One of the things I like best about blogging is that I get to blur the line between the personal and the professional, between the academic and the confessional aspects of my writing. My favorite blogs tend to be those that refuse to make distinctions between the private and the public. Too much of the former reads as navel-gazing, too much of the latter is usually dry.
But the problem is that folks like me build up a web persona that attracts some and alienates others. As a result, I think some folks confuse the message with the messenger. I realize I contribute to this through my blogging style, but it troubles me at times. Anthony wrote below this post:
By asking them to “throw off the chains of repressive gender roles and that insidious, multi-generational guilt foisted on them by those who love them.”, you’re asking them to a) buy into the idea that they are, in fact, chained by “repressive gender roles” and “insiduous, multi-generational guilt”; b) buy into the values you espouse - to become “our kind of people”; and c) to replace their their culture with your culture as their source of identity. That’s pretty powerful stuff, and it *is* an exercise of power, if it is successful. While you may derive no monetary benefit (you’d make the same salary if you didn’t do that), and no sexual benefit, you are getting to exercise power over other people in a way that goes somewhat beyond the normal exercise of power in a teacher-student relationship. Does a math teacher get to have the sort of influence over her students the way you do, even though they are imparting perfect universal truths to their students?
What troubles me is that Anthony is linking my various posts about class and OKOP (our kind of people) with my commitment to “raising up young feminists.” I suppose that’s a natural association to make, but I want to be adamant that the feminism I’m trying to instill in the young women (and young men) with whom I work isn’t about encouraging WASPiness.
When it comes to “multi-generational guilt”, I’m not teaching my students anything they don’t already know. Feminism isn’t indoctrination in a foreign ideology. Good feminist teaching gives voice to what is already inside the student; good feminist teaching liberates students from the fear that the thoughts they think are alien, strange, disloyal, unique. Over and over, I hear from my students that when they read feminist literature for the first time, when they encounter feminist analysis for the first time, it’s like “coming home”. It’s less shockingly new than shockingly familiar.
It may be true that autonomy and individualism gained an earlier foothold among upper-middle class European-Americans than they did in other socio-economic groups. But OKOP are hardly always model feminists, for Pete’s sake. Read John Cheever. Read some Marilyn French. Being a “perfect lady” can be as repressive a straitjacket as being “a good Chinese (or Mexican or Armenian) girl”. I teach to a largely non-white demographic, and I tailor my feminism to them. But it doesn’t mean that I’m taking on the role of the Kind and Benevolent Great White Father leading His little brown daughters to the promised land.
One thing I’m very big on doing is identifying mentors to serve as role models for younger women. This semester, one of my favorite students is a 26 year-old from a very conservative Armenian home. She has stunned her family with a series of brave rebellions, and after years of increasingly assertive independence, is transferring to college out of state. Many of my younger Armenian female students are told that if they want parental support for college, they must live at home and continue to put up with a double standard that permits their brothers to stay out all night but forces them to be in by ten. These young women are excited by feminism and by what it offers for their lives; they are inspired and challenged by what I’m teaching. But they see no way to apply this within the context of Armenian culture. In this case, my WASPy OKOPness (not to mention my maleness) prevents me from showing them how to extricate themselves from a repressive home life. I can’t show folks how to do what I’ve never done. But I can hook my students up with each other, and that’s what I’m doing this week (and have done many times before): arrange for groups of young women (often from a similar cultural background) to meet together off-campus. I always ask a slightly older peer of theirs, from that same background, to act as a mentor. Sometimes, the most important work I do as a feminist instructor is create opportunities for women to challenge, support, motivate, and inspire other women. It’s damn sure not all about me.
Hugo, let me put forth a few clarifications:
I came across unduly harsh; I intended to point out the possibility that there is some selfish benefit for you in what you do, more so than accuse you of actually taking that benefit. But the prospect is really there, and your self-analysis (in the previous post) implicitly rejects the possibility without a good explanation.
OKOP is not solely about a particular socio-economic class and ethnicity, but about shared values as well. By inviting your students to share your values instead of those they grew up with, you’re asking them to become OKOP. If you succeed, they are becoming OKOP (and I say “our”, because other than politically, I’m very much like you in that respect), even if they don’t become Episcopalian, either in faith or in behavior.
That’s actually a positive thing, as the values you impart, by and large, are better than the values they were brought up with, and you don’t (as far as I can see) try to convince people to drop those more traditional values which will serve them well in their life. Many immigrant parents want their children to adopt *some* American middle-class values, because those are what lead to prosperity. But those parents miss the rest of the message, and without someone to explain the rest of it, children of immigrants may end up believing their choices are their parents values, or the values of the ghetto.
However, your defensiveness indicates you’re not entirely comfortable with examining the question of power and of your interests. What you say outright wouldn’t give me pause - what you’re doing is an exercise of power, but generally a legitimate one (especially since they have to take up your invitation to give you any real power), but there’s something about your tone in both the previous post and this one which says that you’re not comfortable with it. I’ll leave the soul-searching to you; I’m just telling you what I see on the surface.
What if….
What if you get a young woman, who for whatever reason takes your class, and resists it? She doesn’t fight you, argue with you, disrupt your class - she answers the fact based portion of it accurately enough, but is unpersuaded when all is said and done. More sonfirmed in her traditional white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant values>
Are you a failure, then? Is she?
No, Gonz, by no means. After all, some seeds fall on rocky ground or in thorn bushes… ;-)
Anthony, as you know, self-reflection goes very much against my nature…
I found many of the most valuable classes I took in college weren’t the balanced ones, where we looked at issues and problems from several different angles, but the ones that required looking at the world a certain way for purposes of the class. Trying on intellectual or personal identities, and seeing what they can generate. I had a number of classes where I fewed the world from analytic and idealogical angles I ultimately came to reject, but learning to think that way regardless was an immensely valuable step in my intellectual and personal development.
I’m just going to post a short excerpt from Red Family, Blue Family”; I’ve recommended it before, and think it’s the best explanation of the issue you are talking about. I think Doug Muder is wrong; but I think he’s accurate.
It’s a compelling piece. I’ll have to muse on how to argue for the Negotiated Obligation family as part of God’s design.
Our belief in negotiated commitment - that people are not obligated to relationships they did not choose
Whoops. And here I thought we lib’rul types were always bothering people about “obligations” they did not choose: to humanity, to ideals, to groups that have gotten the short end of the stick for our benefit.