Response to Feminist Pedagogy

"Feminist Pedagogy" Response

Like the critical pedagogy essay before it, I had reservations about feminist pedagogy before even getting through the first page. I’m comfortable enough to say this had little to do with a bias against feminism itself, but by the “positioning” I felt a composition teacher would take on in this role. From my observations in life, in my family, and in the women I’ve dated, I’ve come to define a feminist is someone who analyzes the world through a lens of gender-awareness in our media, society, business, etc., with the idea of striving for equal rights for the sexes. While this is a worthwhile pursuit, I wondered how it could be equitable in a composition class, a place where I believed should remain a blank slate on stark perspectives. Just as critical pedagogy worked on the presumption of oppression of the public and using writing as a form of liberation, feminism generally works on the premise of a patriarchal-run society and values and uses writing to inspect and fight against these things. What if every student does not believe these things? And just as it was noted in both essays, statements such as these, regardless of veracity, can often create a backlash in the classroom, especially with the social connotations feminism brings up in our society. Someone will always get angry in a good composition class, but when the writing classroom gets politicized and/or genderized, I have know the benefits before I tap into such a pedagogy.

The idea that women and men write differently, I admit, is one I often try to ignore. There were always the sayings that women write prettier and keep diaries -- they are more expressive -- and that men write to solve problems -- they are achievement-oriented -- were there even in my grade school days. I always figured these archetypes would be balanced out in time, but the studies done on pages 122-123 seem to take these observations I had and exemplified them. These differences even reminded me of an study my old rhetoric professor did. He analyzed course catalogs from women’s private schools and compared them to those of mainstream colleges. He found that on average, the course catalogs were much more descriptive of the classes available; they expounded not only what the class was about and its goals, but how students’ lives could be enriched by them.

What really caught my eye in the “Writing (and Reading) . . . Differently” section was how gendered writing was assigned and reviewed. In trying to teach students to write “outside their boxes,” teachers forget they get caught up in their own paradigms of good writing. I really connected to Peterson’s grading of male narratives. Just like she could gain disgust at the beer commercial canoe trips, I would be hard on women’s writing that I felt was too flighty, too full of metaphors. I’d ask for a more “substantial” paper, something with some spine to it, some “ompf,” I’d say with a closed fist. I always wanted more them to bring up more counter arguments so they could counter them right back with hard evidence, not just bring up. But after reading this essay, I’ve begun to think that’s not the best case. I do like personal anecdotes in the beginnings of essays, but maybe I can accept them more as evidence in the future. I’m also the sort of teacher that wants students to create an argumentative essay almost right off the bat, but the essay’s given me plenty of evidence to consider exploratory essays.

As helpful as it can be to recognize a woman’s voice on paper and in the classroom, I found the critiques on logic as a masculine form of writing to be very disturbing. Feminist scholars look at the art of argument to be a masculine genre, and antagonistic and violent as well? Can they be really serious about not using these tools in critical writing? I understand that logic as we know it today was created by white men hundreds of years ago, but that doesn’t mean it necessarily favors them. The rules of geometry and calculus were laid out by men years ago as well, but no one would ever say these equation rules are sexist. For me, logos is exactly that -- sexless. And whether we like it or not, this is a world of conflicting beliefs and desires, and if we want to be taken seriously, we must understand what makes persuasive communication and argue our viewpoint effectively. Just bringing up personal experiences won’t cut it in most scenarios. I find it hard to believe that feminists such as Annas want women to write political essays to break out into public forums, but find that “masculine” logic (what is masculine logic, and how would it differ from feminine one?) and linear reasoning stifle the woman writer’s voice. They seem to see feminist writing as a form of consolidation between two forces, but proper logos-based writing does that as well. Logos doesn’t look for “who’s right” but finds the quality of reasoning and evidence for both points.

And as harsh as I am on this relatively small section on the essay, I must also recognize that I’m deeply entrenched in this line of thought. I was continuingly asking “What else is there, if not logic?” while reading this section, and I honestly couldn’t find an alternative. They mentioned that masculine reasoning in writing doesn’t allow for women’s expressive writing and making sense of the world, but that didn’t flesh out the answer as much as I would have liked. Perhaps feminists are advocating a more open-style of writing, where the thesis is more implicit. I would definitely like to read more of Catherine Lamb’s work to gain a greater understanding of feminist/Rogerian forms of mediation.

As well as questions, the essay has given me a few writing topics as well. I’m going to be teaching Image Analysis in two weeks, and I think looking at media with a gendered-lens fits very well with the chapter. One application idea I had was looking for “strong women” on television. What makes them strong in student eyes, how are they portrayed in relating to men, etc. This could work across many genres in television and bring up many questions in students. Why is it in sitcom-style shows, the man of the house is always the idiot, and the woman has to play the “straight man” (but almost always is beautiful)? How come in many sci-fi or high drama shows, women dealing with conflict means dealing with rape or pregnancy? I’m not sure whether to include male characters or not in this idea, as the traditional idea of a “strong man” is fairly concrete in our culture.

Besides writing topics, Feminist Pedagogy has given me my chosen research topic for this class. I got the idea while reading about how many feminist teachers try to keep the classroom work collaborative and student-student centered. Feminist pedagogy has different opinions of power structures on the class, often compromising on the idea of the teacher as coach, but not authoritarian. What really got my attention was the “Politics of Speaking” section. In thinking up ideas on how to get women to speak up more in class, I remember that women (and in general, men as well) would be much more animated in group discussions. Another issue I was grappling with at the time were revisions I did with students on their theses and main ideas on Summary/Strong Response papers. Too often their ideas would meander or their thesis would not be strong enough, regardless of gender. When they brought in their drafts to peer reviews, these issues would not be brought up, perhaps because they see the draft with an of authority.

The idea I came up with was this: Instead of enforcing the “masculine” autonomous writer right away, why not let brainstorming be a more collaborative ideal. My plan is to let students write notes on their main points and ideas for their assignments, get into groups of three, and have each person talk for ten minutes. The other group members may stay silent or ask questions and comments. The idea here is that speaking about their project will make their work more substantial to them, but also more malleable, as it’s easier to change one’s mind in discussion than to do so in writing. This may or may not be the “multivocal, relational writing process” discuss on page 124, but I’m still looking forward to seeing how it can strengthen beginning drafts of my student papers.

In the end, it’s hard to be against something that seems united in only the awareness that there’s distinct differences and expectations in gender in our society, and questions how we should go about it our composition studies. While I can understand why feminist pedagogy could be a minefield for some, I’m looking forward to applying some of its ideas in assignments of analysis and politics.