In Defense of Gender Studies

For years, now, conservative talk show hosts have identified the American Collegiate landscape as a debatable waste of time and money.  It sinks youth hundreds of thousands of dollars into debt, is many times a glorified propaganda pipeline (as the inherited philosophies of the social contractors, the enlightenment, and nihilism continue to run their courses), and offers students a veritable infinitude of degrees to choose from with no practical use or value in the “real” world.  As things usually go, there is usually one or two specific degrees which are held up as examples of how bleak the state of average college degrees have become.  For conservative hosts, the degree that has become the epitome of wasted tuition and college debt is the “Gender Studies” degree, either as a BA or MA.  While I personally agree that the modern and average college degree wastes students’ time, money, and life, I could not disagree more with holding a gender studies degree as intrinsically useless.  In fact, if done properly and well (and that’s the essential caveat), there is perhaps no degree that is more useful, more beneficial, and more necessary to a well-rounded education.

All things gender-related are a hot-topic and contentious subject in our age.  And yet, we fool ourselves if we think this contention is original or specific to our own day.  There is literally no question that is older has been asked more consistently than what is Man (homo) to make of woman?  We find it in the Bible.  We see it in Socratic dialogues.  We find it treated of in Aristotle, Aquinas, Church history, and every civilization’s traditions.  Nearly every culture has an opinion on women: is she equal to men?  Is she as capable as he is?  Does she have identity of her own?  Ought she be allowed to do things men can do?  Does society have a responsibility to ensure she has the ability to perform the same as males?  Does her physical limitations suggest inferiority over the male, and does the fact that individual women can sometimes outperform males suggest that intrinsically they are the same?  Does her body have any bearing on her personal identity?  These are just scratching the surface of what literally every age has asked themselves, and which every age has failed to articulate a lasting, cohesive, and consequential answer to.  And so, as my first point in defending gender studies as a degree, I offer this: what Man (homo) has asked since the beginning of time is surely a worthy subject to study with specificity.  If we have always wanted to know the answer, why cease to ask the question simply because the general populace has a more vociferous opinion on it at the present moment?

My second point in defending gender studies is actually similar to the defense I give for philosophy or liberal arts as a degree: just because something has no apparent practical application in the real-world does not mean that it is useless, wasteful, or pointless.  On the contrary: the fact that men and women both have been consumed with the question what is Man (homo) to make of women suggests that there is quite literally no subject more consequential to study.  And it has plenty of real-world applications and implications.  If the body is accidental to the person, then of course transgender surgeries are thereby licit.  If the person is isolated and completely autonomous in their subjectivity, of course society has the obligation to ensure men and women perform the same.  If women and men have the same capacity for knowledge, then of course education and authority positions ought to be available to them.  These, too, merely scratch the surface of how far-reaching the ramifications of understanding the nature of woman, man, and humanity impacts our everyday lives, and how we build our society.  So, point 2: a correct anthropological knowledge of gender, both as a whole and as specific to each gender, is imperative to the world.

My third and final point in defending gender studies properly executed as a degree is actually to clarify my “properly executed” caveat.  In order to do this, I must highlight the specific project Sister Prudence Allen, RSM, has worked on and accomplished.  Sister Prudence is, in my opinion, the leading expert in Catholic gender studies in the present age.  She has published a project tracking, distilling, and expounding upon how the world has thought of women and genders in a three-volume work.  To make her work more accessible, however, she synthesized this project into one-400 page tome entitled, The Concept of Woman.  As you could imagine, there is an unimaginable amount of work she has put into this project, tracking down and recording how the conversation about woman has gone throughout the ages, and how hard-fought the battle for a cohesive notion of femininity has been.  And yet, in order to read and fully appreciate her project, a solid foundation in the history of the Western World’s thought progression is required.  We cannot cite or appreciate what Plato says about women in the Republic if we do not already have exposure to him, nor can we truly understand where Aquinas comes from in stating that woman is a misbegotten male if we have no concept of Aquinas’ relation to Aristotle.  And so, as my final defense of gender studies as a degree, I have to clarify my caveat of “properly executed.”  Gender studies is only valuable and necessary if it is taken in conjunction with the liberal arts, philosophy, and theology as a whole.  

My final point, that is, that gender studies must be accompanied by appropriate and deeply rooted liberal arts classes in general, possibly suggests that gender studies is more appropriate to a master’s degree level education than a bachelor’s degree.  Perhaps this is true.  But it is beyond the scope of what I am trying to do here.  All I am trying to do at this point is move the conservative discussion away from one which only holds or refers to gender studies as the epitome of wasted tuition and the bleak state of the American collegiate landscape.  If we as humans have consistently sought the answer to this question, then who are we in the 21st century to say it is not worth our time to formally study it?  How many societal problems would disappear if we were only willing to engage in conversations that do not serve the servile arts!  How many ills would fade if we were able to move away from the isolation of the social contractors, the enlightenment, and Descartes!  Perhaps, instead of discounting these gender studies degrees, it is time that we Catholics develop our own, proper curriculum and offer it as a degree.