In a somewhat indirect way, some of what I was writing in this post, experientially actually ties together with this issue: the can be a sort of gendering around levels of abstraction of theoretical work – certainly the folks at my previous university who were encouraging me to explore my feminine side ;-P, would often also articulate that I might “as a woman” be well-positioned to grasp more concrete things… *sigh* ;-)

But none of this is intended to deny that academic spaces can generate their own instutional dynamics that should be subject to criticism. I don’t think that academic spaces are uniquely “removed” as institutions, but I wouldn’t, by the same token, expect them to have less distinctiveness that other sorts of institutional spaces – I don’t see an analysis of academic discourse and its institutionalisation per se as “idealist” – I just think the exceptionalisation of academic discourse can point in an idealist direction, if this makes sense? It’s where the real/unreal articulation of the specific institutional space starts being mobilised to express the distinctiveness of academic cultures, that I start worrying over whether this is how we should be articulating this problem.

Apologies for writing this in such a rush – no time today. And apologies in advance if I now need to leave things hanging for some time…

Take care

Scale changes the rules of consistency, so I don’t have a criticism. I’m just wondering how you’ve got these two moments of your thought and practice balanced.

The first time I was involved in a situation like this, I was a young teenager working for a newspaper – a male staff member was engaging in some very predatory behaviour (he had trapped me in a room and was threatening not to let me leave unless I allowed him to do various things – I got out of the situation because a security guard was going by on their rounds, and I called out for help…). This had apparently been going on for some time; other women had talked with a female security guard about the issue, but wouldn’t make formal complaints (I didn’t find out about any of this broader context until after I had agreed to speak with a manager formally).

At any rate: so I bring this complaint, and the management decision was to suspend the guy for three days without pay. ;-P The guy reacted to the news by telling his manager to fuck off. Trying to sexually assault a teenage girl gets you a three-day suspension; telling your manager to fuck off gets you fired. ;-P Of course, I was then responsible for getting the guy fired, and had to deal with a scary situation where the guy was hanging around outside the workplace for several weeks, waiting for me to get off work – the security guard fortunately noticed, and so I was having to be escorted between the building and my car…

Sorry – a bit over-literal, compared to what you were trying to thematise… ;-P And actually that can be part of the problem, as well: the assumption that things have to be so physically confrontational for there to be a problem… Although I’m still finding myself surprised by how overt things can still often be…

That said, the kind of advice I have had during my time at uni has been interesting. At one point during undergrad, I had an issue with a philosophy lecturer of the ‘he’ll engage with the points the boys raise, but not with mine’ variety. A female member of staff from another department, when I asked about it, said that yes, I could lodge an official complaint, but it probably wouldn’t do a whole lot, and probably would piss off the philosophy department, and… well, her advice in the end was just to let it go and move on. Another mentor, also feminist, advised pretty much the same. Even then, I had problems with the individualism of this kind of pragmatics (even though they are also regularly necessary). Given that there were structures in place to deal with these kinds of inequalities, and I was in a space that meant I was willing and able to pursue it, where others might not be, I decided Ishould do something about it. The meeting that ensued involved the denial I knew it would: ‘No! I’m careful about that kind of thing.’ I’d have more resources to come back at that these days, (uh, intention’s not enough, midear!) but not then… so it was raised, not really dealt with, and nothing really changed (well, not that I saw; I can hope otherwise, but who knows?).

The system, in other words, is remarkably resistant to alteration, especially to the extent that so many men refuse to see that there’s an issue, and refuse to see that their refusal to see it as the responsibility of *all* is actually part of the function of the system they wouldn’t explicitly condone. Or, you know, so I hope… :-)
(Phew! And I rant… ! Sorry, apparently being concise ain’t a strength of mine!)

On this:

I also think that Derrida misses something I think he usually does, which is that requiring women to be robust, to laugh off ‘objectively rude’ comments, to continue to challenge and refuse to shut up in the end reinforces the same old stuff: let’s make those who are *already* vulnerable (to, say, being ignored) responsible for people *not* ignoring them and at the same moment permit those who do the ignoring to be cast as innocent…

Again, it’s one of these situations that’s enormously difficult – and here, I’m not trying to make a comment about Derrida specifically, but about the more general dilemma of how, for example, do we advise female students or supervisees? How, on a practical level, do we navigate, and suggest that others navigate, these situations?

