I keep thinking about why I’m failing so badly to be a mentor to female students when I’m so successful with the male cohort.
The difference is that male students ask me questions. They want to know things. Female students, in the meantime, use any interaction to advance a narrative of their frailty. I come up, I lead with some of my best material, but they interrupt and launch into an exulted listing of their limitations.
I have no idea what this is, what causes it, and how to make it stop. I’ve tried reassurance. “No, you are not a loser. You are not bad at languages. You are not a mess.” It has zero effect. I’ve tried changing the topic. I’ve tried telling funny stories. In my desperation, I’ve even tried sharing advance knowledge about what will be on the final. Nothing worked.
In the video lecture on Thursday I mentioned that I was born in the USSR. Immediately I got an email from a male student asking where exactly in the USSR, and how is that area of the country different from others, and is it true that we had a lot of civil liberties in the Soviet constitution. Why aren’t female students interested? I’ve been teaching college since 2002. It’s a crapton of years. All I’m asking for is one, just one, female student who’d ask an unprompted question out of curiosity.
Clarissa's Blog 
I’m astounded. I feel your pain.
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“male students ask me questions. They want to know things”
Where I work about 80 percent of students are female (humanities and/or social science studies are mostly female, stem stuff is mostly male).
Most students are not real forthcoming with questions (not the basis of education here) but I do get a few each year with lots of questions (about half/half male-female which would point to more males proportionately.
I have no idea what’s going on with the US now (I remember lots of inquiring female students who did not want to be seen as frail) but if I had to guess, then it’s part of the infantilization process and/or they’re…. trying to get you to court them, symbolically. The list of frailties is there way of saying ‘discover me!’ They’re princesses waiting for Professor Charming to discover their innate value and lay riches at their feet…
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Do you colleagues experience the same difference?
Also, may your female students come from a certain American background in which they’re socialized to behave thus? What about foreign, African-American or older female students with children? Or are those kinds of female students too rare to notice differences?
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The only female student who’d show up and ask questions was a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic. She was actually really great when she remembered to take her medication.
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If it’s so completely without exception, maybe it’s you and not them.
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What do you mean without exception if I explained that male students are not experiencing this problem.
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I’ve got stuff like this (not all female students, obviously).
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