With the re-emergence of the Full Frontal Feminism discussion this past week, I’ve been called to reflect on the challenges and privileges that come with being a middle-class, heterosexual, Christian white man who teaches gender studies. (I say “gender studies” because, even though PCC still has no such formal department, I teach courses on Women’s History, Men and Masculinity, Lesbian and Gay History, and “body” history.)
I’ve written about the problematic nature of my role as a man teaching feminism before. Here’s part of what I wrote three years or so ago:
I do acknowledge that having a man teaching women’s history to a class filled with women (and always at least one or two other men) is problematic. I know just how important it is that young women have feminist role models who, in both their work and their private lives, can live out feminist principles. But higher education is not just about providing role models! It is about the principle that knowledge itself has no sex, and that all human experience is equally worthy of study by all human beings. When we limit the teaching of women’s studies to women, we send the message that this subject is not, somehow, worth the time and attention of male academics. This does not mean that a male teacher confers a legitimacy his female colleagues do not — though some students may perceive it that way. But it does mean that it is immensely counter-productive to “ghettoize” (I use that term carefully) an academic discipline by suggesting that only some folks can teach it.
… “being a woman” does not guarantee compassion or empathy with other women! Women of color in the feminist movement have spent years having their concerns marginalized by their white, upper-middle class sisters. What makes a wealthy white woman more qualified to teach her Latina and African-American sisters than, say, a Latino man — or for that matter, a white man? Feminists who insist that the oppression of sex transcends racial and economic discrimination do a colossal injustice to the experiences of both men and women of color. My point is simple: if we are going to take a teacher’s sex into account, we must also take his or her race into account — and that sets up a slippery slope towards the extreme Balkanization of academic disciplines.
Of course, most of my critics in the “feminist/womanists of color” blogosphere haven’t said “Hugo can’t teach women’s studies merely because he’s a middle-class white Christian male.” Too suggest otherwise is to erect a straw-woman to knock down. What is clear is that my pedagogical decisions (like assigning Full Frontal Feminism in the way in which I did, and managing the discussion the way I did), combined with my maleness and my whiteness, raises a number of questions about teaching, feminism, sex, race, and power.
I don’t know what it’s “like” to be a woman. I don’t know what it’s like to grow up poor, or to grow up non-white, or to grow up in a religious minority. Sometimes, even in recent days, I’ve made the classic white male liberal mistake of trying to establish my progressive bona fides by the classes I took taught by radical women of color, or by talking about my marriage to a mixed-race woman. That’s a cheap and ineffective strategy, and it tends to infuriate the very people I’m trying to convince. I can recite the books I’ve read, I can name-drop until the cows come home, and it doesn’t change the fact that I’ve got a tremendous amount of white privilege.
I’m forty, older than most of the folks who’ve been involved in this debate. I’ve been teaching gender studies here at PCC since 1995, my third year at the college. And even after all this time, I know I still frequently “don’t get it”. Unlearning the acculturation to privilege is painful, it is hard, and the hardest and most painful thing about it is it never, ever ends. Every time I start to “believe my own press”, and begin to imagine that I have become a particularly enlightened being, a person who has transcended his class, his culture, and his sex, I am brought rudely back to earthly reality. I have a penis and a Y chromosome, I am melanin-deficient, and my speech and my bearing reflects a carefully-bred confidence that comes from privilege. Whether or not I think my sex or my race or my class matter, my students (almost none of whom share that particularly constellation of privileges) are likely to see me as a very familiar sort of figure: the older white man who knows a lot (or thinks he does) and is eager to enlighten them.
My women’s studies classes average 45-50 students now (before 2004, I taught in a smaller classroom and had only 30-35). I need to cover women’s history in America from the pre-Columbian era to five minutes ago, and I need to cover contemporary women’s issues — especially feminism — at the same time. I have 75 minutes twice a week in which to pull this off; I have no teaching assistants. The room is too crowded to have us sit in a circle, and the size of the class means interactivity will be severely limited. Lecturing, therefore, is going to be the primary pedagogical tool; that’s of necessity as much as of inclination. The students do write journals, they do initiate discussions from time to time, but most of the time, it’s me talking to them. I make my lectures as captivating as possible, and when I’m “on”, I’m a pretty damn good orator. Which is fine, except that having a middle-class white man strut and fret in front of a classroom that is made up primarily of first-generation female students of color doesn’t do much to undermine the patriarchy. The more I exhort, the more I inspire, the more I risk reinforcing something very traditional.
