Recently in Education Category
Check out Jessica's new piece in The Nation on the rebranding efforts that the virginity movement has been making; it's a must-read!
(Click here to watch the whole conversation.)
Cari works with an awesome organization called the Adolescent Reproductive Health Network (ARHN), which recently put out a report that reveals just how little health professionals around the world know about the reproductive health situation in Burma and in conflict zones. In a survey of 400 adolescents who fled violence in Burma and are living in Thailand, ARHN found:
ARHN works to educate teens about sex and reproductive health. To support their work, visit their Facebook causes page. If you're in New York, you can also attend an event (info after the jump) on Thursday.
a) knowledge of sexual health and anatomy are very low among adolescents from Burma's conflict zones;
b) cursory knowledge of condoms and birth control pills is widespread (more than half of teens know of them) but use of family planning and safer sex techniques is incredibly low;
c) the estimated rate of STI's in this population is 7%;
d) both young men and women report high levels of acceptance of gender based violence and male authority over women's reproductive choices: more than half of young men and a third of young surveyed believe that women sometimes deserve to be beaten; more than half of young men think that husbands shoud determine whether or not wives use birth control.
I remember this guy at Columbia College (I went to Barnard) who was sort of known as "too smart for school." He walked around with his floppy hair and his bemused scowl and started up what began as innocent little conversations about this or that, but quickly turned into all out assaults on the feeble minded person (usually a woman) that he had set his sights on. For a time, I was deeply intimidated by him. Once, I almost cried when we got into a conversation about ethics of one kind or another. Now, when I look back, I realize that he was Bill O'Reilly in a skinny hipster body with post-modern aesthetics. He was a blowhard who got off on making other people feel not as smart, especially if those other people were women.
I thought about him today when I read this Chicago Tribune article about a new group on the University of Chicago campus called Men in Power. Apparently the group evolved when Steve Saltarelli, a third-year in the College majoring in Law, Letters, and Society, wrote a satirical article about starting such a group in the campus newspaper. An excerpt:
next quarter will feature a number of events aimed to raise the profile of Men in Power on campus. Firstly, we will be hosting weekly study breaks/screenings of movement-oriented films, including: A Few Good Men, 12 Angry Men, Men of Honor (and many other Cuba Gooding Jr. masterpieces), All the President's Men, and--of course--X-Men.Additional upcoming events will include an open-mic night on issues concerning body image, a tutorial on barbecuing, and our much-anticipated workshop "Protecting What's Yours: Drafting a Prenuptial Agreement." Given the lack of similar groups on campus, MiP will have to establish a broad base, merging social issues and activities with a pre-professional slant. Through our fishing, hunting, and flag-football retreats, we hope to cultivate close relationships with many individuals and organizations in different sectors of power--including business, politics, and academia.
But then ol' Steve started to get emails from people actually interested in joining and he decided--gosh darn it--there was a need for such a group on his campus. Many of our readers have sent us the article, wondering what we think here at feministing. I can't speak for my co-editors, but I can tell you what I think.
I think Steve would be totally radical if he would spend less time providing networking opportunities for men on his campus (one of the goals of Men in Power) and more time deconstructing what "power" actually means. You see, that was the analysis always missing from that old Columbia blowhard bully's repertoire.
The reality is that a certain kind of power still rests squarely in the hands of a very small number of white people, usually white men, usually Western white men. I'm talking about power that comes in the form of college degrees from fancy schools, inherited wealth, access to other wealthy people who can fund/employ/encourage you, the capacity to walk into a job interview and not have any of the following questions going through a potential employer's mind (Will she have babies and leave the company? Will her looks be distracting? Will s/he fit into this environment given that we don't have many people "like" him/her?), a childhood home far from toxic chemical plants and/or gang violence etc. etc. etc.
Chances are that Steve has a lot of the kind of power I just described. Maybe not, but I'd put money on it. My guess is that Steve doesn't have a whole lot of another kind of power: one born of authenticity, wisdom, humility, empathy.
This whole group seems like a pretty hair-brained scheme to get himself some attention and test out how the world will react to a reactive group. And he's getting attention, indeed. But he's not gaining wisdom if he thinks that putting his energy into organizing networking opportunities for already privileged dudes is where his happiness is going to take root. As those of us who have been around the block a few times, met our share of blowhard Ivy Leaguers, faced them down with tears in our eyes, know: happiness comes from getting to be who you truly are while owning the privilege you come from, and working to dismantle it because you want to be part of a more just world, not a cog in the wheel of the current broken system.
Steve didn't ask for my advice, but if he did, I would tell him to take a step back and use some of that energy, humor, conviction, and creativity to start an organization that gets men and women to think together about ways to make the world more equal, more just, and a more hospitable place for all of us. I'll give my guru Audre Lorde the last word on this one:
The true focus of revolutionary change is never the oppressive situations which we seek to escape, but that piece of the oppressor which is planted deep within us.