Because, of course, in situations where an individual has very little control over overarching dynamics, they might have some ability to influence outcomes for themselves and others by developing sort of an “above the call” capacity to manage their own reactions. I commented to Joe above that, among other consequences, of course, this strategy tends to advantage people who have a particular skillset that isn’t required of everyone, and that may have very little to do with the explicit requirements of particular professional positions. I’ve written a number of times previously here about being advantaged by a certain habit of reaction that I actually don’t “control” myself – the tendency to bracket things and process them later. It’s functional on a personal level – but arguably damaging on a collective one… At least, I can’t avoid the sinking sensation that it’s damaging…

There’s an awful line to be walked, on a personal level, but also on the level of how we prepare our female students for navigating their professional environment, between wanting certain structural situations to be transformed, and coaching people to navigate situations they may be powerless in any immediate sense to change…

None of which takes away from the critique you’re suggesting above (one of the things I think that troubles me the most about myself, is that people who have some sense of my background, then tend to use the “against-the-odds” character of it, to draw out some cheerful “look what the individual spirit can overcome with hard work and determination!” message – it makes me feel like a walking piece of ideology, even though I don’t at all endorse this interpretation of “me” and, every time I hear someone saying something like this in a professional space, I’m basically thinking, “You know, given the choice, I think I’d have opted for fewer ‘opportunities’ to show how it’s possible to ‘overcome’ things, thanks…” ;-P)

ICHELE Le Doeuff:

Discretion is obligatory when one slips into the room where a doctoral viva is being held. Indeed Sorbford University has inherited from its British past the conviction that such thing should not be public at all. Its French past, o…

It is, I think, interesting to see how *some* of the thorough-going challenges posed by *some*, usually male poststructuralists can be taken up and considered by male philosophers far more quickly than those of female philosophers. One of the few mentions of a feminist thinker in the context of phenomenology and existentialism was LeDoeuff, who engages with the deployment of feminine imagery as demonstrating the extent to which the whole gender binary is used to shore up philosophy. Yet the way it was taught, and the *reason* she was taken vaguely seriously was that the teacher implied that what we really need to do is avoid feminised references like Sartre’s ’slimy hole’s and ‘untouched white body of truth’. Yes, dear, it’s just that the *language* is *inaccurate*. That’s the whole of LeDoeuff’s point, apparently: “please cosmetically alter philosophy.” That, it would seem, is all that ‘women’s work’ is good for. Interesting – I hadn’t thought of that in a while, but it seems indicative of the whole thing…

I’ve thought about the whole individual vs structural thing before on my site a little, but this just reinforces what I tend to think about it: those who aren’t carrying the privilege in a particular situation *do* tend to assume that it’s just them, and I think that often (though obviously not always) it blocks the recognition of structural… asymmetries, shall we call them?

As far as movement is concerned (just to come back to that…); yeah, these kinds of considerations always wind up reminding me of ‘Women in the Beehive’ (I think that’s what it’s called) which is a Derrida piece about Women’s Studies, and about how it needs to be both within and without the ‘proper’ university. I agree with this, on the one hand, but I also think that Derrida misses something I think he usually does, which is that requiring women to be robust, to laugh off ‘objectively rude’ comments, to continue to challenge and refuse to shut up in the end reinforces the same old stuff: let’s make those who are *already* vulnerable (to, say, being ignored) responsible for people *not* ignoring them and at the same moment permit those who do the ignoring to be cast as innocent… And academic hazing… or hazing full stop does tend to be about requiring people to be *particular kinds* of people, and unfortunately, that tends to reinforce the elistist, sexist, racist and classist kinds of structures that already shape the university. I, uh, don’t like it; can you tell? ;-)

Speaking of LeDoeuff, I’m posting her breathtaking account over at mine to avoid taking up too much more space here…

the reason it so annoyed/annoys me that my courses were structured this way is because it seems reflective of the refusal of much of philosophy to actually take *seriously* the critiques of philosophy that are regularly dubbed ‘feminist philosophy’ (in an attempt, I think, to suggest it’s a discreet form of philosophy that doesn’t need to affect the rest of the discipline)

