Archive for the 'Feminist Pedagogy' Category

Reprint: Tampax, Virginity, and Teaching the Body

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on August 10, 2006
in Body, Feminist Pedagogy, Sexuality and Teaching
. 15 Comments

I’m on hiatus — at least from substantive blogging — until August 28.  Until then, I’m reprinting favorite posts from 2004 and 2005.

I spent an hour and fifteen minutes in Tuesday’s Women’s Studies class lecturing  on masturbation, menstruation, and tampons.  (If that don’t got your attention, don’t know what will!)

As I’ve written before, much of my Women’s History course focuses on shifting attitudes towards American women’s bodies.  Tuesday, we spent a fair amount of time reviewing the 19th century panic about women’s sexuality (spurred by the medical "discovery" of the clitoris by the medical profession). I blogged a year ago about some of the unhappy consequences of this panic over young women’s masturbation.

We then connected to this to the history of, of all things, the tampon.  The modern tampon was patented in 1931 by a Dr. Earle Haas, who later sold the patent to what would become the Tampax company.  The first commercially marketed tampons appeared on the market five years later.

What does this have to do with women’s sexuality?  One thing is at least anecdotally evident:  cultural background and openness about sexuality seems to play a critical role in whether or not young women begin to use tampons soon after menarche.  My Asian and Latina students (who comprise two-thirds of my female students) are extremely unlikely to have been encouraged to use tampons when they began to menstruate.  Most tell stories of mothers who insisted on pads, often claiming that the tampon was only to be used by women who had lost their virginity.  One gal shared that she began to use tampons when she was on the her high school dance team where the uniforms made them essential; she told of the horrified and amazed reactions of her friends, who were entirely Hispanic.  At the same time, "white girls" seemed much more likely to use tampons in early to mid-adolescence.  Many of these students are stunned when they hear the myths that their classmates from more culturally conservative backgrounds were raised with. 

This jives with the info in this 2000 Wall Street Journal article.  According to company figures:

While about 70% of women in the U.S., Canada and much of Western Europe use tampons, usage falls to the single digits in a handful of countries such as Japan and Spain, and it’s not even measurable in much of the world. Just 2% of women in Mexico, as throughout most of Latin America, use tampons.

Those figures seem to match the ethnic disparity I see in my classroom. 

Religious and cultural taboos are a hurdle: There is a persistent myth in many countries, for example, that if a girl uses a tampon, she might lose her virginity. "Everywhere we go, women say `this is not for senoritas,’ " says Silvia Davila, P&G’s marketing director for Tampax Latin America. They’re using the Spanish word for unmarried women as a modest expression for young virgins.

This concern crops up in countries that are predominantly Catholic, executives say. In Italy, for instance, just 4% of women use tampons. The Roman Catholic Church says it has no official position on tampons. Nonetheless, some priests have spoken out against the product, associating it with birth control and sexual activities that are forbidden by the Church. Indeed, Tampax faced objections from priests in the U.S. when it introduced tampons in 1936.

In many countries, women aren’t accustomed to spending on themselves, particularly for something they’ll throw out — and that costs a bit more than pads. Women must also understand their bodies to use a tampon. P&G is finding that in countries where school health education is limited, that understanding is hard won. P&G marketers say they often find open boxes of tampons in stores — a sign, P&G says, that women were curious about the product but unsure as to how it worked. (Bold emphasis is mine).

What I argue in my course is that tampon acceptance is linked to broader issues of acceptance of women’s bodies.  The real threat of the tampon is not that it will take a girl’s virginity!  Rather, it’s that a woman who learns how to use it must of necessity gain some knowledge of how she works "down there."    Denying young girls access to tampons is a small but tangible way of keeping them ignorant of their own bodies. In that sense, I argue, cultural hostility to tampons can be linked to cultural hostility to female masturbation.   When a woman uses a tampon, she rejects the idea that her body is something of whose processes she ought to be unaware; when she masturbates, she discovers not only pleasure, she discovers that her body truly belongs to her.

