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Personal experiences now, bibliographic references this evening
I was thinking about my reply to Mark Nowacki about whether or not
argumentative discourse is gendered and realized something.
All my life from grade school to now as a doctoral student, I have been
often the only or one of a very few females in my classes to speak up in
class discussion. Even now, in phd level courses with highly intelligent men
and women, I am very often the only woman to speak in class discussion. The
only other who speaks on a semi-regular basis is a lesbian. The other women
in my classes-- a southern belle, a Texan, and a Russian--barely speak out
in class once a month. Oddly enough, one man in the classes I've taken is
the subject of gentle comedy, for he too never speaks, but no one mentions
the fact the three women I speak of do not speak in class either. And yet in
a feminist reading group of which I and these women are a part, they are
quite willing to speak and raise issues.
In the classes I've taught, only one group of women is consistently willing
to speak out in class discussion--black women. In fact, one day Mona, a
black welfare mother in her 20s at a community college and studying to be a
health technician, specifically pointed out the fact that young white women
of the 101 class sat silent, unwilling to speak. Interestingly enough, Mona
made her point in a class discussion following the viewing of the movie
Schindler's List. In that discussion, one of the young white men of the
class was expressing his amazement that the Jews did not resist. Mona (and
this is the sort of scene that makes a teacher proud) was making the
connection between the experiences of the Jews in Poland, her own black
experience, and the silence of the 18-year-old white girls in the classroom.
laurie
======================================================================
Laurie Cubbison
Co-moderator of fop-l with Alan
cubbison@holli.com
: Sondheim at fop-l@vm.cc.purdue.edu
cubbison@sage.cc.purdue.edu
Read, write and discuss fictional
http://sage.cc.purdue.edu/~cubbison philosophy/philosophical fiction
======================================================================
*************
Subject: Re: gendered communication--sources
From: Laurie Cubbison (cubbison@HOLLI.COM
Thu, 14 Mar 1996 19:44:52 -0500
"A Woman Mistress" --Helene Cixous and Catherine Clement; _The Newly Born Woman_
"H: I use rhetorical discourse, the discourse of mastery, orally, for
example, with my students, and obviously I do it on purpose; it is a refusal
on my part to leave organized discourse entirely in men's power."(136)
"H: There will not be *one* feminine discourse, there will be thousands of
different kinds of feminine words, and then there will be the code for
general communication, philosophical discourse, rhetoric like now but with a
great number of subversive discourses in addition that are something else
entirely." (137)
"H: ....Only those peoples who already have a relationship of mastery, who
already have dealings with culture, who are saturated with culture, have
ever dared have access to the discourse that the master gives." (139)
"H:... But rather than mastery coinciding with knowledge, I would say that,
with few exceptions, knowledge is constantly caught up in, is entrapped by a
will for power. I know which people conveying knowledge don't seem to be
dealing with the exercise of power. There are very few. In reality, most of
the people I know make use of knowledge, consciously or unconsciously, and
use it for something else or for themselves." (144)
"H:.... There is something in woman's libidinal organization that doesn't
enjoy this kind of discourse . . . .
"C: When you say that, you are moving in the direction of the women who say
that feminine discourse can only come from splitting?
"H: No. I was very exact. I said, "Woman doesn't enjoy herself in it." I
never said she was incapable of it. And I am sure of it--femininity doesn't
enjoy itself there."
laurie
*************
Subject: Re: gendered communication
Andrew Libby (alibby@PANIX.COM)
Thu, 14 Mar 1996 22:35:42 -0500
Stupid question: Is Mona also a lesbian?
--Andrew
On Thu, 14 Mar 1996, Laurie Cubbison wrote:
> Personal experiences now, bibliographic references this evening
>
> I was thinking about my reply to Mark Nowacki about whether or not
> argumentative discourse is gendered and realized something.
