Reviews

Professing Feminism: Education and Indoctrination in Women's Studies by Daphne Patai, Noretta Koertge

hawk_just_hawk's review against another edition

1.0

I did not need to read much of this book to understand that it is an outdated complaint of second wave feminists who do not enjoy that the development of the discipline did not end with them. In the most curious irony, they complain that established feminists won’t allow critique of Women’s Studies and then also complain that the young students are critiquing Women’s Studies unfairly. This is unquestionably racist in the most wholly unexamined way, but in the way that is a trademark of academia as a whole. The phrase that made me put it down for good was Anna takes on the inherent racism and sexism of any classical academic canon by stating “you can’t invent people who didn’t exist” as if works by Black women writers, academics, analysts, and political activists weren’t actively repressed by the dominant culture.

Don’t waste your time, even though these sentiments still exist. They will die if we let them.