Reader Evelina Anville asks:
Why do you see the student evaluation bias towards males as trivial? It is quite clear to me the bias exists. It’s not impossible for women to get good evaluations of course (mine are quite strong) but in my experience, students are far more forgiving of male professors than they are of female professors. In fact, some people on my campus did some unofficial comparisons and the male professors have (on average) _significantly_ higher evals scores; simultaneously, it’s also quite clear to me that the men aren’t significantly better teachers than the women on my campus.
Since evals tend to be an important part of a candidates tenure dossier, gender (and racial) bias on student evals strike me as an important concern. It’s not the most pressing concern in global politics of course. But I would never call something that can affect someone’s livelihood “trivial.” So I would be interested to know why you are so dismissive of eval bias.
I believe that the period of listing grievances is over. It was a crucial period, it served an enormously important goal, but it’s time to let it go. We need to stop listing grievances and start doing something to change the situation.
Let’s say this bias exists. Repeating a bizillion times that it, indeed, exists doesn’t bring us closer to any important goal.
I don’t want to offend anybody but female academics on this continent mumble. They mumble, they fidget, they smile apologetically and nervously, their hands shake, they bend their shoulders in a servile posture, and they end affirmative statements with a questioning intonation. When I see women on campus behave differently, I immediately know they are immigrants. Or they are from the generation that’s about to retire. There is a lot of research on this. Please consult it before you get angry with me.
American female academics are painfully apologetic for working. They are even more painfully apologetic for having opinions. Sometimes, I get bored during committee meetings and begin to time people who speak. The duration and frequency of female participation in actual discussions is rarely over 15%, even when women constitute the majority on the committee. More often than not, the only female voice we hear is mine. But then we hear a lot of it.
And when the university’s President came to campus, can you guess the gender of the people who got up to ask questions? Right you are, they were a man, a man, a man, a man, me, and a man. After that I left but experience tells me nothing much changed. And can you guess how many women there were in the room? At least half of all workers present, and probably more, were female. And this wasn’t exceptional. It’s always like this. Does anybody think that students are not aware of this?
It’s time to stop concluding that students have noticed this insecurity, mumbliness, self-effacement, and dithering – yes, they have noticed, how shocking – and start doing something about it.
Let’s walk into the classroom, exude authority, have a presence, present ourselves as intellectuals in our own right, and I promise, I absolutely promise that student evaluations are going to turn into a flood of exuberant and adoring praise.
I’m getting so frustrated with these constant discussions of how nobody is prepared to see women as figures of authority, intellectuals, and bosses. I look around and I see the reason why it happens. But it’s not an easy, pleasing answer that anybody wants to discuss. It’s so much easier to stop the conversation right after concluding that the phenomenon exists because the moment we start delving into the reasons for it, we face the need actually to do something about it.
Clarissa's Blog 
Hey Clarissa, sorry to bother you again, but I was wondering if we could talk on skype again? I have something I need to ask you.
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Something is definitely wrong in the state of the USA. I think the extreme gender roles make it very difficult for someone even as remote as I to get my point across, because the idiots are conditioned to hear emotion speak and ladyspeak and their ears are not arranged for proper hearing capacities. Also the Yankees eventually decide that I am just being tricky and competing against them in a mysterious way. That’s because I do not attempt to compete but just assert my opinion. This is thought of as the mysterious trickiness of devious competitiveness.
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I’m reading a book where the male author is trying to get across some really crucial ideas about the nation-state. But the writing is so emotional, hysterical and overwrought that the message gets lost.
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America is a very, very emotional culture. Both the men and the women are very emotional.
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The assumption that one is competing is very strong here.
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And it is rather strong here as well, although perhaps less strong, because we are not as frenzied about the market place. The TV doesn’t try to sell us pills and dreams and notions as much as in the US. However, late capitalism gives the impression that it is fundamental to human nature to compete, which it isn’t. That’s why I made those graphics to depict comparative models of human nature.
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“However, late capitalism gives the impression that it is fundamental to human nature to compete, which it isn’t.”
– Some people are more competitive, some are less so. What is important is that this doesn’t depend on gender.
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Well sure, and that is another issue to consider. Actually in relation to my models that I produced and posted her in another section, the overarching structure of society determines our common-sensical assumptions about “human nature”. But human nature is not fixed and firm. It is molded by larger historical forces and necessity.
I, for instance, am a highly original and somewhat aggressive person. I do not know that I am all that “competitive” because I don’t look at others and automatically see them as rivals. I look at them in a host of different ways. But rivalry is not what I automatically think of when I look at others.
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Yes, that’s why the graphics are useful!
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The graphics are not supposed to indicate any ideological position and in fact they do not. They show a difference in psychical formation, based on historical periods, so that we do not make the mistake of universalising “human nature” and thinking that what we have experienced — or indeed what we consider desirable in society — is “human nature”. My father used to say, “You know, it’s strange. Australians look like us and speak the same language, but what they mean by it is totally different. He also spoke of the need to build up pressure inside himself at work, to fend off attacks. He’s never had to do that before. in fact what he was working on, belatedly, was the development of ego pressure. Something we can conclude from this is that ego pressure is very important in today’s society and very normalized. But someone from colonial society had not learned to develop this ego pressure. I’ve spent about two decades thinking about these sorts of topics, and my recent pyramid depictions comparing the old style versus the new style psyche (more specifically the psychological structure of Rhodesians versus those in Australian modernity) was the product of my putting together a lot of information and condensing it.
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This may well be a problem, but not that one explains this particular study. It was done on a MOOC and had the professors present as their own gender in half the courses and the opposite gender in the other half of the courses.
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How on earth did they “present as the opposite gender” (by which they probably mean ‘sex’)?
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Introduced themselves as “Mr Bupkes”, I guess. Some learning that is where students don’t get to hear the professor ‘s voice. This is what everybody should be discussing : the fraud perpetrated against students by offering this sort of courses.
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Pretty much. And yeah, I agree that thing would have been less of a course and more of a tutorial.
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Yes. So?
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I’m quite curious about what would explain the bias in those circumstances. Not going to argue with you about the self-sabotaging meekness of female US academics, of course.
