Men in Women's Studies Classes

This is the second half of a discussion on men in women's studies
classes that took place on WMST-L in January 1997.  There is also a later, 
4-part discussion entitled Men in Women's Studies Classes II.
 
PAGE 2 OF 2

 
Although I agree with many of the posters that the kinds of questions the
women in the original posters class were asking just subverted the
discussion away from women, I have found that for a lot of young women
addressing these concerns directly allows them to get on with addressing
women.
 
One of the things we need to realize is the power of sexism in US/UK/other
cultures. The discomfort expressed by women students about women only
classes, not getting the male perspective, etc. is a SYMPTOM of this power.
I have assigned readings about men in feminism (both for and against, there
are lots out there by both women and 'pro-feminist' men) to raise the issues
in an academic way. Hopefully if you spend one session clearing the ground
by taking these questions seriously, you can do the things you want to do
with your women-only group much better for the rest of the semester.
 
One article that might help them see the connections might be
 
Marilyn Frye 'Willfull Virgin, or: Do you have to be a lesbian to be a
feminist' reprinted in her collection _Willfull Virgin_ Crossing PRess.
 
It would enable discussion of how there peers and others react to their
women and the body course and get them to think about their questions in
relation to broader social relations.
 
Dr. Jo VanEvery
Dept. of Cultural Studies
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT
United Kingdom
 
0121-414-3730
 
J.Van-Every  @  bham.ac.uk

 
 But I couldn't help noticing that this message also opens up the
>question of how to avoid the problems that are arising in this class.  If
>the course is titled "Gender and Identity," then in my view men ought to
>feel welcome in the class and they ought to expect readings that address
>issues that they feel are significant for them.  Men do have genders, and
>they do have identities.  So it is inappropriate, given the course title,
>to then say on the first day of class that the class will cover primarily
>feminist readings.
 
To say that one is reading feminist texts (and/or doing feminist readings
of texts) does not mean ignoring the male gender.  It means taking a
certain approach toward reading/writing, as well as becoming aware of
gendered assumptions which affect both men and women.  Therefore I don't
think any man should feel left out.
 
Other than that, I appreciate Jack's suggestions.
 
Lisa

 
my advice is simple:  nullify this guy in class every change you get and
get right back in his face.  bullies cannot hear or reason; they respond,
if at all, to being outbullied.

 
This is an interesting and important thread for a number of reasons, not
the least of which is that the dynamic/behavior Michelle Lundgren
describes is not limited to gender/women's studies classrooms.  With
respect to the potential for such a situation to occur in any classroom, I
am weighing in with a response to Jack Meacham's reply.  Specifically,
there are three points I wish to raise:
    1) This is an institutional/political/semantic issue on a
       number of campuses, and in a number of programs and
       departments. Using the truth-in-advertising caution raises a
       critical concern: the increasingly widespread practice of
       using the word, gender, as a synonym or code for woman,
       women, men, women's studies, men's studies, feminist, or
       feminism is inherently hazardous.  Fuzzy use of language(s)
       is not identical with inclusivity of perspectives.  Each
       of us is a gendered creature, regardless of gender
       *assignment*.
 
    2) While I appreciate the "teaching moment" opportunity
       that may obtain here, it does not sound as if the student
       has so much a learning problem as one of social animus.
       Which brings me to the third point.
 
    3) Jack Meacham's response totally ignores and thereby
       minimizes/dismisses the reality of women professors'
       and instructors' encounters with men's use of their
       bodies/size/physique to intimidate women. [In anticipation
       of protests about students' uses of their bodies
       as seduc(er)(tress), I maintain these are not analagous
       circumstances.  Intimidation tactics imply, and at times
       have resulted in actual physical harm.   "Temptation"
       tactics on the part of any student, however flattering,
       require that a prof. remember what body part actually is
       the brain, and act accordingly.]
       I fear that this is one of those situations where there
       is no substitute for having "been there; had that done,"
       whether "there" is a high school date, walking down
       the street, or a college classroom.
 
I'm not attempting to set women up as powerless in the classroom.  Nor am
I granting omnipotence to men.  Having worked in field where taking
physical intimidation seriously meant survival or death for some folks,
I simply find that acknowledging the embodied realities in these
circumstances makes the abstract, hypothetical, theoretical, political and
tactical responses more helpful.
 
Frances E. Wood
Institute for Women's Studies
Emory University
fwood01  @  emory.edu
 
    If you don't live the only life you have, you won't live some
    other life, you won't live any life at all.
                        James Baldwin

 
Is someone creating a file on the discussion of men in women's
studies/gender studies?  A couple of years ago, our women's studies
program underwent a review and we changed our name to Women's and Gender
Studies.  Presently, we are considering whether to change the name of our
minor from Women's Studies to Women's and Gender Studies.  This
discussion seems relevant and demonstrates how naming matters.  I would
like to be able to forward the file of this discussion to my colleagues at
North Carolina State.  Thanks.
 
Elaine Orr
elaine  @  unity.ncsu.edu

 
On Tue, 21 Jan 1997, Barbara Winkler wrote:
 
> ...  I had
> a very 'progressive' male student last semester who not only talked a
> _lot_ but also tried to 'show me up'.  I finally resorted to giving
> out paper 'chits' that represented one turn.  It did get the other
> students talking and made clear what the problem was.  I only wish
> I had done it earlier!  He had very good insights but was also very
> dominating and controlling, which incensed some of the students and
> made it difficult for me to get more people to voice their opinions
> until I used this exercise.  Good luck - ...
 
 
This technique was discussed in an instructional ideas seminar I attended
last spring.  Someone asked how to control participation by students
who just like to hear themselves talk.
 
The teacher used poker chips to regulate classroom participation.
 
