the theory and practice of fighting against the existence of class. Similarly, the original, radical version of feminism was the fight to abolish the gender-hierarchy.

Of course, there are now as many feminisms as there are stars in the sky, and feminism is very rarely understood in the way I outlined above. If I had to guess, I would assume that Beard Society included gender in their description because they subscribed to the idea of understanding gender as an identity that could be chosen on an individual basis. If one accepts the idea that gender can be self-proclaimed, based purely upon the self-identification of the agent irrespective of socialisation, then biological males with ‘non-binary’ gender identities will appear to be just as oppressed as (or even more oppressed than!) women. I believe that the Beard Society has withdrawn the invitation of Linda Bellos because those setting the agenda of the society are more concerned about catering to this ideology of gender than they are committed to women’s freedom. After this incident, I believe it’s time for university Feminist Societies to decide between the feminist understanding of gender - it is something to get rid of because it upholds the patriarchy (as gender is inherently a system of hierarchical classification) - and the postmodernist/queer understanding of gender, where it is something to be celebrated and increasingly elaborated upon in the construction of more and more gender identities.

Perhaps, societies having the best interest of women at their heart could rename themselves as Women’s Liberation Groups or similar, to avoid confusion with the theoretically misguided and practically misleading ‘feminism & gender’ societies?

[femaleinacademia]

Starting this blog out of frustration with the liberal-leftist identity politics in Cambridge. And also because I am afraid to share my opinions with my name on public platforms but I cannot stay silent when all these anti-free speech stuff are happening on campus. I’ll be questioning liberal identity politics, the dismantling of female-only spaces and the infantilization of students in general. As I am only an undergraduate student I do not claim to have definite answers in every topic, but I do think that a radical feminist perspective could be interesting to people as it doesn’t have any platform at universities today. I’ll make sure to share lots of resources (websites, videos) that inspired or support my arguments / views.