I'm all for gender studies, but . . . I don't like that they have pretty ubiquitously replaced women's studies. Not everywhere, but most places.

I'm not against being inclusive, which is presumably why women's studies after a few brief years (twenty or so?) were replaced by nobly egalitarian gender studies. A mere handful of years aren't nearly enough to study women, ourselves.

Sometimes we have to study ourselves at a distance from the other gender so that we don't fall into the habit and trap of posturing. I remember teaching swing at a Girl Power event in Denver years ago. All girls. All effervescent dancing energy. After a while a man came into the gym to replace a light bulb, and all the energy changed, for the entire rest of the session, even after he left again. Suddenly there was self-consciousness and posturing. This was neither good nor bad. It just was what it was. I still believe we owe it to ourselves to dig deep below the posturing, politeness, and inclusiveness to find who we really are, what we really want.

The story goes that cats were once worshiped in Egypt and they have never forgotten this. There are things that women have never forgotten in a similar vein, but we have buried them so deep that we are on occasion hard pressed to remember what they are.

Be important today.