Students and speakers gathered in the Hoynak Room for the roundtable discussion.
Ally Hall | Collegian
What good has come from feminism?
“I would just put it simply: half of my students,” Associate Professor of History Matthew Gaetano said.
Catherine Sims Kuiper, assistant professor of education, led a roundtable discussion about feminism March 26 featuring Gaetano, Professor of Philosophy and Religion Nathan Schlueter, homemaker and CanaVox Assistant Academic Director Elizabeth Schlueter, Associate Professor of English Elizabeth Fredericks, and Assistant Professor of Theology Cody Strecker. The event included a moderated Q&A.
“I will clarify at the outset that we are asking most broadly about the advocacy for women’s rights on the basis of the equality of the sexes, but note that this advocacy has developed over time,” Kuiper said. “It has responded to different needs and sometimes gone by different names.”
After defining feminism and giving a short overview of the movement’s historical “waves,” the panelists were first asked “what good or goods have come from or been pursued by feminism?”
Gaetano grounded the roundtable in Hillsdale College’s legacy regarding women’s access to co-educational higher education institutions. Hillsdale College was the second college in the nation to admit women in 1844, following Oberlin College in 1837. Ivy League institutions like Brown and Columbia didn’t admit women into undergraduate classrooms until 1971 and 1983.
Among many other examples, Gaetano ended with suffrage advocacy in Hillsdale College’s administration.
“Joseph Mauck, the sixth president of Hillsdale College, was printed in the New York Times as a prominent American advocating women’s suffrage,” Gaetano said. “I think this is all part of the heritage of this institution. We should be wrestling with this all a bit more than we sometimes do.”
The panelists then answered the question, “what does feminism have to do with men, and does feminism have anything to do with the flourishing of men, specifically?”
Strecker provided examples of “toxic masculinity” tracing all the way back to Augustine of Hippo’s “The City of God” as well as the Roman emperor Claudius. He noted a distinction between masculinity rooted in force, pride, and envy versus a concept of masculinity based on loving service.
“Feminist theologians and scholars can help us see that there is a one picture of force, pride, and envy in masculinity,” Strecker said. “And in total contrast to that is the other love which Augustine names: the love of the City of God. This is not dominating lust, but loving service. It is a picture of strength and power used not to be over or cause another to submit, but rather to in strength, receive and give in a true vision of lordship of the true lord, the Lord Jesus Christ.”
Strecker encouraged Christian men to explore this type of masculinity.
“I think it calls for a kind of desire of Christian men to be feminists of a kind, to exercise this love and service in relation to other people, including women, who they want to see flourish,” he said. “Loving service, this alternative love, is not then it seems a threat to true masculinity, even if it is calling out a false kind.”
Nathan Schlueter stated that although modern feminism has had a “corrosive influence in our culture,” the response of anti-feminists has been damaging as well.
“I tend to place more blame on the men for a lot of the state of affairs we’re in right now,” Nathan Schlueter said. “Failures of men to stand up, be manly, and be real men. I think men blaming feminism is just unmanly. Real men don’t blame. They don’t blame everyone for their trouble — they instead seek to overcome and to stand up.”
Elizabeth Schlueter discussed the power dynamics at play in progressive feminism and how healthy marriage culture benefits both men and women.
“Men are really suffering today,” Elizabeth Schlueter said. “Part of that blame does fall at the feet of modern, progressive second-wave feminism, but women are also suffering because of that feminism. It is no longer pro-woman at all. If women can truly flourish, men can flourish too. It’s not that women flourishing takes a power piece of the pie away from men. I think having healthy marital norms is one of the keys. It’s not a transfer of power.”
The third question focused on feminism’s relationship to Christianity. Fredericks explored certain traits that Christianity and feminism share and how they can each hold the other to a higher standard.
“I consider how many key Christian virtues such as hospitality and self-sacrificial care are skills or gifts that we often see or characterize as inherently feminine in nature,” Fredericks said. “So tapping into feminist thought at times can help us to be better Christians — more generous, more hospitable, more charitable, and more cooperative. I think tapping into Christianity is one of the various directives that helps feminism from turning into a system of thought that just gives women permission to behave badly in the same way men historically often have.”
To round out the event, the panelists were asked which feminist thinkers had shaped them before leading into audience questions. The audience brought up questions about the relationship between career and motherhood, manosphere influencer culture, and how best to interact with feminist thought both inside and out of classrooms.
One student in attendance, sophomore Tully Mitchell, said she wouldn’t consider herself a feminist. Tully explained that she struggled with her cultural encounters with feminism at large, but liked how Hillsdale framed marriage, family, and motherhood.
“The panel was really well balanced and refreshing,” Mitchell said. “The professors who portrayed feminism positively while also affirming the differences between men and women.”
Senior Sydney Davis, the secretary of the Hillsdale College Democrats club, said she had no reservations going to the discussion.
“These people are our professors, but they’re also mothers and fathers,” Davis said. “They’re members of the community. I knew they weren’t going to get up there and bash anything. I thought it was really great.”