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Exactly what I described. Students spend their lives observing self-effacing female teachers and more confident male ones. So they develop a bias. And they bring it with them everywhere they go. In the absence of a real teacher, they construct an imaginary one and do that on the basis of what they know.
By the way, in my country this study would have had the exact opposite results. I remember how much we always despised male teachers and how wildly we behaved in their classes.
This is very obviously cultural. So let’s study the culture that produces the problem.
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And also, one thing that students react really badly to (because of their age) is insecurity in a teacher. It reminds them of their own insecurities, they get terrified and lash out. An insecure person walking into a classroom is like a dermatologist covered in acne. The best teacher is a) the most confident person in the room and b) the most knowledgeable. Students can sniff out weakness and insecurity and they will detest you for it.
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And the place where I first heard every single thing I said in this post was in a Canadian classroom in a course on gender studies. I was absolutely appalled and thought the studies the prof was presenting to us about the mumbling female teachers were a vicious lie. A had just come from a different culture and brought a different stereotype with me. To me, the whole idea sounded like lunacy. And as a student, I challenged male professors so constantly and even viciously precisely because I had learned that men are weak, male teachers are extremely weak and it’s fun to make them cry in class.
I never challenged female teachers in this way because I had been conditioned to fear them.
Of course, then I started observing the culture of my new country and gradually my biases started to change.
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Couldn’t agree more clarissa. I DESPISED weakness and incompetence from my teachers. And being meak IS being weak.. at least in the eyes of students. I do wish I could have taken a class of yours. Although it depends how we would have got along after me challengning you. Would have been fun 🙂
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The dream student of every good teacher is the one who disagrees. 🙂
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I think this is one place where your upbringing gives you a clear advantage.
Within Europe as far as I can tell women from East of Germany and North of Greece (as rough dividing lines) have it all over women from North America or Western Eruope in terms of self-assertion and forcefully expressing the strength of their convictions and not worrying about the feelings of the dainty.
I’ve also observed similar attitudes in women form some Latin American countries (especially those with more Native American substrates) and very occasionally from Middle Eastern women (who overall are anything but shy and retreating).
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“I think this is one place where your upbringing gives you a clear advantage.”
– Yes. It’s a great advantage. But it’s sad because I see my female colleagues express many and very interesting opinions in a very forceful way but only in an all-female company. But the moment a pair of pants appears on the horizon, they just wither away. It’s completely bizarre. Married women who have zero interest in attracting their male colleagues* or establishing any sort of a romantic relationship with them. I don’t get this at all.
* Not that it’s such an amazing seduction strategy.
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Then why do (some) American and Western men want an Eastern-European or Latin-American bride? I hear a lot that EE women are “better” because we are (supposedly) more subservient, respect men more, happily clean and cook, are more feminine and kinder, etc. Not only western men and women hold this view, but I also heared it a lot from EE men and women. I also heard in Britain that we, EE women “steal” their men, and that’s why they don’t have a chance to find a good one. If American and Western women are so shy and apologetic, why do many American men hold them in such a contempt that they rather order a more subservient woman from the other side of the Earth?
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“Then why do (some) American and Western men want an Eastern-European or Latin-American bride? I hear a lot that EE women are “better” because we are (supposedly) more subservient, respect men more, happily clean and cook, are more feminine and kinder, etc.”
– Oh yes, my favorite topic. 🙂 Here are my posts on this subject:
https://clarissasblog.com/2009/11/25/men-who-buy-mail-order-brides/
https://clarissasblog.com/2010/09/22/when-did-the-stereotypes-that-sustain-mail-order-bride-business-first-appear/
https://clarissasblog.com/2009/07/12/mail-order-brides/
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“If American and Western women are so shy and apologetic, why do many American men hold them in such a contempt that they rather order a more subservient woman from the other side of the Earth?”
– A short answer: only the stupidest of the most stupid rejects look for mail-order brides. And they are looking for a silly stereotype that has no connection to reality. They are in for a BIG surprise when the discover what these women are really like.
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And one more: https://clarissasblog.com/2013/05/05/russian-women/
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@clarissa
I read your previous posts (and sadly some of the comments 🙂 ) about the mail order brides, and they are great. I knew some Russian girls back in the university, and they were the most assertive (aggressive) women I’ve ever met. I bet they (symbolically) slap the shit out of the ordinary American man if he dares to question them. The widely-spread stereotype about the high expectation of American women is also unbelievable. Okay, I don’t know that much American women, but I know British women who are also bullied with the same idiotic stereotypes. In fact British (and I guess other Western) women have quite few expectations towards men. Most of them don’t even dare accept a £2 espresso on a date, they are so scared of being labeled a high-maintenance girl. The attitude of western men towards this is also weird. Once I had this conversation:
MAN: I know that a girl is a golddigger if she doesn’t want to pay her bill on the first date.
ME: If I were a golddigger I would definitely pay my own bill on the first couple of dates, maybe yours too.
MAN: ooo…..ooo… (confused smile)… yeah, maybe. (then his worldview collapsed)
It would be soooo easy to abuse these ill-defined stereotypes and silly attitudes :-), but unfortunately I’m utterly disinterested in this kind of men.
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My favorite aunt married a Canadian through a dating agency. If he was hoping for a quiet, submissive doormat, boy, did he get a surprise! She is a force of nature and he soon learned just to give himself over to her and submit in everything. I think he enjoys it. 🙂
Last week his brother married another one of my aunts. 🙂
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cutting and posting a comment from an earlier thread:
Central/Eastern European women (in relationships with western men at least) don’t make a big deal out of being strong or independent (qualities which don’t immediately appeal to most western men) especially early on. They begin as sweet and helpful and cook and clean and are willing sex partners. This seems like heaven to the naive westerner who’s never known that kind of relationship before.
(added note: the above is called ‘courthship’ and most Westerners don’t know how to do it anymore which makes them walking targets).
Once the relationship seems secure she very gradually starts to put boundaries up around her partner until she’s firmly in charge. By the time the guy figures this out (if he does) he usually likes this new stabilized life better than what he had before. Chances are she’s running his life a lot more efficiently than he ever did so most guys go with the flow.
