Linda Åhäll

Dear Hurt Male Egos

/ Guest Authors / 8 Comments

A guest post from Linda Åhäll on a recent controversy. Linda is Lecturer in International Relations at Keele University. Her forthcoming publications include the textbook chapters ‘Poststructuralism’ in Security Studies: an introduction (3rd edition, Williams and MacDonald eds.), ‘Gender’ in Visual Global Politics (Bleiker ed.), and the journal article ‘Affect as Methodology: Feminism and the Politics of Emotion’ in International Political Sociology.

 

Dear Hurt Male Egos, if I may

I am poststructuralist feminist security studies scholar inspired by and indebted to the work of American philosopher and political theorist Judith Butler. I am also Swedish and have spent the autumn term on research leave in the Political Science Department at Lund University in Sweden where, regrettably, Butler has been dragged into an internal conflict about teaching practice by a Hurt Male Ego. A conflict then turned into a national ‘debate’ by a journalist with, in my view, an anti-feminist agenda: on how, supposedly, ‘Gender Studies is taking over Swedish universities’. A national debate then not only picked up, but seriously misrepresented, in international news media. The conflict and subsequent media attention is framed as a tension between gender mainstreaming policies on the one hand and ‘academic freedom’ on the other. But, above all, what has sparked my feminist curiosity is how a tiny number of people, in a twisted series of events, have managed to use Butler – one of the world’s most prominent feminist and queer theorists – for anti-feminist purposes.

For me, it all started when the Hurt Male Ego at Lund wrote an Open Letter addressed to Butler (‘Dear Judith, if I may’), posted on his blog. In it The Hurt Male Ego talked about a ‘Campus War’ and about ‘campus feminists’ as those infringing on his academic freedom. Crucially, the Hurt Male Ego refers to this incident about teaching practice at the Political Science Department at Lund University as ‘The Judith Butler Affair’ on his website, accompanied by photos of Butler. Some days later, the Hurt Male Ego changed the photo of Butler on his website to one where her face was replacing the (authoritarian) leader in the film 1984. Launching this update of the website, the Hurt Male Ego tweeted ‘Big Sister is Watching’. (He has since changed the photo back to a less provocative one.)

Ahall - Butler Big Sister is watching

Then, the Hurt Male Ego’s PhD Student at Lund University interviewed Judith Butler over email (maybe she knew who he was, maybe she didn’t). In that interview, Butler was asked to respond to the following question: ‘How do you regard having your work imposed on a university lecturer in the name of gender equality?’ She answered, understandably, that she was not in favour of having her work imposed by quotas. But, unfortunately, Judith Butler was misled in that interview. Because, in fact, as I explain below, the policy at the Political Science Department at Lund University was never about the enforcement of gender quotas. There is more to the story. (See also this where Butler clarifies that it would be a mistake to use her remarks about academic freedom as a critique of gender studies.)

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Mapping the (In)Visibility of Gender in Politics and International Relations

/ Pablo K / 9 Comments

Do elite institutions teach the global politics of gender and sexuality on any scale or in any depth? Emma Foster, Peter Kerr, Anthony Hopkins, Christopher Byrne and Linda Åhäll (all of Birmingham, at least when they did the research) have an Early View piece up at The British Journal of Politics and International Relations addressing just this question. Surveying the course content of the 16 top Politics and IR Departments in the UK (‘top’ meaning either in the top 10 in student satisfaction scores or in REF scores), they give some empirical confirmation of what many of us might have known anecdotally:

Our findings…show, in our view quite strikingly, that few political science and international relations departments offer extensive or in-depth coverage of gender and sexuality issues. As a result, many political science and international relations undergraduates merely experience a brief introduction to ‘feminism’ as their only encounter with key debates over gender inequalities and sexual identity.

Of 629 modules in IR and Politics identified across those Departments, only 9 existing full modules related to gender or sexuality (increasing to 12 if Aberystwyth’s ‘forthcoming’ courses are included). That’s 1.4%. Only an estimated 8.9% of all surveyed modules offer at least one week on feminism/gender as part of their wider sweep. The study also shows up some noteworthy cases where there is Departmental expertise but no teaching provision. Warwick and Oxford both have seven staff listing gender/feminism as a core research interest, but Warwick hosts only one gender-related module and Oxford none. Although the paper does not pursue this in great detail, the suggestion is that the relative paucity of courses is not a result of absent expertise, since the progress of feminist and gender studies has been sufficient that all Departments surveyed (with the exception of de Montfort) have staff members with a gender interest. Indeed, on the average of these 16 elite institutions, there are some 3.9 gender specialists in each one (although numbers are always, of course, shifting).

The overall picture, then, is of some progress (perhaps surprisingly limited) in getting gender (but not sexuality) included as the spectral “week on feminism”, presumably primarily in theoretical survey modules. But this vague and introductory inclusion is not supported by more concentrated work either theoretically (as in a module on different perspectives on gender) or empirically (as in an issue-by-issue survey of gender in global politics). Although Foster et al. do not map changes in Faculty composition, this appears to be happening at the same time as gender and feminist academics are increasing in strength within IR.

As is to be expected, this leaves a number of issues unaddressed. Continue reading →