Oh, and while I go (unfairly only for the most part) picking on Slate’s XX-Factor, and since I’m enjoying the heck out of my women’s studies course, I ought to mention that Juliet Lapidos has a post up titled “Women’s Studies, the Bane of Feminism?”

In college, I steered clear of the fringe, identity-focused courses. I figured I could learn about feminism or African-American history through conscientious professors in mainstream departments. Plus, it bothered me that gender and/or women’s studies classes were populated entirely by women and gay men, and Af Am classes almost entirely by black students. The demographics seemed like an admission of defeat…

Source: Julie Lapidos, XX-Factor

This is one of those situations where someone’s conclusion can be 100% logically correct, and even mildly agreeable, but not very helpful. (See also the impeccable but not terribly useful logic of “if we had ham we could have ham and eggs if we had eggs.”) The quibbles being that, oh, say, not all professors in mainstream departments are conscientious and not all women’s studies students (nor, for that matter, all professors) are women.

I do know that I’m getting some benefit from it, as I’ve mentioned. Although to be fair to Lapidos that might qualify as preaching to “our own.” But I wouldn’t say the surprisingly high-to-me mix of Asian, Pacific-Islander, African, Latin American, inner-city, lower-socio-economic-status, and traditional/conservative-religious women in the class necessarily count as “our own” either but they’re doing pretty well. Nor am I sure sure the other men, many of equally diverse heritage, who make up, oh, roughly 20% of the class fit the standard description either. And they’re doing pretty well too. And I, who in an only slightly different universe might have been one of those “conscientious professors in mainstream departments,” know a lot of… stuff… about women in history, politics, arts, science, and letters… but I’m still learning all kinds of stuff.

Yeah, over time, I think that having specific separate women’s studies and/or gender studies departments is a bit of a temporal coincidence. Come back in 100 years and see if, like, say, the once-new discipline of statistics, most women’s studies topics haven’t become intradepartmental rather than interdepartmental. But, for that matter, there still seem to be degree programs in statistics. So there must still be some use for separate departments and/or departmental subspecialties after all.

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Oh yeah, one of the cool things I learned this week: the earliest school of feminism, today known as cultural feminism but also known, sometimes derisively, as “difference feminism” or “exceptional feminism” tends to focus heavily on how women are different from men. Especially in the 19th Century, when it began, but also sometimes today, cultural feminists argued that women’s “better qualities” such as greater temperance and moral fiber made them as suited or even better suited to run things. Notice, however, that anti-feminists spend their time making near-identical arguments only with the arrows pointing the other way. By focusing on differences cultural feminists benefit everybody including men by calling out variation that, evidently, had been denied, ignored, or overlooked back when conscientious but untutored professors roamed the Earth.

And then, I learned, there’s (Classical) Liberal Feminism, which, almost opposite to cultural feminism in focus if not degree, tends to reflect upon the similarities between men and women and to agitate for equality of pay, legal standing, and political and social rights.

And yes, sometimes, like their anti-feminist counterparts, some of the more privileged and/or less-well-informed classical feminists wax about and advocate for recognition of the natural superiority of their gender — many nominally radical “rad-fems” are really cultural feminists. Nor is every liberal feminists hunky-dory either — Wisconsin law professor Ann Althouse, a political conservative, is nevertheless a liberal feminist who will tirelessly fight to make sure the law makes no gender distinctions… when it forbids homeless and millionaires alike from sleeping under railroad bridges.

Anyway, you might find some cultural feminists who think patriarchy should be replaced with matriarchy, but you’re not likely to find many classical liberal feminists who do. And if you had a third hand you’d say on the other other hand real radical feminists, the branch Twisty Faster and I seem to be most drawn to, disagrees with many priorities of both cultural and classical-liberal feminism.

And the point of highlighting such contrast-y schools of feminism? You’d probably already worked this out for yourself but if you were one of those people who said you disagreed with “Teh Feminists” you’d almost certainly talking through your hat since, in fact, large groups of feminists often disagree with feminists!

Update: Just to be clear, by highlighting divergent schools of thought (cultural vs liberal) or even greater divergence between individuals within such schools (Ann Althouse vs. Renegade Evolution vs. Hillary Clinton within liberal feminism) is not intended as a criticism! And if one is going to find that much diversity outside of academia it would be a little startling if there was less diversity within academia. Furthermore, since it’s entirely possible I wasn’t clear about this earlier, with so much diversity within the topic it seems extraordinarily difficult for anyone less closed-minded than Mike Huckabee to disagree with all of either feminism or women’s studies.