Serious Feminism

So economists sometimes have a tendency to take their models too seriously. I'll write another post on this topic, but for the moment note that many models don't purport to use realistic assumptions about the world. Instead, they isolate interesting phenomena and then look for real-world examples. All too often, though, an economist will start making normative claims based on models that should be taken as explanatory and tentative rather than predictive or authoritative.

Economists have nothing on feminists, though. I haven't studied much feminism, but for whatever reason feminists publish and tolerate, or even celebrate, absolutely ridiculous ideas. Take, for instance, this paper on objectivity in science. Sample passage:

"We, the feminists in the debates about science and technology, are the Reagan era's 'special interest groups' in the rarefied realm of epistemology, where traditionally what can count as knowledge is policed by philosophers codifying cognitive canon law. Of course, a special interest group is, by Reaganoid definition, any collective historical subject which dares to resist the stripped-down atomism of Star Wars, hyper-market, postmodern, media-simulated citizenship."

So first of all, clarity is clearly masculinist and the enemy of feminists everywhere. More importantly, though, what I've just done is too easy. It's too easy for people who don't like feminist ideas to point to absurd crap and mock it, painting feminism with one brush. If there are good feminist ideas out there, and there must be, feminists should sort the wheat from the chaff and not let their critics conflate the two. Instead, though, absurd bullshit gets taken seriously by feminists, and therefore feminism gets taken seriously by no one.

Finally, feminists see enemies everywhere. Objectivity is bad for women. Free markets are bad for women. Sex is bad for women. This would be tolerable if women weren't suffering real subjugation and hardship in much of the world. As it is, those evil men and women who use objective science, western medicine, and economics to address the world's problems are doing vastly more for women than academic feminists. That "feminism" has become a distraction from, and in many cases an attack on, such constructive work is what is most galling.