Punch Up That Research

An newspaper can editorially retract or correct an erroneous statement of fact, but I don’t see how an opinion piece can be retracted, unless the basis is that it didn’t faithfully depict the actual opinion held by the writer.

The students at my SLAC (a long time wannabe of the Bryn Mawr/Swarthmore group, although with a more conservative student culture) have been convinced for years that “free speech” means both “uncensored” AND “with no consequences.”  They get this from adult culture of course, but I think that’s what’s behind the curious attitude of the student editors, that to actually edit or even reject a piece would somehow be violating free speech.  Yet when they get in trouble for an ill-considered essay such as this, they panic and try to stick the responsibility on someone else.

Faculty talk a lot about our duty to teach critical thinking, but I think it has also become an imperative that we teach the real, complex meaning of free speech and its consequences.  Our whole culture has somehow convinced itself that responsibility is for other people, but we should be able to do and say whatever idiotic thing crosses our minds without being held accountable.

So is there a connection between this revival of misogyny and the increasing sense that men can no longer cope well with what our society and economy have become?

I also just think that my students at Zenith are more callous than they used to be.  We have some version of a Wiki going all the time which started its life as the Anonymous Confession Board.  There, students write horrid things about each other, answering questions like “which frosh woman is the biggest bitch?” or discussing the likelihood that the most recent rape allegations are the result of a bad breakup.  This may seem like a reach, but I do think this incident in particular is the consequence of the collapse of feminism at a place like Zenith — and the student author’s utter resentment about and hostility to being challenged by feminism at Bryn Mawr.  Then, of course, had the editors been feminist in any degree, they might have also made a useful intervention.

Dr. P,

Here is the text of the original article (copy-pasted to FB, then here). The article is cached somewhere if you’d like the link. Interestingly, the points with which the commenting Bryn Mawr students and alums took issue were not those really addressed in Ms. Chu’s “apology”.

Wesleyan v. Wellesley: “Rather Dead than Coed?”

By Vicky Chu, Class of 2013
Monday, October 10, 2011

“Wesleyan.”

“Wellesley? Massachusetts? The all-girls school?”

“No. Wesleyan.”

It was after this encounter – well, many encounters of a similar
nature—that I realized I was doomed to an eternal association with that
dreaded term, the “all-girls school.”

First correction to be made—the term is “women’s college.” Members of
the Seven Sisters are continually striving to correct every ignorant
male they encounter, trying to debunk the view that they are little
school girls running amok in plaid pinafores and pigtails.

However, a recent article in USA Today concerning Mount Holyoke’s deliberation to go coed blared a relevant headline: “Are Single Sex Colleges Still Relevant?”

A women’s college may seem to have little relevance to your life at
Wesleyan unless you’re one of the two students every year that
participates in the 12 College Exchange Program. However, that headline
is still food for thought. Some statistics show that graduates of
women’s colleges perform better in their careers compared to women who
graduate from coed schools. As a transfer from Bryn Mawr, a women’s
college in Pennsylvania, I myself have no complaints in regards to the
education I received. Class sizes were small and taught by a phenomenal
faculty. The food happened to be exceptional (and thus had a tendency to
cause even more damage than the typical Freshman 15).

But time and time again, as statistics teachers drill into our heads,
correlation does not equate to causation. Most of the women at my
school already displayed confidence before stepping foot on campus.
After all, it takes a woman of considerable character to commit to an
all-female environment for four years.

So what makes a women’s college as an institution different?

In terms of classroom environment, going to a women’s college means
sitting in a classroom with women in oversized sweatpants. Inevitably,
there will be rumors about the relationship between the professor
teaching your class and some student. There will also be one male from a
nearby coed school who sits in the front row. He will wear a sweatshirt
with the name of his school prominently displayed at every lecture and
will therefore be even more conspicuous to his glaring female
classmates. He will be applauded by the professor solely for his
willingness to learn in a female-dominated environment.

Socially, going to a women’s college means almost literally screaming
“Death to the Patriarchy!” all day, every day. It means bloody tampons
strewn all over the bathroom floor. It means glaring at the coed
schools’ sports teams who come to your campus to eat your chicken wings.
It means taking a bus to other schools on the weekends to do
unmentionable things with aforementioned sports teams.

It really isn’t normal.

However, my tour guide at Bryn Mawr had been quick to point out that
the college had a convenient consortium with three coed schools nearby.
Every women’s school that I know of has some kind of similar set-up. And
every one has the same catch-22. Though the consortium was
advantageous, women’s colleges could not seem to function independently
of coeducation institutions.

I remember the day I walked into my first class at Wesleyan. There
was a common phrase that was constantly thrust in my presence at Bryn
Mawr, and now it reverberated through my mind once more as I looked
around at all the men.

“We’d rather be dead than coed!”

Would it be true? Would I be unable to speak up in class? Would I be
unable to function normally because I was distracted by the influx
of testosterone?

The answer was no.

I sat through class. Men talked in class. Women talked in class. I
talked in class. Class with men was the anticlimax of my transfer
experience. At Bryn Mawr, I studied Foucault, Judith Butler, and
discovered that virtually everything is socially constructed. At
Wesleyan, I studied Foucault, Judith Butler, and discovered that
virtually everything is socially constructed.

Despite the ultimate similarity of the coursework, I transferred
because I had come to disagree with the principles of a women’s college.
A single-sex, isolated bubble of women contradicts what it sets out to
do, especially in a time when society seeks to move past gender
discrimination and stereotypes. On the contrary, I saw women reinforcing
negative stereotypes by demeaning themselves in order to gain
validation from coed students.

All women—at both coed and women’s colleges—must seek to empower
themselves by challenging gender inequities. The first step is not to
whine about these inequalities, but to deal directly with the men who
impose them upon us. There is still a Real World, and it’s been easier
to learn how to contend with it and with men at Wesleyan than at a
women’s college.

So in the end, it’s a bit silly to rather be dead than coed. And I’d choose Wesleyan over Wellesley any day.

Best,
Bryn Mawr 2010

The writer makes a good point at the end: dealing directly with men, challenging them and their opinions, and speaking up in class is the ultimate way to challenge inequality.  It is often uncomfortable and sometimes you have doubts, but it’s the experience of doing just that kind of challenging that makes you stronger.

While I love the idea of women’s colleges and wish I had had the funds many years ago to attend Bryn Mawr, I actually was more challenged at a co-ed university.  I learned how to shout my calculus questions from the back of the lecture hall and not be intimidated by the males in front of me.  I learned how to speak my mind, even when male professors didn’t like it.  Now, I wasn’t Miss Congeniality, but I wasn’t going for that.  I also didn’t live on campus (which helped greatly) and I worked 25 hours a week to cover my cheap tuition. 

No amount of Judith Butler teaches you to stand up in line when a famous male academic or politician comes to speak and to ask your question, despite the fact that you are the only woman in a line full of males.  There are some things you just have to freaking DO.  Then you watch the reaction to your presence and realize that you are transgressing some bizarre rule about which gender is allowed to ask questions of a speaker.  And you hope that you’ve given some other woman the guts to get up and do the same, or at least the curiosity to ask herself why she isn’t.