The next person to say ‘dildo’ gets a punch in the face
[If you’re a young child, you should probably cover your ears. Eyes. Whatever . . . look! Over there!]
I solemnly swear that I will drop out of school to become a hobo and/or work at Burger King before I take another Women’s Studies class.
Though I dislike the social sciences generally, I recognize the right of Women’s/Black/Queer/etc. Studies departments to exist, as well as their potential to benefit academia and society as a whole. All I ask is that I not be personally involved in the process. If my Women in the Ancient World class this semester is typical of the breed, Women’s Studies courses are fascinating in theory but downright annoying in practice.
Much of this stems from the demographics, I think. My class included three brave men and twenty or twenty-five women. I would often walk in late (surprised?) and be nearly bowled over by waves of estrogen as I opened the door. Cliche? Yes. True? Also yes.
In case you’re new to the world, women like to talk. Women especially like to talk about sex. In this class, EVERYTHING was about sex. While one could make the case that everything in history really *is* about sex, there were actually a few completely unsexy topics in the course I would have liked to learn about. Of course we skimmed through those parts of the book, only to have the lecture grind to a halt at the first mention of a penis or a lesbian or a uterus, at which point the class would spend ten minutes giggling and shrieking over the scandalousness of it all.
I understand that sex, gender, and sexuality are important, prevalent topics in women’s history, and I find them fascinating and enjoy discussing them, but I could do without the slumber-party atmosphere. I’m sorry, are we in sixth grade?
The flames were fanned by two or three women I like to call the Instigators. An Instigator’s duties are twofold: (1) she must call attention to the lewdest, most erotic passages or phrases in the reading, and (2) once we’re on the subject, she must shout out the most scandalous thing she can think of, repeating and adding emphasis as necessary, until the majority of the class collapses into paroxysms of titillation.
Once the crowd has been Instigated, what was formerly a reasonably orderly discussion devolves into a free-for-all shouting match. There is no listening, no back-and-forth, only shock-value and squealing. We won’t get back on topic for fifteen or twenty minutes.
Case in point: On Thursday we read a primary source passage condemning abortion*, and one Instigator seized the opportunity to share with the class that in the town where her parents live, A THIRD-GRADER IS PREGNANT WITH HER FATHER’S TWINS (emphasis hers), and there’s much debate over whether anyone can force her to abort. Jesus Marvolo Christ, people. Unless I’m in the wrong room, this class is *not* titled Women in 21st-Century Texas, and that story is consequently *not* appropriate.
The result was predictably chaotic: at least ten girls simultaneously creamed their jeans trying to shout over each other about incest and pelvic bones and early-onset puberty. The “discussion” had made no progress when class ended ten minutes later. Barf.
I’m not a lame old fuddy-duddy (Erection! Tampon**! Masturbation! See? Not squeamish.), but crap like this makes me ashamed of my gender-mates. They can be such girls sometimes.
I miss the natural sciences—there was much less squealing in physics. There, the worst I had to contend with were know-it-all, unshaven boys*** who enjoyed foisting their knowledge and “wit” on the rest of the world. Right now it seems the lesser of two evils. Oy.
———
* No less controversial two thousand years ago than it is today. Plus ça change…
** You might think tampons would never be discussed in a class which purports to study cultures which existed two milennia millennia before their invention. You might be very, very wrong.
*** The gender ratio when I was at Mudd was something like 2:1. That’s a lot of not-showering. (Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of nice, clean, friendly guys at Mudd. And many of the scruffy-looking ones are nice once you get to know them. But some are icky through and through.)
Tags: school
May 1st, 2006 at 6:21 am
The Wiggles are a bunch of dildoes.
Seriously though:
“The flames were fanned by two or three women I like to call the Instigators. An Instigator’s duties are twofold: (1) she must call attention to the lewdest, most erotic passages or phrases in the reading, and (2) once we’re on the subject, she must shout out the most scandalous thing she can think of, repeating and adding emphasis as necessary, until the majority of the class collapses into paroxysms of titillation.”
Reading that made me realize that I am actually just like that type of person and need to work on that part of my personality…so I appreciate you having written this blog.
