Should We Teach Camille Paglia?

PAGE 3 OF 3

 
I would just like to add a brief comment regarding the ongoing discussion
of whether or not we/one should teach Paglia.  I think the discussion has
been an interesting one.  In addition, from my reading of various posts, it
seems to me that it's worth making explicit that we don't need to make a
a group decision one way or another whether or not to teach Paglia.  I am
not saying that I think people are trying to make such a case.  And I
think it is valuable to hear why or why not people have chosen to include
Paglia in their courses.
 
The point I want to make is this: Paglia's ideas fit better for some than
others in their discussions of feminism.  I also believe that each of us
has different strengths and weaknesses related to our teaching styles.  If
the use of Paglia et al's ideas enhances those strengths or feels comfortable
for us, I think it's useful to include her materials.  However, if they don't,
why feel obligated to include them?  It doesn't seem that a case has been
made that she represents an essential component of discussions of feminist
ideas, and thus I think individual instructors making their own decisions on
whether or not to include her work is an appropriate way to go.
 
Lisa Pettitt
lpettitt  @  du.edu

 
What is so hard to decide? Is it not the duty of a professor to provide
information to his students on the topic of the course?  A professor's
job is not to dissect information and pick out only that which he feels
is relevant or true.  Students receive greater value when they are encouraged
to use their
intelligence and decide for themselves!  A professor should be an
unbiased presenter of information, not a masqueraded spokesperson for any
cause.  Of course I understand, after being on this list for several
weeks now, that the majority of Women's Studies professionals are not at
all interested in creating intelligent students, but rather lock step
androids espousing the NOW line.  I guess thats why the articles from
Christina Hoff Sommers that I tried to post were never posted to the
list.  Is it that you do not like to hear both sides or is it that you're
afraid that intelligent students will see beyond your propoganda and
become free thinking individuals?  They might even realize that because of
BIOLOGY as well as other obvious differences, there is a difference between
males and females.  The enemy is neither male nor female but those who are
engaged in setting one against the other.
 
 
On Mon, 24 Apr 1995, Lisa M. Pettitt wrote: [message appears above]

 
On Mon, 24 Apr 1995, Catherine R. White wrote:
 
> What is so hard to decide? Is it not the duty of a professor to provide
> information to his students on the topic of the course?  A professor's
                 ^^^
> job is not to dissect information and pick out only that which he feels
> is relevant or true.  Students receive greater value when they are encouraged
> to use their
> intelligence and decide for themselves!  A professor should be an
> unbiased presenter of information, not a masqueraded spokesperson for any
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
 
There is no such thing as an "unbiased" presenter.  The assumptions that
you carry into the classroom *will* affect your presentation of material.
 
> cause.  Of course I understand, after being on this list for several
> weeks now, that the majority of Women's Studies professionals are not at
> all interested in creating intelligent students, but rather lock step
> androids espousing the NOW line.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Looks like good old fashioned usenet flame-bait to me.  Come on.
  I don't know whether to laugh or hang my mouth in sheer amazement.
 
>  I guess thats why the articles from
> Christina Hoff Sommers that I tried to post were never posted to the
> list.
 
That big generalized, essentialed "us" that you're talking to are diverse
in opinion, perspective, and politics.  Maybe it is because the articles
were not concerned with the stated purposes of the list, maybe they got
lost in the mail, maybe my mailbox exploded from too much WMST-L mail
from people that don't know how to use their email accounts.
 
> Is it that you do not like to hear both sides or is it that you're
> afraid that intelligent students will see beyond your propoganda and
> become free thinking individuals?
 
Are you serious?  Maybe you don't realize how hateful you sound, or maybe
you do.  Propaganda?  Women's Studies instructors, in my experience, are
concerned with issues of voice, standpoint, perspective, and fair
presentation--issues that other disciplines don't even bother to think
about for the most part.  The discussion on this list concerning how to
juxtapose controversial or opposing texts should stand out to you for the
reason that it is geared toward giving the students a balanced
perspective.  For those that are against focusing on backlash material,
or material that they find undermining, the very valid argument is that
these sources are a part of popular wisdom, popular culture, and the
hegemony of patriarchy that you can't get away from if you try.
Therefore they form the assumptions already brought by students into the
class.  Far from being absent, they situate the discourse.
 
 They might even realize that because of
> BIOLOGY as well as other obvious differences, there is a difference between
> males and females.
 
Yeah, I get cramps everytime I notice that my paycheck is going to be 30%
less than a man's of identical qualifications.  But that's biology for you.
Can't get away from it! ;-)
 
>  The enemy is neither male nor female but those who are>
> engaged in setting one against the other.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
This is the last in the most amazing list of assumptions about people on
this list that I have seen so far.  To follow the logic of your argument:
 
1.  WMST-L members discuss whether or not to teach material
that has portions which undermine the very valuable progress in Women's
Studies and feminist theory;
 
therefore
 
2. They therefore are propagandists who want all students to emerge
 from universities espousing the NOW party line (whatever
that is, and I get the feeling that it's not *all** that* revolutionary)
 
3.  They therefore take the straw person, hyperbolic (read: WHO have YOU
heard ever say this) position that there is no biological difference
between the sexes.  We're not idiots.  The issues that are being
discussed have to do with the *social use of* biological facts.
No one is going to tell you that men can have babies, ok.
 