Yes – absolutely. And it leads to extremely complex situations – one reason, of course, the Haslanger article should highlight the issue of feminist philosophy, is that the marginalisation and, therefore, exoticisation of feminist writing feeds massively into the problem. And so, of course, it’s completely reasonable to try to tackle this exoticisation and assert the mainstream relevance of feminist writing – and yet this very act is double-edged, because, of course, to do this, you intrinsically have to thematise the differences between the concerns or the methodologies of feminist and existing mainstream work. This is, of course, how any field gets itself established – but since gender is multiply marked on so many different levels of practice… It’s just very difficult to work out a path of contestation that doesn’t get wrapped back into what it’s trying to contest (the example above, of people trying to contest the exploitation of female staff, and this then leading to open discussions of whether it is appropriate to hire female staff for certain roles, is an example of a perfectly reasonable form of contestation, then having completely unanticipated impacts as it comes to be refracted in the vast swirls of other grooves in thinking on gender – it becomes maddening to figure out how to address the issue effectively)…

And I think there can sometimes be a choice between stepping into the recognised, but marginalised and othered, space of being a female student or staff member who works on gender, or stepping into the othered and exotic space of being a female student or staff member who works on a mainstream issue… The available choices will all, for the time being at least, be marked.

On this:

I’ve had men raise concepts that have been ignored when I raised them, and watched a reconsideration of an entire theory take place… But of course, as with most of these things, it’s all to easy to think ‘it could just be me.’

Yes – this is the kind of situation that prompted the “Shit! A woman spoke!” example above. Relatively speaking, I have an easy time asserting myself in a public space – certainly there are guys who would have more trouble. Nevertheless, I tend to need to assert myself multiple times, and often to shake off what are probably “objectively” offensive initial reactions (people trying to “educate” me on basic issues that it should be clear I already know), several times, in order to get the person to stop lecturing, start listening, and realise that I am making a complex point that they might need to address. Unless. If a guy happens to pick up on my point, and reinforce it – and then a conversation erupts.

Now, this happens, and you think: maybe I wasn’t being clear; maybe I’m not sufficiently assertive; maybe they treat anyone new this way; maybe my disciplinary background is unusual, and so what I meant wasn’t coming across; maybe my point actually was really stupid, and deserved this response; etc., etc. – there are always individual, idiosyncratic circumstances like this, and you sort of end up assuming it’s one of these things, trying to work to improve whatever you think it might have been, etc. But you wonder. Because the effects just don’t seem consistent – you notice situations in which your ideas are suddenly fantastic when someone else mentions them, or in which your presence is suddenly more valued when a guy has made clear to other people that your ideas are worth listening to, etc. But it’s only in situations like the one above, where someone who gets to be a fly on the wall in situations you would never personally see, that you actually know… So there’s a perpetual oscillation and uncertainty over how much is just some kind of personal deficit, and how much might be structural…

Again, this isn’t getting into the sorts of frank discriminatory situations Haslanger was describing, and which I’ve also run into in various places.

But one impact is that people tend to move – whether by literally shifting to a friendlier field, or by leaving academia, or by accepting some sort of exoticisation within their field… [edited - initially meant to say this, and somehow lost the point in transit... ;-P: This movement can then further reinforce the existing dynamics in those who, for whatever reason, don't follow this path. Some elements of academic training involve frank hazing - and many people unfortunately come through hazing thinking, not, "This was really unpleasant and unjust and I'll try to make sure no one else ever goes through this," but rather, "This made me who I am today" (because, of course, it will - these experiences always inevitably transform us) "and therefore everyone should go through such a transformative process".]

(Sorry for the randomness of my comments here – for some reason, I always seem to hit this thread when I’m very tired – that, or thinking about this just always manages to make me very tired… ;-P)

…My undergrad philosophy courses were almost entirely on male authors.

They also happen when there is a default assumption that someone who is female is more likely to be interested in the issue of gender – as though only women have a “personal stake” in the issue, or as though having a “personal stake” somehow confers special insight.