May 1st, 2006 at 11:41 am
The reason you dislike these sorts of classes is the reason I love them. I took a Women’s Studies class here that was purported to be about Women in “arts and literature”. Needless to say, we read perhaps one of the six books and instead sat around talking about lesbianism, women’s rights, etc. etc. etc. (basically the gamut of the topics you listed above). I love it.
We spend so much time sitting around in classrooms reading books by dead white guys that have been rehashed by professors since the dawn of time. We constantly fall victim to professors who run their classrooms like institutions and never inject any vigor or modernism into the topic at hand.
I really like women’s studies courses because this all turns into practical and life learning, real conversations about things that really matter and are actually pertinent to us. Granted, the people in my courses have mostly been mature people, not ones to get all squirmy and excited about masturbation and the like.
May 1st, 2006 at 4:45 pm
I was once in a women’s lit class and this girl got so pissed off at me when I said that I did not feel opressed because I am a woman. I have taken two other gender studies classes at Pitzer that I really liked (they were taught by my favorite professor in Claremont). We would read some primary sources about men and women, and then talk about how they differed or were the same and how things changed over time. I think the main problem with the lit class was that every discussion became some sort of way to bash men … to the point where I sometimes felt uncomfortable and I know the guys in the class sort of felt like they were being attacked.
May 1st, 2006 at 6:07 pm
As to men who take women’s studies classes, I point them in the direction of the legal concept known as ‘assumption of the risk.’ You know what generally tends to happen in those classes (they degenerate at various points and times into male bashing) so, if you sign up for one, you’ve assumed that risk - quit bitching and drop the class or cart in some computer games for when it gets intolerable. OR, better than those, stir the pot by walking out.
I was going to say something else, but the brilliance left me, so y’all are stuck with the above comment… back to studying for Contracts (which means, re-learning that crap we may have theoretically covered in first few weeks that i hardly remember - ugh)
May 1st, 2006 at 7:27 pm
Where are you at law school Jay?
May 2nd, 2006 at 2:07 am
I’m all for rational discussion about current topics, but in this class we could never get past the fact that “omg, they’re talking about a dildo?!?!” to talk about any of the underlying issues in a serious way. Maybe I was just unlucky.
Also, I don’t think the prof encouraged reasonable discussion well. She would make a point, then ask us (the class, not anyone in particular) if we agreed. If you spoke up and agreed with her, fine. If you disagreed, she ridiculed your argument: “Come on, now, do you *really* think that [whatever you said]?”
I’ll have this prof again next semester, but in Latin, where the correctness of an answer is a tad more objective, thank goodness.
There was surprisingly little male-bashing in this class, actually, which I was glad to see. The prof would occasionally pick on the guys, though. “I haven’t heard from any of the men in a while. [Joe], what do you think about menstrual blood? *laughs* Huh? C’mon, I want to hear what you think…”
May 2nd, 2006 at 2:29 am
Now that I think about it, the laughing really bothered me. Whenever we got to a “serious” or controversial topic, she would always laugh or make a joke or a sarcastic comment.
I’m not saying that important subjects should always be debated in an orderly, humorless fashion, with everyone taking turns and speaking in monotone, but I think the fear of having a serious comment turned into a joke kept many students (myself included) from speaking up and inhibited our probing any of these topics deeply.
May 2nd, 2006 at 7:05 am
I’ve taken one women’s studies course thus far (Intro) and I had a good experience with it. Of course, the classmates were intelligent and the prof was awesome (she was very good at facilitating discussion. Plus her background was in anthropology and she brought a lot of that perspective to the class). Also no dildoes. But I understand it’s pretty hit or miss, even at Scripps–both with who you get as a prof and who your classmates are.
May 2nd, 2006 at 11:17 am
My lit class was not actually advertised as a women’s lit class. The title of the class when you registered was “20th Century Literature” but once I got to the class I found out it was “Women in 20th Century Literature” or something like that. Quite a few people dropped the class after the first day so I think they did not know what they were getting into either.
May 3rd, 2006 at 5:18 am
@Ben: Jay’s at South Texas