Response to Michelle's summary of Rich Article

The article by Rich brought up several interesting points that made me reflect on Colgate's curriculum. Her analysis of the creation of Women's Studies as a course that appears at universities nationwide raised many questions. The most prominent question that came to my mind is, why is this course still necessary? I ask this question not because I think that this class and major are unnecessary, but more due to the fact that I believe that they should be. In this day in age when we believe we have come so far towards achieving equality why is the study of women something that is not naturally part of the core curriculum. Instead we take classes like Western Traditions where we are still reading "books pretending to describe a 'human' reality' that does not include over one-half the human species" as Rich so eloquently put it. In order to get a feeling for the female experience throughout history, students must make a deliberate effort to take classes centered on women.

Since women are half or more of the population it only makes sense that our experiences should constitute half of the history that is taught in schools. The only women that seem to make an appearances in these courses are helpless beauties, such as Helen of Troy. Perhaps this is a remnant of the times when Colgate University was all male, but my question is how has this not been changed? With my interest in the role of Women's studies both at Colgate and in the greater world piqued, I searched NY times online to see what other opinions I could find. Interestingly enough the first article that appeared was about a newer concept, which is that of Men's studies. The link to this is

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/education/09men-t.html

This article was provocative because I began to wonder what men could possibly need to study more about their gender when it seems to dominate most of the curriculum. After reading the article it seemed that these classes were more about getting men to open up and talk about feelings. So it seems that women's studies classes hope to empower women and men's studies classes attempt to create an environment where men feel safe being emotional. Why is it that we need separate classes to provide each gender with special attention? It seems to be that in modern society there is a general lack of communication between genders, which results in everyone striving to fit into their gender roles. These classes provide an outlet for both genders to break free from stereotypical expectations. While these are a quick fix, it seems to me in an ideal world people would not need separate classes in order to be true to themselves. Perhaps this is something that we can only continue to work towards both in and out of the university setting.