Thanks to all the readers who wrote in asking for our take on this issue.
Twenty songs that refer to women as "hos" and other derogatory names won't be played at the Arcadia High prom Saturday night.That's because senior Madeline Conrique and fellow members of the Women's Health and Issues Club brokered a deal with school administrators limiting songs with misogynistic themes and lyrics.
The group wasn't making a push for squeaky clean Disney pop groups. Club member Lani Luo says, "We are not trying to push for abstinence...We are just trying to advocate for respect."
Awesome.
Check out this great new resource for gender studies professors and feminist facilitators, an online journal called Films for the Feminist Classroom. It's being edited and produced by the Rutgers-based editorial offices of Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society--a long standing resource for folks interested in intersectional feminism and gender analysis. About Films for the Feminist Classroom:
FFC publishes film reviews that provide a critical assessment of the value of films as pedagogical tools in the feminist classroom. Interviews with directors and producers of feminist film are also included in FFC issues. FFC endeavors to become a dynamic resource for feminist teachers.
There are a lot of great films reviewed in the first issue, including To See if I'm Smiling, Leila Khaled: Hijacker, My Daughter the Terrorist, Quinceañera, No! The Rape Documentary, Child Brides: Stolen Lives, The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo, among many, many others.
It is the question on everyone's lips in philanthropy: Who is the mysterious donor giving away millions of dollars to at least a dozen universities nationwide?A circle of successful businesswomen? A publicity-shy billionaire? Oprah?
What is so unusual is that not even the universities know the answer. But the parlor game is afoot, with only one real clue: So far, all the universities are led by women.
Coincidence? Unlikely. Women lead about 23 percent of U.S. colleges. The odds of a dozen randomly selected institutions all having female leaders are 1 in 50 million.
The article goes on to postulate about the motivation of this woman or group of women donors. Essentially, it seems, someone wants to support female leaders in the academy. After years of a leadership imbalance, women college presidents are slowly moving toward parity and it looks like someone wants to continue to see that happen (college presidents, in part, are judged based on their capacity to bring in money to the school and innovate and develop new programs, all of which requires the benjamins.)
But everyone seems flummoxed about why this donor or group of donors wants to stay cloaked in mystery. Why make us connect the dots with regard to motivation? If this donor or donors really want female college presidents to thrive, why not be out and proud about that desire so other women could contribute resources in that direction? It seems to me that we need more visible female philanthropists, not less.
Thanks to Molly May for the heads up.
RH Reality Check has a video about the teacher in Oklahoma who was forced to resign for teaching her students about the Laramie Project.
h/t to Max!
Transcript after the jump (extra h/t to asthenia!)
One of the upsides of reading IWF's blog (the downside being the constant retching) is that it points you in the direction of gems like this one. Robert P. George and John B. Londregan, professors in Princeton's Department of Politics, say that sex on college campuses is a "tragedy." They also really, really like scare quotes.
...Princeton, where we teach, is a wonderful university; but like other colleges and universities there is a dark side to its social life. Our students are bright, enthusiastic, and eager to learn. Most did not come to college bent on boozing and hooking up. Many feel deeply ambivalent about these aspects of campus life. Yet, they find little support on campus for the "alternative lifestyle" of living by traditional moral virtues....Whether it is a private institution such as Yale or a public one such as the University of Delaware, the truth is that things begin going badly for them right off the bat. Princeton is all-too-typical. As part of the freshman orientation program, students are required to attend an event entitled "Sex on a Saturday Night." It consists of a series of skits ostensibly designed to discourage "date rape." For years, critics have contended that the play, which features vulgarity and suggestive conduct, does nothing to serve this laudable goal; rather, it reinforces the campus culture of sexual permissiveness, primarily by shaping students' expectations to include sexual license as normal.
Let's not even get into the fact that date rape is in scare quotes - though I think that reveals volumes about where these two are coming from. What's interesting is that right off the bat, George and Londregan assume that young people don't like hooking up and sex - it's the dark side after all - and that all that's stopping them from living a life of morality is the lack of a college-funded chastity center. (They recommend calling them "Love and Fidelity Centers.")
Most universities have established non-academic centers of various kinds that provide educational, social, and counseling support. Princeton is again typical. We have the Women's Center, the International Center, the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender (LGBT) Center, and the Center for Equality and Cultural Understanding. Whether or not one agrees with the ideological bent of some of these centers, at least they represent the University's effort to meet what are perceived as the needs of certain segments of our student body.
Hmm, the last time I checked being a woman or being gay isn't ideological - it's who you are.
