THOMAS writes:

I am a third-year student at a major law school. Since family law is tested on the bar exam, I decided that it would be smart to take a family law course. The professor is a woman who is a Brigham Young University law school graduate (although I seriously doubt she is Mormon).  She has published several articles on gender, sexuality, and family law.

She holds to the concept that marriage is always changing. Marriages are more like economic partnerships than some kind of spiritual union. Women’s health and careers are negatively burdened by marriage. Traditional marriage is oppressive to women. The nuclear family has almost never existed except during or subsequent to the industrial revolution. Gay marriage is just another subjective transition occurring in the social sphere. The ideal of traditional marriage and child rearing is a creation of class privilege that stigmatizes the poor. The tendency for the law to oppress women by upholding patriarchal marriage is a precursor to marital rape.

I could go on but I am sure that you are familiar with her ideological bent. Do you have any literature or could you point me to scholars that refute her selective social science. I need some relief if I am to survive another twelve weeks of this professor.

Additionally, thank you for your blog posts. Although this is the first time contacting you, I have been lurking for some time now. My wife has started reading your blog, too. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Laura writes:

So you have a family law professor who doesn’t believe in the family. And she uses her academic position to promote her political message instead of examing the history of family law and looking at proven, documented developments. “Gender Studies” is an intellectual scandal. And to think you have to pay for this.

Since she already has a comfortable position, and probably groupies, I doubt that you’ll have much success challenging her. For your own sanity, however, I recommend Michael Levin’s Feminism and Freedom (Transaction Publishers, 1988). It’s more than 20 years old but still highly relevant. Levin, who is a philosophy professor, is excellent at dissecting feminist logic and the fallacies behind affirmative action, Title IX, women in the military, and feminist family policy. As a law student, you should enjoy his look at legal developments and administrative rulings. He also examines the type of consciousness-raising course you are undergoing and the ways in which the women studies project violates the spirit of academic inquiry.

Here are a few other books and recommendations:

Simon Baron-Cohen, The Essential Difference: The Truth about the Male and Female Brain (Perseus, 2003).

Philippe Bénéton, Equality by Default (ISI Books, 2004)

G.K. Chesterton, What’s Wrong With The World (Dodd, Mead and Company, 1910)

Steven Goldberg, Why Men Rule: A Theory of Male Dominance (1993).

Carolyn Graglia, Domestic Tranquility: A Brief Against Feminism (1998)

James Kalb, The Tyranny of Liberalism (ISI Books, 2008)

Brian Mitchell, Women in the Military: Flirting with Disaster (1998).

Steve Moxon; The Woman Racket (Imprint, 2008)

Leon J. Podles, The Church Impotent: The Feminization of Christianity (Spence, 1999).

Brian Robertson, Forced Labor (Spence, 2002)

James Tooley, The Miseducation of Women (Ivan R. Dee 2003).

In addition, I recommend the posts on feminism at Lawrence Auster’s VFR. (There are others not listed in the linked entry). James Kalb’s excellent Anti-Feminist page can be found here. The writings of Fr. Chad Ripperger on marriage and feminism are here. For more on Christian marriage, see Augustine’s De Bono Conjugi,and two great papal encyclicals on marriage, Arcanum by Leo XII (1890) and Casti Connubi by Pius XI (1930).

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