Maybe you were picking on them, but you could not see it because you were making a point, and being in your face... Maybe you want to pick on them. Wouldn't it be surprising in fact if you did not want to pick on them?
Hanno--
I am willing to admit I was picking on them. But, I was picking on them the way I pick on any student who has clearly not engaged in the class. Who is slacking off.
Granted, there was no getting away from the fact that I am picking on a slacking white dude, who is in a feminist class.
If I was picking on him to make a point about masculinity, I still don't understand why the women see these men as victims to me.
So you derailed your colleague's lesson plan, which she perhaps based on a solid understanding of classroom's dynamic and an investment in seeing even the slackers getting some sort of positive learning outcome, and you're scratching your head as to what went "awry" when other women in class started challenging your presumptions of the classroom dynamic?
If you really wanted a remedy, you ought to talk to your colleague and get a better sense of how the class had worked up to this point in the semester (where, face it, she was asking you to fulfill simple A/V and minor T.A. type duties not intervene in what you saw as the semester's alleged "dead weight") before you freelanced all over her program. Maybe your colleague has a teaching style where she actually gets her class to think _as a class_ and not "make examples" of particular segments of the class population. Radical concept, I know, but I got a feeling your female student's identity as students may have been standing up for what they saw as unfair treatment of their peers. You can try to work a gender politics observation in your followup, but my guess is your students may see you as a committed ideologue not willing to recognize a pedagogical error.
Chewing a pencil may be a nervous habit, or a sign of genuine discomfort.
Two observations...
1) One of the advantages of reading the blogs of people you know in real life is how much background knowledge one can import into reading a post. Comments like those of "Teacher Evaluation" generally prompt me to be more charitable in reading the blogs of those who get my ire up.
2) I think just that comment "they think you are picking on men" would be a great way into the topic. It need not be about the gender issue in terms of class defense, but it would be lurking. I find the attitude of "feeling attacked" interesting in the classroom context, as it seems to suppose that having one's ideas attacked is a bad thing.
On the other hand, in my limited experience, the two issues which best prompt the defensive reaction are (a) racism and (b) sexism. In both of those cases, there is blurry distinction between being an active racist/sexist and being complicit in institutional or social racism/sexism. This is a new and tricky distinction. So, perhaps it should not surprise me that students tend to want to fight against the suggestion of institutional racism if it seems to make them guilty of acts of racism - which they know full well to be morally wrong (rather than it being an intellectual matter).
Perhaps it is a similar sort of thing here - particularly exacerbated by a film with clear emotional and ethical implications. The male students in question might have wanted to avoid being tied to the horrific actions in the film, but were not sure how to distinguish the varying levels of moral culpability.
I think it is interesting and worth pursuing why any of the students think people are in need of defense at all. If there is a gendered difference in might come out in discussion. Yet, if the reason for the defensive reaction is anything like my speculation (of course, on very limited anecdotal evidence), then there is a confusion that is actively preventing intellectual engagement on the issues.
Jeff, yes, we're all aware of your past expressions of indebtedness to this blogger for your own intellectual development. It's quite well overstated in this blog.
I still think our instructor here freelanced into a classroom enviroment in the last 1/3 to 1/4 of the semester and may simply be introducing a teaching style the students' may not be accustomed to, to the degree that even "front row" students may be crying foul, or at least pity for their "back corner" peers.
Based on our blogger's instruction: the course's regular instructor thought, wisely IMHO, that the best thing to do is show the whole film (long class?) and then have their students "digest" the film in small discussion circles, probably before returning as a group in the next session.
No doubt Boys Don't Cry is a powerful movie and it's a simple pedagogical fact that one must "ease" their students into the discussion of any matter powerful or controversial. I've had experience in this myself teaching a film such as This Film is Not Yet Rated. I'm pretty confident that self-described "in your face" teaching styles do not really do the job as well as more facilitative pedagogies.
These "back room" students may well be choads, but if I were the instructor I wouldn't think "beating them" was my job, particularly in fashion where they seem to be used as some sort of prop for the rest of the class, as I've gathered from the class synopsis provided. Cutting down 18-22 year olds is just too easy. There are gentler ways of delivering a message through building a consensus response to the film, get it up on the white board or whatever your room's has on had and if you want to be a performative showboat, use that impersonal consensus to unpack what you see going on in the students' reaction to the film.
