...does their behavior reflect a trauma, an injury, a pattern of injuries that have made them profoundly self-protective and cynical?...is feminism the vehicle by which they express a kind of temperamental grumpiness?
Those might be interrelated. The past negative experiences may have impacted their feminism such that it expresses their negative view of men.
Am I one of those happily delusional types (some research suggests that cheerful people are more delusional about reality than depressed types)?
You're happy. So long as it isn't a form of mania, does it matter? We're all delusional to a degree. Their delusions negatively impact their worldview. Yours, it seems, positively impacts yours. Take the breaks when you get 'em.
I may be oversimplifying things a bit, but.... Are we to assume that your older colleagues are in their late 50's or 60's, perhaps older? If so, the time period of when they were attending university and then trying to be taken seriously as an academic is part of the answer. When they began their career, these women were a small minority of the staff, likely populated by men 20, 30 plus years their senior, who were born in the first third of the 20th century. These men already had the mindset that a woman's place was in the home, maybe as a secretary or waitress, but certainly not a college professor or administrator.
Therefore, these women have spent their entire career fighting for every scrap of credibility, when the one place they should've been able to count on for support (their own department, college, workplace, etc.) wasn't there for them. What if they had gotten married and (gasp) had a family? My guess is they would have been pilloried. They just see the promise in you as an educator and want to protect you from the pitfalls they had to endure. Hence, men are all jerks and can't be trusted.
That said, there are still plenty of bias against women (and others) in the workplace (unfortunately no big revelation). I have worked with men (mostly older), who have no interest in hiring a woman. These guys think that they will just get pregnant. ....and this is in the last 20 years.
As you are well aware, you get to stand on the shoulders of these women.
I do agree with SpecialK's point that these attitudes were likely formed at a time where women really had to fight to be taken seriously at all, and if she was, she wasn't "really a woman," but some kind of freak.
That said, I share your frustration. If one cannot adapt to the times, progress is ignored, and people get stuck in a defensive and hostile attitude that serves no one.
Subtle (and not so subtle) aspects of sexism in academia will continue to rear their heads (I'm still frustrated that no one was witness to the "You Did It!" My Fair Lady-esque mutual congratulation fest over my tenure when we were in Nashville), but if we take every instance of this as a sign that men are inherently hopeless, hostile, leches, we'll miss the progress that is actually being made. No human being can successfully be a walking manifesto against injustice (and the ones who try are REALLY annoying)--we're all somewhat self-contradictory people with our strong moments and weak moments. I think it's more honest (less self-deluded) to recognize that fact than to demonize people into characters better suited to a Little Red Riding Hood fairytale.
Spaz,
You sound like Obama when he gave his speech on race distinguishing between his generation and that of Rev. Wright. Seems like the same principle. They had to fight to create a world different. The world is different and therefore so too are those who emerge from it.
Been thinking about your exact point these last two days as I am looking through apps for the sabbatical replacement of a friend of ours. We have a very congenial dept that prides ourselves on working closely with students. One mark that I take seriously in favor of candidates is when students write positive comments on evaluations that use the candidate's first name, especially if it is a nick name. If they say "Kate was an amazing prof!!!!" I will take it much more seriously than "Dr. Johnson was was a wonderful prof!!!!" because it demonstrates a comfort, a connection that is pedagogically advantageous and therefore it stands as evidence of effective teaching. Yet, I do recall that part of the advice given by these older female profs was to insist on the use of titles to demonstrate power and position. It is advice that seems to work against those they were trying to help.
Specialk,
When I wrote my entry, I knew that I would invite a comment like yours. I know your analysis is dead on. I can give all sorts of charitable explanations for why women of a certain generation are bitter.
And yet, there is the living with it. As *I* and SteveG have pointed out, we have made progress. And, we need to honor that progress.
I remember my mother telling me a story from the late 60's. She was at a philosophy department function, when a member of the department her age came up to her and asked her in a sneering, condescending way (and I know the guy, he is one of the best at that), "What is a woman doing in philosophy?" Combine the sexism with the hostility of analytic vs continental (he was a disciple of a famed Analytic philosopher, she did her dissertation on Nietzsche's concept of time), and that she had just joined the department... a recipe for disaster. Big fight.
Well, how can that sort of thing not frame your worldview? All though my mother can laugh about it now, she didn't laugh when she was denied tenure.
Hanno--
But is your mother matronizing now?
Well, my mother is, uh, different. (btw she was asked to review a mutual former colleagues book recently. Small world). I can't fit her into any category. At all.
