>
> I taught Samuel Delany's _Tales from Nerveryon_ last year in a freshman
> composition class. The odd thing is that the students didn't seem to
> complain about the presence of a homosexual relationship between Gorgik and
> Small Sarg. It was the women who were most open to reading and discussing
> these issues. The male students seemed to be somewhat discomforted by the
> reading material. On the other hand, a colleague of mine really focused on
> sexuality and feminism in her class and received a huge amount of
> resistance from her students. Here's an interesting question. Would this
> have something to do with the differences in gender between myself and my
> colleague? Do students tend to respect male teachers and their
> idiosyncratic interests more than female teachers and their interests?
>
> Erik
>
Erik, I'm going to hazard a guess, based on my own experience, that you
got away with discussing Delany's gay stories without too much
resistance, in part, because your male students were so uncomfortable
that they couldn't bring themselves to say anything.
I also know from experience that it can be easier for a male teacher than
a female teacher to get away with discussing feminist and gender-related
topics in class, at least when it comes to dealing with less advanced
students. I share the teaching of children's literature classes in my
department with another colleague. My female colleague and I developed our
syllabus together and we both deal with such controversial topics as gender
roles, same-sex marriages, kids deciding that they're gay, sex education,
child abuse, and incest, and their presentation in books for children.
Because we developed the syllabus together, I know that my colleague and I
are pretty much in agreement on these topics. Neither of us is notably more
radical in our thinking than the other, despite the fact that Virginia is
an out lesbian whereas I'm hetrosexual.
Yet, when it comes to class discussion (and also teacher evaluation forms),
Virginia gets a lot more resistance than I do. Partly, I expect, it's the
whole gender-based respect thing (female teachers often have to work harder
to gain their students' respect than do male teachers), but it also has to
do with the students not knowing quite what to make of a male teacher talking
a feminist line. Because my colleague fits their stereotyped idea of a
radical feminist, she's easier to argue with.
Mike Levy
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu May 25 2000 - 19:06:27 PDT