First, welcome to the douchebags from rationalwiki. Ladies, you know your feminist blog has made it when internet scrotal warriors with their self-proclaimed ‘rational minds’ (sorry, let me pause to laugh my ass off here, man-logic is anything but rational, but fuelled by emotional mantrums) have listed you as a ‘webshite’ and angry, privileged followers click on over to your site to become angrier. I’m sure between watching rape porn and eating the meals their mothers provide, they are raging online about how women have destroyed the world with their quest for human rights and not to be raped or to take the scourge of rape porn away. Nothing says ‘rational’ like not understanding the difference between rights and privilege. I won’t go on. Women will understand. Men never will (they don’t have to in this world). Only rational people will get it.

Anyhoo. I’m in the middle of escaping a violent male in a rental situation while unemployed (I talked about insecure housing for women in my last post). Luckily, but sadly, one of the other women in my house has been experiencing related terrorism and we finally ran into each other and shared our experience. We had thought we were alone and thus unable to be believed (he said, she said, he wins, she flees… or dies). The third woman in the house is straight, very male-identified, and will never get on board. She is one of those who is internet dating, currently has a male who is trying to access her twat, gets angry when she says no, and she is still hanging out with him and making excuses for him. You know this common, sad, but tedious, story. She will likely be raped in the near future, and she is in complete denial. There isn’t a straight woman on the planet who hasn’t experienced something along these lines, but most will never admit it because women are still expected to let men rape them and accept it as love and affection. And the excuses they make to have it all make sense… But long story short, the other woman and I have found places to live, and we teamed up and forced the landlord to let us out of our rental agreement. Seldom do women team up – as I’ve mentioned before, this is one reason we haven’t made much progress as a class in fighting our oppressors (see posts on the need for Old Girls Clubs in the professional sphere, female bonding in general, how intersectionality has destroyed the long lost feminist prime directive, and more). Nothing will happen to our abuser, and while we are lucky to escape, it is another example of women having to escape a space that should, by definition, be safe in order to survive. Women often have to leave secure housing and even jobs and school positions because of the threats of violence and actual violence that men pose and enact, while the men stay firmly and securely in place, untouchable, housing secure and careers skyrocketing without the competition that more competent women would normally present, and most important, without the fears that women live with daily at home, in public and in the workplace. I always wonder to myself how many women are destroyed professionally, economically and more because men threaten them. I’ve written a little about this before, and posit the need for danger pay for women in the workforce.

So we get to my topic. Academia. Now, interestingly, but unsurprisingly, educated women are some of the most hated women among feminists (partially addressed in my post on Isolating Women). You’d think that women would embrace and promote women moving into fields that could actually help the world and empower women. But no. I’ve read tons of posts and articles by or about academic women, and the sad comments sections that accompany them, where so-called feminists viciously attack academic feminists and women in general. Complicated stuff going on there. The attacks often fall along the lines of “this bitch has made it; why isn’t she doing more to help less fortunate women? Why is she capitulating?” And and think to myself, “why the fuck don’t you go attack some men? Yannow, the actual problems.” These self-proclaimed feminists have no idea what it takes to make it in academia as a woman. I’m tired of blue collar bullshit. And liberal bullshit. I’ve lived in multiple worlds – I class myself as ‘educated poor’ – and instead of hating other work classes, I suggest embracing women and fighting the men who keep archaic systems in place. It’s simple, logically, but you have to let go of lady-hate to do it… Anyhow, the women they are attacking are likely 10 times as competent as the men they share departments with, are paid less, are less likely to be promoted, are often forced into non-career-advancing busy work like planning parties, and taking on advising roles that would never be forced on men; are often sexually harassed, threatened and so on; and they are usually completely isolated from normal professional goings-on (especially with female colleagues), unless they support the male party line. To put forth a strong feminist agenda, even in a ‘Gender’ Studies department (the name change says it all – welcome to women’s non-rights in the 21st century) will destroy your career. I watched it happen in my own department in the US when I was a grad student. A committed single (sort of asexual, although not labelled) female professor, top of her field, prominent in the media, well-published and cited, yet treated like shit in our department dared to complain about sexual bias. She ended up blacklisted from academia and had to go to the private sector. Meanwhile, the male professor who would play with his crotch while lesbian grad students met with him in his office, and who threw away a week of lectures in our hardcore stats class because he couldn’t figure out what he was doing, is a full professor now. Untouchable. Further, all the non-white male lecturers got tenure; none of the females did while I was a grad student there. Well, one black woman – no white women nor the one aboriginal woman was promoted. Myself, I had the highest teaching rating of all the grad students. I was in line to receive a prestigious teaching award, but the female prof on the awards committee told me that they were going to give it to an Asian male with lower ratings. She said, “he needed it”. And I didn’t? Why did he need it more than me? He didn’t end up in a teaching career. I did. I needed that award. He is making 6 figures. I am unemployed. And I seldom earn above minimum wage, and that’s when people aren’t trying to force me into volunteer work or work-stay exchange situations (which are more likely to be forced on white women than anyone else, since we are all supposed to be the supported playthings of rich white males with time on our hands, right?)

But this was the 1990’s. Surely things have changed, right? Millennials and Gen Z’s I meet keep telling me that women are EQUAL now. They don’t face misogyny in universities, of course! Could it be? Have things changed radically?

