the coercion of segregation..

So I recently watched a segment on ABC World News (tiny and short), which was focused the implementation of single-sex education in the Greene County school district of South Carolina. The news segment which aired on February 18th was supplemented by this news article, which states:

“Next fall, public schools in Greene County may be the first to implement single-sex education. By separating students by gender, educators hope to improve low test scores, and cut down on teen pregnancy and disciplinary issues, which trouble most of the school system in that rural district.

‘Our high school still ranks 332 out of 369 schools in Georgia,’ said Shawn McCollough, superintendent of the Greene County schools. ‘So, it’s pretty alarming when you see you’re that close to the bottom.’

The board of education approved the measure in a unanimous vote last week. The sports and band programs will remain mixed, and boys and girls will continue to ride the same buses to school. Only the academic programs will be segregated.” (source)

The article goes on to acknowledge that the parents of Greene County students were not able to vote for or against this measure, and that many parents feel helpless and rightfully upset over the “forced” segregation of their children. The way in which the Greene County board of education has dealt with a single-sex segregation enforced school district has outraged even Leonard Sax, from the National Association for Single Sex Public Education, and one of the lead advocates for single-sex education.

food for thought – hannah wilke.

“Visual prejudice has caused world wars, mutilation, hostility, and alienation generated by fear of ‘the other.’ Self-hatred is an economic necessity, a capitalistic, totalitarian, religious invention used to control the masses through the denial of the importance of a body language, which is replaced by a work ethic devised to establish a slavery of the mind burdened by that awful albatross – the body . . . . The pride, power and pleasure of one’s own sexual being threatens cultural achievement, unless it can be made into a commodity that has economic and social utility.” (emphasis added)

-Hannah Wilke

In the 1970s and early ’80s, Hannah Wilke produced performance tapes that examine sex and sexuality, feminism and femininity, the body and its representation. Wilke explores gesture in relation to gender and power, using her own image to confront the erotic representation of the female body in art history and popular culture. (source)

single sex public education? separate but equal?

I recently went home for the holidays and spent some time in Boston with friends. I’ve realized that meeting new and different people has taken on a new significance, one that stems from traditional and seemingly meaningless small talk that begins all new conversations. Introductions that include polite and obligatory inquiries such as, “so what do you do?” have led to some amazingly candid and unexpected conversations about sexuality and feminism. I’ve come to feel lucky that what I “do” is viewed as so unconventional, so surprising to some. Somehow as soon as I say “gender studies”, the conversation shifts from mundane small talk to animated intrigue. Over the past two weeks I have had the most spontaneous and involved discussions, on topics ranging from the basics of feminism to fluid sexuality to queer culture. One of these conversations I had with a friend of a friend in Boston, and he asked me what my views were on single-sex public education.

I admit that I am familiar with the push towards single-sex education, but I was not well-versed enough to respond with any sort of informed or formulated argument. Instead I responded instinctively and thoughtfully, telling this friend that I thought single-sex education would be a detriment to both female and male schoolchildren, for many reasons, one of them being the ultimate “separate but unequal” argument – that separate schools for genders would somehow result in the inequality of education. Secondly I responded that the answers to inequalities in education lies not in separation or segregation, but in a concerted effort to reform a unified educational system so that it is able to address the complex issues of a coeducational curriculum. He seemed relieved with my answer, echoing my sentiments, and while I was satisfied with the answer I was able to give, the conversation stuck with me. I came home and did some research in order to find out if somehow I had overlooked or oversimplified something.

yes, PLEASE!

Kansas University recently decided to change it’s “women’s studies” major to the more inclusive “women, gender and sexuality studies”. In the article found onLJWorld.com, those involved express both happiness at the more inclusive and perhaps more relevant title, but the program director is also worried that the core of women’s history and feminist influence may be lost in a new program:

“Even though the program is changing, [program director ] Cudd said she wants to hold onto its historical ties. ‘We loathe to lose the women as well because we have this revolutionary beginning with the February Sisters,’ she said. ‘We want to keep that kind of link to our beginning as well.’” (source)

Yet the new program title is a response to the relevance of the term “women’s” studies:

“’The title that’s proposed kind of reflects the diversity of the classes and the diversity of the faculty and the work that they do,’ said Ryan Weaver, a graduate teaching assistant in the program. ‘The work being done in the department isn’t just focused on women and women’s oppression.’” (source)

See, the thing here is that the work being done by the faculty isn’t focused solely on women’s oppression anymore because FEMINISM is not only focused on women’s oppression. I have to applaud the decision (which must have been very difficult) of the university professors to ultimately change what I believe to be a very outdated title.

As a graduate student in a program called “Applied Women’s Studies”, I have severe reservations about writing the title of the program on my own CV. I just don’t agree with an exclusionary “women’s studies” program anymore. Women’s studies has evolved and changed in the same ways that feminism has – with time and with the gradual incorporation of certain liberties and reforms and revelations that have been made in the past few decades. With the genre of “women’s studies” come lesbian and gay studies, comes gender studies, comes sexuality studies, comes MASCULINE studies  – and it seems all but impossible to consider one without any influence from the other. This multiplicitous identity – this myriad of standpoints and possibilities – will enable future feminists and scholars to revolutionize stagnant thought patterns that can be persistent when one is committed to *only* learning about women’s oppression, without one foot in the future, without the foresight to recognize that feminism has multiplied and evolved and reached much further than the simple argument of woman’s oppression.

Of course, the one caveat here, that I believe the program director has already addressed – is the absolute importance of learning women’s history as a core, as a base  – as a supplement to the omissive history we all learned in high school. Learning about first and second wave feminism is integral and vital to the formation of a critical and thoughtful feminist. It really is my hope that these students will be able to learn the basics of feminism, and that their experience might be more enriched by the inclusion of the basics of lesbian/gay history, or trans history, of the history of sexuality, as well as philosophies, theory, and application.