>
[[snip]]
*************
Subject: Re: gendered communication
Nowacki Mark R (scotus@PACIFIC.NET.SG)
Fri, 15 Mar 1996 14:02:47 +0730
Dear Ms. Cubbison,
You wrote:
>Personal experiences now, bibliographic references this evening
>
>I was thinking about my reply to Mark Nowacki about whether or not
>argumentative discourse is gendered and realized something.
>
>All my life from grade school to now as a doctoral student, I have been
>often the only or one of a very few females in my classes to speak up in
>class discussion. Even now, in phd level courses with highly intelligent men
>and women, I am very often the only woman to speak in class discussion. The
>only other who speaks on a semi-regular basis is a lesbian. The other women
>in my classes-- a southern belle, a Texan, and a Russian--barely speak out
>in class once a month. Oddly enough, one man in the classes I've taken is
>the subject of gentle comedy, for he too never speaks, but no one mentions
>the fact the three women I speak of do not speak in class either. And yet in
>a feminist reading group of which I and these women are a part, they are
>quite willing to speak and raise issues.
>
>In the classes I've taught, only one group of women is consistently willing
>to speak out in class discussion--black women. In fact, one day Mona, a
>black welfare mother in her 20s at a community college and studying to be a
>health technician, specifically pointed out the fact that young white women
>of the 101 class sat silent, unwilling to speak. Interestingly enough, Mona
>made her point in a class discussion following the viewing of the movie
>Schindler's List. In that discussion, one of the young white men of the
>class was expressing his amazement that the Jews did not resist. Mona (and
>this is the sort of scene that makes a teacher proud) was making the
>connection between the experiences of the Jews in Poland, her own black
>experience, and the silence of the 18-year-old white girls in the classroom.
If you think American white females are quiet in class, you ought to try
teaching in Asia, where the students are more reticient to start with due
to cultural factors. By some odd stroke of fate, last semester two of the
classes I taught were single-sex: one entirely male, the other entirely
female. The male class was perhaps slightly more vocal than the usual
gender mix; the female class...I put more effort into that class than I
have ever done before. Supportiveness, cajoling, sternness, frequent
praise, etc.: I went through all my bag of tricks. By the end of the
semester, that class was still less vocal than my usual gener-mixed
classes. Which I found quite odd, to say the least. My average female
student in a gender-mixed class, while less vocal than her average male
counterpart, still talked more than the average female from this single-sex
class. All this flies in the face of my university experience in the
States: there, classes comprized of a majority of females seemed to bring
out the voices of the usually silent. The only plausible explanation I've
been able to come up with is that cultural factors came into play: the
ideal of the quiet "ladylike" female is still a controlling paradigm in
Singapore, and the opinions females are most sensitive to in judging
ladylike-ness are the opinions of other females. Sort of like the common
phenomenon of women being more sensitive to how other women look. Any
thoughts on the matter would be appreciated.
Sincerely,
Mark R. Nowacki
"Omne quod movetur ab alio movetur."
*************
Subject: Re: gendered communication
From: Laurie Cubbison (cubbison@HOLLI.COM)
Fri, 15 Mar 1996 07:51:08 -0500
At 10:35 PM 3/14/96, Andrew Libby wrote:
>Stupid question: Is Mona also a lesbian?
>
>--Andrew
>
>
Not as far I know. She is a black woman in her mid-20s, a mother, was on
welfare at the time I taught her, overweight, had been a certified nursing
assistant, and was studying to be a medical technician. The difference is in
socialization. Consistently, the black women I have had in my classes have
been much more willing to speak in class. I've discussed this with a friend
here who is a black man who was uncomfortable with the silence of the white
women in our graduate classes, two of whom said once that interrupting was
rude, but who never got a chance to talk because they never interrupt in the
discussion. I'm weird this way. I'll speak up in class, but get me in a
social situation and I'm very quiet unless I happen to know something about
the topic in question. But Tyson was uncomfortable because he said that in
the predominantly black colleges he had come out of, a very freewheeling
discussion with many people talking was common, but that here he
occasionally felt like he was the one dominating the discussion and others
were not speaking. I've thought about this a lot, and I think a lot has to
do with socialization of white women in American culture to be 'ladylike'.