If he decides he doesn’t like his life run by his wife/girlfriend then they have some fights until he gives up. If they break up for any reason then all hell breaks loose and he has about as much chance as a mouse versus a cobra.
They’re also adept at divorcing feelings from life strategy, if she decides that the guy isn’t what she wants or needs to improve her life she’ll drop him from one second to the next no matter how she feels about him emotionally. Most men aren’t capable of that particular move and don’t deal with it well.
The big difference between how they deal with western and local men is that the local men know pretty much where things are headed from the start.
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@cliff
I agreed with your comment until the 2 last paragraphs, as you described the tendencies of how Eastern European women frequently act in relationships based on their upbringing and on the local environment. The end of your comment unfortunately begs for a small dissection.
“The big difference between how they deal with western and local men is that the local men know pretty much where things are headed from the start.”
There’s no universal plan for the corruption of the poor, innocent, (of course) always well-intentioned men who are also that witty and intellectually superior (compared to both western men and EE women) that they magically always figure out the vile manipulation of the emotionally retarded whores. No evil plan on behalf of women, no X-ray eyes on behalf of men.
“They’re also adept at divorcing feelings from life strategy”
Most Eastern European women I know are so desperately emotional that sometimes I want to cry. Many of them hold on to partners or spouses who regularly beat them, because they supposedly love them, and the local feminist organizations are clueless how to stop this sad tendency. Women don’t have a conscious life strategy there, most of them just want to meet at all costs the quite strong expectations of being married and having children. Many support their alcoholic and permanently unemployed husbands PLUS do all the housework for years, even for decades without complaining (there are women in my own family who actually do that).
“she decides that the guy isn’t what she wants or needs to improve her life she’ll drop him from one second to the next.”
Every single man and woman around the globe do (or want to do) that, as everyone wants a partner who adds a value to his or her life, not just Eastern European women, albeit we also sometimes (unfortunately not frequently enough) do that when we have a problematic partner or spouse. When I was regularly bullied by my ex, I dropped him from one second to the next, and it was a great decision. I bet you – as a sane American man – would have also done exactly the same.
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“Most Eastern European women I know are so desperately emotional that sometimes I want to cry. Many of them hold on to partners or spouses who regularly beat them, because they supposedly love them, and the local feminist organizations are clueless how to stop this sad tendency. Women don’t have a conscious life strategy there, most of them just want to meet at all costs the quite strong expectations of being married and having children. Many support their alcoholic and permanently unemployed husbands PLUS do all the housework for years, even for decades without complaining”
– It’s the same in Ukraine and has been like this for 20 years. This is the legacy of the post-WWII years. There was a real scarcity of men and women got used to being grateful and accepting for any man, no matter what kind of a useless prick he was. The demographic situation has long gone back to normal but the myth of make scarcity remains, informing the behaviors of even the very young women.
At the same time, in spite of the tendency to hold on to very low-quality men, these are strong, outspoken women who, more often than not, carry an entire family on their shoulders.
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“There’s no universal plan for the corruption of the poor, innocent, (of course) always well-intentioned men who are also that witty and intellectually superior (compared to both western men and EE women) that they magically always figure out the vile manipulation of the emotionally retarded whores. No evil plan on behalf of women, no X-ray eyes on behalf of men.”
I’m not sure how this relates to what I wrote. My intention was to say that local EE men generally assume their girlfriends will take over the relationship and generally expect their wives to run things (including them) at home. This means they’re not surprised when it happens. Western men have different expectations and are more likely to be taken by surprise.
“They’re also adept at divorcing feelings from life strategy”
Most Eastern European women I know are so desperately emotional that sometimes I want to cry. Many of them hold on to partners or spouses who regularly beat them, because they supposedly love them, and the local feminist organizations are clueless how to stop this sad tendency. Women don’t have a conscious life strategy there, most of them just want to meet at all costs the quite strong expectations of being married and having children. Many support their alcoholic and permanently unemployed husbands PLUS do all the housework for years, even for decades without complaining (there are women in my own family who actually do that).
” “she decides that the guy isn’t what she wants or needs to improve her life she’ll drop him from one second to the next.”
Every single man and woman around the globe do (or want to do) that”
I’m describing a situation I’ve seen play out with friends several times (and from a little further off a few more). That is a (usually western) man is totally blindsided by a serious EE girlfriend who dumps him, seemingly out of nowhere.
The reasons might be that she decides the relationship isn’t heading toward marriage fast enough (or going too fast when that’s not what she wants) or she doesn’t like his longterm life prospects or doesn’t want to leave her country and he does (or she does but he doesn’t). But the breakup itself is lightning fast with no warning: “This isn’t working for me. Goodbye.”
It’s a particular breakup pattern that I’ve only ever noticed EE women (in their own countries) initiating.
“I dropped him from one second to the next, and it was a great decision. I bet you – as a sane American man – would have also done exactly the same”
Not everyone is as mentally healthy as you are, and the breakups I’m talking about are not in the context of abuse of any kind.
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“But the breakup itself is lightning fast with no warning: “This isn’t working for me. Goodbye.”
It’s a particular breakup pattern that I’ve only ever noticed EE women (in their own countries) initiating.”
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I have a funny story on this subject. Once I had a very unserious “relationship” with a French guy (the whole “relationship” took only 4 or 5 days, nothing sexual except a few kisses), and I broke up with him lightning fast with no warning, because the following infamous thing happened. I invited him for dinner to my flat where he pissed on the toilet seat. Next day he came to see me again as we wanted to go out to a party with his friends and he pissed on the toilet seat AGAIN. When we arrived at home he did the same thing the THIRD TIME. Then I suddenly had a strange vision: I saw myself as cleaning pissed off toilet seats at least 5 times a day in the rest of my life, I became mortified, and I immediately broke up with him explaining the decision with the fact I couldn’t deal with the strong cultural differences between us (which was actually true). He was very surprised. He told me “but, but, but I’m a French guy!”. Okay right, what a great reason. When he fucked off I had to clean the toilet AGAIN. That was all of my relationships with western men (which of course doesn’t mean I think all western men is a notorious toilet seat pisser).