   Blue chips were for asking relevant, worthwhile questions.
 
   White chips were for making irrelevant remarks.
 
   Red chips were for relevant contributions to the topic under
   discussion.
 
   Each student gave a chip to the teacher as part of each class
participation transaction.  The teacher kept a color-coded score to help
form the class participation element of the grade.
 
(This was presented as an "active learning" idea.)
 
Betty

 
One could always treat these jerks as pitious psych cases suffering from post
adolescent rejection syndrome and set up group/individual counselling
sessions for them with the campus psych serive--especially if you can find a
sympathetic good humored imaginative feminist psych., esp. one such who is a
grad student and wants an interesting project.
 
These guys can be driven crazy if all of their rudeness and hostility is
treated as symtoms of severe psych. disturbance.  Why not do to them what has
always been done to us?  We, of course, never deserved it.  We were always
sane; it;'s just been the system that's nuts.  But if the system is nuts,
then so are the perveyors and perpetrators and believers in the system.  They
need therapy.  I say give to them up the old euphemistic wazoo!
 
Susan Koppelman
huddis  @  aol.com

 
At 13:17 97-01-21 -0500, you wrote:
>On Tue, 21 Jan 1997, Michelle Delaine Lundgren wrote:
>
>> I'm teaching a composition class this semester titled "Gender and Identity."
>> I started out the class by explaining that the majority of the readings
>> would be Feminist in nature. I then explained that anyone who didn't feel
>> comfortable with this topic, or didn't feel as though he/she could handle it
>> maturely should drop this class and add a comp class with a different theme.
>> I thought this "disclaimer" would help, but it hasn't.
 
I want to mention some tricks I have used, keeping in mind what Pauline Bart
has said before (i.e., "Remember-its not a private problem but a public
issue").  I have only been in this job for six years.  The first year, I had
ideals about what feminist teaching was all about.  I was wrong and sure
paid the price for it.  I got walked all over and was intimidated by male
(and sometimes though not as often) & female students.  I had the privilege
of being coached by a woman who survived the military for 16 years; she
taught me a few things.  It helped me, it might help others (some
suggestions are not necessarily politically "great" but they helped me):
 
1. Increase how loud I speak (use a mike if that is hard for you to do
naturally) so that my voice fills the room.  Don't allow people to interrupt
you (i.e., ignore interruptions . . .  with a louder voice, that's easier to
do).  You can turn the volume down later in the course if you feel like it.
 
2.  Wear shoulder pads and try standing straight and think of filling out
more space again (I am a thin woman with bad posture).
 
3.  Don't smile until the end of October ;-) except with individual students
(which doesn't mean that you cannot look interested by student's comments).
 
4.  When a student asks a question or makes a comment and you feel your
tension rising, if you think there are others in the vicinity that can
respond, call upon them for their opinion on that question or comment(during
that time, calm down and think about a way to diffuse or "re-contextualize"
the issue . . .  )
 
5.  As someone else mentioned earlier, ensure that your course title has the
word Feminist in it, or that the description of it makes it obvious that
your perspective is a feminist one.  That usually deters a few.  I have one
of mine called: "Research in Sex and Gender Differences:  Theoretical and
Methodological Issues".  The length of the title seems to scare students
away, as well as the length of my syllabus (I write down everything; it is
six pages long . . .  small print!)
 
6.  Have them work in small groups so that they can challenge each other
(and you don't have to take it all . . .  you cannot!), and put the groups
together yourself (I have tried it both ways and when I have assigned the
groups, students have ALWAYS had a better time).  For the work in small
groups, have well-structured exercise requiring them to hand-in a written
"group" report as soon as the exercise is over (even if they don't complete
the exercise).  The task tends to keep them focussed and it reduces how much
"ranting & raving" can go on.
 
7.  Don't "take them on" in class.  Suggest that you meet at a time that is
convenient for both of you to discuss the issue or problem, or engage via
E-mail (that is the best yet!).
 
Well, that's some of the things I do.  I know that one can deconstruct many
(if not most) of these ideas and find something really wrong with each one.
Nevertheless, it has helped me survive and come out on the other side.  I
still get anxious at times about new material I introduce, the ways I use to
present it and make them work with it, etc.  But I don't usually fear that
they will attack me, challenge me in a way that I feel "personally hit."
However, I must "contextualize" my comment by saying that I only teach one
course which is required; the others are optional (that makes a difference
too). Sorry about having gone on so long.  I want to also remind people that
we had another tread on this topic some time ago (Key word for browsing the
index might be: "authority") and that it provided me with great ideas and
support at the time.  Thanks.  Carmen
 
 
 
 
*****************************
Carmen Poulin, Ph.D
Department of Psychology
University of New Brunswick
Fredericton, N.B. E3B 5A3
Phone: (506) 453-4707
Fax: (506) 453-4505
e-mail: CARMEN  @  UNB.CA
******************************

 
Perhaps instead of saying the disruptive males suffered from post adolescent
rejection syndrome, I should have diagnosed them with peri-post adolescent
hormonal disorders. ( hyper-adrenalism, like steroid overdoses).
 
The point is, really, that their behavior can be dissected in the same
demeaning, discounting ways that women's, feminists's behavior/ideas can be
"deconstructed."  If they understand that they are playing games they have
learned wthout learning they were learning games, they might understand that
they can be beaten at that game.
 
On the other hand, perhaps part of the problem for some of you is that
students often reject theory because theory doesn't interest most people.
  Why not start with popular media material analysis--advertising, popular
music (A woman's place in this old world is under some man's thumb, but if
you're born a woman, you're born to be hurt" 0r  "Lay Lady Lay" or "She's
under my thumb!" )  Start with the culture they are immersed in.
 
