Introduction

Overview

The Honors Humanities Gender Caucus has planned a series of panel presentations, colloquia and informal conversations for the spring and fall of 2007 organized around the topic, “Feminism Now.” Conceptually, Feminism Now is designed to address the past, present and future of feminisms, particularly as they relate to issues directly affecting women’s lives, such as reproductive rights, pornography, international politics and gender and sex-based oppressions worldwide. As an ongoing series of special programs and events, “Feminism Now” should bring together students, faculty and staff throughout the University of Maryland community (and beyond) to discuss, learn, challenge, and dialogue around the complex ways in which gender inequality continues to shape the everyday lives of all people in the United States and around the world. Feminism Now aims to be innovative in its approach by examining gender oppression through an intersectional lens, exposing ways in which multiple dimensions of difference (e.g. race, sexuality, nationality, ability) shape all people’s experiences of gender inequality, discrimination and oppression.

Project Impetus

This project was motivated by an informal network of Honors Humanities community members who continue to perceive highly negative attitudes toward feminism and gender issues in mass culture, generally, and the University community, specifically. Prevailing attitudes toward gender- and sex-based oppression seem to imply that gender inequality is no longer an issue affecting men and women in the U.S. Such attitudes similarly work to distance Americans from explicit gender oppression occurring in other places throughout the world, such as Sudan and Afghanistan. Furthermore, by denying the existence of gender inequality, these attitudes have the effect of symbolically separating gender from other forms of oppression, such as racism, classism, heterosexism and ablism. In other words, such attitudes deny or obscure the intersectionality of gender and other forms of identity.

Even in contexts in which the persistence of contemporary gender oppression is acknowledged, there often exists a palpable reluctance to engage with feminisms as perspectives that a) might be useful to shed light on how gender continues to be an organizing component of social life and b) offer ways to combat gender inequality and generate positive social change. At least for undergraduate students in Honors Humanities, feminism seems to be a caricaturized movement left far behind in the 1960s. Accordingly, feminism is sometimes viewed as too radical (“The Vagina Monologues”) and too irrelevant (the suffrage movement) to the lives of young adult U.S. women.

Regardless of this perceived resistance to feminism, Honors Humanities is a vibrant community of engaged student-activists, many of who devote much of their time and energy to social justice. Honors Humanities is an accepting community of critical thinkers and motivated citizen-scholars. Over the course of fall 2006, it become clear to the members of the newly formed Gender Caucus through conversations in the classroom, residence hall and greater University community that Honors Humanities was ready and willing to have conversations about feminism. A lack of exposure to contemporary feminist ideas appears to be much more the source of resistance than ignorance or intolerance.

As such, “Feminism Now” is envisioned as a variety of events and programs to expose students to the diversity of ways in which feminism can empower rather than oppress; include rather than exclude; innovate rather than stagnate; trouble rather than stabilize. Contemporary feminism – at least in the abstract – has failed in many cases to appeal to young American women, particularly those whose race and class privilege has shielded them from experiencing (or perceiving) overt forms of discrimination and those for whom “feminism” remains something only relevant to White, middle-class, heterosexual women. Through inclusive conversations that focus on application rather than academic theory, “Feminism Now” hopes to expose, educate and empower all members of Honors Humanities and the University of Maryland community. By (re)considering feminism in all its diversity, we hope to offer fresh perspectives and new ways for knowing and doing social justice.