I can’t do anything about the size of the class. (Indeed, because it is a popular class, I was asked to consider moving into a larger lecture room that accomodates 150. I turned down the offer and asked for two smaller sections instead, and was told that wasn’t feasible.) And I can’t do anything about my maleness, my whiteness, or the fact that I grew up in Carmel, went to prep school (though I was kicked out!) and live a moderately comfortable life. But there’s still a lot I can do, even with the limitations of a large class size and my own privilege. And the chief thing I need to continue to do, and to get better at doing, is to remain teachable.
Actually, that’s not quite enough. As I was reminded this week, “remaining teachable” is essentially passive. It asks those who want me to change to do the work of teaching me. Perhaps it would be better to say that I need to work on three things in particular: humility, curiosity, flexibility. The arguments over Full Frontal Feminism haven’t changed my mind about the usefulness of the book as a highly accessible primer. But the arguments have reminded me to be a better listener to criticism, more humble about my role in facilitating learning, and to be more actively curious in seeking out alternative views to provide to my students. I need to better, too, about being flexible. Like most ageing academics, I get attached to the “way things have always been done”, and tend to be loth to update my syllabi.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I teach gender studies courses because I want to raise up young feminists. I want to inspire men and women alike to become informed agents of personal and collective transformation. I want them to reflect upon the past — and upon their own lives. I want the result of that reflection to be a strong sense of responsibility to themselves and to others. I want them to be committed to justice for the vulnerable and equality for all — but I also want them to begin to liberate themselves from self-doubt and self-loathing. I believe that personal happiness and public virtue are, in the end, deeply compatible (as a Christian who grew up listening to my mother’s lectures on Aristotle, I could hardly believe otherwise!) And in the end, I want my students to be happy, free, kind, independent, and good. That has been my goal for a very long time.
My male body, my family background, and my white skin have opened many doors for me. I cannot close those doors retroactively. I’m not ashamed of my masculinity, my heterosexuality, or my class. (See the OKOP post.) But I’m not inordinately proud of these things either. Privilege is not the consequence of virtue. It’s simply a fact, and it’s one of which I have to remain perpetually cognizant. Sometimes, privilege will blind me, and I will need help to see the right path. But in the end, privilege is both an advantage and an obstacle to good feminist teaching. And as long as I am aware that it is a double-edged sword, and as long as I remain committed with evangelistic zeal to my students’ growth, I’ll do a good job.
That is, if I work harder at humility, curiosity, and flexibility.
Wow! Thanks (again) for the brave post and your courageous practice of teaching feminism to all who will learn.
Hugo, I would also recommend that your readers (re)read Jacqueline Jones Royster’s When the First Voice You Hear Is Not Your Own. It’s also available electronically here. Royster advocates the (feminist) subjective position, but she also gets those of us who are not women of color to stop for a moment, and listen.
I enjoyed your article very much. I would like to attend your class and meet you personally.
Do you invite comments and questions? Have a 5-minute break every 20 for class discussion and ask questions yourself if necessary? Have students present reports based on their research? Do you ever break into small groups? debates? It only has to be white man in a one-way lecture to brown, female heathens if you want it to be. Sure in 200-300 person class, it is lecture only. but 45-50 students, use some imagination.
Yes, I use small groups, Rainbow. D; alas, only registered students are allowed in the class. But my office hours are online at pasadena.edu.
Rainbow: Have a 5-minute break every 20 for class discussion and ask questions yourself if necessary?
I wonder whether this would ironically result in silencing women. Five minutes is barely long enough for two people to make points, let alone long enough for a genuine discussion. Enforcing the strict time limit would abruptly cut off the discussion, and may leave them with the impression that Hugo’s using his power to silence them.
debates?
Given how heated feminism is, I also wonder whether this would result in silencing women. It might create an unsafe space that leaves students with hostile feelings towards feminism. Frankly, the white male professor model is emotionally safer than debating with classmates.
Have students present reports based on their research?
When I was an undergraduate, I frequently had to give these presentations in non-women’s studies classes. Regardless of the topic, students tuned out. If it’s not on the final, why bother listening, right? But watching my audience tune me out was incredibly disheartening and reinforced the cultural value that there’s no point in speaking up. Giving fledgling feminists a platform is great, but I wonder whether the students will leave the experience with the same reaction I did.