laurie
*************
Subject: Re: gendered communication
From: Jane Hudson (jhudson@WORLD.STD.COM)
Fri, 15 Mar 1996 11:20:31 -0500
I haven't posted for a while but this issue is quite relevant to a
converatsion I just had with a grad student of mine. She's in her
forties, married with children, lives in a woodsy place, and makes work
about the land and its processes in video, sound and sculpture (materials
of the land itself). She is quite quiet in class, and has a feeling of
being overwhelmed by the male discourse-level, as she sees it. Even the
medium carries a gendered quality for her, with video and the electronic
media carrying the most male-karma. She wants to make a "feminine" work,
and feels that her efforts at conversation in these coed contexts will be
completely off the mark. Wrong level stuff. So this is not a militant
woman but I feel a lot of anger there.
Jane
On Thu, 14 Mar 1996, Andrew Libby wrote:
> Stupid question: Is Mona also a lesbian?
>
> --Andrew
[[snip]]
*************
Subject: Re: gendered communication
From: Kathryn T. Ziehm (kziehm@igc.apc.org)
Date: Fri, 15 Mar 1996 21:40:41 +0000
At 10:35 PM 3/14/96, Andrew Libby wrote:
>Stupid question: Is Mona also a lesbian?
>
Laurie Cubbison wrote:
>Not as far I know. She is a black woman in her mid-20s,
<snip>
>I've thought about this a lot, and I think a lot has to
>do with socialization of white women in American culture to be 'ladylike'.
opportunity to discuss with Lani Guinier her findings on the
silencing effects of gay bashing on female law school students, I
would say that these two elements are closely related. The threat of
being branded a lesbian is an effective tool in controlling all sorts
of behavior by young women who have not yet gained the confidence
that comes in later years.
What is heartening to me is that my own generation (X) is creating
spaces online where people can speak out and interact regardless of
gender, race, or orientation. Frankly, we are trying to escape the
efforts of older people to make us pawns in their ideological wars,
so we tend to stay out of these types of discussions.
Kathryn Ziehm
*************
Subject: Re: gendered communication
From: Laurie Cubbison (cubbison@HOLLI.COM)
Fri, 15 Mar 1996 21:44:17 -0500
At 02:02 PM 3/15/96 +0730, Nowacki Mark R. wrote:
>
>
>If you think American white females are quiet in class, you ought to try
>teaching in Asia, where the students are more reticient to start with due
>to cultural factors. By some odd stroke of fate, last semester two of the
>classes I taught were single-sex: one entirely male, the other entirely
>female. The male class was perhaps slightly more vocal than the usual
>gender mix; the female class...I put more effort into that class than I
>have ever done before. Supportiveness, cajoling, sternness, frequent
>praise, etc.: I went through all my bag of tricks. By the end of the
>semester, that class was still less vocal than my usual gener-mixed
>classes. Which I found quite odd, to say the least. My average female
>student in a gender-mixed class, while less vocal than her average male
>counterpart, still talked more than the average female from this single-sex
>class. All this flies in the face of my university experience in the
>States: there, classes comprized of a majority of females seemed to bring
>out the voices of the usually silent. The only plausible explanation I've
>been able to come up with is that cultural factors came into play: the
>ideal of the quiet "ladylike" female is still a controlling paradigm in
>Singapore, and the opinions females are most sensitive to in judging
>ladylike-ness are the opinions of other females. Sort of like the common
>phenomenon of women being more sensitive to how other women look. Any
>thoughts on the matter would be appreciated.