But I cannot see her trying to protect others, and she seems well aware that her situation is quite different from today's situation. And she is not hostile at all. But then she went through much worse times growing up. Once you have your house blown up, lose everything, and have your mother killed all in one day, everything else is gravy, if you look at it right.
And this: Men are either sexist pigs or lecherous. In this worldview, no woman is capable of being warm, nurturing toward students and colleagues, cheerful and congenial WITHOUT it being read as unprofessional or unserious. Moreover, in this worldview, sexist pricks are out with their fangs at every turn. No man is to ever be trusted completely. is most definitely not her world view. Her closest working colleagues were with men, for example, and I never heard one word against men, not even about the guy mentioned above. Not even when I took a class from him.
I heard the story not as an example of the behavior of a sexist, but as a story between feminist philosophy vs non-feminist philosophy. That is, she thought the way in which genders do philosophy may well differ, and that difference was displayed in the story. She thought perhaps the other guy could not see what she was doing as philosophy because her questions/style were not his, and thought maybe gender was part of the equation.
Are you using the word matronizing just because the people involved are women? Because it sounds patronizing to me, ie, buying into the general "men ARE pigs, and protect yourselves from them". Even if the "protecting" methods differ a bit.
I'm not sure what matronizing even means. I'm not sure it's one of those words you can just flip around like actor or actress depending on the gender of who is involved. Because patriarchy is an institution, not a person or even composed of only men.
Anon--
I am using the word in a tongue-in-cheek way. I do mean patronizing.
Women of my age have always been slammed on the basis of our gender and know that the older a woman gets the worse it gets. They are warning you (mixing metaphors) that your shelf life is limited and that you had better get all your ducks in a row if you expect to reach your professional goals.
Don't be naive.
Look at what Hillary Clinton has gone through. She is a good model (and cautionary tale) for any woman who wants to succeed. My husband puts it well: there is nothing wrong with being a woman, but if push comes to shove, your gender will be used against you. If you are not encountering antagonism from men and female "fellow travellers" it means that you are not a threat, which means you are underachieving.
"Matronizing" definitely exists, distinct from "Patronizing". Both are typically enacted by opinionated Baby Boomers, and Gen-X and Gen-Y-ers are usually on the receiving end of it (I see a big difference between the generations here). Both patronizing and matronizing are used to re-inforce assumptions about relative status, no matter how "helpful" the person with the "upper hand" is pretending to be. It's really all about them.
I think both genders experience "matronizing" in different ways. For example, I happen to work with a lot of young men who have recently become parents. There's one very vocal boomer in the office who is outpokenly feminist, and who continually takes a berating or scolding tone with the young fathers in the office when she's offering her "friendly advice" on parenting. She always finds ways to subtly suggest to them that they're somehow letting their wives down. Everyone finds it obnoxious but no one calls her on it. That's only one example - I can think of a number of others. So "matronizing" is definitely a real interpersonal dynamic.
I think the age gap is definitely the issue distinguishing your perceptions of gender relations from those of the "matronizers." However, I think it goes beyond simply generational experiences. I think you also have to think about the contexts that age create for perceptions of those around you.
My point: you are young, blond, hip - sporting a tatoo, and with pop culture references at the ready. To anyone under 40 you are perceived as the "cool older sister." You may not feel or be treated as matronly because you are not viewed as a "mother." (Okay, you are, but only just recently!)
Now consider the matronizers giving you advice. Not only did they come of age in a very different context of gender relations and expectations, but when they interact with the same people you do they are perceived as older women, women who probably have raised children and who have that quality. Their perceptions come not just from their experiences twenty years ago when they were 35 but also today, when they are 55.
So I think that, while the environment may have changed for a 35 year old woman in the past 20 years, their failure to recognize changes that you perceive may be attributable not to stubbornness but simply to the fact that their reality is not the same as yours - never has been and never will be....
Ricardo
Ricardo,
Very insightful. I guess its the bitterness and pessimism that gets me down. And, sometimes the schadenfreude.
I don't think it boils down to a matter of subjective perception. Lots of women (and men) from that generation don't power-trip by patronizing or matronizing people around them. If people feel consistently aggressed (even if it's in a passive-aggressive way), then it's more than an inter-generational communication mis-match. This person just has an "issue".
On a related note, this reminds me of a Salon.com article I read a long time ago:
"Women's Way of Bullying" http://www.salon.com/jan97/
women...omen970113.html
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