A RANT ABOUT SEX OMG WTF RAAAAAGE!!!!

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Part of my job entails slogging through this poorly written intro sociology textbook a bunch of times, tasking away at the manuscript (TGI Word track changes function), the picture selection (TGI iStock.com), citations (TGI iPod), et cetera (TGIF). While this can get to be monotonous and monotonous and monotonous, it does allow me to think about

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sociologists loooove to claim Marx as their own

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Yeah, in the text I'm working on the author actually goes out of her way to mention liberal feminism and multiethnic feminism as distinct from the radical variety, so she gets props for that. However, acknowledging that ethnicity, class, etc. play a significant part in stratification and power corrals the feminist framework back into its father (lol) paradigm, conflict theory. I think the radical arm of feminism grew out in attempt to distance and define feminism from conflict theory, validating it as a novel way of thinking. So in a sense...what is feminism without the radical? Of course, some good theoretical development occurred under the banners of liberal/multiethnic feminism, but it could have just as well under conflict.

I had a professor completely, unabashedly blow off structural functionalism, one of the pillars of social philosophy (equal to or bigger than conflict theory, for scale). Directly paraphrasing, "functionalism states that women should be subservient to their husbands because that's their designated role in society...that doesn't sound right, does it?" That's wrong on so many levels. Actually, there are some significant, valid, even beautiful refutations of privilege as you mean it (we're talking about Peggy McIntosh privilege, yes?) under the banners of functionalism and symbolic interactionism (my favorite paradigm), but in most women's studies classes, students aren't even introduced to that side of the debate. As a (probably too often the case) example: if an economics major goes fours years being told Adam Smith is The One without even being introduced to the ideas of socialism or anarchism, and if so in a derogatory, dismissive way, isn't that fucked up?

I learned of Marx, Durkheim, Evans Pritchard, and Weber in Religion class. It's the "liberal" arts

[fiddlinfreak]

I don't know what womens studies classes you were in. I couldn't even imagine an introduction to womens studies without bel hooks or Judith Butler, maybe if they just taught Mary Daly? Or maybe Earlham's department is on the cool end of the spectrum as far as sociology's concerned. It would certainly be messed up to only have one school of thought at a school. Did your professor mean that it doesn't sound right that women should be in the kitchen or that functionalism demands it? In any event I don't understand how that constitutes anything radically feminist, merely that he's narrow minded. Course you were the one taking the class.

The problem I have with banner theories and development out of them is that they're always retroactively applied. bel hooks didn't say "conflict theory is cool, let's expand it" she said "this is what's wrong with current feminist thought *and practice*, let's refine it." Feminism itself was a novel theory. Before the first wave conflict theory completely overlooked women's issues. Before the third there wasn't a clear idea of oppression being linked in any but the most abstract ways. You can't really say that they aren't original because while it's true that they drew influence and parallels with other thinkers, the issues they bring up were not part of the discourse before. It seems cheap to me to brush them under the rug of "conflict theory" whatever that means.