Archive for the 'Teaching' Category

“Perfomative Ambiguity” and heterosexual privilege: on being a straight man teaching Queer History

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on October 10, 2008
in GLBTQ, Memories, Pasadena City College and Teaching
. 4 Comments

I’ve posted before on the advantages, disadvantages, and “unearned privileges” of being a man who teaches women’s studies. See here, here here , and here. Those four posts cover most of my feelings and experiences as a man who has taught women’s history for a decade and a half.

I’m thinking today about a somewhat related topic: the role of a heterosexual man teaching gay and lesbian history. (I first taught my “Introduction to Lesbian and Gay American History” course in 2001, and am offering it for the sixth or seventh time this fall.) My maleness is obvious, of course. But sexual orientation is not always as easily definable as gender identity (depending on the person, of course). And though I doubt anyone thinks I’m biologically female, I know that quite a few of my students over the years have “wondered” about my sexuality — particularly because of the various gender studies courses I teach. The stereotype that “only a gay man” would teach women’s history (much less gay and lesbian history!) is an entrenched one, perhaps particularly so among the sort of first-generation college students who make up a majority of the students on the Pasadena City College campus.

I generally don’t tell my students my reasons for teaching my gender studies courses at the beginning of the semester. It’s usually towards the end of the term, after we have (one hopes) developed a good classroom rapport, that I share with the folks in the course my reasons for teaching this particular subject. Because I’d love to raise up future gender studies professors, I share with them a bit of my own academic and personal narrative, and talk to them about the special challenges that those who choose to do gender/sexuality work will face. (Starting with questions from parents about one’s sexual orientation, and segueing quickly to worries about how the heck a living can be scratched out with a Gender Studies major!) And at some point in my gay and lesbian history courses, I talk about what it was like to grow up surrounded by a great many lesbians and gay men who played nurturing and important roles in my youth. (See this post.)

My students know I’m married (I occasionally mention my wife, and I am never without my wedding ring.) I sometimes make self-deprecating remarks about my previous divorces, though I do so less often than I used to. But I’m aware the possibility hangs in the air that my sexuality might still be more unclear than my married status would suggest. I wear more jewelry (necklaces and bracelets) than your average WASP, and my fondness for pink shirts does not go unnoticed. And though I am of course never flirtatious with students of either sex, seeking always to project a clear and unmistakable aura of professionalism and unavailability, I also am aware that some of my body language and mannerisms are direct violations of the rigid expectations of American masculine culture. Call it “perfomative ambiguity”, if you will. It’s not an act, because I come by what the media calls “metrosexuality” honestly. But I am not unaware that it does raise questions in the minds of those students who are inclined to contemplate the sexual habits of their gender studies professors. Continue reading ‘“Perfomative Ambiguity” and heterosexual privilege: on being a straight man teaching Queer History’

From friend to mentor: a short note on teaching and boundaries

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on October 7, 2008
in Academia, Emotional and Sexual Boundaries and Teaching
. 3 Comments

As I mentioned yesterday, I’ve had a whole new batch of “older men/younger women” relationship emails come by way. Perhaps it’s seasonal: in the spring, a young man or woman’s fancy turns to love and baseball; in the fall, it turns to age-disparate relationships and boundary violations? One wonders.

I can’t post about all the emails I get, and those that simply repeat old queries are better off looking at my growing archives under older men/younger women, or perhaps student crushes. But there’s always something new to think about; “Kay” wrote to me last week:

I have (a) professor whom I adore and who I know is keenly interested in my future…he has said before how much he enjoys my being his student. I have nothing but platonic interest in him (your posts on understanding the difference between mental and physical arousal have been VERY helpful). I’d really like to be his mentee as well…but it would be more of a big brother connection as he is only 34.

The reason I am writing in is because I am not sure how to re-route our initial relationship building. The first time I slapped eyes on him last year I thought “peer.” He was still an adjunct, finishing his PhD, and applying for the asst. prof. job he currently has. He’s the same age as many of my friends, and we have a lot in common. I have previously invited him to go play trivia with a group (he declined), and when I swing by his office I talk about movies and music instead of the DSM-IV. I was trying to make him my friend, not my professor and I am embarrassed when I think of the transparency of my motives.

So, the question: What can a young female student to do help build the best and most appropriate mentor-mentee relationships? I’m sure I’m not the only person who has, after a time, realized that their initial motives in relationship-building were slightly askew. More specifically for my situation, how can I let him know that “friend” is off the agenda? Any advice would be helpful…I’ve been feeling as awkward as arse around him lately.

It’s a good question Kay asks. In both graduate school and undergrad, mentor/mentee relationships are vitally important to both students and faculty. There are few aspects of my job from which I derive more deep and enduring satisfaction than the opportunity to mentor young men and women. And looking back on my own days at Berkeley and UCLA, I’m eternally grateful to the men and women (Fred Tubach, Scott Waugh, Marilyn Adams) who served as my academic advisers and guides. Students need to be encouraged to seek out mentors from the ranks of the faculty, and professors need to be reminded that nurturing students’ intellectual and personal growth, while not always among our stated tasks, is our moral responsibility.