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A great story! 🙂 You made me laugh very hard.
By the way, here is one of my favorite dating stories: https://clarissasblog.com/2011/02/07/a-dating-story/
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And this one: https://clarissasblog.com/2011/10/06/online-dating-story-3/
Friend, if you are reading this, do you remember that date?
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Haha, that was funny, too :-). Maybe it would have been better if he had just simply pissed on your toilet seat three times. Physical disgustingness is still better than mental.
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@cliff
Sorry, I misunderstood the part about the assumptions of EE men. There’s a common stereotype among less intellectual EE men that women always “plan” to financially wrong the men even before the actual relationship starts and all they want is their money. I thought you referred to the same annoying stereotype but I’m happy that I only misunderstood it. That’s true however that EE men “generally expect their wives to run things (including them) at home”, so your observations are accurate.
“That is a (usually western) man is totally blindsided by a serious EE girlfriend who dumps him, seemingly out of nowhere.”
Yes, that’s also true, it’s because the horrible socialization in that region. We are taught from a very early age that we are not permitted to talk about our problems and it’s better to keep them inside. I guess it has its roots in communism where one could have never known who would have reported them to the secret police, or maybe the roots are even deeper as we had other oppressors before communism as well (the Habsburgs, the Ottoman Empire and other jerks). A relationship among an EE woman and an EE man can be quite weird to an outsider inddeed, as they usually never talk about their real problems, both of them act as everything would be okay, then one of them can’t stand it any more and he or she “suddenly” breaks up and the other party just accepts it as he or she also doesn’t want to talk about the real issues. We tend to repeat this unconscious pattern when we are in relationships with western people. To tell the truth it’s quite hard to overcome this “never talk to anyone about anything” pattern. I fight against it, and I have some success, but it still doesn’t come natively. I guess it’s like a foreign language. If you don’t learn it as a small kid you will never speak it natively (however one still can be fluent which is a great hope for me).
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“To tell the truth it’s quite hard to overcome this “never talk to anyone about anything” pattern. I fight against it, and I have some success, but it still doesn’t come natively. I guess it’s like a foreign language.”
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How much of this is also generational?
In your experience, how old are the oldest women who faint dead away at the prospect of volunteering an unsolicited opinion in mixed company?
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Yes, it’s very generational. The Gen-Xers, my generation, are the whiny generation by default.
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I guess I got labeled as a generation exxer, but if I was born in a pre-industrialised country, more akin to the Europe of Hegel’s era than contemporary society, maybe I am generation alpha? Something like that anyway.
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“I guess I got labeled as a generation exxer, but if I was born in a pre-industrialised country, more akin to the Europe of Hegel’s era than contemporary society, maybe I am generation alpha? Something like that anyway.”
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Yeah, I come from the very, very beginning of Modernity, when it was just starting to send out its shoots. In my new memoir, I point out that my father’s generation was already traumatised by war loss, and that really our whole orientation was toward war and Christianity, in about that order. But we didn’t have any modern art or contemporary humor, or leftwing ideas, or philosophy or anthropology. Our culture was also resistant to psychology, with the attitude that we were too tough for it. And yet not too tough not to pass down war trauma from one generation to the next (I was third in line).
Given that this was and is my background, if people want to treat me like I am just overreacting, I take that as a challenge. In fact, I may seek out the comment that I am overreacting, in a certain mood, so that I can test the mettle of the modern person and see how well they react. I’ve had to absorb a lot of traumas and not react, so it is an interesting experiment for me when somebody rises up to challenge me with their implied suggestion that they are much tougher than I. I would severely doubt that. But if they imply it or assert it, then I get to test them and see whether what they say is true or not.
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The assertive women at my university (me included) are labeled as intimidating, aggressive, and bitchy — not by students, but by other faculty! Nobody wants to be those things, but I’ll take intimidating, aggressive, and bitchy over meek, mild, and mumbling. My student evaluations are typically wonderful, but I think most of my peers are scared of me. I do have some good friends — my best friends at school are an assertive Brazilian woman and an outspoken Canadian woman — but my American colleagues think I’m a tad too audacious for their liking.
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You can get away / be forgiven for behaving assertively if you are identifiable as a foreigner. But if you are US native you are punished for it. If you want to get ahead at many institutions and in many regions here it is important to defer to men — this could actually be the most important thing. You can be assertive in defense of your man or a male authority figure, a male colleague, and so on, but not on your own behalf, or on behalf of the field / the profession and so on. Once again, if you are foreign they understand that you have not learned this and they forgive you or even reward you.
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Yes, they are taken outside and shot by a firing squad. Life is so scaaaary.
By the way, did I share the story of my female colleague who felt disrespected by male administrators and just got them fired? She’s not a foreigner. But she’s over 60. The firing squad still hasn’t shown up for her. 🙂
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No — just denied tenure / power, different things like that. And again, assertiveness on behalf of certain causes *is* appreciated. I don’t know that that is “scary,” though.
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Honestly, as an assertive American woman, I don’t think anything really bad has happened to me. I got a job, tenure, do well at my job, have friends, a husband who loves me etc. etc. I think there are times when I’ve been overlooked for a certain job “perk” but then I think meek women are also overlooked.
I don’t think meekness wins women anything at all. Unfortunately sycophantic behavior tends to get results (for both men and women) but meekness and sycophantism aren’t precisely the same. I just think meekness for American women is very very culturally ingrained and limits women success in the workforce (which is what “cult of meekness” values: good women staying at home.) So In this sense having non American parents has been helpful to me? I come from a fairly big family and all my sisters are assertive. So I do think there is a cultural issue here.
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“Honestly, as an assertive American woman, I don’t think anything really bad has happened to me. I got a job, tenure, do well at my job, have friends, a husband who loves me etc. etc.”
“I don’t think meekness wins women anything at all.”
Another bonus is that self-infantilization is a great way to avoid adult responsibilities.
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It depends on the region of US you inhabit.
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I know you live in the south. Do you think meek women are successful in the south? I see a patriarchal bias towards men in my region/at my institution. But I don’t think I would say that I have seen evidence that meek women fare any better than assertive women. Have you?