4.  By discussing this, and by recognizing that dominant culture already
provides a  text to which the students will compare/react to the material
presented, we are "enemies" sowing dischord among the sexes.  Please.
 
Myabe I'm just an unsophisticated little grad student, but this argument
just doesn't follow.  Flames may be sent directly to my killfile.
 
Game over.
 
Chelsea Starr
cstarr  @  uci.edu

 
We do not teach all extant texts on feminism in women's studies
courses.  I think teaching without Jacqui Alexander, Lata Mani, Rey Chow
or Chandra Mohanty would be difficult.  Others don't.  To teach or not teach
Paglia isn't the problem.  The problem sees to me that the
commodification of knowledge is such that it seems that inordinate amount
of attention is paid to a text like Paglia (that's right, Paglia as a
text rather than her writings.) So for those of you who are worried that
Paglia is being censore, you might ask, do you teach everyone?  If not,
why not?  Are you "censoring" some texts?  Probably not, right?

 
>What is so hard to decide? Is it not the duty of a professor to provide
>information to his students on the topic of the course?  A professor's
>job is not to dissect information and pick out only that which he feels
>is relevant or true.  Students receive greater value when they are encouraged
>to use their
>intelligence and decide for themselves!  A professor should be an
>unbiased presenter of information,
 
I have to disagree!  Maybe we are having a semantic discussion.  Perhaps we
have different definitions of what is "relevant information".  As a social
psychologist who teaches courses on people's relationships, aggression,
etc. am I obliged to provide students with transcripts of daytime talk
shows, soap operas, tabloid newspapers?  Of course not!!!  The universe of
possibly relevant information contains that which is of low quality all the
way up to high quality.  High quality for me as a scientist means
informations which is based on fact and logic.  This is why I do not swamp
my students with garbage.  So from what I hear, Paglia's book is not very
high quality.  If she misrepresents facts and uses poor logic, then there
is no obligation to present her work.  Just because she is popular with the
media does not translate into high quality.  In fact I think there is a
negative correlation between quality and media coverage.  Read Backlash by
Faludi.  Perhaps Paglia is relevant reading for a course that is about
distortions in the media.
 
Chris Jazwinski, Ph.D
Department of Psychology
St. Cloud State University
St. Cloud, MN 56301-4498
http://www.stcloud.msus.edu/~jaz

 
In my Intro to Women's Studies course I do a section on equality and
difference feminisms as strands and strategies rather than as diametrically
opposed perspectives.  I find Joan Scott's article on the Sears Case
and Sandra Bem's _The Lenses of Gender_ especially helpful.

 
On Sat, 22 Apr 1995 08:30:42 -0400
FShahnaz C Saad <saad  @  DOLPHIN.UPENN.EDU> wrote:
 
>
> As a radical feminist, I believe that sex equality cannot be achieved
> without the destruction of gender as a concept in its entirety (or, as
> Mary Joe Frug said, women will not be equal until the concept of "woman"
> no longer exists).
 
This makes me think of a talk by Sandra Bem that I recently attended. Bem
felt that getting rid of gender is one option but that actually
magnifying gender differences is another. To magnify gender differences,
you would acknowledge that there aren't just 2 genders, but hundreds of
them.  Look at it this way:
 
5 sexes (m, f, herm, m herm, f herm)
x 4 sexual orientations (het, queer, bi, asexual) = 20 genders
x m-f transexuals and f-m transexuals = 40 genders
x f-m transgendered and m-f transgendered = 80 genders
x masculine, feminine, and androgynous = 270 genders
and so on.
 
To me, magnifying gender differences seems like a more viable option than
eradicating them because a 2000 year history of having 2 genders isn't
likely to be easily forgotten.
 
Chris Saad
saad  @  dolphin.upenn.edu
 
 
With regards to the above I think it is helpful to think of gender
as a continuum where the experience of any individual can be located
as a point along the continuum and not as one of a number of given
categories (no matter how many categories you include).
 
Also with regards to getting rid of gender categories (and cultural
categories come to think of it), have a read of Marge Piercy's
absolutely brilliant novel "Woman on the Edge of Time"

 
Since the following two posts were at least in part in response to my
post re. radical feminism and the destruction of gender as a concept, I
felt the need to elaborate briefly.
 
In refernce to the of gender of a concept, I believe that the
acknowledgment of the biological multiplicities of sexes (as explained
beautifully in Ann Fausto-Sterling's book, Myths of Gender, previously
referred to on this list) is a necessary step in breaking down the
categories that exist, but I also believe that the creation of additional
categories does not solve the problem of the binary, inaccurate and
oppressive 2-sex model by which our culture is currently governed.  A
"spectrum" or "continuum," while more attractive in theory, also doesn't
feel right because it assumes that one "pure" or extreme form (e.g.
`entirely male' and `entirely female') rests on each end of the continuum.
 
