My Intro to Women's Studies class is being run by a guy.
The teacher is female, and most of the class too. It's obvious that all of them have interesting things to say.
And yet they hardly get the chance. He is too busy questioning and mocking to let them speak much, too busy thinking up contradictions and trying to control the conversation.
I might not mind if I thought he was trying to understand. I might not mind if he was respectful. I have taken plenty of other women's studies classes with men in them who listened well and were deferential even if they disagreed.
But he makes it clear that it is all about power, about domination of the conversation, about denying the basis of the discussion without even thinking about it.
The subject today was masculinity, specifically outlining the masculine ideal. He wanted to know what was so wrong about the ideal; it was fine for him, his argument seemed to go, so why shouldn't it be an ideal for every man? And yet, when another person pointed out that many men find it stifling, his response was, "You don't want a man who's going to cry because you didn't call him."
Because the difference between showing emotions and not showing emotions is either bawling at the slightest provocation or never crying at all.
"When was the last time you cried?" a girl asked at one point.
"When I was 9 and my grandpa died," he said.
"Would you cry now if someone you loved died?"
"No. Men shouldn't cry."
But after another person had pointed out that not every man should be held to this standard, he claimed - with obvious awareness in his joking tone that he was contradicting himself - that no one believed that men shouldn't show emotion.
This went on for half the class.
I rolled my eyes for half the class.
He was acting as a perfect example of male privilege, so perfect I wished I could let him crawl inside my head (or any of the girls who were trying so hard to be eloquent and respectful in the face of his scoffing) to see what we saw.
We saw a man, sitting in the back of a roomful of women, blurting out whatever he felt like saying without any thought of the impact it would have on the rest of the class.
Contrast this with the few girls who did speak, who all sit near the front of the class to better show their engagement, some of whom raise their hand and wait to speak or else talking glances at the professor to make sure they aren't stepping on anyone's toes.
Contrast his dominance of the conversation with the restraint of the girls. Contrast his dominance with my restraint; I've told ManPants since the first day of that class that I am careful not to talk too much because I could easily go on and on about that subject forever (thus the blog!).
Contrast his apparent expectation that he need not learn anything about the way the world is for women while we women are supposed to simply accept his worldview as right. And contrast his dismissive treatment of the assertions of these girls, while the girls engage his points and ask questions of him in turn.
Contrast these, and the privilege is as bright as a neon sign in a pitch black night.
Cross-posted at What If
Feminisms is a series of sort-of-weekly feminist diaries. My fellow feminists and I decided to start our own for several purposes: we wanted a place to chat with each other, we felt it was important to both share our own stories and learn from others’, and we hoped to introduce to the community a better understanding of what feminism is about.
Needless to say, we expect disagreements to arise. We have all had different experiences in life, so while we may share the same labels, we don’t necessarily share the same definitions. Hopefully, we can all be patient and civil with each other, and remember that, ultimately, we’re all on the same side.