Where a student and professor are close in age, each can be tempted to adopt a “friend” approach to the mentoring relationship. And on one level, there’s nothing wrong with that! I talk about music with my students, I talk about veganism and politics and fashion. I understand well how “small talk” (as if veganism could ever be “small talk”!) serves as a lubricant for social interaction. A discussion of common interests doesn’t need to obscure the healthy hierarchy at work in a mentor/mentee relationship. At the same time, new junior faculty in particular need to remember that their own common unease and uncertainty about their newly acquired status doesn’t mean that the power they now exercise isn’t real. Kay’s prospective mentor has gone from being a graduate student to tenure-track faculty in the same department in which she studies — and he, as well as she, needs to be keenly aware that that upgraded role has a real impact on everyone.

If Kay’s professor seems unclear about his role, it’s not her job to set the boundaries for him. At the same time, Kay can do a lot to make clear how she sees him. Little things can set the tone: visiting him only during his listed conference hours rather than meeting him for coffee. (There’s nothing wrong with students and teachers having coffee together, of course — but usually that’s best after a very clear line of demarcation has been set up. And that line is best set up initially inside, rather than outside, the office.) While calling him “Dr.” or “Prof.” when she has previously addressed him by his first name is probably a step too far too soon, directing the conversation onto academic rather than personal topics ought to do the trick. Continue reading ‘From friend to mentor: a short note on teaching and boundaries’

Shame, suicide, sex education and the unwitting incentivizing of abortion

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on September 22, 2008
in Abortion, Having children, Sexual ethics and transformation, Teaching, Youth and Youth ministry
. 17 Comments

My old debating buddy and men’s right activist Glenn Sacks sent me a note about this post of his: Girl Commits Suicide After Being Expelled from School for Having an Abortion. Here’s an excerpt or two:

Last night my wife and I attended the 15-year-reunion for a Catholic School where I once taught. I taught most of the attendees World History as sophomores.

It was quite a way-back machine. I remembered some names and I recognized some faces, but didn’t do too well at connecting them. Still, many of the students remembered me (fondly, believe it or not), and I enjoyed seeing them again.

One student I wanted to see was Elena, who had been one of my favorites. She and her boyfriend Darian, who was also in my class, were expelled from the school in mid-year because Elena had gotten pregnant and had an abortion at Planned Parenthood.

The day they were expelled from school I had been out sick, and I was later told that they had come to my room after being expelled to see if I could defend them and get the expulsion reversed. I always felt a little guilty about having been out that day, though of course there was nothing I could’ve done about the expulsion anyway. It was quite a surprise–I had no idea she was even pregnant…

I was looking for her at the party last night and when I couldn’t find her I asked Cathy, who organized the event, if she knew whether Elena was coming. She got an odd look on her face, and told my wife and I:

Elena was very depressed after being expelled. She was cut off from her friends and the life she had. She got depressed and her life spiraled down.

A few years later she hanged herself. I was dating a guy whose brother was a friend of hers and he was the one who found her and cut her down.

My jaw dropped. It’s still on the floor. I guess we’ll never know to what degree her expulsion led to her suicide, but it certainly seems that it was a major factor. And however one feels about abortion, I’ve always opposed making pariahs out of scared girls who find themselves in a bad situation.

Glenn, more than most who beat the drum for the cottage industry known as the “men are victims too, and it’s mostly feminism’s fault” lobby, takes a liberal line on certain issues. He’s caught flak from some of his normal allies, who lean well to the political right, for standing up time and again for gays and lesbians. And I welcome the concern he expresses in this piece.

It’s a good time to talk again about teens and abortion. The initiative that won’t die is back on the California ballot this fall: Proposition 4, which requires parental notification for minors seeking an abortion. We beat two earlier incarnations of this proposition (73 and 85) in 2005 and 2006, but its wealthy conservative backers are nothing if not relentless. Given the stakes that they perceive to be at play, I admire their tenacity even as I reject their basic premise. (For more on parental notification, read this old post of mine opposing the identical proposition 85 a few years ago. And check out Mermade’s piece from just this past weekend.)

The story of what happened to Glenn’s old student is desperately sad. My initial inclination is to hold the school which expelled her accountable — at least in significant part — for her suicide. My more right-wing friends would reject that notion, and might even argue that guilt over the abortion was a prime instigator for Elena to take her life. But if guilt was a motivating factor in the suicide, that guilt was something externally imposed on to Elena rather than her own organic response to terminating a pregnancy. Of course, in the absence of a very detailed suicide note, folks on both sides of the abortion divide could argue about this until the proverbial cows wander back into the barn. It’s axiomatic that we come to these painful anecdotes, all of us, with our own prejudices. We interpret a tragedy in a way that fits not only our worldview but our deepest instincts about sexuality and ethics. Continue reading ‘Shame, suicide, sex education and the unwitting incentivizing of abortion’

“Elitism”, privilege, and competition: some thoughts on the new Deresiewicz article

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 22, 2008
in Academia, Pasadena City College, Teaching and Youth
. 19 Comments

Marian, a periodic reader, sends me a link to this William Deresiewicz article in the American Scholar: The Disadvantages of an Elite Education. It was almost exactly a year ago that I responded to another Deresiewicz American Scholar article in this post.

