Wednesday, March 24, 2004
So far, this has no happened to me at the Graduate level (mostly because I have avoided any classes that contain "feminism" or "gender" in their titles or course descriptions)
However, today, for some reason, I was recalling one of the most annoying features of the many undergraduate English classes I took.
This happened in at least a dozen classes, most of them key major requirements - not electives, but classes I had to take to get my BA.
Anyway - some feminist issue would come up, and the teacher would say something like "That's interesting. Well, for the next half-hour men are not allowed to make any comments at all."
What followed was never a discussion of the issue at hand, but something more resembling primal scream therapy mixed with group therapy. For a half-hour the more strident and radical feminists in the class would insult, berate and attack men. It was all very fungible - there was no idea or acknowledgement that men might be okay. Nope, men were evil and by their very existence oppressed women.
After a half hour of that, most guys didn't want to say anything at all. It was like those movies where the cops tie a guy to a chair and yell at him for hours on end. How do you respond to that? I never did, but only because I figured nothing I could say would add to the non-existent conversation.
Luckily, as I said, this has never happened (to me) on the graduate level. Still, I'm sure this practice of shutting down of diverse alternative voices is fairly common, if undocumented.
However, today, for some reason, I was recalling one of the most annoying features of the many undergraduate English classes I took.
This happened in at least a dozen classes, most of them key major requirements - not electives, but classes I had to take to get my BA.
Anyway - some feminist issue would come up, and the teacher would say something like "That's interesting. Well, for the next half-hour men are not allowed to make any comments at all."
What followed was never a discussion of the issue at hand, but something more resembling primal scream therapy mixed with group therapy. For a half-hour the more strident and radical feminists in the class would insult, berate and attack men. It was all very fungible - there was no idea or acknowledgement that men might be okay. Nope, men were evil and by their very existence oppressed women.
After a half hour of that, most guys didn't want to say anything at all. It was like those movies where the cops tie a guy to a chair and yell at him for hours on end. How do you respond to that? I never did, but only because I figured nothing I could say would add to the non-existent conversation.
Luckily, as I said, this has never happened (to me) on the graduate level. Still, I'm sure this practice of shutting down of diverse alternative voices is fairly common, if undocumented.