And being 5 ft. tall and young looking is indeed a challenge to authority.
 But I don't think there is a single way of being embodied that can't be
construed as a challenge to one's authority.  Try being fat and hairy and
fifty!
 
Many of you are describing disruptive student behavior that reminds me of the
days when I taught in an upper east side NYC junior high.  You might appeal
to the class's consumer interests--what are they paying tuition for, to learn
something or to listen to these jerks?
 
You can be nice--most of the suggestions people are making sound effective
and kind and pedagogically righteous.  But they also sound "good womanly."
 Do any of you watch Pearl on Tuesday nites?  How would Professor McDowell
handle these students?  You know you can all out-talk these jerks; you can
bring them to their knees, you can shrink their weinies with a few well
placed snidenesses and raised eyebrows and pointedly directed glances (below
the belt).  I have always found that they can be made to understand
oppression, humiliation, discrimination, etc. by experiencing it.  And they
can be exposed to it, make to experience it, in ways that are too subtle for
them to yet have a vocabulary to describe to themselves.  We've done all the
work to create the concepts and vocabulary.  If they want to learn to defend
themselves from the evils and uglinesses of they dish out but aren;t used to
receiving, then they have to learn what we have figured out by paying
attention in women's studies classes.  They can learn, in your classes, if
they want.
 
Why are you all being so nice?  That is my main question.  What about our/you
conditioning as female nurturers motivates you to waste your time on rude
disruptive students?
 
When we were first starting to create women's studies and we raised the kinds
of questions in patriarchal sexist oppressive classrooms that these guys
think they are raising in yours, no teachers took us aside to lead us gently
back to reasonable discourse.  They harrassed us intellectually and sexually,
flunked us, refused to renew our grants and fellowships, and generally made
our lives as miserable as they were able to.  We didn't all survive.  Many
budding feminists left the academy.
 
Reading this discussion is very sad.
 
Are any of you in touch with, working closely with, elementary school
teachers?  There are all sorts of techniques for shutting up unruly students.
 See Dale Spender's book The Schooling Scandal.  You are describing typical
elementary school classrooms and curricula--designed to keep boys involved
and under control.
 
And I also suggest you get in touch with your colleagues who teach ADD
students, because that's another aspect of what you are describing--attention
deficit disorder.  You are not dealing with intellectual peers.  You don't
really have to sink to their level, but you sure don't have to pretend they
are at your level.
 
I'm sorry for how long this is, but I am just so saddened to read what you
are all writing, and it makes me so MAD!  Your sister in struggle, Susan
Koppelman <<huddis  @  aol.com>>

 
MIchelle,
regarding the problem of disruptive men in your class I have a few
sketchy approaches that perhaps others can flesh out further.  First of
all, I agree with you about not sending the culprit to your male
supervisor--upt to a point.  I might do so as a last resort but what I
have found helpful is role playing with colleagues or other insightful
friends as to how to have an eye-ball to eye-ball talk with this guy in a
way that re-assumes your authority in his eyes.  Although it sounds like
you have already attempted this, you will probably gain different,
sometiems surprising perspectives from other people.  The task seems to
be to reassert your authority so he's got to know that his grade might be
jeapordized, for one.  There might also be other ways to re-assert your
authority in the class-room: i don't know if this is appropriate to your
situation, but someimtes in a discussion oriented class I have done some
lecturing to establish my position at crucial moments.  As for the women
students.  I don't have any guaranteed solution, it varies depending on
context, but I have always found it crucial to in anyway possible shift
responsibility over to the women or to other men to confront culprits so
that i am not locked into conflict with this one student.  One way to do
this (perhaps you've already tried this) is to always re-direct his
points, as questions, to other students, find out what they think.  I use
small group work as much as possible to shift responsibility over to the
studnets for a variety of things.  YOu might want to try separating the
class into groups of women an dgroups of men for discussion.  These seems
especially important for the women who you mention are being silenced by
the problem student.  And I would consider sending the male student over
to your supervisor if nothing else works because, in my opinion, the most
important thing is to foster the learning, now disrupted, of the other
studnets rather than to hope for raising the consciousness of this one
man. I hope this helps a bit and it'll be intersting to see what other
list members come up with.
Kathy (sorry for all the typos) Miriam
kmiriam  @  cats.ucsc.edu

 
          my memory is that the "chips" method of equalizing
          discussion oportunities was used in early consciousness
          raising groups, to encourage women of varying levels of
          conversational assertiveness to participate.  in those
          groups there wasn't a distinction made between types of
          comments.  every member of the group began with the same
          number of chips, and you could use them however you wished,
          tossing them into the center of the circle. once you were
          out of chips, you couldn't speak until there was a
          re-distribution of the collected chips.  i've done this in
          classes, and found that sometimes students gave their chips
          away, wanting to hear more from a particular speaker, for
          example.... small groups that report back to the whole group
          on their discussion, or "silent discussions" in which
          written responses circulate in the room for add-on comments,
          and then get collected and "published" by the prof are other
          ways to deflect monologue and involve more students...
          joann
          joann-castagna  @  uiowa.edu

 
>Why are you all being so nice?  That is my main question.  What about our/you
>conditioning as female nurturers motivates you to waste your time on rude
>disruptive students?
 
