Who-Stole-Feminism.-How-Women-Have-Betrayed-Women

THE FEMINIST CLASSROOM 113outside their own classrooms. They have raised a generation of studentwatchdogs ever on the lookout for sexist bias in all its insidious manifestations.Students are careful rather than carefree. Humor is guarded. Manyteachers now practice a kind of defensive pedagogy.In December 1989 I received a phone call from a man who told me hewas a graduate student at the University of Minnesota. He asked me tolook into some "frightening" things campus feminists were up to. Hementioned the Scandinavian studies department. He told me he did notwant to give me his name because he felt he would be hurt: "They arepowerful, they are organized, and they are vindictive."The University of Minnesota is heavily "colonized." In addition to itsWomen's Studies department, it has a Center for Advanced FeministStudies, the Center for Women in International Development, a Women'sCenter, a Young Women's Association, the Center for Continuing Educationfor Women, and the Humphrey Center on Women and PublicPolicy. The feminist journal Signs is housed there, and the radical feministreview Hurricane Alice is associated with the English department. Thereis a Sexual Violence Program, as well as a Commission on Women.After a few phone calls I found some faculty members who wouldspeak up about the "campus feminists," provided anonymity was promised.One professor of social science told me:We have a hardened and embittered core of radical feminists. Thesewomen have been victorious in court: they have the ear of severalpowerful regents and administrators. They call the shots. Everywhereyou look there are feminist faculty members concerned todivest departments of the white male viewpoint. If you questionthis, you are labeled a sexist. It is a nightmare. At faculty meetingswe have learned to speak in code: you say things that alert otherfaculty members that you do not agree with the radical feminists,but you say nothing that could bring a charge of gender insensitivity.People are out for control and power. I did not fully understandwhat was happening until I read Nien Cheng's Life and Death inShanghai.Professor Norman Fruman, a distinguished scholar in the English department,was outspoken:If you resist feminists you are liable to the charge of sexism. Youthen may be socially or professionally isolated. With the rise ofpoststructuralism, Derrida, Foucault, Althusser, you have the basis