I think the classroom tactics deployed here have not only failed to reach the "back room" but it seems even your "front row" left the classroom thinking something went wrong, as opposed to walking away with any insight or analysis of what is a really great film capable of doing incredible work inside or outside the classroom.
For what its worth, my colleague told me to feel free to do whatever I wanted in the class since I teach these courses all the time.
The class went well, not badly.
The original program was to only show half of the film, put them in small groups, and then have a full discussion.
Because we had technical difficulties, we had to choose either small groups or big group. I put it to a vote. The class voted for group discussion.
I had them write for 3 minutes first and then each of them put a question on the board.
Then we talked through their questions.
I didn't berate the guys in the back. I used humor, like I always do. I don't even think they felt attacked. They seemed to be laughing and being silly.
Teacher Evaluation,
Have you been lurking for a long time and hankering to "rip me a new one" for my pedagogical techniques. Or, did you just choose this occasion to open up a can of whoop ass?
Just thinking the response is a bit disproportionate to the facts.
From what you have written, it looks as if we agree quite a bit on how to teach. My "in your face" style is to use humor and to get people engaged by redirecting their attention to the matter at hand, rather than ignoring them because they keep their heads down and avoid eye contact.
Three of the four men in the back refused to write a question on the board, so I was trying to find a way to get them involved.
Nicknaming students silly names doesn't usually, in my experience, put them in therapy and shut them down for the semester.
I haven't seen the film, and frankly can't bring myself to see it, so I can't comment in any depth. However one thing to keep in the back of your mind is that if any of the guys in the back row are gay, they will have analyzed masculine rituals and homophobia obsessively as a way to protect themselves. I find it interesting that, at least in your abbreviated account, the men were unwilling to defend themselves against you. Did there seem to be a gender dynamic at play there, given that they were being "attacked" by a female professor?
MRW,
I hadn't thought about a gender dynamic. I really read the situation as one in which I was pushing students to be engaged when they aren't. For example, when students are text messaging in class. Or they haven't done the reading and put their head down.
If they felt attacked, it was because I wanted them to participate as much as the other students. Otherwise the entire conversation is dominated by women about men, without the men saying anything on the matter.
I forgot this part of blogging. You get your ass kicked once in awhile. It is probably good for me.
I think I need to rethink this. It never occurred to me that the guys in the class felt attacked or beat up.
Picking on or teasing a student is not always a bad thing. Sometimes it merely indicates that a camaraderie has developed in class. It can also be a way to make light of a tense situation or subject matter.
Your core question is about the female guardedness and defensive reactionary posture they took up on behalf of the men. It might look odd, but I'm not sure it's unexpected. There are a couple initial explanations I can think of:
1. If we look at "traditional" gender roles, women are the maternal caretakers. If they see a woman as being overly aggressive and the men as victims, then it's only natural to step between the two.
1a. Men are supposed to be strong. Weak men might be seen as even more pathetic/in need of saving than their female counterparts, and so the women felt even more inclined to step in.
2. If the men are not supporting their tough, machismo, take no B.S. from womenfolk attitude and are backing down from a female authority figure, then the women might be reacting by overcompensating in their own roles and/or temporarily usurping the "tough" male persona, in hopes that it will abate the current turbulence and allow the status quo to return.
3. You really did cross a line. However, after a film that's tough to digest, the line may have moved further than you thought. You didn't cross the "standard" line to which you are generally accustomed, but it had shifted because of the subject matter and the way it was presented. You just weren't able to gauge that properly.
4. Some combination of the previous.
Just some off the cuff thoughts.
Oh, another point, they have only seen half of the film. My colleague asked me to break it up into two halves so they could digest it. They haven't seen the violent end yet.
Ah, I fear I have been caught up in a contest. I do not mean to be involved in one.
I meant my initial point in all earnestness. I do think, Teacher Evaluation, that your tone was overly harsh and combative. It prompted me to think about my reaction to a piece on a different blog I read the other day (a "dissent of the day" post on Andrew Sullivan's blog). I think I would've been similarly harsh. Your post, which prompted a converse defensive reaction, struck me because it highlighted the fact that I read Aspazia's posts in light of what I know about her as a teacher. Perhaps had I this knowledge of this other poster, I might not have reacted in the way I did.