As with his essay on consensual faculty-student relationships, Deresiewicz in his current piece on academic elitism takes a good idea and promptly takes it just one step too far. His basic thesis this time around: an Ivy-league education makes you incapable of connecting with ordinary folks. His first bit of evidence? His own inability to connect with a plumber standing in his kitchen.

It didn’t dawn on me that there might be a few holes in my education until I was about 35. I’d just bought a house, the pipes needed fixing, and the plumber was standing in my kitchen. There he was, a short, beefy guy with a goatee and a Red Sox cap and a thick Boston accent, and I suddenly learned that I didn’t have the slightest idea what to say to someone like him. So alien was his experience to me, so unguessable his values, so mysterious his very language, that I couldn’t succeed in engaging him in a few minutes of small talk before he got down to work. Fourteen years of higher education and a handful of Ivy League dees, and there I was, stiff and stupid, struck dumb by my own dumbness. “Ivy retardation,” a friend of mine calls this.

I know I’m often accused of making universal applications out of my own experience, but I don’t think even I have done something quite so risible as what Deresiewicz does here. The idea that a first-rate education somehow renders the recipient of that education clueless about the real world is a classic American slur; anti-intellectualism is a potent force in American politics, and has been at least since the Andrew Jackson Administration. It’s disappointing, but perhaps not surprising, that some academics who ought to know better find themselves joining the chorus of those who decry the “useless” nature of top-notch higher education.

It’s all too easy to offer counter-anecdotes. Barack Obama went to Harvard Law, for heaven’s sake. There are many criticisms that might be made of him, but an inability to connect with those who were not similarly well-educated is not one of them. And though I’ve never sent a transfer student to Harvard undergrad, I have had former students of mine go on to graduate school at that most famous of American universities. I’ve had exceptional students here at Pasadena City College who have transferred to other Ivies, such as Cornell, Penn, and Columbia. I’ve seen first-generation students from working-class Mexican-American families go “back East” and come home to put the education they received to work within their communities. Most of my colleagues could say the same. Continue reading ‘“Elitism”, privilege, and competition: some thoughts on the new Deresiewicz article’

Blue book essays and the Martha Complex: on time management, test-taking, and letting go of perfectionism

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 11, 2008
in Feminist Pedagogy, Teaching and The Martha Complex: perfectionism in adolescent girls
. 7 Comments

I’m grading summer midterms today, with an eye to passing them back Monday. I gave all three of my summer classes their midterms on Tuesday. In each class, including my women’s history course, the midterm was designed to take ninety minutes. Within that time, students were to answer two out of three essay questions within their blue books.

Yesterday, after my 25B (Women in American Society) class, two of my students asked to meet with me briefly. Both young women were very concerned that they each had done poorly on the exam for the same reason, namely that they had spent too much time answering the first question leaving themselves little time for the second. I gave them my standard spiel about the importance of time management, and reminded them that no matter how poorly they had done on the midterm, a strong final exam could go a long way towards lifting their course grade.

But we also talked briefly about perfectionism. For years, I’ve given the same classic exams: “blue book” essays, with students required to complete two prompts within a given period of time. Each essay is worth 50 points. And I’ve noted that my female students, particularly the very bright ones, often have a great deal of trouble managing their time effectively. Part of the trick of doing well on these exams is learning to let go of the perfectionist desire to write one flawless essay. Spending the full class period crafting one beautiful, elegant paper will earn the student a poor grade. One “50″ (a perfect score) and one “0″ is an F grade; two “35s” will earn a C.

There’s a method to this madness, and its rooted in more than a desire to inflict upon my students the same testing techniques that were inflicted on me. Learning how to write well under time pressure is an important, even vital academic skill. From a pedagogical standpoint, we can debate whether or not that’s as useful a skill as some academics imagine it to be. But there’s little doubt that my students, as they transfer on to four-year institutions, will continue to be exposed to tests that evaluate their competence at writing effectively under time pressure. And as long as these tests are given at places like UCLA, I have an obligation to prepare my students for those exams.

