In Defense of Our Fathers
On the misapplication and perversion of feminism in Columbia’s Introduction to International Politics course
Last semester, in my Introduction to International Politics class, we spent half a week on the topic of “gender and sexuality in international relations.” I thought we would cover the very real issues of global LGBT and women’s rights. Instead, our class studied the theoretical analysis of gender’s role in shaping international relations.
The main paper assigned for the class’s gender unit, “Feminist Foreign Policy” by Victoria Scheyer and Marina Kumskova, is fundamentally flawed. Rather than basing its arguments on real-world examples about women and women’s rights, the paper consists of theoretical arguments that rest on the authors’ unfounded—and problematic—assumptions about the nature of women and men. Though the authors claim to align themselves with a “feminist approach,” their arguments are not remotely related to the term. The result is not an argument for women’s rights or even about women, but rather the use of a vague “feminist approach” to advocate for an unspecified rearrangement of the global world order, presumably in line with the authors’ preferences. The authors are, of course, free to argue for a reordering of the global world order in whatever utopian vision they see fit, but using feminism as a facade to promote a solution that women do not want and would not benefit from is absurd.
Merriam-Webster defines feminism as “belief in and advocacy of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes expressed especially through organized activity on behalf of women’s rights and interests.” But by making unfounded assumptions about men and women in order to blame men for the flaws in our current world, Scheyer and Kumskova not only attempt to usurp the mantle of feminism for their own ends, but also construct a fundamentally immoral universe in which people are unfairly and restrictively defined by their group identity. As I and Merriam-Webster understand it, feminism’s fundamental aim is equality with men. The ideal state is one in which every woman is equally valued as a human being and given the same opportunities for advancement as their male counterparts. Instead of pursuing this aim, the authors seek to elevate women and degrade men.
Scheyer and Kumskova claim that “the feminist approach to foreign policy is about advancing peace and development for everyone, not through striving for the absence of conflict or serving the interests of individuals within the government, but through reimagining governance and social structures, as well as promoting nonviolent conflict solutions”. This definition implies a difference between feminist goals and men’s goals. Women want to advance “peace and development for everyone,” while men are assumed to serve “the interests of individuals within the government.” Women want to engage in “reimagining governance,” whereas men are assumed to blindly uphold the status quo. Women want to promote “nonviolent conflict solutions,” while men are assumed to prefer war and violence.
None of these assumptions are supported by evidence. Many are simply sex-based caricatures that depict women as inherently gentle and kind and men as hopelessly violent, selfish, and cruel.
We can try to give the authors the benefit of the doubt and assume that they are talking about the on-average differences that do exist in the aggregate between the average behavior of men and women. Such differences have been measured in countless scientific studies, including on agreeable, extroverted, and neurotic behavior, sensation-seeking, and susceptibility to different psychological disorders.
However, the authors never stop to imply that they are dealing with on-average differences or to clarify that there are always individual exceptions to the mean.
Additionally, some of the established statistics for average behavior between men and women directly contradict the authors’ arguments. For example, while it is true that women engage in far less violence than men, that correlation does not hold for other conflicts, such as war. Socially, female relationships actually tend to be more fragile and conflict-prone than male relationships, despite men physically fighting far more than women. In one study of national leaders, both female and male leaders initiated conflicts at comparable rates, indicating no significant sex-based preference for war on the part of men or aversion to war on the part of women.
Having established their argument on shallow, sex-based stereotypes, Scheyer and Kumskova go on to portray the current world order as an inherently sexist product of the patriarchy, in which states’ “relationships and systems are organized hierarchically and situated within a security dilemma; they serve national interests; and they are based on the principle of sovereignty.” While it is true that the concepts of hierarchy, the security dilemma, and national interests were produced by male-dominated societies, they are not exclusive to men. Rather, they are an outgrowth of fundamentally human instincts, which women are equally capable of experiencing and acting on. Though the burden of proof lies with the authors, they offer no evidence that a female-dominated world would be free of such basic human behaviors as hierarchy, national loyalty, and sovereignty. In such a world, there would certainly be hierarchies, national interests, and sovereign states acting in pursuit of their own interests. Women and girls, just like their male counterparts, naturally engage in hierarchies, fights, and self-interested behavior. We are not merely selfless angels.
To believe that our current world of international politics is only hierarchical and self-interested because it was produced by largely male-dominated societies is an assumption untethered from basic knowledge of human nature.
The few examples that Scheyer and Kumskova give about actual international relations are plainly inaccurate. While critiquing “dominant masculine behavior,” the paper states that “Buying tanks or fighter jets are not preventing children from dying of hunger, stopping preventable diseases from spreading, or averting gender based violence.” No, they are not. But their purpose is for something else entirely. Military equipment is intended to protect societies from violent threats.