I’m always careful to check in on the comfort level my students have when we talk about these things.  Discussion of masturbation and menstruation, clitorises and tampons can be overwhelming in any setting, even more so with a male college professor leading the class.  But by God, it’s necessary!  One young woman wrote in her journal this week:  "It was a very interesting discussion.  I didn’t know we had a clitoris, or knew it was a word.   I think it’s a good thing to talk about."  (Emphasis mine.)  She’s not the first to write something like that.  Remember, these are college students, but they come from many different backgrounds and many parts of the world.

I try and choose my words carefully.  I don’t make assumptions or give direction to my students as to what they ought to do.  What kind of sanitary products to use, and whether to masturbate or not, are, of course highly personal decisions that should be made without professorial suggestion. Choosing a tampon over a pad is not an inherently feminist act.  One could also be a feminist and choose not to masturbate for spiritual reasons, a point I acknowledge. But ignorance and shame are never, ever congruent with the spirit of feminism.  They are the twin evils that we are struggling against.

But whatever our spiritual orientations, it’s vital in gender studies that we teach the history of the body.   It’s equally vital that we challenge our students’ cultural and sexual assumptions, even if, on occasion, we need to acknowledge some embarrassment when we do so.  (I always say it’s okay to laugh and it’s okay to blush.)  Above all, I want my students to continue the conversations that we begin in class with their friends and with their family members.  On topics so sensitive (pun intended), the best discussions will happen in more intimate settings than the classroom.  It’s my fervent hope that what we do in the class will stimulate many good cross-generational, cross-ethnic talks among women — and men.

Originally posted March 24, 2005

Words are not fists: some thoughts on how men work to defuse feminist anger

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on May 25, 2006
in Favorite Posts, 2004-2006, Feminism, Feminist Pedagogy, Men and Masculinity, Pasadena City College and Teaching
. 192 Comments

This is, I think, an important post.

I’ve been thinking about men in women’s studies classes, and jokes about "male-bashing."

This semester’s women’s studies class is like most: overwhelmingly female.  I’ve got 32 women and 6 men in the class.  I met individually last Thursday with the women for "all-female day"; I met with my guys on Tuesday for "all-male day."  This morning, we all got back together in the classroom for the first time as a full group in nine days.

Most of the guys hadn’t spoken in class all semester; today, all did.  A number of the women in class were eager to ask questions and create dialogue; up until this week, mine has been the only consistent male voice in the classroom.  The guys did a great job of sharing about many topics (we spent a lot of time on the "myth of male weakness")  But two of the guys did something that I see over and over again from men in women’s studies classes.  They prefaced their remarks by joking "I know I’m going to get killed for saying this, but…"  One of them, even pretended to rise from his desk to position himself by the door, saying that "Once I say this, I know I’m going to have to make a run for it."   Most of the women laughed indulgently, and I even found myself grinning along.

When men find themselves in feminist settings (like a women’s studies class) they are almost always in the minority.  When I was taking women’s studies classes at Berkeley in the 1980s, I was usually one of only two or three men in the room.  In my women’s history classes over the past decade, men average 10-20% of the students, never more.  Even when they make up as much as a fifth of the class, they generally do less than a tenth of the talking. That isn’t surprising, given the subject matter — I was often fairly quiet in my own undergraduate days.

But one thing I remember from my own college days that I see played out over and over again is this male habit of making nervous jokes about being attacked by feminists.  In my undergrad days, I often prefaced a comment by saying "I know I’ll catch hell for this".  I’ve seen male students do as they did today and pretend to run; I’ve seen them deliberately sit near the door, and I once had one young man make an elaborate show (I kid you not) of putting on a football helmet before speaking up!

All of this behavior reflects two things: men’s genuine fear of being challenged and confronted, and the persistence of the stereotype of feminists as being aggressive "man-bashers."  The painful thing about all this, of course, is that no man is in any real physical danger in the classroom — or even outside of it — from feminists.  Name one incident where an irate women’s studies major physically assaulted a male classmate for something he said?  Women are regularly beaten and raped — even on college campuses — but I know of no instance where a man found himself a victim of violence for making a sexist remark in a college feminist setting!  "Male-bashing" doesn’t literally happen, in other words, at least not on campus.   But that doesn’t stop men from using (usually half in jest) their own exaggerated fear of physical violence to make a subtle point about feminists.

