In My Defense of Feminization

Feminization in the discipline

        First off, I'd like to address the apparent conflict I may have had with my view on feminism. I made the stance that I do support equality across the spectrum, but I did not like the militant feminist regime. I was met with the response, "I think there are more people who say that then there are actually militant feminists" or something to that effect. I got to thinking about our discussion about essentialism and how we attribute or ascribe certain values to things in our culture. I am guilty of that in my stance against militant feminism. I think that I took a small sample of feminists and applied it to the movement as a whole, which was not my intention.

       With that being said, I'd like to defend the "feminization" of the field as a whole. If Composition was being compared to say, Engineering, which would be considered more "masculine"? This idea of essentialism, what makes something exclusively masculine or feminine, permeates every field in education in general. In my previous example most would be inclined to say that the Composition course is more "feminine". Why? Is it because Composition is supposed to invoke more "creativity" which is considered a more feminine trait? I think my point here is that even though it permeates our disciplines it also helps to enrich it. This idea that something is strictly feminine or masculine is outdated and ridiculous. We have here a binary, which in actuality is not a binary at all. The apparent femininity or masculinity of a field is not essentialist because there is not an "essential" man or an "essential" woman. In today's society we have stay at home dads and women in the workplace providing for families. These sorts of essentialist views just do not work in today's society. In fact, the view of the field of Composition being "feminized" actually gives the field more of a place to stand out and combat other fields that are seen as more "masculine". As a field seen through this "feminized" lens we can use it to our advantage to break down other fields in to what they'd consider their "essentialist" parts and expose the possibility that every discipline is "feminized" or "masculine" in different ways. Engineers would hate this, hell, any Science or Math based discipline would hate this. What I say though is that we seize this view and use it to our advantage to advance the discipline and walk in stride next to others using this as a pillar in our arguments.