In the end, it’s not just this point, though I too am a bit annoyed about it. It’s the other side of this point: the reason it so annoyed/annoys me that my courses were structured this way is because it seems reflective of the refusal of much of philosophy to actually take *seriously* the critiques of philosophy that are regularly dubbed ‘feminist philosophy’ (in an attempt, I think, to suggest it’s a discreet form of philosophy that doesn’t need to affect the rest of the discipline). The other side of saying “Feminism or female theorists only interest women” is “men don’t need to be involved in it at all,” which, er, is kinda the thing that many of these thinkers are critiquing…

Not only this, but there was in my degree, just as NP says above, a ’special’ course on ‘gender,’ which was almost entirely on liberal feminism (with the crazy French gals chucked into a single week at the end which wound up being more about Freud anyway…). I don’t think it’s quite coincidence that (especially French) poststructuralism and feminism was marginalised throughout the whole of my degree, really, or that Kristeva and Irigaray were packed into a final week disconnected from the rest of the course which made them practically incomprehensible to people used to reading Okin!

And whilst we might like to suggest that this has nothing to do with how open philosophers (or perhaps more generally people involved in theoretical engagements) are/can be to women *and* feminist critiques, I’m not sure about this, either. I was thoroughly marginalised in my department for doing an honours thesis on feminist theorists, for example, and the raising of, say, a public/private distinction as *problematic* was treated as an issue to note and then move on past, usually without any discussion and certainly without consideration of the ramifications of this distinction for the theory at hand. In the end, it wasn’t just *content* that was being dismissed, it was a particular set of concerns; and whilst no one would dare to have been too openly dismissive of me, I’ve had men raise concepts that have been ignored when I raised them, and watched a reconsideration of an entire theory take place… But of course, as with most of these things, it’s all to easy to think ‘it could just be me.’

Cultural studies makes my life easier in this regard, and lets me feel like I’m not just an irritating bug the department wish they could swat (but can only wave away)… ;-) Sorry to rant on!

In terms of my personal experience, I was never particularly troubled by courses structured around male authors, although this may have been an idiosyncratic thing for me – but I was profoundly irritated by statements that expected me to be more personally interested in female authors, or in work topically related to women. That said, I think it’s a good idea to think a bit more carefully about who is assigned, what sort of theory “wins” when selections have to be made, etc.

Sometimes these things can be both striking, and yet difficult to get people to perceive. Just to take an example from a course design process I was involved in some time back, where the issue was ethnicity rather than gender: looking over the draft of reading pack for an intro social science course, I noticed that we were planning to assign qualitative ethnographic studies – only qualitative ethnographic studies – when the readings related to social groups that would be positioned as “ethnic”, whereas quantitative or more abstractly theoretical materials were being used when group identity wasn’t being thematised (and groups that would have been positioned as “non-ethnic” were never thematised as groups or presented as having a marked identity).

I was struck by this pattern, pointed it out, and suggested that it was a bit tacitly “othering”. The pattern hadn’t been intentional – this had apparently just seemed an intuitive way to organise the readings. After some discussion, the response was, “Well, we wanted to show that the social sciences involve more than just quantitative or abstract work – that there are other ways of knowing.” I argued that this was all well and good, but that the tacit message of this structure of readings was that those “other ways of knowing” applied to them – those strange folks that aren’t captured by the more mainstream readings. Perhaps I was having a bad day, but I was completely unable to communicate the point – which is that I think we were tacitly exoticising and marginalising both particular forms of social science methodology and particular social groups, by pairing these things…

Similar things happen when, say, gender issues become thematised only as special courses, or in the “other week” of a course that doesn’t touch on the issue in any integrated way. They also happen when there is a default assumption that someone who is female is more likely to be interested in the issue of gender – as though only women have a “personal stake” in the issue, or as though having a “personal stake” somehow confers special insight.

On the issue of whether something might boil down to “bigoted men” – that’s complicated, too, as gender dynamics are often mutually constitutive in certain ways. The Haslanger article certainly mentions some examples of things that would be frankly discriminatory, but much more complicated are the tacit dynamics: assumptions (that may be shared among men and women) about gender roles, “natural” differences in interest, typical forms of communication, etc. Frank discrimination can be thematised more easily…

(Apologies that this is a bit disjoint – just coming up briefly for air while I’m in the midst of writing something else, and so my thoughts aren’t the most focussed…)