As a lowly TA who is required to do similar presentations, I have to note that it’s impossible to give 40-50 students presentations if you’re already under the type of time constraints Hugo is.
45-50 students, use some imagination.
I’m a perma-student who has been in college and graduate school for almost a decade now. I’ve seen many professors try using their imaginations in survey classes with 45-50 students, but I’ve never seen it actually work.
Indeed, Meredith; a better response than I could have given!
When I took women’s history, it was from a women whose class was a pretty traditional lecture style other than a couple discussion sessions and no one really questioned her feminist credentials. In women’s history, if taught well, I think the material speaks for itself to a large degree.
Given how heated feminism is, I also wonder whether this would result in silencing women. It might create an unsafe space that leaves students with hostile feelings towards feminism. Frankly, the white male professor model is emotionally safer than debating with classmates.
If I read you correctly to be saying that it feels emotionally safe to have a white male in a position of authority there to protect you from engaging in fraught intellectual discussions with other female peers–and since this is a subjective report, I cannot argue with it, though I did not share this set of emotions when I was an undergraduate–
this, Hugo, is part of what you are endorsing, when you say it’s a better response than you could have given? This does not horrify you and suggest to you the passive harm your presence can do, when you’re not vigilant to guard against it? Your presence protects the women in your class from the frightening prospect of engagement with other women, and you do not see this as a problem?
Meredith, you seem to be setting up benevolent protective authority as the antithesis of being silenced. Is it not possible to be neither silenced nor protected? Can a woman not have a conversation or a debate with another woman without being accused of “silencing” her? Are women undergraduates so cringing and timid as that, so afraid of arguments with other women? And if they are, and if there are good and serious cultural reasons for them to be so–which I think is the case–is this not something a women’s studies course should be trying to change?
Sorry, sophonisba, I was endorsing Meredith’s last remark about “using imagination” with 45-50 students. But I think we read Meredith differently; she refers to the white male professor MODEL, which is a style of teaching — and not to be confused with actual white male professors. I read her comment as a defense of the lecture method only, but can see how it might be construed differently.
Hugo is correct: it’s only a defense of the lecture method in the context of introductory survey courses on socially heated issues.
As much as I love seminars, they’re not a quick fix. For starters, most colleges and universities simply can’t afford to cap introductory surveys at 15 students. Even if you can make it past that hurdle, in my experience it’s extraordinarily difficult to create a safe space for discussion in introductory survey courses. My alma mater could afford them, but the professors simply couldn’t figure out how to prevent students with certain types of privilege from silencing students without those privileges. Women challenging women wasn’t the problem. The problems were that 1) men questioned women’s experiences with sexism, 2) white students questioning black students’ experiences with racism, and 3) rich students’ questioning working class students’ experiences with economics. And by “questioning” I really mean “angrily arguing.” There’s only so many times you can hear, “oh, you’re just being too sensitive” before you shut up and spend the rest of the class doodling.
To be fair, a couple of my friends wound up in a section that did foster a safe space. However, they thought it had more to do with the students’ personalities than with the professor’s teaching abilities. (Because several survey seminars were mandatory, whether or not students wound up in a particular section depended on dumb luck.)
I apologize for the confusion; finals season takes a toll on my writing skills.
By “angrily arguing” I meant “dismissively arguing.” My apologies.
Meredith, can you see the same pattern repeating itself with this whole FFF thing? Because I can, I can see how the privileged white people both angrily argued and dismissively argued against the critiques of WOC, in hopes we would just go doodle somewhere.
Hugo, I know you have seen what WOC/MOC are saying about some of your more problematic pronouncements. Like dismissing BA’s critique and experiences out of hand and then going on to say that FFF couldn’t possibly be more inclusive of WOC. That isn’t your decision to make, that is privilege speaking, “Hey, you got 10 whole pages, man! Isn’t that enough for you? Greedy, greedy WOC.” The same with telling Jeff that there is plenty of time to address white centered feminism. Yeah, we’ve been ignored for hundreds of years, whats another couple hundred?
What I said on the other thread, I would really prefer that white authors didn’t even cover us at all than do a half-assed job. It’s also what BA meant by her post, “Don’t include me.” because we know we are only included to use us and for the appearance of being liberal minded, appearance only. I don’t think it’s too hard to see that Jessica had a specific audience in mind while she was writing, someone like her, there is nothing wrong with that. What is a problem is that at the end she was like, oops, I better throw out a holla to the brown chicks and stuck that intersectionality chapter in there. We know when we are an afterthought.