But there’s another purpose too, one that ties in to feminist work. I’ve written a lot about the “Martha Complex”: the relentless pressure that so many young women feel to be “perfect” in every area of their lives. This perfectionism shows up in disordered eating of course, but it also shows up in the tendency of many of the best and brightest to overload themselves with work, volunteer activities, and family obligations. Classic symptoms of the Martha Complex include near-constant anxiety and exhaustion. Not surprisingly, those with the Martha Complex feel a huge pressure to do well on exams. So knowing this, why do I offer the particular sort of tests that I do? Continue reading ‘Blue book essays and the Martha Complex: on time management, test-taking, and letting go of perfectionism’

“Men are more objective than women”: Second Wavers, Third Wavers, and the complexity of teaching feminism and inter-generational conflict

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 10, 2008
in Academia, Age, Feminism, Feminist Pedagogy, Male feminists, Mentoring and Teaching
. 3 Comments

It’s taken me far too long, but I finally finished Deborah Siegel’s immensely engaging Sisterhood, Interrupted: From Radical Women to Grrls Gone Wild. Deborah is a wonderful writer, and she’s produced the most readable summary of the last forty years of intra-feminist conflict that I’ve seen in print. I may find a way to work it into a syllabus sometime in the next year or two.

At times, Siegel visits a similar theme to the one Astrid Henry explored in Not My Mother’s Sister, a book I reviewed here. Read together, Henry and Siegel offer a sobering account of how the conflict between so-called “Second” and “Third” wave feminists emerged and has continued to play out. Both books were, of course, written well before Hillary Clinton’s run for the White House formally began, but the issues raised by her campaign make the two texts (particularly, perhaps, Siegel’s) seem positively prescient.

But what I was keenly aware of as I finished Deborah’s book was the degree to which intra-generation feminist conflict facilitates male privilege. Specifically, it facilitates my privilege as a male gender studies professor.

I don’t spend a lot of time in my women’s studies classes dwelling on my own maleness. I may have a robust ego, but I draw the line at a kind of pedagogical narcissism that invites the students to reflect at length on their feelings about the professor. Still, there’s no point ignoring my maleness, any more than there’s any point ignoring my whiteness or my age. We teach, after all, as embodied persons. All those who can see or hear (and all of my students can do at least one of these tasks) can sense that a man is teaching women’s studies. I’m not the only man in academia doing it (read my tribute to David Allen), but I am the only one doing it at Pasadena City College. It’s appropriate to create a forum where students can question whether a man can or should be teaching feminism to a predominantly female class, and I try and do that at least once a semester. Continue reading ‘“Men are more objective than women”: Second Wavers, Third Wavers, and the complexity of teaching feminism and inter-generational conflict’

“Teaching May Be Hazardous to Your Marriage”: Social scientists and the myth of male weakness

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 30, 2008
in Academia, Divorce, Older Men & Younger Women, Teaching and Youth
. 36 Comments

Reader and blogger Treifalicious sends me a link to this PDF file of a 1999 study on college professors and divorce. Published in the journal of Evolution and Human Behavior, it’s melodramatically entitled Teaching may be hazardous to your marriage.

The abstract:

Kenrick et al.’s experiments demonstrate that men who view photographs of physically attractive women or Playboy centerfolds subsequently find their current mates less physically attractive and become less satisfied with their current relationships. What then would be the
cumulative effect of being exposed to young, attractive women on a daily basis? Would there be any real consequences to the men’s dissatisfaction with their relationships? Secondary school teachers and college professors come in contact with more young women at the peak of their reproductive value than others do. The analysis of a large, representative data set from the United States indicates that, while men in general are less likely to be divorced than women, and secondary school teachers and college professors in general are less likely to be divorced than others, simultaneously being male and being a secondary school teacher or college professor statistically increases the likelihood of being divorced We contend that the contrast effect that Kenrick et al. find in their experiments is cumulative and has real
consequences.

It’s an almost laughable study, save for the fact that it’s, well, so bloody infuriating. Here’s the initial premise:

Few occupations and professions afford greater opportunities to come in contact with
women in their teenage years than teachers in secondary and postsecondary schools. These
teachers experience the cumulative effect of exposure to young, attractive women who are at
their peak reproductive value more acutely than people in most other occupations.

I suppose that’s true enough, though I can’t say I think much of the term “peak reproductive value.” No offense intended to teenage moms out there, but in my experience, those who choose to make babies in their thirties often (not always) have more “valuable” resources (time, patience, finances) than those in their “peak” reproductive years.

But then the study’s authors lose me completely. They note that those who teach are slightly more likely to stay unmarried after they divorce, though the difference with the general population is barely significant. But then this whopper:

We believe that there are two possible interpretations for this finding. First,
subsequent to divorce, male teachers and professors may remain unmarried because they prefer
to pursue a series of affairs with female students without marrying them. Second, they may remain unmarried because, due to the cumulative contrast effect, any adult woman they might meet and date after their divorce would still pale in comparison to the young attractive women with whom they come in daily contact.

“Pale in comparison”? Continue reading ‘“Teaching May Be Hazardous to Your Marriage”: Social scientists and the myth of male weakness’

Poor white boys: school leaving, male under-performance, and the disaster of masculine anti-intellectualism

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 23, 2008
in Class, Men and Masculinity, Race, Teaching and Youth
. 27 Comments

Regular reader Frederick often likes to send me “grist for the mill”, as it were, and last week sent me this Telegraph article: White working-class boys becoming an underclass. In one of those periodic reminders that the UK and America are very different indeed, the paper reports:

White teenagers are less likely to go to university than school-leavers from other ethnic groups - even with the same A-level results, according to official figures.