Because most of us NEED to get "good" teaching evaluations -- at some
institutions we need to get spectacular ones -- in order to keep our jobs.
Tenure and promotion committees neither know nor care whether the "bad"
evaluations were written by disruptive antagonists or whether they were
written by sensitive, knowledgeable majors.  All they know is that if you
get a certain number of teaching evaluations that say that you are biased,
racist, sexist, rude, attempt to impose your own opinions on students, and
only give good grades to those who agree with your own opinions (common
charges by disruptive individuals against feminist teachers, BTW) ... you
probably aren't going to get to keep your job (if you are untenured) or get
 
promoted (if you are tenured).  So unless untenured feminist teachers can get
disruptive and unruly students to SOMEHOW engage in the behavior of writing
good teaching evaluations at the end of the semester, or else to drop the
class before teaching evaluations are given out ... they aren't going
to be around to teach anything at all in a few years.  When hostile and
disruptive and angry students constitute more and more % of the total students
in one's classes -- the dangers of getting fired for "bad teaching evaluations"
rise proportionately -- and *NOBODY* is going to hire a person who was fired
from their previous institution for "bad teaching evaluations."
 
Its a drag, and it corrupts the educational process immeasurably, but its a
very
real fact of life for many young feminist faculty. Been there, done that. Got
the t-shirt.
 
Ruth
ginzberg  @  beloit.edu
 
************* Ruth Ginzberg <ginzberg  @  beloit.edu> ***************

 
I'm responding to Ruth Ginzburg's post, in which she mentions the young
women in her classes who deny that sexism exist (please correct me if
I've got this wrong, Ruth. I'm typing from memory).
Gloria Steinem has an excellent piece about this. She notes that women
become more feminist as they get older in large part because college is
such a liberated time for women and because we have not yet accumulated
those many experiences that make us no longer able to "deny" the sexism
all around us. I'm sorry I can't remember the name of this article, but
perhaps someone else on the list will know.
I read Steinem's article after teaching a feminist theory course and
being very dismayed at how few women in the class were willing to call
themselves feminists and how they, too, didn't think the issues of "2nd
Wave" feminism were especially pertinent. (I had a similar experience
with white students in my comp class last semester re: Racism, which they
claimed existed "a long time ago." When I questioned them, it turned out
"a long time" was "ten years ago"!). Reading Steinem's essay was so
helpful to me--it made me sit down and think about who I was as a
twenty-year old feminist. (I think young women cannot bear what is in
store for them & deny & come to it very gradually--I know I did. Imagine
knowing/finding out then that you were entering a world where, during
your lifetime, you would never know equality, never be safe or free.)  I
imagine my ambivalent feminism troubled my teachers in a similar
fashion--thinking about this has really changed the way I relate to women
students.
Janet McAdams
English/ SFASU
jmcadams  @  sfasu.edu

 
I must think about the serious problems the writer is having.  But would
suggest that instead of putting "he" first in the phrase "he/she", the
pattern be broken and written as "she/he,
putting the female pronoun in the position of primacy.  Ruby Rohrlich
rohrlich  @  gwis2.circ.gwu.edu

 
Like Amy Sarch I have used an exercise to talk about what feminism means -
in my large section (we also do smaller breakout discussion sections) of
100 students I gave the students a simple survey - asking if they believed
in equal opportunity for women and men, then if they believed that women
were still oppressed and discriminated against, then finally did they
identify themselves as feminists.  This took place a little over half
way through the class.  The results were very interesting: nearly 98%
agreed with equal opportunity, and 96% believed women were still oppressed
or discriminated against, but far fewer were willing to claim the title
'feminist' - about a third.  This is our "Introduction to Women's Studies"
class which has up to one-third male students enrolling.  Some of the
men students told me in section that the term seemed to them 'women-
identified' and they needed a different term to explain where they were.
Others, no doubt, we unwilling or afraid to be called feminist but were
convinced by our discussions of discrimination against women in the
workforce and violence against women, etc.  I find that the male students
in the class - which fulfills a university wide requirement - run the
gamut - some openly or passively resistant, others interested and wanting
to learn more.  We have had male students who later recommend the course
to their girlfriends!  One thing I have noticed is that when it comes
to the 'floor of talk' men still tend to dominate if I don't actively
intervene, using exercises and discussion of participation styles and
educational micro-discrimination that favors male assertiveness.  I
also hear from male students that the emphasis on the intersection of
gender, race, class, and sexual orientation that overtly structures the
class helps them feel their issues are includes.  Since we talk about
the social construction of gender we do a section on 'men and masculinity'
as well.  Barbara Scott Winkler  WINKLER  @  wvnvms.wvnet.edu

 
I'm afraid we are all feeling our way along here.  Whether I am
teaching about social problems, culture, or WS, I have sometimes found it
helpful to use handouts (which place the focus on the ideas of another),
videos (experiential as well as presenting others' ideas), journals (to
give direct feedback from me to an individual), to use the situation
itself as a learning exprience for the class, to use examples and stories
from other countries and cultures which can then (once the point is made
& you have some consensus) be brought back to the U.S. situation, and to
use humor whenever possible -- perhaps to defuse, not to ridicule.
   I do agree that Pauline Bart is quite fortunate to have someone to
back her up -- a sometimes rare resource, but I understand a reluctance
to make use of a male in this way for fear of showing weakness.  It seems
that there is less "automatic" respect given to authority figures now
than is the past (perhaps a good sign, I think), and we have to be sure
to assert our power in some way, if only as the grade-giver.
   This won't be the last time you have to deal with such behavior, and I
keep reminding myself that these are the very types of people we have to
eventually reach anyway.  Those who come in agreeing with us need us far
less.  Dissenters may have personal issues that are compounding the
problem in class -- dad lost his job to an immigrant or woman less
qualified, the authoritarian view (somewhat a class issue) that men are
the "natural" leaders and heads-of-households, or something else that
adds to a sense of being threatened.  And still the vision of
bra-burning, frizzy-haired, unshaven liberal women is the vision held in
the heads of many.  All cases are definitely not alike.
   Well, we're supporting each other, for whatever that may be worth.  I
like the idea of putting our information together in a file so that we
may try one anothers' ideas and offer new insights and strategies.  I
have tried to keep the posts in a file myself.  Many thanks to you, Joan,
for educating me about this list and for developing a file when you have
the time.
Judie Montoya
Dallas, Texas
e-mail: judiem  @  swbell.net

 
I am resending this to you because I forgot to sign it:  The following is
from Susan Koppelman at <<huddis  @  aol.com>>
---------------------
 
"We were never meant to survive."
 