There’s a conscious purpose to this sort of behavior.  Joking about getting beaten up (or putting on the football helmet) sends a message to young women in the classroom: "Tone it down.  Take care of the men and their feelings.  Don’t scare them off, because too much impassioned feminism is scary for guys."  And you know, as silly as it is, the joking about man-bashing almost always works! Time and again, I’ve seen it work to silence women in the classroom, or at least cause them to worry about how to phrase things "just right" so as to protect the guys and their feelings.  It’s a key anti-feminist strategy, even if that isn’t the actual intent of the young man doing it — it forces women students to become conscious caretakers of their male peers by subduing their own frustration and anger.   It reminds young women that they should strive to avoid being one of those "angry feminists" who (literally) scares men off and drives them away.

Here’s where I need to issue a big ol’ mea culpa.  Until today, I don’t think I fully realized how common this strategy of joking about male-bashing really is.  I didn’t realize how I, as a teacher, permit and thus encourage it.  Too often, I’ve been so eager to make sure that my small minority of men feels "safe" in the classroom that I’ve allowed their insecurities to function to silence the female majority — in what is supposed to be a feminist setting!  Though I haven’t made such remarks myself, I’ve laughed indulgently at them without stopping to consider their function.

Part of being a pro-feminist man, I’ve come to realize in recent years, is being willing to face the real anger of real women.  Far too many men spend a great deal of time trying to talk women out of their anger, or by creating social pressures that remind women of the consequences of expressing that anger.  Many men, frankly, are profoundly frightened by women who will directly challenge them.  In a classroom, they don’t really fear being struck or hit.  But by comparing a verbal attack on their own sexist attitudes towards physical violence, they hope to defuse the verbal expression of very real female pain and frustration.   I know that it’s hard to be a young man in a feminist setting for the first time, and I know, (oh, how I know) how difficult it is to sit and listen to someone challenge you on your most basic beliefs about your identity, your sexuality, your behavior, and your beliefs about gender.  It’s difficult to take the risk to speak up and push back a bit, and it’s scary to realize just how infuriating your views really are to other people, especially women.

The first task of the pro-feminist male in this situation is to accept the reality and the legitimacy of the frustration and disappointment and anger that so many women have with men, and to accept it without making light of it or trying to defuse it or trying to soothe it.  Pro-feminist men must work to confront their own fears about being the target of those feelings.  Above all, we cannot ever compare — even in jest — verbal expressions of strong emotion to actual physical violence or man-bashing.

After all, one of the pernicious aspects of the "myth of male weakness" is that men can’t handle being confronted with women’s anger.  We either run away literally or figuratively, disconnecting with the television, the bottle, the computer screen.  But we’re not little boys who will physically lash out in rage when challenged, nor can we be so fearful that we dodge and defuse and check out.  That’s not what an adult does in the face of the very real emotion of another human being.

I’ve allowed this kind of joking and defusing to go on too long in my classes. It’s going to stop now.

UPDATE:

Please don’t get into thread drift here.  This is not a forum to question the basic tenets of feminism, or issues of domestic violence and abuse, or why I’ve banned anyone in the past.  I’m going to be much more careful about monitoring what is posted here.  This is not a free speech zone, nor need it be.  It’s my blog, and y’all have other forums for discussing gender issues.

Myths and discourses: talking about love in a feminist classroom, part one

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on May 3, 2006
in Feminism, Feminist Pedagogy, Men and Masculinity, Relationships and Teaching
. 16 Comments

In my women’s studies class, we’ve been talking about myths and discourses.  Yesterday, working off of one of my favorite texts, Lynn Phillips’ Flirting with Danger, we talked about the omnipresent tension between the "Love Hurts" and the "Love Conquers All" discourses.

