As a young woman who aimed to have both a family and a career, I had welcomed the women’s movement because its founders supported my choice. Then came the moment I discovered that the movement had been hijacked by a band of militants whose mission involved a whole lot more than expanding women’s choices.
The year was 1984, the same year that “women’s studies” were booming in universities nationwide, including NC State, where I was teaching as a lecturer in the English department. We had just welcomed a new department head who promised to take the department in a “radically new direction,” which included adding scholars who specialized in “gender-deconstructionist” theory. My moment of discovery came when I encountered one such scholar in the women’s room.
Standing at the mirror, I noticed that my new colleague was staring at my strappy black pumps, which she complimented before noting that my shoes displayed “the ultimate symbol of male bondage.” In all fairness, her tone was joshing, but her message was clear: We’ll support your choices — as long as they match our theory that female vanity equals male bondage, and male bondage breeds female victims.
The only other time I ran afoul of a gender-deconstructionist came when I slipped up and used the word “chairman” in a memo to faculty. Later that day, a colleague stopped by my office to deliver an article on how to avoid using “gender-specific language,” which, for starters, advised me to replace the offending “chairman” with the clunky “chairperson.”
I drew the line at “cisgender” and “heteronormativity” and wondered what would become of young women who fall for such nonsense — and for the notion that they are victims of a “white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.” Four decades later, I have my answer.
In 2024, researchers for the Institute for Family Studies asked, “Why So Blue: Liberal Women Are Less Happy, More Lonely, But Why?” Interpreting the results of a nationwide survey, authors Grant Bailey and Brad Wilcox found that that “young conservative women are three times as likely to report being very satisfied with life” and found that their involvement in “church and marriage, account for about half the ideological gap among young women.” They also found that leftists who traffic in “catastrophizing” are “dragging down the spirits of liberal women.”
New York University psychologist Jonathan Haidt has traced the art of “catastrophizing” to DEI “monomaniacs” who encourage “racial and gender animosity” and create a “hierarchy of oppression” in our universities. Speaking to faculty at UNC Chapel Hill, Haidt admitted, “We have dug ourselves into a hole, especially with the studies departments,” arguing that “abolishing DEI may be the only way out of the ideological capture of American campuses.”
Haidt opposes President Donald Trump’s plan to abolish DEI programs through executive fiat and thinks that “market forces” will favor schools that sideline ideologues and “find ways to make all identity groups feel welcome without using divisive methods.” Call me a skeptic because Harvard University has just hired drag performer Kareem Khubchandani, aka “LaWhore Vagistan,” to teach in its department of women, gender and sexuality studies.
Still, there are reasons to hope that professors who project their grievances onto young women are losing their grip. In the Feb. 2 issue of Educational Technology and Change Journal, English professor Jim Shimabukuro reported that enrollment in women’s studies is dropping and that some universities are dismantling their programs altogether.
The National Women’s Studies Association’s president blames the decline on their critics’ “nefarious maneuvers,” but articles that include “Gender Studies” and “Chopping Block” in their titles date back to 2022 — when President Joe Biden was our Feminist in Chief.
A bigger challenge for the opponents of gender studies will involve rewiring young women who cheer Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez when she echoes their rage on the national — and now the international — stage. AOC was already on record decrying the “grip of patriarchy” on American women and accusing our forebears of “weaponizing Scripture to justify bigotry.”
Then came her calamitous performance at last week’s Munich Security Conference, where she informed a panel of world leaders, “Whiteness is not a cultural identity with a rich cultural heritage. It is a social construct tied to power and exclusion.” The good news is that AOC’s dim-witted rant has prompted a backlash on social media and in the mainstream media.
The satirical Babylon Bee may have had AOC in mind when they pictured “Liberal Women Frantically Refreshing Instagram To See What They Should Be Mad About Next.” Bright young women will be in on the joke because, like me, they have discovered that angry young women display the ultimate symbol of hard-left bondage.
Nan Miller is professor emerita in literature from Meredith College, where she opened and directed the Meredith College Writing Center. She resides in Raleigh.