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Yes, conformist women do MUCH better. Weak and meek maybe not, but you need to be conventional. It also helps to have family connections or failing that, at least an identifiable husband, someone people can see or know. Being married helps a lot to legitimize you and makes it safer to be assertive or more likely that assertiveness does not cost you more than it does you good. But the key thing is to be conventional / conformist and I repeat: you can be very very assertive if you are working on behalf of someone else’s power (the patriarchy’s, usually). They also like to put meek women in charge of things so they can do the bidding of a man higher up. All of this applies to minorities as well. But the problem with being assertive and doing re something that goes against the designs of power — like supporting something good that the university wants to defund — is that it you can easily just get categorized as someone they do not want to deal with / will not let vote. It is really not the same as being in California or other places I have lived, incluing foreign countries. Actually including machista foreign countries (I have lived in Spain under Franco, Peru which is very conservative esp. re gender, northern Brazil which is very machista, etc.).
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“Actually including machista foreign countries (I have lived in Spain under Franco, Peru which is very conservative esp. re gender, northern Brazil which is very machista, etc.).”
This is why I have said that if they men are happy, they will leave the women alone. I have said send the men to war, so that if they are not at least happy, they will be kept busy. I’ve also said that female teachers in Rhodesia had a tremendous amount of status and used to induce awe. They were frightening people. The minute I got to Australia I notice that the female teachers, even more than the male ones, were browbeaten and cowed.
Liberal society is taken for granted to be automatically better than authoritarian societies, but it is not better in all respects. When we allow people to be too natural or to “follow their natures”, we end up with a retraction of the psyche into modes of understanding that relate to very familiar things, like the nuclear family, and the gender roles in place there. Notably, then, the breeders establish what is normal for the rest of us in terms of gender roles, as little Johnny and little Jill grow up retaining their most primal memory of the maternal mother and breadwinning pop. Since that is all they have as a reference point, we are all supposed to cater to that and make them feel at home and normal by adopting roles that replicate their expectations of their family.
Everything sinks to a low level then, but there is no arguing with it, as it is said to be “nature” — that is, the most liberal of propositions (“follow your nature!”)
As for me I am against the reduction of every value and meaning to whatever can be ascribed to the call of nature. I find that demeaning to the extreme.
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“This is why I have said that if they men are happy, they will leave the women alone.”
“Notably, then, the breeders establish what is normal for the rest of us in terms of gender roles, as little Johnny and little Jill grow up retaining their most primal memory of the maternal mother and breadwinning pop.”
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I say, “Bring on my eternal recurrence. I am willing and waiting.”
I am the ten percent.
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“I am the ten percent.”
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Oh, I think the system worked quite nicely before and nobody changed their sexuality, they just repressed it a bit, which was hardly a problem as they had horses and other aspects of excitement.
Anyway, I am trying to recreate my eternal recurrence as my next steps in life, so we shall see.
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“Oh, I think the system worked quite nicely before”
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Oh, one day you will have to read some of my posts about Rhodesia. Then you will understand.
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Here we go:
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Although here, there are a lot of male only activities, hunting, and so on. And the society is quite authoritarian.
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“Although here, there are a lot of male only activities, hunting, and so on.”
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No, but men like to get away by themselves, and women have a lot of home responsibilities. A lot of men also work in the oilfield and are gone for weeks at a time. So there are a lot of gender segregated activities — not because it is required, but because it is chosen. Women like to get away by themselves too, to a group of women to do something, because they can shed the role they have to play in the patriarchal family for a few hours.
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If the society does not get subsumed in some metaphysics of reproduction, that is all good.
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Yes. It’s called Narrenfreiheit in German. The freedom of fools. I never really got away with much defying the unwritten rules when I was a foreigner.
Brushing us American women aside in our own country and on our own turf and acting like we don’t count can backfire. We know the ropes,after all.
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Ah, now it’s the evil immigrants who are causing this. I’m sure we are to blame for the weather, as well.
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Germany and the USA are both rich countries, their citizens don’t have too much at risk even when they emigrate to another rich country. The same is true for the “hardships” they experience. If you are an immigrant from another rich country nobody will talk to you as if you were a worthless subhuman which is not the case for the rest of us who happened not to be born in the sacred West. Like most fascists you don’t understand too much about power relations. All you want to do is to keep your unearned privileges at the cost of others because you are sooooo special, aren’t you, Hatie? Do you know what people like you would be if you were born in a poor country? Even toilet cleaning would be a dream job for you.
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Aglaonika, I think Hattie’s older relatives actually had those kinds of jobs when they first came. She is from my home town. I am the one you should be yelling at about unearned privileges, having been born in the sacred West, and so on.
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How do you get from what Clarissa wrote to “brushing us aside” and “acting like we don’t count?”
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A little clarification for everybody: Hattie mysteriously reappears every once in a while to inform me that immigrants bother her and then mysteriously disappears. For some reason, she decided that I hate Americans and there is no pushing her off this stance.
A general question: do I come off as a big America-hater?
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“A general question: do I come off as a big America-hater?”
No, you come off as a Hatie-hater :-). Maybe he thinks all Americans are obsessed weirdos like him, that’s why he thinks you hate all Americans.
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I generally think you like Americans more than I do– and I’m American! 🙂
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“I generally think you like Americans more than I do– and I’m American!”
🙂 🙂
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I do tend to react badly to people who tell me “If you don’t like it here, get on a plane and go back home” whenever I express the slightest criticism of life in the US.
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He seems to have a weird fixation about the vile immigrants whose only life goal is to wrong poor, powerless Americans. From a certain point of view he is funny like a broken down tape recorder. I wonder what native Americans would say on the subject of being wronged by immigrants.
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Hattie is mestiza, descended from working class immigrants from Mexico and works in prison literacy in US. Lived in Germany in 70s due to husband’s job. Original post says that in her experience as foreigner, defying the unwritten rules did not bring benefit. I think she is trying to say in this post that it is worth looking more closely at unwritten rules and how they work. That may or may not be good advice, I would say — sometimes such rules need shaking up.
