Get your hankies out: The political fatigue of doing feminist and queer research in anti-gender times ...

[IwantToRetire]

... anti-gender politics is an epistemic conflict as much as a political one. This conflict generates political fatigue among researchers engaged in feminist and queer work. We must address such fatigue through distance, care and collective reflection

Across Europe and beyond, anti-gender actors increasingly portray gender studies, feminist research, and queer scholarship as ideology rather than science. Beyond undermining rights, anti-gender discourses, mobilisations, and policies target the concepts, methods and communities that make gender and sexuality research possible.

Concepts such as gender, intersectionality, sexual orientation and gender identity are no longer simply activist, institutional, academic, or legal terms. Anti-gender actors now use these concepts in propaganda. They frame the relationship of gender studies, queer theory, feminist research and LGBTIQ+ scholarship with activism and social movements as a threat to children, women, families, and freedom. Politicians, parties, and moral entrepreneurs weaponise these so-called threats, as do activists and academics appropriating radical feminist theories in anti-gender, anti-LGBTIQ+, and anti-trans terms. ...

https://theloop.ecpr.eu/the-political-fatigue-of-doing-feminist-and-queer-research-in-anti-gender-times/

The heartlessness of women is not succumbing to their gobbledegook and causing their fragile research identities outpoorings not to be taken as "science".

Get the ducking stool ready.

I wonder what would happen if I ran that slosh through an AI checker…

“Academics appropriating radical feminist theories” Fuckwits is all i can muster as a response.

Not sure that addresses the article.

It is about these "researchers" claiming their belief system is a science.

Sorry, wrong thread! Want me to delete it?

if they are claiming that is 'science' (or even scholarship really) they could do with some actual evidence rather than assertion after assertion with no definition of terms

No worries - might interest others.

I just wondered what the link might be!

(well behind it all there obviously is a link)

Apart from the real world damage that is being done, now it seems there are people managing to live in some fantasy world claiming they are part of some strand of science, and as seems normal with this faction, they are as usually getting the violins out.

Not one instance of recognising the damage being done to women.

Far from it they are claiming this as feminism.

Silly me, of course feminism should be about men.

LGBTIQ+? How come the I moved place and what was wrong with the A?
I feel like watching this stuff is like watching eastenders. Sometimes niche and fasctinating.

Eastenders comes with an off button (not that I use it 😂) and this shit doesn't. Therein lies the difference.

Nice forced teaming of queer studies with feminism and sexual orientation.

For fuck sake does anyone want or need anymore of this identity babble?

No wonder universities are in dire straits if this is the ‘research’ they’re churning out.

Very true, if you don’t keep up you may well lose your job. And you definitely can’t shout ‘get out my changing rooms’

From the article:

As scholars studying anti-gender politics have already described, we are facing not only an opposition to equality policies but an attack on the forms of knowledge that render these claims intelligible and possible. The epistemic conflict concerns what knowledge we have access to, who is excluded from it, and whose experiences are allowed to matter in public debate.

Such attacks challenge who is entitled to produce and legitimise knowledge about gender and sexuality. They also call into question whether ideas, concepts and fields of study related to gender and sexuality are truly scientific. Critics label feminist and minorities’ perspectives as ideological, and illegitimate. Their goal is to replace feminist epistemologies with religiously oriented but strategically secularised knowledge or renewed forms of sex-based essentialism. Sex, family, nation, and citizenship become natural categories that governments and laws should protect against critical theories.

Now think this is a land grab, or whatever the equivalent is in academia. They think they "own" this "science" and therefore anyone who challenges it is reactionary, or whatever.

I wish I could get a job like this.

I am sure I could spin a yarn about how a dominant group is actually the suffering victim.

Please let me know where to sign up.

This complaint is an utter joke..

They have been suppressing proper scientific research into these issues, getting funding withdrawn or refused, getting scientists and academics removed from their jobs and prevented from speaking at public meeting about their work. And running uncontrolled experiments with dangerous drugs and surgical intervention on children.

And they dare complain about gender realism!

Across Europe and beyond, anti-gender actors increasingly portray gender studies, feminist research, and queer scholarship as ideology rather than science.