Conspicuously absent, however, are centers or programs offering meaningful support for students who desire to live chastely. "Sexual health" offices do not supply the need because staff members see their roles, not as promoting self-discipline and high moral standards, but as providing "non-judgmental" advice about how to have sex while avoiding pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases and infections.
Perhaps - and this is just a guess - these folks providing scary non-judgmental advice simply don't think it's their place to preach "morals" (I think they're rubbing off on me with the scare quotes!) to adults capable of making their own sexual decisions. But George and Londregan are having none of it. They not only think that there needs to be virginity centers on campus - they believe they need to be led by university officials, not students who presumably can't be trusted not to fuck their way through school.
Students are strapped for time and don't have the experience or professional skills to provide the level of guidance and support that their peers need when it comes to important questions of sexuality and morality. Universities know this--that's why at Princeton, for example, in addition to the student gay Pride Alliance, the Queer Graduate Caucus, LGBT Task Force, and the LGBT Staff and Faculty Group, there is the University's LGBT Center, with a full-time paid University staff member committed to LGBT support and activities. For the same reasons, there needs to be university support for students who want to live and conduct their relationships honorably in the face of the hook-up culture.
What really gets me - outside of the frightening idea of dudes like George and Londregan heading up a center telling young women anything about sex - is that these professors that claim to have students' best interest at heart use incredibly shaming language throughout this article. After all, if students who don't have sex are acting "honorably," what does that make those who do have sex?
So just a quick message to George, Londregan and all the virginity movement shamers out there: There's nothing wrong with having sex. There's nothing immoral, abnormal, or dishonorable about it. (Also, mind your own business and stop thinking about your students' sex lives. It's creepy.)
SIECUS and other organizations are calling for action against the suspension and following resignation of a high school teacher in Grandfield, OK who taught her students about the Laramie Project. Via USA Today:
The episode began in January, when Debra Taylor showed students at Grandfield High School The Laramie Project, a 2002 film based on the play of the same name, about the murder of Matthew Shepard. The students soon decided to film selected scenes themselves for an in-class project.Taylor, 50, knew the project was controversial with strong language, but got her principal's permission. A few weeks into it, the principal told her to stop production. After students protested, she held a 20-minute ceremony in a nearby park in which students wrote their thoughts and rolled them into helium balloons, then released them.
The next day, Taylor says, Superintendent Ed Turlington canceled the class. After she complained to a school board member, Turlington put her on paid leave and recommended that she be fired. The school board approved her resignation Friday.
This is outrageous. What's funny is that the district is saying that Taylor wasn't forced to resign because of the play. Attorney John Moyer (representing the district) says, "If someone is saying that adverse employment action is being taken against Ms. Taylor because of homosexuality, they're wrong." So why don't you shed light on exactly why Taylor was suspended the day after she held the mock funeral based on the play?
William Smith, SIECUS Vice President says: "What happens when the next teacher tries to talk about intolerance and hatred and murdering people for that, and they get harassed and forced to resign? This is bigger than just what's happening to Debra Taylor. It's about the perpetuation of hatred and injustice in our society. The same sort of hatred and discrimination that led to Shepard's death leads to this teacher's firing. We can't allow that to stand." (Emphasis mine)
SIECUS is asking folks to take action and call Superintendent Turlington at 580-479-5237 or send an email and tell him:
"Debra Taylor did not deserve this kind of treatment. Young people need dedicated teachers willing to confront issues of respect and acceptance for people of all sexual orientations. She should be commended for creating a safe space for all her students and should be reinstated immediately."
h/t to Max!
I used to teach at Hunter, so I feel moved to let everyone know about this awesome and important action they are taking this afternoon to protest the tuition hike.
Students at Hunter College, led by the Hunter Student Union, will walk out of classes on Thursday, March 5th at 2:00 pm to protest a proposed tuition hike, budget cuts, and faculty and staff layoffs at CUNY. The event is being staged in advance of a 3:00 pm rally at Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC) and the demonstration at 4:00 pm at City Hall organized by the One New York coalition, which includes the United Federation of Teachers and 75 other unions.'This proposed tuition hike will make the financial situation of many students substantially worse, if not preventing many students from going to school next semester altogether,' says Hunter College sophomore and Hunter Student Union organizer Leanne Sajor. 'Conditions at this institution are getting worse, resources for students are a joke, and are adjunct professors are hired and fired at will. This walkout not only raises consciousness, but also unites students to work against something that directly affects us. We need to keep Hunter accessible!'
As the economy continues to falter and federal and state funding for higher ed is threatened, it's critical that students organize--alongside staff and teachers--to make sure that folks can actually afford college. Community colleges are especially under threat, and especially important to Americans without a lot of money lying around for tuition. Good luck Hunter community!