The authors’ decision to frame national defense as problematic masculine behavior assumes that women do not value the physical protection of their own families and societies, and by extension, their continued existence. This belief is completely degrading to women because it assumes they operate like total pacifists and are incapable of any violence, even in defense of themselves or someone they love.
This thinking also ignores the real protective maternal instincts that mark the female experience. For example, in the 2004 election, protective “security moms” who prioritized national security post-9/11 were seen as a significant voting bloc in George W. Bush’s re-election.
The stereotypical portrayal of women as uninvolved with military activity also ignores the numerous modern women who have fought for their countries, including thousands serving in combat roles in the U.S. armed forces.
Additionally, the idea that men, by focusing on the military, ignore “children dying of hunger” and “preventable diseases” is historically illiterate. For centuries, fathers have been breadwinners, earning the wages that kept their children from dying of hunger.
As to the prevention of diseases, because women in the past were excluded from medical practice for so long, men, of course, dominated the medical field, developing vaccines and treating patients. The participation of women in the workforce is a modern one, and it is expected and good that women will continue to share the roles of hunger prevention and medical care with their male counterparts. Women now make up around half of medical school graduates, and these statistics indicate that our future medical field will likely exhibit a relatively even split between women and men. Both sexes are clearly capable of devoting their lives to curing “preventable diseases,” a profession that men are not and have not by any measure been neglecting.
Of course, for most of human history, women were systemically demeaned. This is a fact, and we should celebrate the recent trend towards equal opportunity. However, Scheyer and Kumskova reject the goal of equal opportunity. They discard our traditional notion of equality—judging people as individuals—to claim that even gender-neutral systems and concepts are instruments of The Patriarchy’s oppression.
They take this intellectual liberty to assert that truly feminist foreign policy “requires rethinking and re-envisioning gender structures of institutions and governance systems”. The idea of re-envisioning governance systems is typically used in left-wing literature to refer to ways of reorganizing society, such as in an anarchist or communist way, or by abolishing institutions like the police; the authors are most likely arguing for something similar.
It is one thing to argue for such systems or whatever re-envisioning governance systems means to the author. But doing it under the guise of feminism is fundamentally dishonest. The authors seek to transfer the immorality of sexism to concepts that have nothing to do with either women or men. In doing so, they dilute the definition of sexism, forcing the label onto everything they don’t like in order to grant themselves faux moral credibility. I would call Scheyer and Kumskova’s argument hyperbolic and hysterical, except that they would probably respond by calling me sexist, too.
The ideas expressed in “Feminist Foreign Policy” might feel insignificant at first glance. After all, an academic paper that students skim in a foreign policy class in college seems unlikely to reflect the views of the broader American public. But we should be wary of the trickle-down of theory from our academic institutions.
Viewing men and masculinity as inherently wrong and indoctrinating women into believing that the system is inescapably rigged against them has negative effects on our society. Today, both sexes feel they are experiencing sexism from the opposite sex, with 2023 surveys revealing that 58 percent of women believe that being a woman hurts one’s ability to get ahead, while 45 percent of men believe that there is some or a lot of discrimination against men in the United States. Young men and women are also experiencing a growing political divide, with young women increasingly leaning left and young men increasingly leaning right. Promoting hostility between the sexes is likely to exacerbate these divides and further degrade social cohesion.
But maybe more significant than the far-reaching societal effects of such an ideology is the promotion of a morally warped viewpoint that faults and stereotypes innocent men for what they didn’t do, especially younger generations far removed from historical periods in which sexist behavior was the norm.
When the authors of “Feminist Foreign Policy” focus on sex-based grouping, they lose sight of individuals and reduce people to a group identity of perpetrator or victim. Such reductionism abandons any moral goals by smearing an entire group of people. In our era of political tribalization, we must remember that true justice can only be individual justice, by which each person is judged by their own merits.
No modern woman is forever rendered helpless by the lifestyle imposed on her grandmothers. Women are stronger than that. Similarly, men do not inherit the sins of their fathers. My own dad has been an incredible moral example to me and my siblings. He’s protected us and taught us to work hard. When I did experience sexism, my father never let it affect the way I saw myself.
We at Columbia are privileged because of the men who came before us, like our famous alumni John Jay and Alexander Hamilton, both founding fathers who contributed so much to our country. We are also privileged because of the men who attend and teach at this institution. We should be able to say so without anyone assuming that appreciating men is in any way contradictory to feminist thought. And we should never feel that advancing women requires diminishing men.
Ms. Weinfeld is a junior at Columbia College studying political science and creative writing. She is a staff writer for Sundial.
The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Sundial editorial board as a whole or any other members of the staff.
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Time to read, or re-read, A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf.