W​omen’s Studies was Never About Study

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W​omen’s Studies was Never About Study

For decades, Women’s Studies has held a privileged place in academia. From its earliest days, it was never a neutral or exploratory field—it was born out of activism, not inquiry. The goal was not to ask open questions about gender, but to advance a political framework that saw women as oppressed and men as privileged. It promised to give women a collective voice and to expose the “hidden structures” of patriarchy, but from the beginning, its conclusions were already written into its premises.

From Activism to Orthodoxy

Women’s Studies emerged in the late 1960s as an explicitly ideological project, shaped by the political currents of second-wave feminism. Its founders were activists first and academics second. The programs they built were not designed to test ideas but to institutionalize a belief system—that society was organized around male domination and that liberation required dismantling it. Rather than studying whether patriarchy existed, Women’s Studies set out to document how it did, embedding the theory of oppression into every syllabus. What began as political conviction soon became academic dogma.

A Closed Loop of Certainty

Once the framework of oppression was installed as unquestionable truth, the field began to police its own boundaries. Dissent was not debated—it was pathologized. To question the narrative of systemic male power was to “uphold patriarchy.” To suggest that men face distinct forms of hardship was to be told you were shifting attention away from women — that you were “making it about men.”​ Even sympathetic scholars who urged more balance found themselves marginalized. In time, Women’s Studies became a self-reinforcing system—its theories generating its evidence, its evidence confirming its theories. The goal was no longer discovery but preservation of the ideology itself.

Theory Without Tether

Much of the writing in Women’s Studies rests on sweeping abstractions: “patriarchy,” “privilege,” “internalized oppression,” “toxic masculinity.” These terms are often treated not as hypotheses to be tested but as truths to be applied. Shulamith Firestone declared that “the goal of the feminist revolution must be… the elimination of the sex distinction itself.” bell hooks wrote that “patriarchy is the single most life-threatening social disease assaulting the male body and spirit.” Such claims are not evidence-based conclusions; they are moral declarations — proclamations of belief.

When theory replaces evidence, conversation dies. Instead of exploring how men and women differ in complex, sometimes complementary ways, Women’s Studies tends to flatten the picture into one story: oppressors and oppressed.

The Disappearing Male

Ironically, as the field expanded into “Gender Studies,” men nearly vanished from the picture except as symbols of privilege or threat. Rarely do these programs explore male pain, fatherhood, or the male experience of relational loss, shame, or sacrifice. When male suffering is acknowledged, it’s often reframed as a symptom of “toxic masculinity” — as though men’s pain merely confirms the theory rather than complicates it.

If academia truly cared about gender, it would study men as carefully and compassionately as it studies women. But in the current climate, even suggesting that balance is considered suspect.

Power, Not Understanding

Modern Women’s and Gender Studies have largely shifted from studying what is to prescribing what should be. The core pursuit is no longer knowledge but power — the power to define social norms, influence policy, and shape language. As a result, universities now graduate students steeped in theory but poorly equipped to engage with those who don’t share their ideological framework. The field’s inward focus breeds division rather than understanding.

Why It Matters

This isn’t just an academic squabble. The ideas born in Women’s Studies now drive policies in media, law, education, and corporate culture. They shape how we talk about men and women, how we define fairness, and how we teach our children about themselves. When a discipline insists that one sex’s narrative of oppression defines the truth, it narrows empathy for the other half of humanity.

A truly balanced study of gender would ask harder questions — not how to dismantle men, but how men and women can understand each other more deeply. Until that shift happens, Women’s Studies will remain less a study of truth than a sermon about power.

Men Are Good

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Note:
Next week, Janice Fiamengo, Jim Nuzzo, Hannah Spier, and I will be releasing a video discussion titled “The Evolution of Women’s Studies and Its Terms.” We’ll take a deeper look at how Women’s Studies developed, examine course materials and degree trends, and unpack the language it has generated—terms like microfeminism, antinatal feminism, compulsory heterosexuality, internalized misogyny, and kin-keeping. It should be a lively and revealing conversation.​