The tone of the original piece of one of attacking, so perhaps that is not what you meant. It did not sound like the experience "went well." It describes the following:
I was my usual, in-your-face-let's-talk-about-sex-masculinity-
homophobia self. I mostly pushed the group of men huddled together in the back of the room clinging for dear life.
That sounds like attacking. It does not sound like using humor to draw students in. It sounds like, what is that group in SF that is really in your face.. Can't remember, but funny is not a work that comes to mind. So if a reader takes it that way, it is not surprising.
In any case, I started directing some of my, admittedly, pointed questions to the men huddled together in the back row.
If it was pointed to you, it was surely pointed to them.
I turned back to others in the class. But, I returned to huddlers again and finally the women started "protecting" them. One woman said: "they think you are picking on men." Another: "they feel attacked."
It sounds like you have a rebellion on your hands, and rebellions do not happen out of thin air (but they do happen to substitutes all the time.) It is not unusual to have the students take the side of the defensive party. What is unusual is that they actually said it out loud. That sounds like either you lost control of the class, or they felt comfortable enough to you to criticize you in front of the class. (That is probably a false dilemma) Again, that is easier with someone who is not their professor.
From your later comments, it seems like the latter. But TE seems to be taking the former. It sounded to me like you were picking on them, but I did not assume you were being overly harsh.
Sure, I was mocking pen chewer a little bit to get him to lighten up and answer the question. But, he further retreated into himself.
This reinforces the "picking on them" interpretation. You cannot mock without picking on someone (trust me, I know). And that he retreated into himself could mean many things... could be thinking about things, hitting too close, or thinking about football and just wanting to get out of class, or whatever... deciphering the human mind when it speaks is hard enough. When silent, near impossible. But it is easy to read this as hitting too hard.
You interpret the women's behavior as rushing to protect the fragile male ego. You know more about such things than I. You are probably right that something is interesting about it. But perhaps it is only interesting in a context where you think the protection is unnecessary, and then you can ask "what is it about gender that makes the women act this way?" In another context, one that TE seems to have assumed, you have students defending students they see as picked on and attacked. That story sounds interesting in a totally different way.
TE was harsh in the last two paragraphs, but doesn't say much harsh before that. But by that time, TE seems to have settled on a harsh interpretation of the day's events, in which case TE's harsh tone makes more sense.
Also:
Jeff, yes, we're all aware of your past expressions of indebtedness to this blogger for your own intellectual development. It's quite well overstated in this blog.
Comes as news to me, and I've been reading the blog for a while. I didn't even know there was any indebtedness. How could I miss such an overstated claim?
Catherine D. Edwards.
Institutional Johnism: Male Dominance in SW 754
Affilia 1995 10: 328-334
This article is one of my favorites, as it is written by a student. It even has the student tone of citing the literature--you will recognize it when you see it. But it does a great job of helping female students critically see their own caretaking behaviors and the ways we "protect" males in the classroom. I have used it to spark conversations about these kind of dynamics.
It is a dance to engage with students you don't know, and you have to build some trust and get to know the group.
Also, be sure to prep the students for the rape and other violence. It is terrible and could be a real issue for survivors.
Good luck! And do write about how the second class goes!
That's a remarkable degree of class bonding, if one student feels like they can say what another one is feeling on order to defend them to you. On the other hand, not surprising that it would happen in Intro to Gender and Sexuality--where everyone comes in with their own complex and emotionally-charged folk theories of the material. Once earlier this semester I sat in on my college's equivalent class, and had a very strong feeling of being an interloper, of being put in a combative position just by saying what I felt like I had to. I can only imagine how much more that would hold for a discussion leader.
As for the idea of violence-as-masculinity, I wonder what cultural traits determine this. At my school, public violence is almost unheard-of; sleaziness toward women and monastic introversion seem to be the closest equivalents to what you're describing. At my high school, massive drug use was the thing. Is it a liberal/conservative thing? A class thing? Something to do with the gender ratios in the environments?
Also, be sure to prep the students for the rape and other violence. It is terrible and could be a real issue for survivors.
This is really important advice!
And, yes, I do agree that I would need more time to really get the trust of the male students. I agree that my joking around with them had a great deal of potential to go the wrong way given the content of the course.
That is a very provocative film. I would not have shown it in a class. As a matter of fact, I would not show films in a college class in regular class time.
I would proceed with the rigor that feminist theory demands and make those students read basic texts and write about them.
Commenting by HaloScan
