On Academia and Gender Roles
When academia is at its best, it becomes a great center for dispelling social myths that contradict reality. The academic system of peer-review and intellectual rigor creates an atmosphere where new ideas can be explored even if social conventions might prejudice one to be hostile to such ideas.
This is important because once a myth has saturated a culture, it doesn't go away easily. It's easy to get annoyed at people who hold onto their mythology no matter how much it contradicts logic and reason, but this is a fundamental part of human nature. No matter how much one closely holds empiricism and logic, people will always hold certain things to be self-evidently true without question, and when one of these things turns out to be false, it's hard to let go. Think about how you felt when you first learned that historical evidence suggests that, yes, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg did give away nuclear secrets to the Soviets and were in fact guilty of treason, not the poor innocent railroaded victims that they were believed to be. Or if you never heard this before, think about how you're feeling right now.
But there's a downside to academia too, in that it can help to perpetuate ill-founded myths by acting as a sounding off board for eventually regrettable ideas. The most egregious example of this that I can think of is the flourish of racial studies in German univerities in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that helped give rise to Nazi ideology. But this bit of academic work doesn't have that much bearing anymore, as on the whole, contemporary western society doesn't accept such a racist form of social science.
But what has bearing in contemporary society is the aspect of gender roles, that the male and female gender have fundamental characteristics that are itemizable and immutable. As an illustration, see this post byAmsterdam Ampersand from a few months ago in which he posts a list of male and female characteristics from a magazine article from 1844. (I do hope Amp kept that article, it could prove to be a valuable historical document!)
There's an interesting history to this categorization of gender characteristics. For a long long time (as in since the time of Aristotle) the prevailing gender model was that there was one gender, and to be male was to be the idealized form of that gender. Sometime in the early nineteenth century though, a new gender model started being used, one in which there are two opposite genders with inherent characteristics. Once this concept starting becoming mainstream, it contributed to a resurgence in overt homophobia, as homosexuals were seen to either act in opposition to their gender or remain somewhere in between male and female. It also helped to contribute to overarching social mysogyny, since although theorists stated there is no superior gender, it relegated the more desirable gender role to men, making them the leaders and captains, while women were to look after the family.
Of course this idea sounds familiar, because it persists. Although I'm unaware of any self-respecting academic who studies the dichotomy of the genders as it was studies, similar sentiments are often sited in mainstream discussion without question of its truth. The damage is done. The myth is firmly established in the mass social conscious. It can be removed, but it won't be easy.
When academia is at its best, it becomes a great center for dispelling social myths that contradict reality. The academic system of peer-review and intellectual rigor creates an atmosphere where new ideas can be explored even if social conventions might prejudice one to be hostile to such ideas.
This is important because once a myth has saturated a culture, it doesn't go away easily. It's easy to get annoyed at people who hold onto their mythology no matter how much it contradicts logic and reason, but this is a fundamental part of human nature. No matter how much one closely holds empiricism and logic, people will always hold certain things to be self-evidently true without question, and when one of these things turns out to be false, it's hard to let go. Think about how you felt when you first learned that historical evidence suggests that, yes, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg did give away nuclear secrets to the Soviets and were in fact guilty of treason, not the poor innocent railroaded victims that they were believed to be. Or if you never heard this before, think about how you're feeling right now.
But there's a downside to academia too, in that it can help to perpetuate ill-founded myths by acting as a sounding off board for eventually regrettable ideas. The most egregious example of this that I can think of is the flourish of racial studies in German univerities in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that helped give rise to Nazi ideology. But this bit of academic work doesn't have that much bearing anymore, as on the whole, contemporary western society doesn't accept such a racist form of social science.
But what has bearing in contemporary society is the aspect of gender roles, that the male and female gender have fundamental characteristics that are itemizable and immutable. As an illustration, see this post by
There's an interesting history to this categorization of gender characteristics. For a long long time (as in since the time of Aristotle) the prevailing gender model was that there was one gender, and to be male was to be the idealized form of that gender. Sometime in the early nineteenth century though, a new gender model started being used, one in which there are two opposite genders with inherent characteristics. Once this concept starting becoming mainstream, it contributed to a resurgence in overt homophobia, as homosexuals were seen to either act in opposition to their gender or remain somewhere in between male and female. It also helped to contribute to overarching social mysogyny, since although theorists stated there is no superior gender, it relegated the more desirable gender role to men, making them the leaders and captains, while women were to look after the family.
Of course this idea sounds familiar, because it persists. Although I'm unaware of any self-respecting academic who studies the dichotomy of the genders as it was studies, similar sentiments are often sited in mainstream discussion without question of its truth. The damage is done. The myth is firmly established in the mass social conscious. It can be removed, but it won't be easy.
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