Feminism and my students.

This has been simmering for a while now. Dr. Crazy and Anastasia have both written about feminism and their students... the whole "I'm not a feminist but" phenomenon, how older versions of feminism don't fit young women today. I think in part because of these posts, I had a very long conversation with one of my students this week that touched on these topics.

My student met with me to talk about her final paper, and then she wanted to ask me about a comment I made early in the semester about the trouble I had been given by some admin-type folks about the fact that my class "would only be interesting to women." I had to sell my class as one that both men and women would be interested in, in order to be allowed to teach it. I did make an effort to write my syllabus and course description in a way that would make my course seem relevant to all students, but then the admin took my description and butchered it to get it down to two sentences to put it on the website, and really removed all description from it. So who knows, either I did a shoddy job or the course was "doomed" to be all women.

(As an aside, I have to admit that I'm thrilled that this class is all women. While I hope to do a better job reaching out to men in future iterations of this course, it has been wonderful working with a community of bright young women for my first time teaching on my own.)

So back to the conversation with my student. We both agreed that the university seemed to have no problem holding courses that women didn't feel comfortable in (at this school, female students have told me again and again that chemistry, physics and military history make them feel unwelcome), but offer a course or series of courses (oh god, no! not women's studies or af-am studies!!) that addresses underserved folks and they get up in arms. Sure, lots of universities, including mine, have departments that teach this material, but they're often only departments in name (for instance, they're just committees that have a teaching program, as opposed to a dept that can do its own hiring of profs or enrolling grads). Cool thing is, my student is writing a paper on this for another class.

We then launched into a longer discussion. The student was talking about how she felt like there was no community of activists around women's issues, that young women didn't have one major issue to rally around as has happened in earlier generations. I talked about what it was like for me in college to primarily do work around sexual assault and rape. The student talked about the campus' "rape culture" and the ways that comments, jokes and permissive behavior generally creates an unsafe space for women, yet no one is saying or doing anything. I'm not that many years out of college, and yet it did seem as though we were living in different worlds. Me and my friends were practically rioting.

I shared with this student my hypothesis that capitalism is the reason women aren't rioting about sexism. Every day, a young woman's femininity in college is based off her ability not only to conform, but to purchase the proper items (makeup, newest trends in clothing, hair color, magazines) in order to conform. She has to spend so much time being hyperaware of her cohort to stay in line, and scour the magazines and television for what she needs to keep up, that it's exhausting.

Maria Bamford, a hilarious comedian that I've seen on Comedy Central, said something similar once in one of her acts. I can only paraphrase, but she mimicked a Revlon lipstick model and said something like, "I buy Revlon lipstick because if I didn't, I'd remember my lower wages and second-class status and start a riot." I've butchered it, but you get the picture.

Remembering this, that capitalism exerts additional pressures that exacerbate internalized sexism in women, helps me be a little more forgiving when I see things that bother me about the way young women -- sometimes my students -- behave. Sexism does sit on some of my students quite heavily; in private conversations, I've had them admit to some things and ask me questions about other things (you know, the "my friend has this issue" questions, and the "is it really true that" questions) that make it clear they're up against big stuff.

I wonder, what can we be doing to better support young women as teachers? On the surface, the vast majority of my female students look great -- they look successful, their grades are good, they're getting into law school and med school. But that's just the problem, isn't it? Many women who go to college, especially those who are successful, are there because they learned how to look a certain way in order to appease those in authority. They sit nice, they aren't rowdy, they do their work on time. My classroom is sometimes frighteningly obedient. If I have them partner up, they all hear my timer when it goes off (just a watch timer, it's not even loud) and the room goes silent as seventeen pairs of eyes turn back to me.

I think I might experiment with allowing my students to be "bad," if only for a few minutes. Maybe I could encourage them with, "Ok, class, I need a good example of a loud, rowdy, unattentive class today!" I once had a lovely conversation with an art teacher who was able to help a student with a method like this. She would draw lovely human figures, but would always stop at the hands. The teacher asked, "Why don't you draw the hands?"

"Because I'm no good at them."

For a while he didn't know what to do. But then in the next class, he said "You know, I need some examples of badly-drawn hands for one of my other classes. If it wouldn't be too much trouble, would you draw some hands for me?"

The student then was able to draw lots of hands, and very quickly became good at it. This is very similar to Peter Elbow's idea of freewriting being necessary -- one has to write garbage in order to not censor oneself and eventually get to fresh thinking.

How can I apply this to my students? How can I lighten their sexism load, even if just for my two-hour class?