Well, I spent a year in the American college system as a student during this past year, and no, things are not equal. Not in the slightest. Almost all the full professorships are still held by men. Women are taken on board on a casual lecturer basis, most often. I looked up the salaries at the public colleges I attended. One of my male teachers was making over $130,000 per year. He showed films all the time, frequently cancelled class, and I remember we had a quiz in class one day, and he announced gleefully, “Nap time!” Working hard, earning his pay! I had two stellar female teachers, highly committed to students, put in extra work, stayed after class, etc. My favourite, had a listed salary of $19,000 despite extensive expertise in her field. Never once yelled “Nap time!” for herself when we had tests. The other was teaching a double load at the College and University because she couldn’t get hired as full-time staff and had to make ends meet.

Canada is no better. No way. I’m currently exploring a possible PhD program as my two Masters degrees have been the worst professional decisions for my career possible, besides deciding to work in China. I would never recommend a terminal Masters to any woman unless she is already in a job that requires it for her to advance. As it is, I’m too educated for lower level jobs (I’m a risk because I’ll leave once I see something better!), but I’m not educated enough for the jobs I’m intellectually capable of. I also have a weird resume – my education doesn’t match my vast, but colourful, job experience, so that is seen as a risk too. (why aren’t I specialized or in management???) So I’m looking at PhDs as a possible option in these turbulent times. I’ve found a perfect program in Canada, and I’ve explored the faculty members thoroughly. Now as we all know, the current political climate is focused on forced diversity. What does that mean? Well, it means ensuring that non-white people populate the higher echelons, even if it doesn’t accurately reflect the local community. And this agenda has been successful all over North America. This department I’m looking at is mostly non-white, despite being located in a province that is over 90% white (try forcing diversity in any non-Western country and see how that works…).

Now what is blatant, but will never be addressed, is that there are no female core faculty members. I think there are one or two adjunct female lecturers. And it’s not a Physics department where you would expect that kind of misogyny. So I’m thinking to myself – what has been solved here? Why are Millennials and Gen Z’s so fucking deluded? This department is operating in a mainly white community where over half the population is female (the latter being normal in all corners of the world, of course). And they’ve populated their departments with foreign, non-white males, although white males are also present as they always are. And there is a huge immigration drive here. I agree with having foreign faculty in all countries – definitely! you need international expertise to boost your research agenda and perspectives – but I also believe you need to solve your problems at home first. And the problem that needs to be addressed EVERYWHERE IN THE WORLD is this: woman are not represented. And it’s not for lack of intelligence, experience or education. Most of our undergraduate students are female. The majority of grad students are female in a growing number of departments. But conversely, in most departments, all or almost all of the tenured faculty are male (of multiple races). And no, the problem is not that women are just starting to get PhDs in 2020. Try decades of increasing numbers of female PhD graduates. So, something else is going on that keeps women out of jobs fitting their education and that pays them for the 8-12 years of post-secondary education they sweated through while living at poverty levels. Where is the drive to allow women into the halls of intellect, of power? How can we effect change when female students don’t see a place for themselves in academic institutions? Let’s stop taking tuition money from women and girls while not allowing them a chance to find economic freedom and influence in policy, research, and the realm of discovery. Everyone is happy to take our money, but we are still denied power. Education is, first and foremost, a tool, not a hobby for women.

Part of the problem in many Western countries with predominantly white populations is that in the drive for racial diversity, white women have been lumped in with white males. And established white workers are almost always male. White female jobs are ‘last in, first cut’. And if those jobs open up, white women are not usually considered ‘diversity hires’ even though they are vastly underrepresented and always have been. See, men only share with us when they are trying to shove some of the responsibility for problems (i.e., racism) onto someone else or to find a scapegoat to blame or punish. White women have never had a kick at the can of power. We have fought harder than most women to achieve rights, but are not actually benefiting our own selves from this hard work despite what non-white women say. We are still underrepresented in all areas of power, including academia, even when we are a majority in the local population. Yet we are told over and over that our ‘white privilege’, which actually is ‘white male privilege’, is unjust. Politically, in the West, it has gone this way: white men have dominated forever. They still dominate, but are slowly on the way out. (And they fucking hate it!) Diversity is the buzzword of the day. So the bottom line is: if a job is going to be a special population hire, white women, who are underprivileged, are ‘white’ and thus left out. We’ve never had our time and never will, in other words.

So is it worth it for me to even try? I’m already an undesirable because I’m middle aged. Second most invisible time in a woman’s life except old age. And men have hurt my career prospects so many times. I’ve been pinched, talked down to/mansplained to, micromanaged (among other psychological techniques used to push women out), sexually harassed, forced into lady-busy-work, passed over for awards and promotions and recognition, given heavier workloads than male counterparts, and threatened by colleagues and bosses and advisors. I’ve often had to leave. Fear. Frustration. Stagnation. Men don’t experience this, can’t understand this, and downplay or dismiss it as crazy talk if you even bother to explain. I don’t get the sense that anything has changed for the better for my demographic, even though I’m told over and over that women, in general, are equal now, and that white women, specifically, have all the power. Where is this actually reflected? I don’t see it. And trust me, I am looking hard.

♀️ If you care to support Story Ending Never, we are appreciative. ⚢