The gap is widest among male teenagers from poor backgrounds, raising fresh fears that working class boys are becoming the education “underclass” in England.

According to a Government report, just over one-in-20 white boys from poor homes goes on to university.

This compares to 66 per cent of Indian girls and 65 per cent of young women from Chinese families.

The full report is here, in a PDF file.

The causes of “male under-achievement” are many and complex, and this study does not concern itself much with them. But it does seem clear that whatever the matrix of influences that lead young men to underperform their female peers, feminism is unlikely to be one of them. The study notes that even among recent immigrant groups in Britain, groups in which it can be safely assumed that the Western model of liberal feminism has not yet been fully accepted, girls outperform boys:

Overall, 58 per cent of men from Indian backgrounds and 66 per cent of women go on to university. Among Chinese families, 60 per cent of boys and 65 per cent of women go to university.

Anti-feminist voices, under the guise of concern about the well-being of young men, suggest that contemporary pedagogy doesn’t meet the needs of boys, who aren’t suited to long periods of concentration. The underlying racism of that charge becomes apparent very quickly when one looks at the much-stronger performance of boys from, say, Indian or Chinese descent. For a very long time, white European men have questioned the masculinity of Asian men, seeing the latter as somehow more effeminate. When we posit the ability to concentrate and “do school well” as essentially a feminine trait, then bigotry and anti-feminism collude to explain why so many East and Southeast Asian lads are doing so much better than their white male counterparts. The implication is that Chinese and Indian males are “more like girls” than “real” (white) boys.

I do think we see a performance gap between boys and girls in many places in the Western world. Much of that gap is attributable, I think, to a kind of masculine anti-intellectualism that has developed in response to the relatively recent success of young women in school. In both British and American society we define masculinity as, first and foremost, the absence of feminine characteristics. “No sissy stuff” is the first rule of Western manhood. As long as girls were systematically excluded from education, boys showed great aptitude for intellectually rigorous activity. Once girls began to be admitted to the same schools as boys, and began to demostrate the same intellectual abilities, the life of the mind lost its exclusive masculine cachet.

Boys can sit still. Look at any group of young Marines on the parade ground; paying attention is something well within the range of masculine capabilities. “Boys can’t concentrate as well as girls” needs to go the way of “girls can’t understand science as well as boys”, discarded as a vile myth that shortchanges the full range of human potential with which each and every one of us is born.

The real problem, as I see it, is a culture of “masculine anti-intellectualism” that seems increasingly rife among certain sub-groups of young men. Young men, particularly in Britain perhaps young working-class white men, are more likely than their sisters to see little practical need for education. Too many of these young men under-estimate the value of education, and over-estimate their ability to “make do” on their own, perhaps by doing “a little of this, a little of that.” Many of these lads are filled with ambition, but with little sense of how vital formal education actually is to realizing that ambition. And too many of these young men are eager for a perverse kind of masculine distinctiveness with which to assuage their own anxieties. Dropping out of school to work gives them that masculine distinctiveness, particularly as school is no longer (as it once was) an exclusively male province.

Does everyone need a formal university education? Perhaps not. But I do lament the unwillingness of many boys to buckle down and work. Knowing that earlier generations of the be-penised and the be-Y-chromosomed were able to master complex material and learn by rote, I don’t accept that men as a rule can’t thrive as well as women in the contemporary educational model. The problem is a lack of strong male role models who value education, the problem is a culture that emphasizes to young men that anything of real importance lies in an arena from which women are largely excluded.

Eighteen hour days and classrooms with no chairs

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 17, 2008
in Stuff and Teaching
. 0 Comments

It’s always tougher for me to blog during summer school, and it will be especially so this summer. I’m teaching my usual load of three six-week summer classes, starting at 8:00AM and finishing around 3:00PM. What’s different is that the classroom in which I normally lecture (steps from my office) is undergoing renovations. I’m teaching my three classes in three separate buildings on campus, including a computer lab and a sprawling room in the main gymnasium. When I walked into my first class yesterday, there were no chairs in the room — my students had to sit on the floor, and the be-skirted had to stand. In my second class, I had 45 students enrolled in a classroom with a maximum fire code capacity of 40, and chairs for only 37. Life in the trenches indeed!

I’m not complaining, not really. I’ll be beginning my sixteenth year at Pasadena City College this fall, and this is my fourteenth summer session. My youngest students today were getting potty-trained when I started, and more and more these days, I learn of students whose parents are both younger than I am. Two days after Father’s day, I feel more paternal than ever.

This morning started at 4:45AM, as I wanted to get in a quick seven-miler before the heat set in. I’m participating in a volunteer event at the Kabbalah Centre in West Los Angeles tonight, so it will be more or less a non-stop eighteen hour day. I like busy, of course, except that it does give me precious little time to blog. I’ll see what I can squeeze in later.