Er yes. Because it is. It's not quantifiable. It's all theorectical.

Concepts such as gender, intersectionality, sexual orientation and gender identity are no longer simply activist, institutional, academic, or legal terms. Anti-gender actors now use these concepts in propaganda.

This is word salad that means nothing. It's words strung together to look clever but these sentences do not actually mean anything intelligible.

For starters the law is based on fixed definitions. Not concepts.

This is not propaganda. This is the law. It has been the case for hundreds of years.

And then activists throw a strop because their concept, which doesn't even have widespread public consent, isn't recognised by law.

Again this is just just jumped up little twerps having a tantrum because they think because they have social status from their educational level they can throw their weight around and get what they want "because equality".

These fuck nuggets don't understand equality, propaganda or the law. They are thick as mince and don't follow due process. They think they can bully people into submission with word salad nonsense like this.

Then get really surprised when other people who are also educated wipe the floor with them because their nonsense is complete claptrap and it's demonstrably nonsense. They are made to look stupid and they don't like it.

I have zero sympathy.

Go on then - quantify and demonstrate your case with evidence - you have the skill sets.

Or fuck off and stop blowing propagandic hot air.

Where has reality and common sense gone in the World?

It could be the money's drying up and they're all facing an uncertain future, poor lambs. They might be framing themselves as a 'science' because that's where the money is, that and they're delusional.

There is an article in Quillette, which I couldn't read in full because it's behind a pay wall, that posits

The Humanities Crisis Is Not About Money

"Did the humanities go woke because they went broke? That scenario has become one of the more persuasive explanations for the present crisis in the humanities. As their enrolments declined and federal funding shrank, and universities began sending money (and, thus, prestige) toward STEM and professional programs, the humanities went looking for support wherever they could find it. If serious funders wanted academic work to be framed in the language of social justice, then scholars were willing to adapt accordingly. Tyler Austin Harper recently made this case in The Atlantic, arguing that what looked like ideological capture may, in fact, be economic desperation."

The article it links to is The Multibillion-Dollar Foundation That Controls the Humanities, is also behind a paywall, but it should piss off the TRA's because they claim it's GC that's funded by the billionaires.

Out of interest, I asked AI why would anyone claim that a political belief or analysis is a "science".

And apparently for more that a few decades some academics who are so cross that members of the public and politicians dont take what they write seriously, that they now do operate and proclaim that what they have "found" (ie personal beliefs) is in fact so credible it is a "science".

Hence the weird sentence in the article where some male fantasists talks about queer feminism being a proven science (ie all terfs are unscientific loud mouths) is how they think.

I am stunned to find this is an actual "thing". And that is the function of the stupid magazine this article came from.

Not sure how prevalent this is, but to even know a tiny group of educated people are playing this game, is on one level totally disturbing, but on the other level just hilarious.

Maybe they can claim it a a protected belief. Just dont ask the rest of us to subscribe.

The Loop publishes short pieces on politics, policy programmes, societal and political issues. We showcase the work of the political science discipline at its best.

Our readership extends beyond fellow political scientists, to include policy-makers, journalists, businesspeople and the general public.
Pieces might distil an academic journal article, or analyse a topical news story from a political science perspective.

We draw contributions from ECPR’s 50+ Standing Groups and Research Networks; from our global institutional membership; and from across the wider political science community.

https://theloop.ecpr.eu/about-us/ It says you can post comments below but strangely there is no system for posting comments.

I thought the thread title was a parody.
Silly me.

Part of my motivation is starting the thread was to get that as the title of a thread on FWR!

Concepts such as gender, intersectionality, sexual orientation and gender identity are no longer simply activist, institutional, academic, or legal terms. Anti-gender actors now use these concepts in propaganda.

Oh, declining nouns again, I think.

I am an activist;
You spread propaganda;
She is a raging bigot.

Are you questioning the term ‘political science’ or the just the inclusion of queer feminism?

In this post, the concept of "political science" - although in starting the thread it was the contradiction as in the title of the article in the OP.

In that feminists have been questioning, probably since it first became more known that you can link queer and feminism, when queer theory directly contradicts feminist sex class basis.