Introduction courses often do more than just satisfy curriculum requirements, they can change your whole world, as senior Alunda Rutherford discovered three years ago while taking an Introduction to Women’s Studies course.
“When Alunda took that Intro to Women’s Studies class, it rocked her world, as it often does to people,” said Dr. Amber Kinser, her instructor for the course.
“That intro class changed my whole perspective on what I thought about gender,” Rutherford said.
Not only did Rutherford’s perspective shift, so did her goals and plans for the rest of her life. Rutherford, formerly a pre-nursing major is set to graduate in December as a Women’s Studies major, perhaps the first graduate of the new major.
“And, to be quite honest with you, when I came to ETSU, I was really unaware that there even was such a thing as women’s studies, much less considered it as a career path,” Rutherford said.
It all started innocently enough, said Rutherford. “In all honesty, I had decided to take Introduction to Women’s Studies because it was a writing intensive course, and I needed one,” Rutherford said. “And I thought, ‘Wow, that class might actually help me out in my nursing career one of these days.’
However, it has done much more than that. “She had her world wide opened up by that course,” Kinser said. She started really being moved by the material and rethinking her world, and with such energy and courage.”
Kinser is not the only one who has witnessed the transformation in Rutherford. “When I think of the young woman who sat next to me in that Women’s Studies class, and the woman that she’s becoming, I can see where she’s grown a whole lot, she seems stronger, more confident,” said Women’s Studies minor Anita Shell, 49.
Now, Rutherford, unlike many generations of Southern women before her, who thought their only viable career options were in either nursing or teaching, will likely have numerous career options.
Women’s Studies prepares students for leadership in advertising, broadcasting, journalism, public relations, government, law, management and teaching, reports a Women’s Studies Program brochure.
Educating people about women’s issues is the best way to raise awareness for positive change and equality in our society, Rutherford says. “If I can educate others about women’s studies or feminism, then I’m willing to do it, any way to shine a positive light on women’s studies or feminism in general,” Rutherford said. “I don’t understand why any woman would not want what feminists are fighting for.”
However, at the same time, it is easy for her to see why some women wouldn’t be receptive to their message.
“After all, we are in the Bible Belt region, and that has a lot to do with it,” Rutherford said. “Religion can be very oppressing.”
Kinser sees other problems with patterns in the region as well. “Women, particularly in Appalachia, have been taught that gender relations as they are right now, are the way they always have been, and the way they always will be, and, not a product of anything we [women] have done,” Kinser said. “We’re just sort of passive recipients and actors in it, and not surprisingly, many women don’t resist this.”
Rutherford, however, did resist. “And, if she goes down in the historical records of ETSU, as the person who pioneered the Women’s Studies Program at ETSU, that would fit perfectly with my image of the kind of person I would like laying down the foundation,” Kinser said.
Things began to click early on for Rutherford. “When I took that intro class, I got what we call in feminism, the ‘click,’ when all feminists, or any woman, for that matter, starts to realize, ‘Wow, I might be a feminist,’ ” Rutherford said.
Kinser is not at all surprised that Rutherford is breaking a chain of oppression. “I think she has always had an inner strength,” Kinser said. “She knows it now and sees it, and is fed by it in ways she might not have been before.”
Mind you, Rutherford’s feminist transformation did not come without inner struggles. “Initially, I was just like, damn it, I agree with everything that we’re talking about in this class,” Rutherford said. “OK, I may be a feminist.”
Her former classmate, Shell adds, while Rutherford may be a feminist in every sense of the word, “Alunda manages to be very feminine, while at the same time, strong and determined.”
Rutherford is not one to hold back her feelings. “Just look at the disparity in pay scales among men and women,” Rutherford said. “Like male plastic surgeons for instance, who make roughly twice what a female plastic surgeon would. Where’s the equality in that?”
Society’s often-unhealthy obsession with body image also raises the ire of this Feminist Majority Leadership Alliance member. “Not all women are 6-foot-3-inches and 120 pounds, yet that’s all the women you see in commercials, advertising, media, everywhere,” Rutherford said.
Treatment of women in pornography definitely does not sit well with her. “I feel like the porn industry exploits females more so than it does males,” Rutherford said. “Too often, women in them tend to be portrayed as submissive, and are often degraded in some form or another.”
She is not one to shy away from hot-button topics like abortion, either. “No one is pro-abortion,” Rutherford said. “But pro-choice, yes, I am pro-choice. And, for someone to call it pro-abortion is just not politically correct at all.”
Another big issue is emergency contraception, and whether it’s right or wrong, Rutherford said. “Emergency contraception has been wrongly attacked in some aspects by pro-life organizations, misinterpreting the fact that emergency contraception simply stops the fertilization process,” she says. “It does not make you have an abortion.”
Thus far, friends and family of the rural Jellico, Tenn. native have mixed feelings, she says, about her chosen career path.
“On the one hand, my parents feel like I’m wasting my time and my money,” Rutherford said. “But, at the same time, my parents are very intrigued and interested in the fact that I stand for something so strongly.”
Rutherford’s integrity is apparent to her mentors and peers. “She is just one among many Women’s Studies students, who are pioneering, courageous women, not just silly feminist radicals, but brave women who are willing to, in the midst of a culture that punishes them for it, revamp their world view,” Kinser said. “And after all, it’s not like she’s surrounded by undying support for being a feminist.
“She just simply believes that it is a world view that is accurate and fitting for appropriate human relations, so she’s going to pursue it, and if that means she gets castigated for it, so be it.

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