To respond to the following:
> A few brave souls have now written in to request this thread, which has
> become unbelievably violent linguistically, be ended. What will it take
> to end it? I think this thread has shut down a hole slew of dialogue
> because people are just so frightened of seeing any womenbionet mail,
> and because their postings are likely to get so vehemently attacked.
> I do think the net is a good place to share warnings and vent, but there
> is a limit to how much you can humanly impose on your fellow net-ers.
>> Will all those out there who want to see some new dialogue please say
> so? It only take a minute to put in a vote for this?
>> I am really sorry that some people have had absolutely horrendous
> experiences. I try to acknowledge their pain as much as I can. But I
> don't think this dialogue is at all productive at this point.
>> Thanks.
>> Alice Dreger
> Indiana U.
I would agree. The ante has been upped and it seems as if the thread has
gotten as violent in writing as the harrassment the writers are venting
against. I would love to continue a *conversation* about ways to deal
with these issues on campus, if (and only if) we can not go ballistic and
personal about them. I am very interested in the issues of feminism and
gender and how science gets done. On my campus (a very alternative, very
PC campus), men are more often shut down than condoned and condemned more
quickly than supported. So this is not our issue. But we do find subtle
sorts of harrassment and gender related behavior. We team teach almost
everything here (which has its good and bad points) and what I find
interesting are how our students respond. I find that when teaching
advanced science (biology and chemistry) to pre-med students, they will
argue with me about their evaluations (we have no grades, rather, long
written evaluations of their work and exam results), but not my male
colleague, whose eval looks very similar to mine, even worse. As I am
the biologist and he the chemist, we wonder whether it's a gender thing
or a topic thing. We've had conversations about it for the past three
years. Also, I find the young men often work out there power issues with
me and not with my male colleagues. It is no surprise to find that most
of these folks have been raised by single mothers, or by parents where
the father is rarely there. I find this interesting and wonder if any of
you out there finds something similar. I know my roommate from graduate
school got caught in one of these by dint of group dynamics, whereby one
woman led a revolt in the last week of school, saying how unfair my
rommate was to insist that they do the final project (which was the
culmination of all the labs that they had done). She asked them had they
had the same revolt in Dr. So and so's class (who was male). No they had
not, they said, and she what was different. They couldn't come up with
anything, but she attributed it to the fact that she was female and he
was male. So I'm curious if you get any of this sort of thing and more
importantly, how do you deal with it. I am also interested in the
broader question of how to talk to women students who think we don't need
feminism anymore because there is no sexism, etc. Right! Fat chance.
How do we talk to these young women without alienating them and yet
giving them the history and the facts?
Thanks for any input. I hope I am not engendering more awful
stuff, but rather turning the topic to a more productive (I'm trying to
come up with a needlework term that indicates thread, without being a
"thread" for somewhat obvious reasons, but can't think of any) line of
discussion.
Jan Ott Lab I The Evergreen State College Olympia, Wa. 98505
