Why Study Feminism, Part 1: The Personal Is Political

Why Study Feminism?

Over my 55 years, I have learned that in my lifetime, Feminism is still getting a bad rap.  And why wouldn’t it, as a movement to end patriarchies, a consistent resistance to its denigration of those of us who identify as women and other outcasts?  My project is to bring my expertise to a public, non-university audience--my love of Feminism and Women’s Studies, critical consciousness generally.  As a university professor, my classes in Women’s Studies have always held a special glow in memory.  And I would guess the same is true for anyone who was lucky enough to spend time in a Women’s Studies classroom.  One is transformed through discussions about topics we had never attempted to intellectualize at any other time in our educational histories.  We move with “The Personal is Political” as a guiding force in analysis and dare to offer our own personal experiences as worthy of analysis and transformation.

In my Women’s Studies courses, we always sit in a circle.  This is a worthy pedagogical intervention that displaces many long-accepted assumptions about what a classroom looks like and does.  Removing the expert from the front--and the rows of students only facing the front and the teacher--we rearrange the furniture and face each other.  Sometimes we go around the circle, one at a time, looking for answers, and sometimes we pass the mic, letting anyone who chooses to speak out, to speak their truth. Simply, this spatial and then processual transformation of the classroom is life-giving, and it often heals.  The circle gives life to long suppressed emotions and opinions about being treated and often having been taught to feel second- or third-class in our society.  Or having had witnessed this for people we love . . . teaching online will be an interesting project for simulating these types of discussions.  But I am excited to try and eager to do so.  I expect some failures, as the road to Online has been glitchy and long.

And “Why Study Feminism?”  Because the study of women’s lives and women’s oppression is transformative for all.  Not just because of the feminist circle and its limitless transformations, but also because we are all FORTUNATE to live in the moments of  human history when women’s lives are finally taken seriously.  As a philosopher by training, I am still riveted to teach an Intro to Philosophy course that offers 6 of 300 pages of history covering philosophical contributions by female bodies.  It’s a travesty, and one I intend to right.

My foray into the online environment is a small attempt to download the years of study in my head and to bark back at the current rageful attacks on women’s (personal) freedoms that we have many foremothers and even forefathers to learn about, digest, wrestle with, honor, and stand above.  We must stand on their shoulders, and the only way to do this is to learn their musings and protests.

I invite you to join our courses as we build critical consciousness with, frankly, whoever shows up.  My coaching programs are for women of color, their allies, and any others who feel marginalized in the current U.S. culture wars and hope to understand their social positions and what is and has been at stake for all of us—and most importantly, how to transform your own resiliency to offer your gifts, despite any social standing and marginalization.  Thanks for reading, and I hope to meet you in one of our courses or coaching programs.  As I like to say, Amen and Awomen.  May our thinking shift and our paths be enlightened.  And yes, that means WOKE : )