And for those family and friends wanting an update, my wife called this morning from some remote jungle camp in Uganda, and is doing just fine. She’ll be home Saturday.

Asking out Dr. “desperately hot”: a note on students pursuing former professors

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 12, 2008
in Older Men & Younger Women, Student crushes and Teaching
. 10 Comments

One of my former students has now transferred on to a large university elsewhere in the state. A 22 year-old junior, she took a class this past quarter with what she describes as a “desperately hot” 30 year-old assistant professor. He’s in his first year teaching the best of all possible subjects (history), and according to my former student, he’s said to be “single and straight and very available.”

My former student has read my various postings on student crushes and on older men, younger women relationships. She shot me a message on Facebook this week, asking me whether I thought it would be appropriate for her to ask out “Dr. Desperately Hot” now that the term is over. She’s quite clear that this isn’t just an intellectual crush — she’s interested on, as she puts it “every level.”

Assuming she’s not likely to be his student again, I wrote her a short note telling her, in essence, “Go for it.” An eight year age-gap is not insignificant, but it’s not an insurmountable one. (I admit I would have responded differently had her Dr. DH been 40 instead of 30.) I’m familiar with the campus on which she studies and he teaches; the university policy in place, like that at Pasadena City College, prohibits professors from dating their current students, but says nothing about dating former students who continue to be enrolled in other instructors’ classes.

I got a follow-up note:

Cool. So, another question: how do I ask him out??? Do I suggest coffee, trying to make it seem like I just might want a friendship? Or do I just flirt with him (more than I have been!!) to see if he takes the inititaive?

I pointed out to her that students frequently invite me to coffee. The nice thing about coffee is that it can have multiple meanings; it can be a wonderfully casual “first date”, or it can be an extension of normal office hours, complete with refreshment. I’m a great believer in having coffee with students, knowing that the chance to chat with a professor one-on-one in an informal environment was one I always treasured when I was an undergraduate. It’s a situation that can be, and indeed should generally be entirely non-sexual, uncharged and unfraught with romantic implications. But it’s relatively easy for even a young adult to inject some gentle flirtation into a coffee date — and my former student can try that with Dr. DH and see how he responds.

I warned her, half teasingly, that she might be very disappointed. Many of us who are masterful and charismatic in the classroom are stunningly not so when we are out of “our element”. While there’s nothing inherently unethical about a 22 year-old dating her 30 year–old former professor, the chances are pretty damn high that she’s got him on some sort of a pedestal. Up until this point, theirs has been a one-sided relationship; he lectures to a large classroom, she sits and gazes at him. She projects more on to him than he has to her, even if he has “noticed” her in a way that goes beyond the purely professional. The chances of disillusionment on her part are near 100%, though I’ve seen more than one relationship survive that process.

Because we’re friends, I felt comfortable challenging my former student to check her motives. Some students pursue professors for the same reason some young women seek out older men; they look for a yardstick by which to measure their own attractiveness. Dating (or, depending on the milieu, merely having sex with) a popular professor who is widely acknowledged to be “desperately hot” might be simply a way to boost the ego, or to boost status in the eyes of peers who share an attraction to this desirable instructor. Even if he is older and presumably wiser, it’s at best unkind and at worst deceptively manipulative to pursue a relationship of any duration merely for the sake of bragging about it (even if that bragging is confined to one or two very close friends.)

I’ve said a time or nine that older men, younger women relationships are problematic — but not always strictly inadvisable — for many reasons. I’ve pointed out too that most student crushes on professors are less about the desirability of the instructor and more about how that professor makes the student feel about himself (or herself), about ideas, about possibilities for life and the world. But all of this doesn’t mean I don’t think a mature young student can’t ask out a relatively young, eminently single, hot assistant professor. Something interesting will happen no matter what the final outcome.

“How do you desexualize that?”: on the erotics of teaching, and learning to affirm and redirect

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 9, 2008
in Favorite Posts 2008, Sexual ethics and transformation, Student crushes and Teaching
. 5 Comments

A reader named Anna kindly sends me a link to this story that ran in the Times (UK) Higher Education Supplement last month: Sex and the university. It deals with an old and familiar subject, that of teacher-student affairs at the post-secondary level.

The British, it seems, are slower than we Americans to embrace ethical codes that forbid consensual amorous relationships between professors and their current students. While most American two and four-year colleges started adopting such policies in the early 1990s, universities in the United Kingdom have met more resistance to such restrictions (and, apparently, less interest in the policies in the first place).

In the UK, attitudes towards relationships in academe are changing rather more slowly. In 2005, figures revealed after a Freedom of Information Act request by Times Higher Education showed that 50 out of 102 institutions had no policy requiring staff to declare sexual or other relationships with students that might give rise to a conflict of interest. Of those that did, few appeared to apply them: just 17 universities had any current records on file.

In the same year, 18 per cent of respondents to a poll conducted by the Teacher Support Network said that they had had a sexual relationship with a student. Despite this, only 73 relationships were officially recorded and just five of these were defined as sexual or romantic. Many respondents, 62 per cent, said they did not know whether or not their university had a protocol on such matters.