I have some sympathy for those without tenure who hedge their bets, play down
their rage.  But for those with tenure who sacrifice principles for raises, I
have no sympathy at all.  Frances Woods says she has worked in fields where
people's lives were actually in danger.  I think that all of our lives are in
danger--it's just a question of how close or far we are from the bullets at
the moment.
 
When I was talking to my son (he was 12 at the time) about a friend who is
the daughter of survivors (you all know I mean concentration camps, WWII,
right?), he looked at me in a very strange way and said, "Mom, we are all
survivors.  Just because Hitler didn't get this far didn't mean he didn;t
intend to come!"  He changed my perspective on everything when he said that.
 
We must learn to assess our dangers realistically.  We have to know when it
is time to pack what we can and get out.  And we have to know that we are in
danger when they come for the people across the street or down the block.
 These people are dangerous.
 
There may not be enough women in the academy to satisfy us; there certainly
aren't enough women in higher ranks.  But aren't women still doing most of
the shit work in the academic world?  What if you all went out on strike?
 What if you all refused to take it anymore?  There really is power in
communal action.  I know you all feel isolated, or most of you feel isolated,
working at rural or small town institutions, far from the friendly smile or
hug of a sister.  But we have the net and we can organize.
 
Do you all remember Marge Piercy's wonderful poem, "The low road?"
 
What can they do
to you?  Whatever they want.
They can set you up, they can
bust you, they can break your fingers, they can
burn your brain with electricity,
blur you with drugs till you
can't walkl can't remember; they can
take your child, wall up
your lover.  They can do anything
you can't stop them
'from doing.  How can you stop
them?  Alone, you can fight,
you can refuse, you can
take what revenge you can
but they roll over you.
 
But two people fighting
back to back can cut through a mob, a snake-dancing file
can break a cordon, an army
can meet an army.
 
Two people can keep each other'
sane, can give support, conviction,
love, massage, hope, sex.
Three people are a delegation,
a committee, a wedge.  With four
you can play bridge and start
an organization.  With six
you can rent a whole house,
eat pie for dinner with no
seconds, and hold a fund raising party.
A dozen make a demonstration.
A hundred fill a hall.
A thousand have solidarity and your own newsletter.
a hundred thousand, your own media;
tem million, your own country.
 
It goes on one at a time,
it starts when you care
to act, it starts when you do
it again after they said no,
it starts when you say WE
and know who you mean, and each
day you mean one more.
 
This poem always makes me cry.  And seethe.  And get up and dance.  I have a
copy of it in a frame next to my computer.
 
Then there is Susan Griffin's wonderful poem that starts
 
I like to think of Harreit Tubman,
Harriet Tubman who carried a revolver,
 . . . .
I like to t hink of her especially
when I think of the problem of
feeding children.
 
And then there is Gloria Hull's poem to Audre Lorde:
 
 
What you said
keeps bothering me
keeps needling, grinding
like a toothache
or a bad
conscience:
                          "Your silence
                            will not
                            protect you"
 
                          "Our speaking is stopped
                            because we fear the visibility
                            without which
                            we can not really live"
 
You quietly stand there,
annealed by death,
mortality shining:
                          "Whether we speak or not,
                            the machine will crush us to bits--
                            and we will also
                             be afraid"
 
                          "Your silence
                             will not
                           protect you"
 
I ache for how frightened some of you sound.  But you can't be safe, no
matter what you do, no matter how you handle it.  At least you can get mad.

 
Dear Susan Koppelman:
While I find your (then) 12 year-old son's response poignant and profound,
and while I know that none of us knows when the bullet will find us, and
further, while I live daily with the knowledge of un-safety, I nonetheless am
clear about the particularities of peoples' lives that distinguishes
so-called random, stranger violence from the intimate terror in the homes of
many women, children, the elderly and disabled of all ages and sexes.  One of
the lessons I have learned from the study of Jewish history is that the
particularity of circumstances *does* make a difference in how we are
treated.  Not all of us are at risk for the same kind of harm at all times,
even while each of us is at risk for some form of violence at any time. You
cited a beloved sister spirit who is with me daily, Audre Lorde.  My mantra
for claiming all of who I am in the world, and acting with integrity, has
been for many years, "your silence will not protect you."  I am familiar
w/both the poet, Pat Parker's "Where will you be when they come?" and Pastor
Niemuller's confessional reflection on being silent, and having noone to
speak for him.  Nonetheless, I resist the temptation to conflate my life as
your life, or yours as mine.  I think this is important, because in such
conflation and elision we miss important differences that result in our doing
damage by omission as well as commission.  Whereas I appreciate your view and
invocations of Piercy, Rich and Lorde, I want to persist in particularizing
life situations and circumstances out of respect for both the dialogics of
difference and the dialectics of (shared) identities.
Frances E. Wood
fwood01  @  emory.edu

