Reading about Gender Studies

Let's start with a confession. I've reposted on Facebook an article that was making its rounds about a hoax paper successfully published in a gender studies journal. That's certainly good fun and starkly points out certain issues in the academic publishing world. The article, however, goes further and attacks gender studies in general. Which is even better since it's always good to make fun of dem crazy feminists! Right? Right!

But then a friend of mine who is into this stuff pointed out that the article didn't exactly PROVE that gender studies are wrong and was merely bashing them. Which is true for the most part with the possible exception of something I'll address later. There is a point to it for me as well - I never had any solid grounding to dismiss gender studies, all I had was a strong suspicion about its conclusions and aversion to the general ideological tendencies that the entire field seems to have. It's uncomfortable to admit, but yes, I was making fun of something I didn't know about and when I was asked to defend my views I failed miserably. Which can't exactly impress people that strongly hold these views and happen to be friends. I am sorry for that.

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So, okay, I have an unsubstantiated beef with gender studies. But how does one disprove an entire field of study? There are thousands of people creating new studies and writing articles with its own obscure jargon, having disagreements, feuding and splitting into new subschools... which means that disproving any part can be simply "refuted" by pointing to another school or another author. Criticising specific articles etc. can be rejected by pointing to yet another article or just saying that any field will contain some subpar works.


The original article this started with pointed to a Twitter account listing what are supposed to be particularly bad examples of gender studies:  https://twitter.com/@RealPeerReview

A Twitter account is not the most impressive source of evidence but I'll try to pick up a few examples and see whether it's a good source of bad articles about gender studies which would at least in a limited fashion support the claims of the initial article by Boghossian and Lindsay. Then I'm going to try to find more 'representative' and authoritative gender studies works and see where that leads me.


Let's start with what seems to be a pretty bad example.

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“Lose Like a Man”: Gender and the Constraints of Self-Making in Weight Watchers Online
by Emily Contois

"This constraint upon self-making exposes how patriarchy subordinates even the men assumed to profit the most from its power, as the male weight loss promise withholds transformative potentials."

The article picks two advertising videos and analyses the heck out of them, deriving and proving already assumed gender stereotypes from this tiny sample. Assuming the two stories were not picked by chance (which is easily possible), there is at least one more uncomfortable option open not picked up by the article: maybe men and women are different after all and different argumentation motivates them differently? Or maybe the Weight Watchers simply followed some gender stereotypes or their actual knowledge about their customers - which might prove misconception on their part but in either case the mystical "patriarchy did it" claim falls apart. Not that the "patriarchy" is ever actually described or defined - is it the Weight Watchers? Somebody else? An elusive cosmic force? We might never know.

The article declares that although the man in the story provided by WW loses weight, is promoted, becomes a role model and is on track to run a marathon, that exact man is somehow excluded from the the process of transformation, acquiring agency and new skills that women get out of the process. But never mind that, the article already has the correct solution prepared:

"To embark on such a process requires destabilizing the masculine subject, conceding space for improvement, admitting vulnerability, and relinquishing power — all actions in conflict with hegemonic masculinity, as currently crystallized."
 - How and why is it needed to destabilize the masculine subject - and what does that even mean? Didn't the man in the story clearly concede space for improvement, admitted vulnerability and relinquished power to the company and its online program? He did these things but apparently not to a sufficient degree or in a desired way for the author. (And what is hegemonic masculinity anyway?)



"Dan does not speak of fatness, weight, or weight loss in terms that relate to his identity and sense of self." while at the same time the article says: "he states that he was a sergeant in the military who 'could have been honorably discharged [for] barely meeting the fitness requirements.'" Could it be that this is how this character identifies himself? Or could it be that this character in a two-minute advertising video is not a fully three-dimensional representation of a complete person?


The concluding statement about the multi-billion dollar diet industry manages to sabotage itself: "While reality weight loss TV shows like The Biggest Loser depict men experiencing the emotions of weight loss, Weight Watchers’ men do not engage in the self-help process of reflecting upon weight gain. Men are not expected to employ self-discipline...

The work of male weight loss is external to the self — oriented around public life, professional advancement, and athletic achievement. This is the script for how Weight Watchers has extended its weight loss promise to a new “niche market.” Given the diet industry’s capitalist motivations and the near total failure rate of diets, weight loss promises are rarely realized (Campos 2004; Fraser 1998; Gaesser 2009). Weight Watchers’ construction of “masculine” weight loss demonstrates another terrain upon which dieting fails."

So, is this, in the end, a condemnation of a single company that gets its message wrong, while another company manages to get the message right? Wouldn't that exonerate the diet industry?

And what if, shockingly, there is more than type of person interested in weight loss, with different motivations and personalities? What if these ways to weight loss work differently for different people?

The article points out that dieting frequently fails and this is a brand new niche market. Since this is a new marketplace it is quite possible that the old knowledge doesn't apply - and who knows, these weight loss methods might actually work.


Finally, the article doesn't fail to complain about the "diet industry’ s capitalist motivations and near total failure of diets". Interestingly, this provides a very capitalist motivation for anyone capable to actually bring about the promises of weight loss - anybody capable of doing so could take over the profits of this billion-dollar heavy industry. Since that's not the case, could it be that weight loss is indeed extremely hard to achieve and the few that do so have been helped by these companies? It is perfectly possible that these are evil companies that rake in profits from their gullible customers but that makes them vulnerable to the real deal... if there is such a thing.

What if the business of the diet industry is providing the elusive chance of real weight loss to the masses yearning for it - actual weight loss to the lucky few and perhaps a better health and some sense of 'doing something' for everybody else? If weight loss is very hard to accomplish, as it seems, the diet industry provides an outlet to popular frustrations with some (however marginal) benefits. Hopefully, one day this problem will be resolved.


To finish on a positive note, the article sums up nicely the recent developments in the diet industry and the challenges it faces. The gender-focused analysis doesn't stand up to scrutiny, however.