That nearly one in five faculty members in Britain admits to having had a sexual relationship with a student doesn’t surprise. I don’t know of any comprehensive study of faculty behavior at North American campuses, but would imagine that the numbers would be very similar. Purely anecdotally, based on gossip as much as self-reporting, I’d guess that somewhere around 10-20% of my colleagues have engaged in such a relationship. (And as I’ve admitted many times, I had a series of such relationships, all of which ceased ten years ago this month.)

I’ve written about consensual relationships policies here, here, and here, among other places. Part of my own redemptive work was to chair a committee to write a policy for Pasadena City College on consensual relationships, a policy that was not in place during the years in which I was conducting a series of these affairs.

But the point I want to make today is less about such policies, and more about the erotics of teaching. Of all the quotations in the THE piece, this one from the Cambridge classicist Mary Beard struck home:

In some ways we have to accept that there is an erotic dimension to pedagogy. If you take a traditional Oxbridge-style tutorial system, that’s one thing that students love and it’s some of the most interesting teaching when you really get to know someone. That doesn’t mean it’s about feeling someone up, but it is passionate. The difficulty is that that’s a terribly sexy experience; two people sitting together really talking through how Latin love poetry works. How do you desexualise that?

I haven’t done anything with Latin love poetry since auditing a seminar on Catullus in late 1990, but I get what Beard’s talking about. Obviously, a community college doesn’t have the English tutorial style of instruction. But what we do have at PCC is a faculty dedicated to student mentoring. I am certainly not the only instructor whose office hours are frequented by bright young people eager to meet with me one-on-one. And though I don’t teach Ovid, I do teach several courses that touch on various aspects of human sexuality and gender. I’m passionate about these subjects, and the students of both sexes who can be bothered to come to my office hours to work through the material with me are, generally equally passionate. And we all know that there are few things more charged with sexual potential than a shared interest, perhaps particularly one that is discussed behind closed doors. (And yes, I always keep my office door shut — as it opens out onto a hallway so loud that even if it is merely ajar, I can’t hear myself think.) Continue reading ‘“How do you desexualize that?”: on the erotics of teaching, and learning to affirm and redirect’

The Pill, autonomy, male responsibility, and the virtues of body sovereignty

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 2, 2008
in Birth control and contraception, Memories and Teaching
. 27 Comments

As noted on Friday, historian (and fellow UCLA Ph.D.) Elaine Tyler May is looking for stories about the Pill.

Since she asks for stories from men whose partners have used the Pill, I’ll take the invitation to offer some thoughts.

I lecture on birth control every semester in my women’s history class. I always begin the same way, by talking about semantics, namely to make what ought to be an obvious point: “birth” control is not identical to contraception. The very names make clear the difference: birth control encompasses a wide variety of methods to give women control over their entire (or nearly entire) reproductive process; contraception is, evidently, limited to those methods designed to prevent conception. Contraception, in other words, is a subset of but never a synonym for birth control. One key feminist goal remains ensuring safe and reliable access not merely to contraceptive technology but to birth control.

Invariably, some students get confused, largely because the phrase “birth control” in their minds has come to mean only the Pill. When they hear an expression such as “Mary’s on birth control”, they assume that means oral contraceptives. This equation of birth control with the Pill hasn’t changed noticeably since I first started teaching fifteen years ago. Nearly five decades after it first appeared on the market, the Pill continues to exercise a powerful hold on the language — as well, of course, on the bodies — of women young enough to be the granddaughters of the first generation to use it. Continue reading ‘The Pill, autonomy, male responsibility, and the virtues of body sovereignty’

“Our presence is evidence we’ve all screwed up”: defending the community colleges against Professor X

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on May 28, 2008
in Academia, Pasadena City College and Teaching
. 24 Comments

Via Lauren, this stunningly depressing article by Professor X about life in the basement of the ivory tower. X adjuncts a night class at a community college — which is what I did for one year (1993-94) before I had the great good fortune to get a tenure-track job at the tender age of 26. X teaches English, and he or she is grim about it:

Those I teach don’t come up in the debates about adolescent overachievers and cutthroat college admissions. Mine are the students whose applications show indifferent grades and have blank spaces where the extracurricular activities would go. They chose their college based not on the U.S. News & World Report rankings but on MapQuest.

Okay, right off the bat, that describes only half of my students at Pasadena City College. Professor X doesn’t get in his night classes the students I’ve been getting in mine for fifteen years — which include not only the academically indifferent but those of exceptional potential whose family circumstances prevent them from attending a four-year college right away. I transfer students to Berkeley, UCLA, Occidental, and USC every year, students who have figured out that taking two years at $20 a unit makes good sense.