 
There are several points I'd like to make:
1) What a disruptive male may say out loud may be what several other students in
 the class are thinking
silently OR what they hear from friends and neighbors when they go home or to
 the dorm.  Thus how the teacher
responds may be very important to a number of students beyond those who are just
 outraged by the comment.
2) All students should be held to the same standards of accuracy.  Thus in the
 case of the man who said
something to the effect of "We all know that the women who started the women's
 movement were too ugly to get a
man" I would reply, "Actually that's a media stereotype that's much older than
 the current movement."  When the
first women's movement started in the U.S. in the nineteenth century most of its
 leaders were married, but it
was assumed that any woman who challenged women's place was unnatural and
 therefore was portrayed as a sexual
misfit according to 19th century standards - either unmarried and ugly or
 promiscuous."  There are of course
other issues in the statement I could take up including assumptions about
 judging women by appearance, etc.,
but by going for something factual it defuses his "judgement."  On the other
 hand, I also hold women to the
same standards.  Almost all statements beginning "We all know" or "All men" or
 "All women" represent
generalizations that won't hold up.  Students are asked to be more precise or
 recognize that the experience may
not be universal.
3) Some students (male and female) are going to find ANY presentation of
 evidence concerning sexism, injustice,
or inequity "negative" (of course it is!) and thus "Bashing".  Some of these
 same students may feel a general
guilt about belonging to a group that has had the power to perpetrate these
 wrongs.  At the same time they may
individually be feeling extremely disempowered in society at large.  What works
 here is for people to begin to
see that they may be focusing their anger on the wrong groups. I've found that a
 wonderful old radical film
"The Salt of the Earth" is great for refocusing the discussion. If you don't
 know the film it was made by
black-listed filmakers and a New Mexico miner's union in the 1950s and looks at
 a strike where the wives of the
miners had to take over the picket line.
4) Except maybe for advanced women's studies courses, teachers should never make
 the assumption that students
begin with feminist theoretical assumptions.  In 22 years of teaching women's
 studies every class I've ever
taught (except for one or two seminars) began with at least a third of the
 students unconvinced that women
faced any remaining barriers in society.
Joan Gundersen  jrgunder  @  coyote.csusm.edu

 
I just read over my previous note about the survey I gave in my
Intro class - meant to say that the survey was given about half-way
through the _semester_.  Thanks, Barbara Scott Winkler
WINKLER  @  wvnvms.wvnet.edu

 
I'd like to counter the suggestions that we "dish it back" and "get in the
face" of bullies.  That's exactly what they want and what they expect.
It's not just that they hate feminism.  They hate everything and were
probably raised by miserable people.  No good can come from feeding their
built-in antagonism. It helps to get perspective on them and see how
afraid they are.
 
I don't say this because as a woman I am prone to "nurture"--far from it.
My instinct is to antagonize back and if I thought it did one bit of good
I would freely advocate it.  Instead I try, 1) not to take it personally
because it is not and it's fatal to think so and, 2) to rise above bully
tactics.  Last term my "bully" actually took the chalk and went to the
board saying we were "hung up on social issues and needed to talk about
important things instead." So I let him. After awhile I asked the class to
vote on whether or not he should continue, just to let him know it was MY
class.  Eventually I said  we needed to get back to the issues at hand
and he sat down, defused. Later in the term he tried again to attack my
authority as I was describing what I saw as similarities between
"Pretty Woman" and _Lolita_.  He said I should see a therapist for my
paranoia.  Looking him right in the eye I smiled and said "no, what I'm
hearing is that this topic makes you uncomfortable, and that's a good
thing because it means we're generating knowledge."  Lifted that line
right off a past discussion on this list (or FEMPED) and man has it come
in handy. That smile and response bought me more credibility with my class
than any "shrinking of his wienie" could have.  If we have a legitimate
platform then why do we need to respond defensively?
 
Diana York Blaine
University of North Texas
dyb0001  @  jove.unt.acs.edu

 
Diane, I appreciate your insightful comments about responding to
"bullies" with respectful, assertive behaviors.
 
Decades ago, an elderly peace activist and pacifist, Igol Roodenko, told a
group of students studying non-violence that if a protest or demonstration turns
 
violent, it is because those who believe in the power of non-violence are
not doing enough to promote alternatives to violence.  The task, he
suggested to my students, was to find a way to connect with the humanity
with those who were themselves moving toward violence. That challenge is
as pertinent to day as it was 25 yrs ago, even if the context is different.
 
What frightens me as I read these many postings these days, is the ease
with which there is a sense of "othering" the other -- be it men who are
abusive or women who don't understand the issues.  What is it that will
empower all of us to "connect" with that other, to know, as Gandhi knew,
that there is a kernel of truth in the words of all people, even those
who might perceive us, -- or we them -- as enemy.
 
What I wonder about, these many decades after the first stages of the
women's liberation movement of the early 60's, is how we each connected
with the succeeding generations.  After all, these young women and men
are -- many of them -- our sons and daughters,  our grandsons and
granddaughters, our nieces and nephews, the children of our neighbors,
our friends, our co-workers.  How have we connected our sense of outrage
against injustice with the experiences of their lives?  How have we
connected our theories and analysis and research in a way that touches
their hearts in the everydayness of their lives, those young ones who
seem do angry, resistant, and/or distainful of what we have worked so
hard for.  And how do we do so without making them the other???  how do
we soften our hearts so that we might soften theirs?
 
We are, all of us -- women and men, young people and adults, students and
professors, -- hurting in some way, angry in some way, afraid for our
ourselves, our family, our work, our future, and in some cases, our very
lives.  Othering will not help.
 
I have no answers, just an abiding awareness that connection is what is
needed.  Inclusivity is what is needed.  A willingness to trust, to reach
out and risk is what is needed.  A willingness to listen to each others stories
 is
what is needed.  Can this happen in the academy???  Should it???  And it
not there, then how do we take our theory, our analysis and our research,
and our teaching and use it to empower others and transform our
communities and our world?
 
peace,  Jacqueline Haessly   jacpeace  @  acs.stritch.edu   Image Peace!