According to Phillips, professor of psychology and gender studies at the New School, the "love hurts" discourse — spread by popular culture, by parents, and by peers,

lets young women know that they should not expect too much from men in their relationships… By casting women’s disappointment and mistreatment as inevitable in hetero-relations, this discourse simultaneously normalizes men’s misbehaviors.  Inherent in this discourse is the expectation that women must compromise themselves and their needs in order to compensate for men’s apathy, neediness, or misconduct.

The "love hurts" discourse remains omnipresent in our culture; it is a rare young woman who hasn’t been warned of the pains and perils of love (and of male betrayal) by the time she enters adolescence.   The key thing about the discourse that I find so troubling is that it reinforces the "myth of male weakness" — the notion that men will inevitably disappoint, betray, and hurt the women who love them because "all men are dogs" and can’t help themselves.  The "love hurts" discourse reminds women, over and over again, that "after all, he’s just a man", and the pain that  loving him causes is inevitable. 

My students typically respond to discussions of this discourse with a mix of recognition and cynicism.  Most admit that they were raised to believe that loving men would be painful and disappointing; most were told by older sisters or mothers about the perils and pitfalls of love and the inevitability of male betrayal. But so many of my students, perhaps particularly those from traditional backgrounds, don’t see the discourse as a cultural construct — they see it as an accurate description of hetero-relations.  They don’t believe male weakness is a myth; in their guts and in their hearts, they do believe that men are weaker, less trustworthy, and almost inevitably certain to hurt the women in their lives.

Of course, the cynicism surrounding the "love hurts" discourse is opposed by the equally prevalent "love conquers all" discourse.    Love conquers all suggests that in the end, the greatest source of joy and fulfillment in a woman’s life will come in relationship with a man:

Posing hetero-relationships (and ultimately marriage) as central to women’s well-being, this discourse suggests that every woman needs a man in order to find true fulfillment.

Mothers and sisters, fashion magazines and pop songs all spread this second competing discourse.  Virtually all of my students were raised with this one.  Even if their parents urged them "to get a good education so you won’t have to rely on a man", they received the constant message that it was in romantic relationship, rather than career or spiritual work, that one would find the secret to enduring happiness. 

While the "love hurts" discourse creates a fear of men and an expectation of hurt, the "love conquers all" discourse insists that regardless of the risks, young women must open themselves up to the chance for love and relationship if they are to have lasting joy.   The "love hurts" discourse reminds young women that "most men are dogs", but the "love conquers all" discourse calls upon young women to always hold out hope that they will meet the exception to the rule, however unlikely that may be.  The two discourses, taken together, aren’t really so much contradictory as awkwardly complementary: the first is not so much a recommendation to avoid love altogether, just a reminder that it is a woman’s lot to suffer in love.  The second promises that all of that suffering, all of that waiting, all of that disappointment, will someday be worth it.  "Someday, my prince will come…"

From a feminist standpoint, it’s absolutely vital that we explore the deeply entrenched beliefs about love and relationships with which so many young women are raised.  Whether we like it or not, fantasizing about and worrying about relationships with boys and men absorbs an extraordinary amount of time in the lives of high school and college aged women.  We can issue standard bromides about "focusing on yourself" until we’re blue in the face, but these will have little effect in the face of the overwhelming power of these discourses. If we are concerned about the well-being of young (and not so young women), we need to incorporate discussions of our cultural beliefs about love and romance, pain and male weakness, in to our broader feminist work.   

When we don’t have these discussions, too many young aspiring feminists end up feeling bad about themselves because of the amount of time and energy thoughts of love and romance take up in their heads.  Too often, I hear from students: "I’m not a really good feminist because I worry too much about my relationship with my boyfriend."   When feminists urge young women to de-prioritize love and relationship (something we often urge for good reason), we frequently end up making the very young women we are trying to help feel guilty, inadequate, and weak!  Rather, we would do well to do as Lynn Phillips does — and as I try and do in my classes — and devote time and energy in a feminist space to exploring our powerful, persistent, and ultimately deeply damaging myths and discourses about love, sexuality, and relationships with men.

I’ll have a further post on this topic up soon.