It might surprise some readers that the students in my women’s studies classes are as politically and religiously diverse as the students in my other general education courses. The widely-held stereotype that feminist-themed courses only appeal to those on the left-hand side of the spectrum has not proven true, at least not for me here at Pasadena City College. (And is it possible that this fall I will begin my seventeenth year of teaching here? Where does the time go?) Though my women’s history classes do tend to attract slightly higher numbers of white students, and correspondingly lower numbers of students of color compared to the college average, those students who do take the class and submit journals and participate in discussions do run the full gamut.
Creating opportunities for honest, non-condemnatory and respectful dialogue isn’t particularly easy, particularly when the issues we discuss (like abortion rights, or the merits/drawbacks to abstinence, or the intersectionality of race and gender) are so potentially explosive. As diverse as my students are, most come from backgrounds where women are conciliators and peacemakers; many come from the “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all” school. And as a result, while we sometimes have very charged discussions in class in which emotions run high, my students tell me that outside of school, they tend to seek out friendships with those who are ideologically like-minded. The young woman committed to abstinence until marriage, for example, seems to find it hard to form a honest frienship (rather than a mere civil acquaintanceship) with the young woman who volunteers as a sex educator and talks openly about the physical aspects of the relationship she has with her boy — or girl — friends.
Labels like “prude” and “slut” have genuine power to wound. (Some women, of course, are unfortunate enough to be on the receiving end of both.) Those on opposite sides of the “abstinence divide” frequently imagine that it’s harder to be wherever they are; those who advocate for or live by a more progressive sexual ethic often carry the scars from words like “slut” or “whore” or even the surprisingly not-yet-dated “tramp.” Those who remain virgins (or who become born-again virgins) insist that theirs is the tougher cross to bear, that living in a sexually permissive environment where the pressure to fit in is enormous requires courage and resilience. There is an element, I note of the old “suffering Olympics” problem, in which various constituencies compete for the title of “most maligned” and “most deserving of sympathy.”
Most feminists, myself included, side quite firmly with those who want to liberate women from a traditional sexual ethos, an ethos well-described by Jessica Valenti as The Purity Myth. At the same time, we can do an even better job of acknowledging that for some young (and not-so-young) women, a belief in pre-marital chastity is less a sign of submission to the patriarchy and more the result of sincere reflection and personal choice. We need to do a better job of practicing the most evolved level of the famous Perry model: commitment within relativism, the state of acknowledging that we live in a world of competing goods which we know at best imperfectly, and that the best we can do is make a sincere commitment to those goods most congruent with our values while honoring the legitimacy of those whose values (and choices) are radically different. This doesn’t mean an end to arguing, but it does mean the beginning of the kind of dialogue in which the good faith of one’s opponents is taken for granted even while the legitimacy of their positions is called into open question.
It also means, particularly around the “sex wars” and the “abortion fight”, that we refrain from cheap psychoanalysis of our opponents. Particularly for women, it’s often considered more acceptable to turn one’s opponent into a victim to be pitied than an active agent to be pilloried. So many of the best writers on the purity issue are women who write in highly confessional style (Jessica Valenti, Lauren Winner, Dawn Eden, Naomi Wolf); they leave detailed accounts of their pasts for readers to pore over. As a result, one of the ugliest and most indefensible strategies used in the sex war is that of using quotations from writers on both sides of the divide in order to pathologize them. “She’s just trying to justify her sluttiness because she’s trying to heal from the wounds of high school” or “She’s coping with her guilt about pre-marital sex by creating for herself a flattering narrative of the redeemed sinner” or even, “Poor thing, she’s a victim of the hook-up culture” — or alternatively, of patriarchal religion. We do women little credit when we rob them of agency and belittle them as psychologically damaged. We would do better to call our opponents wicked than to infantilize them by suggesting that they are wounded birds trying to heal.
So how do we create civil dialogue? In my women’s studies classes, I’ve urged my students to go to lunch or coffee with folks of their same sex with whom they think they might passionately disagree about an important feminist issue. I ask them to try talking for at least twenty minutes about something else — not a superficial topic like the weather, but important stuff like hopes and dreams and fears and wants. Perhaps they’ll never get to the subject of disagreement, perhaps they will. But just as on your average date, some degree of verbal intimacy often precedes physical intimacy, so too in these potentially charged conversations some period of honest disclosure about feelings and desires and experiences can serve to create a situation in which the argument, when it comes, is handled with much greater respect and empathy.
One of the most anguishing things about being in close relationships with other folks is realizing that sometimes, people whom we admire and like and love hold views which we find inexplicable and even abhorrent. Sometimes we terminate those friendships, unable to reconcile our liking for a person with our contempt for the views they hold; sometimes we create elaborate strategies for changing the subject and ignoring the issue. But sometimes, if we work patiently, we can find a way to live together in loving, harmonious, undisguised disagreement. I’ve learned to do it with some of the men and women in my life. And while it is hardly the most important feminist task, building coalitions among women is always a feminist concern. And sometimes, those coalitions grow out of bonds formed with what one might have thought were one’s sworn ideological enemies.
It also means, particularly around the “sex wars” and the “abortion fight”, that we refrain from cheap psychoanalysis of our opponents.
This is a very good point, Hugo. Thanks for bringing it up.
I admit I’m very guilty of this at times. Sometimes I even try to justify this stereotyping of people; in reality, that is not the right thing to do, and I need to tell myself that more often.
