|
Letter from the Editor
By Jocelyn Barrett
My friend, whose male, and I were
having an intense discussion the other day. He was talking about the fact that when a
woman gets into her college years, it’s the most likely time she’s going to jump
on the wagon and become a feminist. The image of one of our Women’s Studies
professors walking around campus, pulling a red wagon with the word "feminism"
written on the side, shaking a cow bell high over her head as women streamed out of the
dorms to jump on entered my mind. He thought I was laughing at him. I guess in a way I
was. After I regained my composure, I asked him to please elaborate on the metaphor. Well,
he said, Women’s Studies in colleges are constantly recruiting women, and the stuff
you guys (sic) learn in the classes is all we are the victims of this horrible society
and the books and the professors specifically can say has this ever happened to you?
Have you ever noticed this in your own life? So it’s not like taking an
English class, you know. It’s more like a giant self help group. He quickly
added, Not that there’s really anything wrong with that. It’s important that
you learn that stuff, but I can’t imagine that any women wouldn’t want to be a
part of that. In the real world it’s not that easy.
I thought about what he said after our conversation had ended. I was
disturbed, because I knew there was more than one thing inherently wrong about what he
said. The most glaring mistake in his little monologue was that Women’s Studies
classes are just self help groups. I think that it’s easy for those who’ve never
been in one of these classes to think that is the case. Anyone who has ever been
challenged by the reading load, amount of reflective essays, final projects, interviews,
note taking and intense discussion that happen as soon as one enters Introduction to
Women’s Studies can attest to the fact that the myth is just that – a myth. We
don’t come to those classes every week bearing a box of tissues and some chocolate
chip cookies to cheer each other up, because all we’re going to do is learn that
we’re victims.
It’s a fact that Women’s Studies classes tend to be self
reflective. What that means is that when you are reading a series of essays, and writing
response papers on something like "How Media Exploits Women," you are encourage
to include in your thoughts, personal experience. And why not? There are few women in this
country who have not been effected at one time or another by the issues discussed in
Women’s Studies. Hence the name, the women being studied span the entire globe, but
they include us. Relating one’s personal experience as a part of one’s own
education certainly doesn’t make that education easier. Adding a new dimension to the
classic structure of higher education makes it more in depth, and harder.
What had gotten under my skin the most, though, was not what he said. It was
how he said it. He said it like it shouldn’t be that way, like the fact that the
students at UMF have this wonderful resource to tap into is somehow wrong. Why should we
get to learn when not everyone does? That’s a reasonable question with no simple
answer. Education should be accessible to all people, all the time. Hmm, that statement
sounds familiar. Oh, yeah, that’s the kind of thing we learn in Women’s Studies,
along with the ways in which that goal may one day be achieved. Maybe that’s
the closest to an answer that there is right now. In the end, the only part of his little
rant that I agreed with was Why would any woman not want to be a part of that? I
definitely don’t have an answer for that.
 |