Marge Piercy's classic novel, "Woman on the Edge of Time" does offer an
alternative, albeit imperfect, model.  I think it should be included in
every student's mandatory reading--for any type of class that addresses
issues of gender, class, race, ethnicity, nationalism, environmental
protection, philosophy ...
 
Another book that offers a haunting view of the social construction of
gender is Gerd Brantenberg's "Egalia's Daughters."  I am wondering how
many instructors use this novel in their courses?
 
Rebecca Eisenberg

 
Chris Saad  wrote:
 
>With regards to the above I think it is helpful to think of gender
>as a continuum where the experience of any individual can be located
>as a point along the continuum and not as one of a number of given
>categories (no matter how many categories you include).
>
>Also with regards to getting rid of gender categories (and cultural
>categories come to think of it), have a read of Marge Piercy's
>absolutely brilliant novel "Woman on the Edge of Time"
 
I think Bem's point is that gender is not "a" continuum, but many
intersecting continua defining a multidimensional space.  I would add that
the individual is not located at a fixed point, but shifts position in
relation to some or all of the dimensions over the course of a lifetime and
even from moment to moment depending on the situation and on internal
changes.  Eli Coleman has some interesting research using a similar
multidimensional concept in relation to specifying  sexual orientation.  The
model keeps getting more and more complex until the whole idea  of trying to
put people into rigid little pigeonholes just sort of implodes.
 
I also loved "Woman on the Edge of Time."
 
__________________________
Clare Holzman
holzmr01  @  mcrcr.med.nyu.edu

 
Since a couple of people have asked me for the full citation for the
Joan Scott article, I thought I would post it to the list:
Joan Wallach Scott, "The Sears Case," in her book _Gender and the
Politics of History_(New York: Columbia University Press, 1988).  Scott
is very good in explaining how equality in political theory assumes
inclusion of differences - there would be no need for political equality
if there were only sameness or identity, she argues.  Enjoy!
Barbara Scott Winkler, WVU.

 
As others have stated, I believe that expanding gender categories has
a better chance of actually happening than eliminating them.  The present
system exists largely because it has a function in society.  Of course,
it is the function that is the problem, not really the categories
themselves.  The elimination of gender is often misinterpreted as a
mandate for homogeneity (everyone is essentially the same), when in
reality I interpret it to be just the opposite.  It is the ultimate
representation of diversity (everyone is unique).  The problem with
this stance is that it is very difficult to transform the proposal
from the pages of theory to reality in a society.
 
Whether innate or socially-constructed, humans seem to have a general
propensity to categorize.  Thus, it would seem that expanding gender
categories would have greater success than removing them.  However,
this has problems as well.  Humans not only have a general tendency
to categorize, we also tend to collapse categories into a simpler
system when they become too numerous to manage easily in daily
activities.  For example, people in the U.S. of A. do not handle
ethnicities very well.  We tend to collapse highly diverse groups
into single categories based on a single (or small number of)
perceived common characteristics.  A case in point is the recent
Oklahoma disaster.  The first speculations concerning a
perpetrator(s) was that the individual(s) responsible was
Middle-Eastern.  What the hell does that mean?
 
My point is that expanding gender categories probably has
limitations in it practical application.  However, with all of
that said, unless the overall function that the categories
serve is undermined, regardless of how many actual categories
there are, my prediction is that we will have done a lot of
work only to wind up basically where we started.  Existing
categories will be collapsed into two:  White, heterosexual,....
....males, and everybody else.  From there, "everybody else"
will divide themselves into binary distinctions, which will
ultimately form a hierarchy based upon perceived common
values (or in some cases opposite values) with the dominant
group.
 
Iana Pattatucci
Luciana%bchem.dnet  @  dxi.nih.gov

 
Thank you, Chelsea Starr.
 
I can't help but wonder how we, as women studies teachers and educators in
many fields can help women realize that women are not their enemies.  This
Catherine person who was flaming on the enet over women studies teachers
biased teaching is a case in point.  Somehow she has the impression that
our debates are trying to harm her or her male friends.  Or that if we
teach students to question popular views (and popular myths) of
male/female relationships, we are somehow trying to subvert DEMOCRACY AND
THE AMERICAN WAY.  I would seriously like to consider what I might be able
to do to help women like Catherine see the value of permitting all
perspectives into the classroom with an equal questioning of them all.  No
one on this list advocated creating bias or treating even Paglia unfairly.
From what I gathered from the discussion, most of those who choose to use
Paglia do so with the intent of examining her arguments objectively.  I
choose not to use her at all--as I've said before.
 
So how do I reach students like Catherine, or should I even try?  And
Chelsea, there is no such thing as a "lowly grad student."  We've all
been there, and if we haven't, we've all struggled for something too.
 
*********************************
*Theresa Thompson               *    Out flew the web, and floated wide,
*Washington State University    *    The mirror crack'd from side to side,
*Pullman, Washington  99164     *    "The curse has come upon me!" cried
*email: ttheresa  @  wsunix.wsu.edu *    The Lady of Shalott.
*********************************