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“Hattie is mestiza, descended from working class immigrants from Mexico and works in prison literacy in US. Lived in Germany in 70s due to husband’s job. ”
It really bugs me that in this country whenever you say to anybody, “This insults me as an immigrant”, they always roll out their ancestors who were obviously also immigrants. It’s the same as saying, “I can’t possibly be a sexist because my mother was a woman.”
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No, I don’t think you see where she is coming from at all. A big piece of it, I think is that she is a fairly-far-for-US-leftist horrified by some of the right wing views expressed here and some of the faulty historicization or lack of same. An example would be the admiration for Margaret Thatcher, Rand, etc. And some sometimes wild generalizations that can be interesting insights or can be based on really narrow information sometimes. And she gets huffy and writes shorthand remarks.
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“And she gets huffy and writes shorthand remarks.”
I also want to remind you that not a single time did I allow myself to go over to Hattie’s blog and write any insulting comments, no matter how “huffy” I get.
The idea of Hattie as a leftist is the joke of the month. I follow her blog, you see. She’s maybe slightly to the left of Bush. But slightly so.
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Students in America are very powerfully conditioned by their teachers not to speak up. In any given class, no more than half the class will ever say anything. The teacher will pick one or two students to speak and give verbal prompts to move the lesson along, and the rest will be quiet. This is for the purposes of crowd control no matter how big the class is.
They love loud know-it-all boys and hate know it all girls. And the “they” in this instance is mostly female because most primary and secondary school teachers are female. I suppose they learned that “good girls whether smart or stupid are not heard” at home and reproduce it in their classroom and with their colleagues. I think a lot of their male colleagues are used to being the only people talking in a room full of quiet girls, so they react badly when they encounter the opposite.
In one class, my lab partner and I were the only people who would volunteer answers. The teacher would call on him about 10x as much as me when we both raised our hands.
I have actual report cards where the teacher comments in one semester that I “had the bad habit of trying to answer every question…[she] is making headway in curbing her desire for attention…” (the teacher would drone on and on and beg for someone to answer her questions and I would raise my hand, nothing more) and the next semester she wonders “why Shakti is so quiet; she must take a public speaking class so she can make friends” My reaction was to make my first assigned speech about FGM. Everyone looked like they were about to throw up. Keep in mind, I’m not an outgoing, assertive or outspoken person by any cultural standard.
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I understand that there is an enormous history of the patriarchy behind all of us. But we either start doing something about it or just sit here complaining ad infinitum. I choose the former.
Women already are the majority on college campuses. I don’t know what else needs to happen for them to start speaking.
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I’m getting unpleasant flashbacks to a conversation on Feministe about men silencing women in online spaces. By that, they meant men contradicting women. Nobody in a 300 comment thread was able to explain how this can silence a woman who doesn’t already wish to shut up.
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Quite a few guys and girls I know moved to the US at an age young enough to attend highschool or college there (and in one girl’s case, primary school), and “Students in America are very powerfully conditioned by their teachers not to speak up” is the precise opposite of everything they’ve described. You say that “in any given class, no more than half the class will ever say anything”. It’s been my experience that in any given Romanian class, no more than 5 students will ever say anything, whether this is a 15-person seminary or a 150-person lecture. This doesn’t make us meek and unlikely to speak our minds.
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Yes, it all differs based on your frame of reference. In my country, nobody speaks at all in class or is expected to. The professor dictates, everybody takes notes. That’s about it. Discussion seminars were completely new to me when I came to Canada. I was absolutely horrified by the idea that 30-40% of the final grade went to in-class participation. At that time, this was the end of the world for me because of autism.
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Your female teacher was jealous of your intellectual capacities, saw you as a competition (unlike your male partner), that’s why she abused her power and bullied you. She should have been fired, as she is not suitable for preparing young people for their professional life. She should go and seek a treatment for her insecurities BEFORE she starts to teach other people again.
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“She should have been fired, as she is not suitable for preparing young people for their professional life. She should go and seek a treatment for her insecurities BEFORE she starts to teach other people again.”
– Very true. People who bring their psychological problems to the classroom don’t deserve to be there.
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\\ Students can sniff out weakness and insecurity and they will detest you for it.
Could you write how to become more secure as a teacher and in general?
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Find the source of the insecurity and go directly to it. You are right when you observe that it all stems from a general insecurity, the kind we have as human beings. But you can only treat it by going to the place where it started.
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\\ But you can only treat it by going to the place where it started.
Does “going” mean understanding where it started or something more? Ok, you understood, and?
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Make a list of all the things, events, comments that caused your low self-esteem. Share it with somebody who will listen and be accepting. That will begin a transformation which the people surrounding you know will find unexpected. So you will have to start boundarying up against them. Start pushing back against comments or actions that lower your self-esteem. You will need a lot of energy for this, so do things that fill you with energy.
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I guess I qualify as the generation that’s about to retire. In my experience, this sort of thing varies by US region. I’m off-puttingly assertive to midwestern students, but completely normal/acceptable on the West Coast and in the Northeast. Family configuration also has something to do with it. I had brothers who conditioned me to argue and get attention like the boys did (mine was not a family that expected girls to be subservient to boys). At my own institution, it seems that women who present as “less feminine” in appearance can also get away with being “more assertive” in presence, whereas my combination of “feminine” face and clothes with “masculine” attitudes causes a lot of cognitive dissonance for students, especially the younger/less experienced ones. Returning women students of roughly my age sometimes also get bent out of shape about my not performing femininity as they were taught to do. But really, I didn’t learn how—I wish I could refer them to my brothers!
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I look as traditionally feminine as anybody can with my pin-up dresses, pigtails, makeup, jewelry, and designer handbags. And I’m also very loud, aggressive and angry. Never had a problem with evaluations by students or colleagues. All of these scary dangers and horrible punishments people are imagining are largely a fiction.
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Then your students are different from mine.
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Heh, if there’s anything I’ve learned by growing up in a family that’s half teachers and professors, is that the one thing you need for *glowing* student evaluations (no matter who those students are) is perfect self-assurance while in the classroom. It may be that your female colleagues who present as “less feminine” feel more confident in being “more assertive” in the classroom than the ones that present as “more feminine”.