 
>
> >         Kathryn Church's experience of having a seething, defensive man take
> > up tremendous space in her course leads me to wonder why we don't say, at
> > the outset of our classes, that this course is not for people who think that
> > sexism does not exist.
 
*************************************
 
The course that I was teaching was not a women's studies course.  We were not
explicitly discussing 'women's issues".  It was a course in  social work focused
 on
"competence" and my efforts were to problematize the notion of "competence."
Same dynamic developed anyway.
 
kathryn
kathryn.church  @  utoronto.ca

 
Dear Friends,
 
 About a week ago I started a discussion on men in women's
studies classes.  I am grateful for so many insightful comments.  I have
continued to discuss this "problem" with students and am beginning to
think that there are some 2nd wave, 3rd wave issues going on.  Many
students, self identified  feminists, believe the men they want to bring
into classes already understand the limits of sexism.  They further say
that THEIR world
includes men and they want these men enlightened.  We have agreed upon
having invitation days where students can bring "guests" to class.  I like
this approach because after the "guests" leave we can process the
experience
without them (the guests).
 
through this experience I  again realize  the legitimacy of
feminist pedagogy, which constantly seeks to bring forward that which
has been hidden or silenced. It has defused so many potential
classroom problems.
 
An aside to the writer who said that my class was so small because of
my attitude about men, I CLOSED the class at 20.  I like them that size.
 
Carol Horwitz

 
        I think Jackie Hassely's posting points up some important,
substantive differences in the way that feminists (who may or may not define
themselves as peace activists) and peace activists (who may or may not
identify as feminists)frame their work.
 
        In her last posting, she wrote:
 
Decades ago, an elderly peace activist and pacifist, Igol Roodenko, told a
group of students studying non-violence that if a protest or demonstration turns
violent, it is because those who believe in the power of non-violence are
not doing enough to promote alternatives to violence.
 
        As a white feminist who has done antiracist work for years, I can't
work with this.  I certainly don't believe that white supremacist violence
in any context is a result of people of color not trying hard enough to see
my or anyone else's humanity.  As my co-worker (a fierce black lesbian)
wrote recently, "I tire of the admonition (always from white people) that I
must do outreach to my enemies."  When I come to the table (be it a
classroom, demo, whatever) with my peers of color, I have a responsibility
to not take up another precious moment of their already challenged lives
with my racism (read: violence) -- whether by ignorance or intent.
 
        Concurrently, I am not about to tolerate male hostility/supremacy in
a classroom that is designed to create a real discourse on sexism.  For men
who have come with a real willingness to engage, great, pull up a chair and
let's dig in!  And by all means, feel free to make mistakes, as we all will.
The others can simply opt to work their stuff out somewhere else.  It's _my_
work to make a place for women and men who are willing to examine their own
lives (and the texts provided) to make an new 'peace' if you will around
sexism and gendered violence.  Given that there are so few places in the
world for this work, I take my responsibility to create a (relatively) safe
container for it quite seriously.
 
Jackie also wrote:
 
The task, he suggested to my students, was to find a way to connect with the
humanity
with those who were themselves moving toward violence. That challenge is
as pertinent to day as it was 25 yrs ago, even if the context is different.
 
        Again, in my own feminist practice, I have found my energies better
spent working with folks who are at a place of willingness around taking
responsibility for themselves.  I've worked in co-gender movements for
years, and I firmly believe (for me) that it is the work of other men (who
have come to take responsibility for their own histories and relationships
to power) to talk to men who are not there yet.  I would rather take the
energy I am not spending there and work on issues of racism with other white
women who are willing.
 
        This is my worldview and my choice, and I understand that it is not
Jackie's.  But it seems to me that our work is different.  That she has the
energy for angry, disruptive men in your class/demo/whatever is Jackie's
(and anyone else's) choice.  But my energy and work is equally valuable
spent elsewhere, and I will continue to suggest that men who serve as
disrespectful magnets for attention take someone else's class.
 
        Jaime
        jgrant  @  tui.edu

 
I'm still puzzled by why people feel they must allow a disruptive student to
remain in class.  What is the benefit for the class?
 
Sally Harrison-Pepper

 
Though I've not read this entire line, the problem with
bullies in the class I suspect is partially a reflection
on the policies of one's institution/program.  At one
school I was teaching in I could not remove students
from my class--even when one started harassing another student
and me.  Instead we had to send the problem to a kind of
mediation.  (I felt that because the student was a
"paying customer" I could not deny him the service he had
paid for.)
 
At another institution I have taught at, one of the courses
that I have taught sections of can not be dropped without
having the student withdraw from the University.  We literally
can not have disruptive students removed from the class--and
they can't drop the class without leaving school.
 
In these situations, the "bully" has a lot of authority because
the instructor does not have the option to remove the
student.  So I suspect that the "bully" problem also
involves the institution's policies.
 
Dr. Debra Combs
SMU

 
Re:  Carol's comment that
 
"  We have agreed upon
having invitation days where students can bring "guests" to class.  I like
this approach because after the "guests" leave we can process the
experience without them (the guests)."
 
