Mike Levy wrote:
> [W]hen 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.
It's funny. I get the sense that students actually are more receptive to
feminist theory/criticism when it's a man who is teaching it to them. I
don't know if that's true or not in all cases, but definitely when I've
taught essays and stories written from a feminist perspective, the students
tend to be more receptive to it than when my women colleagues have
attempted to teach the same material. Maybe it's because they never
realized that men could be feminists, and as you said it's easier to argue
with someone who might, more obviously, fit the stereotype of a radical
feminist.
Erik
Erik Tsao
Graduate Student
Department of English
Wayne State University
Detroit, MI
"The naked Senses sometimes see too little -- but then _always_ they see
too much."
--Edgar Allan Poe
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu May 25 2000 - 19:06:27 PDT