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“Heh, if there’s anything I’ve learned by growing up in a family that’s half teachers and professors, is that the one thing you need for *glowing* student evaluations (no matter who those students are) is perfect self-assurance while in the classroom.”
– Very true. Teaching is like dating: the most self-assured person gets the most love.
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“By the way, in my country this study would have had the exact opposite results. I remember how much we always despised male teachers and how wildly we behaved in their classes.”
I just rediscovered this long lost video of Clarissa as a young student in the Ukraine.
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That’s one of my favorite online videos ever. 🙂
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Back on topic, I would like to know if anybody has looked at the gender of those giving the evaluations? I have a feeling that you might find women are general harder on women than men are on women.
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I don’t want the thread to drown in sexist mythology.
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I think this debate re student evaluations and also re assertiveness has happened before on this blog, with the same positions articulated. And yes, you should exude authority in class, speak, not come across as a ditz, and so on, and I am for assertiveness generally. I just know why some people are not, and I see them rewarded for not being, so I understand.
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Oh, of course, there are enormous secondary benefits derived from the wallflower role. The role wouldn’t exist if the performer weren’t “paid” to perform it. The costs for this operation are, as usual, shouldered by those women who don’t want these benefits. Every time when somebody sees me for the first time and dismisses me as a probable idiot, that’s when I pay the costs of wallflower ‘s successful business. This business model is successful because it socializes the costs but hogs the profits.
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That’s how it works. Someone else always carries the cost for certain groups of people appearing angelic. It’s not just in patriarchy but in the so-called post-colonial society we live. Even the appearance of that sense of having transcended it all is costly — for somebody.
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What bugs me is that, in the end, everybody pities the angel who is raking in the profits, happy as a clam, and not me, the person who pays for somebody else’s benefits. I’m sure you know what this is about: you are told you are an evil colonizer when you are not the one who ran off with the profits.
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Certainly I am not anyone who did anything wrong or participated in any war or had any knowledge of any racist goings on, or had anything under my control. But there is racket to be made in post-colonial posturing and in demanding others make all sorts of endless mindless adjustments to their demeanors and so on and boring so forth.
I’ve been paying for other people’s benefits for so long, even before I became an adult. That’s why my perspective on Western society is a bit strange, because I’ve had to see it from the underbelly, where people are not being as they are, but are constantly involved in manipulative mind games.
I’ve stated that it is a shamanic reckoning when one absorbs the evil that is in others and has to process it for them. That’s the whole basis of my writing, to write about this shamanic mediation. But this is also WHY I am treated with hostile silence — it’s because I hit the nail on the head!
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In the post above, to translate it, I was saying “you are perfectly free to think what you want”. I understand that this puts many people into a posture of hardship. At least, I think I am being led to understand that at least one person feels that they should not be perfectly free by any means.
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I’m sure that’s true.
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And by “that” I meant this:
“I’ve been paying for other people’s benefits for so long, even before I became an adult. That’s why my perspective on Western society is a bit strange, because I’ve had to see it from the underbelly, where people are not being as they are, but are constantly involved in manipulative mind games.
“I’ve stated that it is a shamanic reckoning when one absorbs the evil that is in others and has to process it for them. That’s the whole basis of my writing, to write about this shamanic mediation. But this is also WHY I am treated with hostile silence — it’s because I hit the nail on the head!”
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It’s all true. You would have been surprised about the divisions between different groups in that colonial society and their epistemic privileges. It’s hard for people to imagine, but there were huge differences in epistemic privileges. I was a child and a female — and that certainly meant I had limited epistemic privileges.
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There are all kinds of differences among people in all colonial societies I know or know of. There isn’t one role that is “the colonizer” or something like that.
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Yes, it really is that way. Very irritating, but to me it is helpful to remember that that is simply how things work (in this social configuration, anyway).
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And by “that way” I meant this:
“That’s how it works. Someone else always carries the cost for certain groups of people appearing angelic. It’s not just in patriarchy but in the so-called post-colonial society we live. Even the appearance of that sense of having transcended it all is costly — for somebody.”
and
“What bugs me is that, in the end, everybody pities the angel who is raking in the profits, happy as a clam, and not me, the person who pays for somebody else’s benefits.”
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“Yes, it really is that way. Very irritating, but to me it is helpful to remember that that is simply how things work (in this social configuration, anyway).”
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“Very irritating, but to me it is helpful to remember that that is simply how things work (in this social configuration, anyway).”
It is crucial to let go of “Well, that’s just how I am” and start asking “But why am I this way?” And this goes not only for speaking in public but for pretty much everything.
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““What bugs me is that, in the end, everybody pities the angel who is raking in the profits, happy as a clam, and not me, the person who pays for somebody else’s benefits.”
Fuck, this is what happened to me so many times that I can’t even count it. The saddest thing is that I didn’t even realize what happened. So basically this means it’s not worth to help others, to stand up for causes and against bad things, because if you do you will lose, and others (who did nothing) will get the benefits of your work. I could tell so many stories from my life that I don’t even know where to start. It’s disgusting. I would like to spit at the face of disgusting, manipulative “angels” like that. Angels are disgusting, bleeeh. And the manipulation is so strong, that you don’t even notice, and keep fighting for the interests of these disgusting pieces of shit. Sorry for the swearing, but I just understood it now what happened to me and why I was always considered a “problem”. I will never stand up for anyone again. Let everybody learn on their own how to fight for their own interests.
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Back in fifth grade, I had two friends, Masha and Marina. Masha was very religious and pious, never spoke above a whisper, and smiled angelically. Once, Marina came to school wearing tiny little ear-rings. Nobody could see them because she had these huge, Jewish curls but she showed the ear-rings to her best friends: me and Masha. It was not allowed for girls to wear any jewelry, so Masha immediately went to the principal and ratted Marina out. The principal came to our class and yelled at Marina, shaming her and calling her a dirty little whore in front of everybody.
When she left, Masha started crying and vociferating about how horrible she felt for ratting Marina out, how she was suffering, and how miserable she felt. Everybody flocked to her, telling her that it was OK, that she didn’t mean it, and consoling her.