The thing about the community college is that I get such an astonishingly wide range of students. In a typical night class of nearly fifty, I will have a few very bright high school kids of perhaps 16 or 17 years of age. I will also have retirees in their 60s and 70s, 30-ish single moms returning to school, and quite a few students between the standard ages of 18-24. Some are very bright, with the skills but not the financial wherewithal to do well at competitive universities; others struggle with learning disabilities or barely average intellectual ability. That breadth of ability is a challenge, but it is also a joy — and anyone who doesn’t find it such should be elsewhere. Continue reading ‘“Our presence is evidence we’ve all screwed up”: defending the community colleges against Professor X’

“Fly, you fools!” A simple answer to the question about where to go to college: UPDATED

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on April 30, 2008
in Academia, Family and Teaching
. 20 Comments

I’ve been getting emails and calls and visits this week from various students who, having been accepted to at least two colleges to which they have applied for transfer admission, are now trying to decide where to go for school.

Let me make it simple: all things being equal (and Berkeley and UCLA are pretty equal in most programs, as are Cal State LA and Sacramento State), go to college as far away as possible from your friends, family, and everything you have known. I don’t know if anyone has copyrighted it yet, so call it the Gandalf theory of higher education. When in doubt, and if you can possibly afford it financially, move away.

So much of a good college education takes place outside of the classroom. Disconnecting from loved ones, if only for a time, is a vital part of becoming an adult. Not everyone has the luxury of making such a choice, but if my advice is asked, my answer is essentially the same as that uttered by Gandalf the Grey in his last words before the Balrog drags him down.

I do understand that some students must live at home for financial reasons. Though I think debt and independence are preferable to solvency and enmeshment, that’s a personal cultural bias on my part, a bias others may not share. I do think that there is much to be said for spending as much time as possible in another corner of the state or country, exposed to different weather, different media markets, different social values.

And for what it’s worth, as someone with an undergrad degree from Cal and a Ph.D. from UCLA, I can say that I loved Berkeley with every fiber of my being. My attachment to Westwood never rose above the tepid. But as they say, your mileage may vary.

UPDATE: I’m bumping this up from the comments section. Daisy at Our Descent offers the exact opposite advice in a lovely post. I’d like to note that my wife shares a view closer to Daisy’s; she graduated from high school in Glendale and headed off to USC, living at home the entire time. She wouldn’t have changed that for the world.

In the end, I acknowledge that giving advice about going to college is like giving advice about whether to have sex at a young age: the right answer is contingent upon a unique set of circumstances surrounding the needs of the particular person inquiring.

I’d point out, though — and this is clearly for a future post, maybe soon — that the desire for autonomy is not evidence of a lack of devotion to family. As I’ve argued before, WASPy families in which men never do more than shake hands to show affection to each other, and where children leave home at 18, never to return, are no less intensely loving for their commitment to formality and personal autonomy.

More on that to come.

Not just a professor, but a mentor: on hiring a new African-Americanist

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on April 24, 2008
in Academia, Mentoring, Pasadena City College, Race and Teaching
. 3 Comments

As most readers will know, the feminist blogosphere continues to go through an unusually painful period of discussion and debate about race, sex, and intersectionality. And while it really isn’t all about me, I find it, if not ironic, oddly serendipitous that this semester finds me on a hiring committee to select a new African-American specialist for a tenure-track position. The first round of interviews unfold this afternoon and tomorrow.

Confidentiality protocol bars me from disclosing too much about the hiring process, but I can share what has already been made public. After more than two decades, my colleague Pete Mhunzi, who taught both African and African-American history, is retiring. In this depressed budget climate, we had to fight tooth and nail to get a replacement position approved; some in the administration wanted to fill the Africanist position with a series of adjuncts.

At the beginning of the year, we sent out the standard notice for a new tenure-track hire. Because we are a community college, we need someone capable of handling several different intro courses: African-American history; the History of Ancient, Early Modern, and Modern Africa; modern U.S. Survey. We received a number of excellent applications, and starting at noon today, we’ll meet the most promising candidates, the one who survived the “paper screen” process.

When we were first writing the hiring proposal last year, there was some debate amongst the members of the committee about non-academic qualifications. We have only one professor who teaches African and African-American studies; the retiring holder of that position served not only as a classroom professor but also as a mentor to black students on campus, advising the BSA and so forth. Though just three decades ago, the campus was nearly 25% black, today the percentage of African-American students has plummeted to the mid-single digits. Some of that is due to the changing demographic of the San Gabriel Valley and of Southern California in general, some of that is due, frankly, to a decline in the number of African-American high school graduates who are attending any kind of college.

As far as I — and the other members of our committee — were concerned, it’s vital that the new faculty member we choose be committed not only to mentoring all students, but have a particular interest in working with young African-American men and women. Of course, this doesn’t mean we asked for or are demanding that the person we hire be themselves black. (Even with tenure, if I, as a member of a sitting hiring committee, announced on a public blog that race was a qualifying factor, I’d be in a massive heap of trouble. Heck, I might not be allowed to serve on a committtee again. Wait a minute… naw, bad idea.) Continue reading ‘Not just a professor, but a mentor: on hiring a new African-Americanist’