>
I have two thoughts on this. The first you have already observed: the lives
of Asian women are very circumscribed in terms of the acceptability of
behavior and definitions of 'ladylike'. But I think perhaps these students
are doubly inhibited, for not only are they unfamiliar with a masculine
discourse of speech within their own cultures, I suspect that they are also
unfamiliar with the Western discourse that you are teaching in the
classroom. One, they are socialized by a culture that often enforces silence
for women. Two, the culture within which they live likely does not educate
students, male or female, from childhood in Western academic discourse, so
that the discourse you are expecting may be difficult for Asian males as
well as the women. And, judging by your posts, I dare say your classroom
discourse is steeped in the Western logical tradition. Perhaps your
discourse intimidates them. Perhaps in order to evoke the kinds of responses
you want from your students, you might try to build a bridge from their
discourse to yours. If I were a teacher in this situation, I would raise
this question with one of the Asian teachers who might have built such a
bridge between Asian and Western discourse for him or herself.
laurie
*************
Subject: Re: gendered communication
From: Dobie (hoberman@HUSC.HARVARD.EDU)
Date: Sat, 16 Mar 1996 13:08:09 -0500
On Fri, 15 Mar 1996, Kathryn T. Ziehm wrote:
> What is heartening to me is that my own generation (X) is creating
> spaces online where people can speak out and interact regardless of
> gender, race, or orientation. Frankly, we are trying to escape the
> efforts of older people to make us pawns in their ideological wars,
> so we tend to stay out of these types of discussions.
As someone who would (apparently) fall within domain (x), this raises
some interesting questions.
It *is* heartening that there are these spaces online to speak - but many
of them are far from free of stresses on gender, race (odd typo, I almost
wrote 'face' here ;-), and orientation. If that's not already
evident, I can always throw in a few examples later.
Ocassionally I've found that the same people who intently discuss such
things "the feminine is uncomfortable with this [masculine?] discourse"
end up reifying the very concepts that divide us. As an example, there
are different ways of discourse that has been instilled in men vs. women. But
I'd be wary of labeling something "a masculine/feminine discourse"
because again, there we are falling into the trap of yet another binary
opposition.
Mind you, I'm also quite interested in gender issues, and have been
following this thread closely (which is why I quoted one of Laurie's sources)
. I'm *not* saying that these differences don't exist, or that they
shouldn't be studied - they should, and have been, by a number of people
who have done some excellent work.
Kathryn, as far as you last comment (not getting involved) ... if we
don't write the ideology/discourse for "our" generation, then who will?
dobie
*************
Subject: Re: gendered communication
From: Nowacki Mark R. (scotus@PACIFIC.NET.SG)
Date: Sun, 17 Mar 1996 03:58:52 +0730
Dear Ms. Cubbison,
Thank you for replying to my request for suggestions on teaching. You wrote:
>At 02:02 PM 3/15/96 +0730, Nowacki Mark R. wrote:
>>
>>
>>If you think American white females are quiet in class, you ought to try
>>teaching in Asia, where the students are more reticient to start with due
>>to cultural factors. By some odd stroke of fate, last semester two of the
>>classes I taught were single-sex: one entirely male, the other entirely
>>female. The male class was perhaps slightly more vocal than the usual
>>gender mix; the female class...I put more effort into that class than I
>>have ever done before. Supportiveness, cajoling, sternness, frequent
>>praise, etc.: I went through all my bag of tricks. By the end of the
>>semester, that class was still less vocal than my usual gener-mixed
>>classes. Which I found quite odd, to say the least. My average female
>>student in a gender-mixed class, while less vocal than her average male
>>counterpart, still talked more than the average female from this single-sex
>>class. All this flies in the face of my university experience in the
>>States: there, classes comprized of a majority of females seemed to bring
>>out the voices of the usually silent. The only plausible explanation I've
>>been able to come up with is that cultural factors came into play: the
>>ideal of the quiet "ladylike" female is still a controlling paradigm in
>>Singapore, and the opinions females are most sensitive to in judging
>>ladylike-ness are the opinions of other females. Sort of like the common
>>phenomenon of women being more sensitive to how other women look. Any
>>thoughts on the matter would be appreciated.