Sorry, Hugo, but when somebody assumes their opponents are all stupid whores who will someday see the wisdom of chastity - I’m looking at you, Dawn Eden - it doesn’t bother me a bit to figure they’ve got some serious issues they’re foisting on the rest of us.
As a knee-jerk reaction or as a tactic, of course such accusations are wrong.
Mythago, when somebody assumes their opponents are all self-deluding, naive children who will someday discover the joy of free love, it hurts just as much. And, I think, in pretty much the same way - it’s always a slur on your character under cover of disagreement with your decisions.
Froth, you misunderstand me. I agree with you (and Hugo) that it’s execrable to simply dismiss anyone who disagrees with you as Foolish, Misguided Persons With Issues. Where I part company with Hugo is that he implies one ought never conclude that one’s ideological opponents have serious issues, in addition to being assholes, because sometimes in fact they do and they are.
In that number, by the way, I include smug twits who lecture anyone less libertine than themselves about how they just need to be less uptight.
Though my women’s history classes do tend to attract slightly higher numbers of white students, and correspondingly lower numbers of students of color compared to the college average, those students who do take the class and submit journals and participate in discussions do run the full gamut.
How is the race and gender split? By which I mean, if you split it by gender, how do the numbers match up?
Do you have any speculation as to why this is so?
Sorry Mythago, I did indeed misunderstand.
I try not to make diagnoses of my opponents, largely because I am very bad at making them. My usual reaction to apparently irrational insults is to believe that the speaker is either ignorant, blinded by ideology, or enjoying watching me flail.
Which boils down to “They’d agree with me if they knew more,” “They’d agree with me if they weren’t hung up on theory,” and “They’d agree with me if they weren’t being mean.” This may not be a healthy emotional response.
Well, I’m a member of the conciliatory gender. And I still hold, with a tenacity equal to that with which I’d hold an article of faith that it is not necessary that everybody learn to get along and that it is not necessary that everybody learn to treat everybody else to a perfectly unbiassed hearing. I believe this is part because of an intimation on my part that, to the extent that it does come to be seen as necessary that everybody learn to get along and to drink coffee with everybody else in placable amicability, I’m eventually going to end up with the job of making that happen, and that my job, in that case, is going (at least) to be unpaid, if not unpaid and despised.
But that’s just me.
This may not be the post of the year, but I vote bekabot’s response as the Comment of the Year.
Seconded.
But yo can’t get away from the fact that most of us (the entire human race that its) do have issues and we often try to resolve them via feminism and other agents of dynamism. So, if someone said to me - your version of feminism is ‘just’ a way of dealing with your past issues. I would say ‘yes it is, and a very fine way of doing it too, feel free to join me and deal with some of your own’. Isn’t feminism all about healing issues men and women have, isn’t that the whole point of it???
Point taken, bekabot.
Matey, I think there’s a difference between acknowledging issues and pathologizing one’s opponents: saying “I’m a feminist because I have an issue with injustice” is fine. Saying “So-and-so is a right-winger merely because she has an unresolved need for control and longs for an authoritarian daddy figure” is not.
ok, I can see your point Hugo. But I’m still a bit torn about this - I mean I’m a feminist beacause I’ve had certain negative experiences in life and feminism has helped me to deal with them, and offers the promise of a better way forward. Almost anyone with alleigence to a political or similar group could say that. I guess it comes down to phrasing. I mean someone could easily say of me ‘**** has certain feminist views merley because she has unresolved issues from being abused and seeks a way of resolving her anger’ and they’d be right about that, and I’d agree with them. The fact that I, like most of the world’s population have issues, does not detract from the validity of my views and actions. But, of course, that statement could be taken many different ways, and the truth of any given situation is much more complicated than can by be summised in a single sentence.
However, if I think someone holds a view and/or is carrying out certain behaviours because of a personal issue, which they are attempting to resolve in a way in which I think will damage other people (and to a lesser extent themselves), then I will say so and I don’t care if they like me for it or not. There are far more important things in life than being popular. I mean you yourself have said you wouldn’t be friends with vivisectionists, so why should issues which hold equal weight with other people (such as feminists of, my own ilk) be any different for them.
Although, I can imagine that what you are describing works for teaching, there does need to be overall harmony in a class situation.
Interesting post, Hugo. I think often times middle ground can be found if there is reason enough to find it, but I don’t think a lot of folk are willing to forgive and forget and get along when one knows whomever on the other side of whatever issue sees them as flawed or subhuman or whatever else. The Abortion debate is a place where one sees this a whole lot, one side seeing the other as little better than murderers and the other seeing that side as fanatical god drones, so on so forth.
Sometimes it is hard, all around, to remember than on either side of whatever issue, there are real actual people.
Ren,
“Sometimes it is hard, all around, to remember than on either side of whatever issue, there are real actual people.”
very good point. That is a particularly important point to make with respect to any social philosophy that emphasizes the importance of the social vs the individual.
‘but I don’t think a lot of folk are willing to forgive and forget and get along when one knows whomever on the other side of whatever issue sees them as flawed or subhuman or whatever else.’ Given your track record when interacting with anti violent porn feminists - that comment made me laugh out loud!!!! Thanks for the comedy value Ren.
Matey, watch it — Ren didn’t attack you in this forum, give her a break in mine. The porn wars aren’t being fought in this thread, but like abortion rights, differing views about sex work and pornography have led to far too many poisonous exchanges among feminists in which the temptation to pathologize the other side has proved too great for otherwise reasonable people to resist.