I like the gist of this.  But is there a way to allow the _guests_ to
go home, process the information without _you_, and report back to the
class, so they have a moderately equal role (rather than perhaps feeling
like the day's "show and tell" objects)?  Schedule a return visit?  Invite
written commentary?  Construct a survey for them to fill out?
 
shelley
 
sreid  @  austinc.edu

 
Dear Kathy and other List members.  SOme of you assume that you will get
support from your supervisor etc.  BUt  in the cases that I have been
involved in the supervisor(Head of Women's Studies) was so supportive of the
disruptive man, that because of my experience last semester I won't teach
undergraduates, particularly lower division students, anymore, and I
certianly won't teach in a woman's studies dept. headed by a woman who would
never use the term "wrong"--only "peculiar".  I finally said "Do you think
the Holocaust is peculiar?"  They are not hiring what I call first wave of
the second wave feminists any more to head programs.  They are
hiringambitious women who want to make it in  a male world.  There was
little I could do with the guy in my class because he would walk out when he
disagreed with me and go stright to the administrators.  I would like to
pont out (as a matter of fact I wouldn't like it but that's the way it is)
that each time there was a disuptive man whose complaint in Illinois
resulted in my not being allowed to teach in LIberal Arts again, and in
NOrthridge, refusing to teach there, and perhaps other places, that man,
contrary to the belief system and the way we teach women's studies, was gay
and a man of color.  The first man made an issue of race.  The second man
didn't.  I've just had it.  As long as men are supported by the higher ups
there is little we can do.  I made sure that everyone knew what the class
was about, on the syllabus, in the lectures, etc.  The main text was
FEMINIST FRONTIERS.  But that doesn't matter.  We are out of date to most of
the students.   Best, Pauline Bart-Cathy Miriam-note my new Email number.

 
    I have followed with  interest "the men in WS classes thread"  because it's
been an issue at  Community College of Philadelphia where I teach WS.
Making WS a comfortable place for men has been a major concern of many of my
colleagues.  If our  WS courses become an actual program, the majority of my
colleagues are very concerned that the option be re-named Gender Studies so
that men will feel included.  I am continually being asked if I have any men
in my classes and if I am doing outreach to male students.
 
    My colleague who co-developed  the course with me and I both  love having
all female classes; however,  I realize that if we are ever to establish WS
as a legitimate academic discipline it must be open to all for study and
research.  I also acknowledge the importance of making men students aware of
the issues explored in Women's Studies, yet I questions whether the classes
will be as mind-expanding, as empowering and supportive for women  if we
have large  numbers of men in our classes.  Iwould appreciate hearing from
other WS teachers at community colleges. I suspect that the issues may play
themselves out differently in community colleges.
 
             Karen Bojar

 
Re having male and female students punctuate the sentence:
 
Woman without her man is a savage
 
I tried this today with a few colleagues and it came out just
like this posting suggested. Another interesting note was
that the men got mad when I pointed the other spelling
out to them.
This just confirms what was said in the earlier thread about
disruptive male students: the fact that they are
feeling *uncomfortable* and *being found out* is what makes
some of them act this way.
 
Michaela Blaha
Ruhr University Bochum
 
 
(can be
Woman, without her man, is a savage.
or
woman - without her, man is a savage.)

 
While I don't want to claim any kind of biologistic essentialism re. "what
men are like" or re. "what women are like", I certainly think that the vast
majority of men & women are *socialized* differently, to observe and/or to
care about what others, thoughts, feelings & experiences are, etc., etc.
 
I am finding that as the numbers and %ages of men increase in WS classrooms,
it is becoming necessary to rethink various pedagogical techniques that I
may have been using quite successfully in all-or-vast-majority female WS
classes, but which simply "play out" differently in mixed groups.  And this
is quite apart from any students who may overtly be disruptive or bullies,
etc., etc.  (EX: in a mixed group discussing personal experiences of sexual
harrassment, women students might very well find themselves listening to a
male student talking about his experiences of HARRASSING women -- and those,
indeed ARE his experiences, so he is doing what the assignment said to do --
but it turns out to be a quite different classroom experience for the women
involved than what may have been intended.)
 
I'm interested in hearing what other people are doing, whether you are
finding that you need to change your pedagogical techniques as the
demographics of the classes change, & how ... and how is it working?  I am
particularly concerned that the women students' quality of education not
suffer because of different pedagogical strategies one might use in a
"mixed" classroom from what one might use in an all-or-primarily women
classroom.
 
ruth
ginzberg  @  beloit.edu

 
    I have followed with  interest "the men in WS classes thread"  because it's
been an issue at  Community College of Philadelphia where I teach WS.
Making WS a comfortable place for men has been a major concern of many of my
colleagues.  If our  WS courses become an actual program, the majority of my
colleagues are very concerned that the option be re-named Gender Studies so
that men will feel included.  I am continually being asked if I have any men
in my classes and if I am doing outreach to male students.
 
    My colleague who co-developed  the course with me and I both  love having
all female classes; however,  I realize that if we are ever to establish WS
as a legitimate academic discipline it must be open to all for study and
research.  I also acknowledge the importance of making men students aware of
the issues explored in Women's Studies, yet I questions whether the classes
will be as mind-expanding, as empowering and supportive for women  if we
have large  numbers of men in our classes.  Iwould appreciate hearing from
other WS teachers at community colleges. I suspect that the issues may play
themselves out differently in community colleges.
 
             Karen Bojar

 
I want to thank everyone who responded to my problem with the disruptive
male in my Feminist composition class. Many asked for an update, so here it
is...Today, the guy refused to take his books out of bag, even when I asked
the class to refer to a specific passage in the book. I asked him if he
brought his book, and he said "yes." Nothing else. I decided to let it go
and not give him the attention he seems to crave. He then played the "stare
down the teacher" game for the entire period. The only thing he contributed
to discussion was,"women will never be better at men in sports or academics.
They never have been, and never will be."  He caused a major uproar.
Luckily, class was over at that point.  I have decided to have a conference
with this student in the presence of my comp director, who seems to be
supportive thus far. I hope to keep him in the class, and maybe even help
him to see beyond the stereotypes he holds.
 
Anyway, thanks again for the response. On to other matters...
 
Michelle Lundgren