The Wimpification of Modern Academics: Dr. Kubiak’s Response to Gender Feminism
It was the morning of November 15th. The gender issues committee was sponsoring a presentation and light lunch that day. They planned to pitch their proposal for a new course requirement to the student body and clear up any misconceptions about the nature of their mission. The talk was titled: “‘Either I’m the Bitch, or He’s the Bitch’: Why Wabash Needs a Gender Studies Graduation Requirement.” I was skimming through my emails that morning and quickly deleting the bulk of them when a campus-wide invitation to the event caught my eye. I read the email and decided to write down the time and room number for the talk. The offer of lunch was attractive. I found my pledge brother and fellow WCU member, Ron Allman, and proposed that we attend the talk together. He quickly agreed. The offer of lunch was attractive. Besides, we figured, we might learn something interesting about the gender studies debate and how it will affect us.
We arrived early and ate lunch before the talk began. It was not disappointing. There were sandwiches from Johnny Provolone’s and A&W root beer, which is far superior to Barq’s, the preferred root beer provided by most campus organizations when they want to entice students to participate. It ended up being an above average incentive. Ron agreed. We sat down and turned our attention to the speakers, which included Dr. Warren Rosenberg, senior Devin Kelley, and senior Reed Hepburn. The speakers mounted an interesting defense for instituting gender studies, which had been largely snickered at by myself and fellow classmates upon first hearing about the proposition.
Gaining interest in the topic, Ron and I decided to ask Dr. David P, Kubiak if he would be willing to share his views on the debate. We are both students in his Classics course, “Topics in Masculinity,” which has been offered this semester and have had the pleasure of hearing Dr. Kubiak express his views on feminism, academia, traditional values, and masculinity in all its aspects. He agreed to meet with us and did not disappoint.
Wabash Conservative Union: One of the major messages that the gender studies advocates tried to get across at the talk was that the field of gender studies is more than just feminist propaganda. Are they justified in saying that the proposed gender studies course will not devolve into feminist indoctrination?
Dr. David Kubiak: The gender feminists have their own catechism. It’s a way of life. For them to impose it on students is like me going in and trying to convert my students to Catholicism. And I think they are being a bit disingenuous in claiming ideological neutrality. Gender Studies are a manifestation of academic gender feminism and that is that. If you question faculty closely enough this will emerge, and particularly in what is termed masculinity studies. All the leaders of the group – people like Harry Brod – will say that their foundation is in academic feminism, and it is through that lens they are proposing to look at men. So my colleagues may talk about ideological neutrality, and perhaps in their own minds they are being honest. But it’s not going to come out that way. When you examine their own intellectual commitments it is academic feminism that they are going to teach. Most of the faculty are indifferent to the issue. The only ones who really get excited about it are the ones who are ideologically wedded to academic feminist approaches. As I said, to me it’s a religion. And I don’t think we should be shoving any religion down students’ throats.
WCU: What threat does the academic feminists’ way of thinking pose to masculinity and traditional values?
DK: It’s just not the real world. I don’t think it’s preparing you for the real world, so that’s one danger. My sister is a very successful advertising executive, and when I tell her some of the things that are proposed at our gender panels she laughs out loud. And I do think that despite rhetoric to the contrary there is a deep-seated misandry involved here: a dislike, a distaste for regular guys, the salt of the earth types that are the core of Wabash College. The more one attacks that kind of man the more one attacks the essence of the College. So ultimately I think the gender feminist influence is not desirable as a College-wide influence. Individual instructors can teach whatever they want in their own classrooms once you hire them. That is academic freedom. What feminist ideologues do in their own classes I have no desire to interfere with, but when they start proposing that this perspective should be imposed on all the
WCU: The gender studies talk focused largely on a sentence brought up by senior tight end, Devin Kelley, during a classroom discussion on masculinity when he brought up his perspective as an athlete. He described his mindset before making a play: “Either I’m the bitch or he’s the bitch.” Is this a good reflection of masculine values? Is there danger in simplifying masculinity in a way that it only represents conflict?
DK: First, I don’t think in this context the word “bitch” has any kind of literal meaning; it’s apparently athletic vernacular to describe who wins and who loses in a contest. (I would compare the expression “—- you”, which has nothing much to do with sexual intercourse.) From the Greeks on athletics involves winners and losers, and it’s not pleasant to be the loser, as Pindar tells us. It is one of the delusions of gender feminism that we can live in a world where everybody is a winner. That’s not the way life is. When conflict is stylized as it is in athletic contexts, I can see how the desire for dominance would be verbalized in various ways, and I’m not at all sure any of us has the right to invade the verbal privacy of our athletes or any other of our students. “Bitch” is not a word any student would use in conversation with me; that’s all I have the right to demand about it, I think. To make a student stand up and confess publicly his gender feminist transgressions, as I gather happened at that panel, is just too close to a Maoist show trial for me.
WCU: If gender studies were to become a required course, what would be a more constructive approach to the topic than the gender feminist perspective? What should we study?
DK: If you study literature you have to talk about men and women. Originally I thought that Gender Studies proposed simply to do that, but as I said I quickly discovered that what was really meant was academic feminist studies. The older I get I become much more committed to the idea of naïve readings of literature. Theory has been the death of the appreciation of art and literature among students today. They have no aesthetic appreciation of art. That is chiefly due to the triumph of various kinds of academic theory. To bring to bear on Henry James or Homer a massive ideological construct is not helpful. That is what angers me most about gender feminism and masculinity studies, I think. They are no friends of art.
WCU: You have said that gender studies is highly academic and detached from reality. Do you believe that studying it will have few applications to real life? Could it even have drawbacks?
DK: I don’t think women are interested in wimps. You go out into the real world and you interact with women, you become attracted to and court a woman perhaps. I don’t think they are interested in these wimpy, neutralized guys that gender feminists are trying to create: men who are not committed to constructive struggle and conflict and fighting for a cause and coming out the winner. I think these are deep-seated human, even biological, values, and it is hybristic of gender feminism to think that they can suddenly be erased from human experience.
Our talk with Dr. Kubiak was enlightening. Clearly he is opposed to the gender studies course being required, and he clearly encourages us to be on guard against the invasion of academic feminism in the classroom. Could gender studies give us a constructive look at ourselves and our school? Or are our fears justified? There was much to ponder as Ron and I strolled quietly across the mall back to our house.
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