Urban questions and epistemologies

When I was 15, one day in English class our teacher asked the question of an entirely female classroom, “who here would describe themselves as a feminist?” Everyone looked confused and hesitated. The teacher looked shocked. “What if I told you”, she said, “that a feminist is somebody who believes in equality between the sexes?” All hands shot up. It was the first time the concept of feminism had been succinctly explained, and ever since I’ve been deeply annoyed by women who don’t describe themselves as feminists because they either don’t understand the concept, or don’t wish to be seen as political. Australian supermodel Miranda Kerr caught my attention most recently for stating in an interview that she was not a feminist. While celebrities declaring themselves not to be feminists is irritating, I would expect better from sociologists. I was very surprised to learn that only 5 out of 26 female academics in the Chicago school interviewed by Mary Jo Deegan would agree with her assessment of the Sociology Department as highly patriarchal in outlook and practice, despite the clear evidence Deegan presents in her critique of the School’s “dark era”. If women in all professions are to move closer to equality, surely the lesson of this article is that, at the very least, they should not be complicit in their own exclusion.