![]() ![]() It wants to reject all previous experience of relations between the sexes and substitute a new status for women in our society unknown in any previous society. One could even say that feminism is all about theory. To do so will require a brief summary of the theory of feminism, for feminism cannot be understood without examining its theory. So far, despite this unprecedented intrusion, universities have meekly submitted to be instructed by what the OCR, with a phrase for the books, calls “significant guidance.”īefore examining the OCR’s mandate, however, it is best to return to the contradiction within feminism that both characterizes and inspires it. In fact, the OCR does not merely propose a program or lead a movement, it lays down a set of regulations with which universities must comply. The movement has support from students, but once again it is led from the top, this time by a branch of the federal government, the Office of Civil Rights (hereafter OCR) in the Department of Education. The most recent, also the most revealing, illustration of the contradiction can be found now in the movement on the campuses of universities to protect college women from sexual assault. If women are capable, they deserve to be independent, particularly of men if they are vulnerable, they need to be protected, particularly from men (and yet, of course, by men). Put simply, feminism did not, and still does not, know whether to say that women are capable or vulnerable. Feminism was able to change American society from the top down, but that did not prevent feminism from expressing, teaching, and even thriving on a contradiction. The movement had its start among intellectuals outside universities-Simone de Beauvoir in Paris, Betty Friedan in America-but soon made its way to academia. Feminism in the universities is nothing new.
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