The stunned Marina stood alone in the corner while everybody pitied the girl who actually caused the whole scene.
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Yes, this happens to me constantly, or has done. I am now very careful about who I stand up for. I think in terms of solidarity but most people are out for what they can get as individuals. They are desperate and need support, but they themselves would not do anything for the good of the group.
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Thanks for posting this. I agree with much of what you say. American women do tend to withdraw– particularly around men. But I do think it’s student evaluation bias is important to note and highlight. If this bias is as widespread as the OP seems to indicate, (and I happen to think it is) then it suggest that we need to develop other mechanisms for evaluating effective teaching. I don’t think evals need to be thrown out but they can’t be “the be all and end all” that they are at some institutions (like mine.)
As I said before, my evals are strong but not marked by over-the-top adulation in the same way that many of male colleagues get. And some of the criticisms of my teaching do reveal a gender bias. For instance, I once had an evaluation that said I don’t smile enough. My male colleagues have never ever gotten such an eval (and it’s also patently ridiculous. I’m a smiley person by nature.) And many of my male colleagues are very good teachers of course. But I can think of a couple who are quite simply lazy and yet students fawn over them. And I really can’t think of a lazy female teacher who gets good evals.
So I agree that women need to learn to “own” their authority. But I think we also need to realize that student evals have some significant flaws: fawningly high evaluations don’t necessarily reveal an amazing teacher and critical evaluations don’t necessarily reveal a poor teach (although I will say that consistently terrible evaluations do indicate bad teaching.)
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The reason I am not in teaching full time is that I don’t know what to make of all the petty criticisms that try to remold my character. Random passers-by and uncouth entities do not have the right to advise me on how to remold my character. My character was formed when I became an adult. But they think they do have that right, and therein lies a problem. Also the petty criticisms one can receive strike on as trollish. It’s like the old way of throwing someone off their game by asking them if they breathe in or out as they perform a particular complex action. If you can get them to focus on their breathing and become overly self-conscious, they can’t do the complex tasks anymore.
I give up therefore. Let people teach themselves. And I will continue to teach MYself.
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I’ve never seen anything of what you describe in my life, but I’m not questioning your experience. If you say it’s so, then it’s so. The problem is that there are very few measures that can gauge teaching effectiveness. I think we will agree that standardized testing sucks as a measure. What’s left? Peer evaluations of teaching? That’s problematic, especially for those of us who teach in a foreign language. There are only 4 people at my school who can evaluate my teaching in Spanish. What if I don’t happen to have a great relationship with all of them? (I do, but what if I didn’t?) And who’s to say they don’t have the same biases?
What else? Graduation rates? Again, that’s problematic because I don’t believe I’m to blame for people who don’t graduate. There is nothing else left as an evaluation measure.
I tend to trust students more than I trust any of the alternative measures. As for the bias, I’m strongly convinced that it comes from a certain reality and will go away once the reality is changed by all of us collectively.
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I agree that other teacher evaluations measures are problematic. And student evals are probably the only thing that should be done regularly (as in every semester.) They are easy, quick, and do show general trends in someone’s teaching. But I think that we just need to look at them a bit more critically.
I think teaching is best evaluated by some portfolio type system which includes teacher generated assignments/handouts, a teaching philisophy, peer evaluations, and student evaluations. And my institution does solicit portfolios for tenure; it just seems that the student eval info trumps all forms of info. So I guess I’m just arguing that student evals become part of how teaching is evaluated and not the sole mechanism.
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@musteryou way upthread, what do you mean by metaphysics of reproduction? I strongly suspect that where I live now may be more strongly caught up in some such thing than almost everywhere I have lived except this city in NE Brazil. Both are very involved in creating the image of themselves they want and reproducing it, and it is all very specular. This is after the culture as it was got destroyed mostly by modernization and the decision was made to enact and market a sanitized image of same. Is this anything like what you were talking about?
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Unfortunately we live in an ideological matrix which has already convinced the majority of a metaphysics of sameness, which is why any explanation I attempt to give about a metaphysics of reproduction will be hard to hear.
First: the metaphysics of sameness leads people to produce the retort, “But it has always been like this! Human nature! If you thought you observed any differences, you were in error!”
That is why, positioned within the metaphysics of sameness, it is hard to see any kind of metaphysics, because it has already been taught that whatever happens within the system one is in must necessarily be perfectly natural.
The metaphysics of reproduction, however, is what I said it is. It’s the reduction of meaning to the level of experience stemming from one’s reproductive origins — the nuclear family. In a society or culture that is afraid of imposing “authority” for fear of seeming “authoritarian”, social order must nonetheless come from somewhere. In the absence of authority coming from the higher reaches of society, it must come from early childhood imprinting. Whatever impressions the child had as a baby, and growing up, must be deemed to be natural — indeed, impressions of Nature Itself.
The impression of the early childhood mother as nurturing and the early childhood father as distant but authoritative therefore take primacy as cultural motifs, which, in the absence of any other guiding hand, become the fundamental motifs by which society is normalized and recieves its sense of organisation and order. It seems so natural to do it this way, because there are these imprints of masculinity and femininity on the early childhood brain. It’s so convincing to appeal to these things, since the impressions are so deeply registered by babies and children.
At the same time, one must consider that to default to “nature” in this way is to follow a line of reasoning that is arbitrary, for one need not default to “nature” at all, but could in fact impose different values from the outside. The cultural compulsion to default to “nature” is a mystification, a superstition, which maintains (for no clear reason at all) that everything that appears organically and without thoughtful intent must be deemed to be automatically superior to that which appears from intent or from authority.
This is in fact what we have, then — the metaphysics of reproduction. Or, to put it differently, the mystification of holding that organically produced “nature” is superior to values or systems that may be imposed by adults, in an adult society, intentionally.
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AHA, I see now. Yes, this has broad implications.
Side note: so this is why I am strange, a different early imprint of these parent functions. I will think about this as well.
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I think it is also worth thinking about this in terms of Sparta versus Athens. In Sparta, women’s status was much more aligned with men’s. But that was, I would say, because of the very authoritarian militaristic system imposed from above. Resort to nature, or try to return to it, and women’s status immediately diminishes.
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