>>
>
>I have two thoughts on this. The first you have already observed: the lives
>of Asian women are very circumscribed in terms of the acceptability of
>behavior and definitions of 'ladylike'. But I think perhaps these students
>are doubly inhibited, for not only are they unfamiliar with a masculine
>discourse of speech within their own cultures, I suspect that they are also
>unfamiliar with the Western discourse that you are teaching in the
>classroom. One, they are socialized by a culture that often enforces silence
>for women. Two, the culture within which they live likely does not educate
>students, male or female, from childhood in Western academic discourse, so
>that the discourse you are expecting may be difficult for Asian males as
>well as the women.
Unfortunately, it isn't that simple. This is Singapore, not (to pick a
random example) Thailand. The first language of the country is English; the
official language of instruction is English; the school system follows the
British model; and Singaporeans are at least as much inheritors of Western
culture as they are of their own particular ethnic culture (be it some
Chinese dialect group, Malay culture, or Indian (Tamil) culture). Not only
are Singaporeans acquainted with Western academic discourse, all of the
students I have been teaching have never been exposed to anything else.
There are, for instance, no more Chinese-language schools; and there
haven't been any such for some time now. Beyond all this, of course, I am
quite familiar with Singaporean culture: my wife is Singaporean, almost all
of my local friends are Singaporean (the non-Singaporean ones tend to be
from South-East Asia anyways), I have very little contact with the
expatriate community, and, basically, I'm fairly attuned to cultural
differences. I have had to be; otherwise, I would never have become
comfortable living here.
>And, judging by your posts, I dare say your classroom
>discourse is steeped in the Western logical tradition. Perhaps your
>discourse intimidates them. Perhaps in order to evoke the kinds of responses
>you want from your students, you might try to build a bridge from their
>discourse to yours. If I were a teacher in this situation, I would raise
>this question with one of the Asian teachers who might have built such a
>bridge between Asian and Western discourse for him or herself.
Well, as for "steeped in the Western logical tradition", you are of course
right...seeing as I'm teaching them formal logic. I have to say, though,
that your analyis bothers me. The problem with this type of explanation is
that it threatens to be extremely patronizing. There is a short step from
saying: we have to be aware of each other's cultural differences; to: we
cannot understand each other because of our cultural differences. The idea
of building a bridge from their discourse to mine, as you put it, is
certainly important: for instance, I deliberately mix bazaar Malay and
Singlish expressions into my discourse. No, these are decent kids, and I
have no problems about challenging them to expand their own intellectual
horizons. (That I am generally sucessful at doing so I suppose comes out in
the fact that my students as a whole outscore the groups taught by anybody
else in the department. <Proud grin> ) To put the situation I describe down
to an inability to effect cross-cultural communication is to denigrate not
just me (which I could live with) but to denigrate the intelligence of my
students (which I certainly will not permit). For all my teacherly
grumbling about my students, I'm generally quite proud of them. The problem
goes deeper than that. Since I do not have difficulties relating to female
students one-to-one, or even have any difficulty getting females to talk in
a gender-mixed environment, my experience with this solidly female class is
puzzling in the extreme. The lack of vocal participation was exactly the
opposite of what I expected at the start of the semester: I expected the
class to follow the Western model you describe, where a preponderence of
females brings out womens' voices. Maybe I was just the subject of a
statistical anomoly; but if I wasn't, then I would like to know what aspect
of socialization accounts for this behavior. It isn't just a question of me
intimidating my students; the silence seems to come from an extreme female
sensitivity and awareness of each other. What I was really hoping for was a
personal, female-perspectived view of the matter. My own wife confesses to
being puzzled by the phenomenon. (Are there any Asian members of Cybermind
that might be able to help me out here?) Laurie, your account strikes me as
being too close to the American PC orthodoxy to do more than scratch the
surface here. Please, please...try approaching the problem from the more
personal perspective you brought to the discussion of the silence of white
women in your classes. Comments that come from your experience are most
insightful and valuable.