I know I shouldn’t go here because it’s possible my words will be used to pit for example the poor brown girls against the rich brown girls, but I am because for some reason white people don’t understand how complex we are, as complex as knowing that white people aren’t a monolith, neither are we. There should be no surprise that FFF will speak to some WOC. Some WOC are more white identified than others, some WOC really do believe that white people are superior to themselves and more authoritative, some WOC are middle class and will have more commonalities with middle class whites, all WOC are used to being shunted to the side and told they aren’t important and some get excited when finally some attention is paid to them, even if it is only 10 pages, etc. I’d really prefer that people didn’t use the fact that someone liked the book to dismiss someone else who didn’t. I’d rather they addressed the specific reasons why the book was liked or disliked instead of bashing either WOC.
Meredith, can you see the same pattern repeating itself with this whole FFF thing? Because I can, I can see how the privileged white people both angrily argued and dismissively argued against the critiques of WOC, in hopes we would just go doodle somewhere.
I am aware of the pattern similarities: I’m trying very hard not to be dismissive and/or silencing of WoC. It’s why my tone is so different on this thread than in previous threads. (One of my graduate degrees is in law, so I have a tendency to go straight for the jugular.) Re-reading my posts made me realize how much further I have to go, especially during finals season. My apologies.
Yet I have lived Rainbow’s recommendations as both a student and a teacher, and, well, they scarred me. In fact, it’s a large part of the reason why I’m now in the health and law intensive fields I’m currently in, instead of women’s studies. Now, it could just be the context of my UG and graduate programs.
However, I’m pretty sure there’s a better solution somewhere, but I don’t know what it is or how it can be achieved. I was hoping that by sharing my experiences, we could brainstorm something more viable.
A general solution:
Take the position in a survey course that the professor does not (probably can not anyway) have to cover the entire material — especially if the assigned readings do a good job — for most classes. Cover the gaps, the opposing points, the linkages, etc.
Cut lecture time to 50 minutes (about the most time the average student can stay focus for an average lecture IMO) for 10 classes (keep the full 75 minutes for the remainder where the subjects are perhaps more nuanced/controversial).
Assign 5 students to stay the remaining 25 minutes and discuss one or two issues/statements/points related to that day’s session (the mechanics of random/sign-up; give topic in advance/on the spot are up to the professor based on the unique factors of that class/course). Assign a grade based on the quality of participation, not quantity (so, responses such as “you’re too sensitive” lower your grade). Invite the rest of the class to participate as silent observers. Repeat 10 times during the semester.
Also, in lieu of a final exam, conduct 5 larger group exercises (10 per). Assign each group a theme that integrates some of the course concepts. Have each student get up and present for 10 minutes on an aspect of the topic (you can talk for 10 minutes about the same number of words you can write in a 3 hour essay final). With break, that exercise takes 2 hours. Conduct a one hour group discussion (same grading rule as with the smaller group). Total time is 3 hours. For 5 groups, that’s 15 hours of instructor time, but considering you basically can have “graded” each student by the end of the exercise so all you have left to do is review your notes and write some feedback comments (assuming you even feel obliged to do that as opposed to just assigning the grade). I suspect that time is less than trying to grade 50 essay final exams.
If you combine with a mid-term essay or some individual writing requirement, you can cover various examination forms, even in a survey course..
Just a thought..
It is a thought, and a good one. Sigh — if only I weren’t teaching six other classes too.
Hmm, interesting. I’ll give it a shot.
5 minutes was not meant to be rigid time limit. It was just the concept of inviting, welcoming comments, questions. It is an attitude, an openness. There are always a few students who are not afraid of forum or who like to hear themselves talk. They can be easily engaged if invited to speak. The most tuned out student can sometimes be rouse to interact when she hears something from another student that inspires or annoys– that is, not the authority figure. I had a religion teacher once who never forgot the class with the three born-again female Christian students and the one serious male Satanist. He said it was the most interesting class he ever taught and he barely did more than start the discussion going. College students can hopefully read a text themselves and only need a minimum of straight lecture.
On the topic of male and white privilege, it is interesting to read the #1 ladies detective agency series, which is written by a white male law professor from an African woman’s perspective. He is well aware of how men throw their weight around and how women struggle with their place between modern theories and traditional ideals.