Geography is chauvinistic

Also racist, heteronormative, cisnormative, and perpetuates white heteromasculinism.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/are-you-ready-for-feminist-geography/article/2008909#.WXDX4k8KNrg.twitter



Two college geography professors are urging their colleagues not to cite geography research done only by straight white men. Relying on the scholarly efforts of pale males who mate with females perpetuates “white heteromasculinism,” say geographers Carrie Mott of Rutgers University and Daniel Cockayne at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. If “white heteromasculinism” sounds bad, well, that’s because it is.

According to Mott and Cockayne, it’s a “system of oppression” that ignores the scholarly contributions of women and people of color in order to benefit those who are “white, male, able-bodied, economically privileged, heterosexual, and cisgendered.”

Mott and Cockayne have published their joint plea in Gender, Place & Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography, an online journal devoted to—what else?—“feminist geography.” The two argue that citation—the practice of using footnotes and similar rubrics to credit the ideas and research of other scholars—isn’t so much a safeguard against plagiarism as a “problematic technology that contributes to the reproduction of the white heteromasculinity of geographical thought and scholarship,” according to the abstract for their paper.

Since scholars gain prominence and professional advancement in their field in part because of the number of times their work is cited by other scholars—a “neoliberal” practice, say Mott and Cockayne—good feminist geographers ought to downplay the efforts of white, non-gay, cis-men in their field and practice a kind of footnote affirmative action for members of alleged victim groups: “[C]itation thought conscientiously can also be a feminist and anti-racist technology of resistance that demonstrates engagement with those authors and voices we want to carry forward.” Mott gave an interview to Campus Reform:

“When it is predominantly white, heteronormative males who are cited, this means that the views and knowledge that are represented do not reflect the experience of people from other backgrounds,” she asserted. “When scholars continue to cite only white men on a given topic, they ignore the broader diversity of voices and researchers that are also doing important work on a that topic.”

You might be wondering what geography, which most people associate with map-making and which is supposed to focus on the physical shape of the earth and its human populations, has to do with feminism. But like the rest of the social sciences, the field of geography is now saturated with fashionable leftist ideology and its impenetrable jargon. Course offerings in college geography departments these days consist of bizarre pendulum swings between technical skills and social-justice indoctrination on “climate change,” “capitalism,” and “sustainable agriculture.”

Mott’s geographic specialty is “how resistance movements mobilize to fight against state-sponsored violence and marginalization.”

Cockayne, an “economic geographer,” says his research “is influenced by social theory, including feminist theory, Marx’s writing, political theory, post-structuralism, psychoanalysis, and queer and affect theory . . . Additionally, Daniel also investigates the relationship between queer theory and software studies, and is engaged in feminist critiques of knowledge production in geography.”

Gender, Place & Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography thus seems the perfect outlet for Mott and Cockayne. Other prominently featured articles include: “Racial Microaggressions, Whiteness, and Feminist Therapy,” “Masculinities Under Neoliberalism,” and “The Perilous Whiteness of Pumpkins.” After all, when you are skewing scholarship in the direction of pure ideology, why not skew the footnote counts as well?