Thank you for having taken the time to respond to my earlier comments. I
look forward to hearing from you when you get the chance.
Sincerely,
Mark R. Nowacki
"Omne quod movetur ab alio movetur."
*************
Subject: Re: gendered communication
From: Laurie Cubbison (cubbison@HOLLI.COM)
Date: Sat, 16 Mar 1996 15:45:57 -0500
Mark Nowacki,
thank you for the further description of your classes. I have a couple of
thoughts which may or may not be any more helpful than the others. The first
may be that as a group they are waiting for others to be bold enough to
speak. I have been in classes like this. In the mixed class one of the males
can speak first possibly and break the ice for the rest, but perhaps the
women aren't quite bold enough individually to speak first, to break
silence. It might be also a matter of length of comfortable silence. I've
had professors ask questions and then wait for someone to answer. Often I
would answer just because the silence had gone longer than i was comfortable
with. I was talking about this sort of thing with other grad students here
once. A Japanese grad student said that she used this with her students in
the 101 class, that since she had a long wait time, she would just stand and
wait for them to break the silence. I've been trying to do this as well with
my students, but I tend to break down too soon and answer the questions myself.
laurie
*************
Subject: Re: gendered communication
From: Josephine Rodriguez-Hewitt (hewitt@HUMNET.UCLA.EDU)
Date: Sun, 17 Mar 1996 06:31:41 +0800
At 02:02 PM 3/15/96 +0730, Mark Nowacki wrote:
<snip>
>By some odd stroke of fate, last semester two of the
>classes I taught were single-sex: one entirely male, the other entirely
>female. The male class was perhaps slightly more vocal than the usual
>gender mix; the female class...I put more effort into that class than I
>have ever done before. Supportiveness, cajoling, sternness, frequent
>praise, etc.: I went through all my bag of tricks. By the end of the
>semester, that class was still less vocal than my usual gener-mixed
>classes. Which I found quite odd, to say the least. My average female
>student in a gender-mixed class, while less vocal than her average male
>counterpart, still talked more than the average female from this single-sex
>class. All this flies in the face of my university experience in the
>States: there, classes comprized of a majority of females seemed to bring
>out the voices of the usually silent. The only plausible explanation I've
>been able to come up with is that cultural factors came into play: the
>ideal of the quiet "ladylike" female is still a controlling paradigm in
>Singapore, and the opinions females are most sensitive to in judging
>ladylike-ness are the opinions of other females. Sort of like the common
>phenomenon of women being more sensitive to how other women look. Any
>thoughts on the matter would be appreciated.
>
>Sincerely,
>
>Mark R. Nowacki
>
You are leaving yourself out of the story. The class may have had only
female students but the instructor -- the authority figure -- was still a
man !! This fact may have made it even more difficult for the students to
speak up.
Josie
P.S. I am also a grad student. Unlike Laurie, I am usually fairly quiet in
class. My being fairly quiet gets misinterpreted. Faculty and other
graduate students tend to assume that I am quiet because I have been
socialized to not speak up and try to "encourage" me to speak up. (Needless
to say I find this annoying and more than slightly paternalistic.) The
problem is that (a) I am not very talkative in any setting; (b) speaking up
seems to be less natural for me than for my colleagues because my _academic_
background is in math and here there are far fewer reasons to engage in
debate than in the humanities; and (c) I am not given to making off the cuff
remarks (I feel that much of what gets said in the seminars I have taken are
off the cuff remarks).
I only speak up if I think that the conclusions being made are grossly
wrong. This does not happen all that often. If the conclusions are only
slightly off I am less likely to speak up.
I do not think of myself as the "lady-like" type and no I am not a lesbian.