Women in the pulpit, men teaching gender, and lingering discomfort

It's a bit cooler this morning after yesterday's record-breaking heat. I went for an early morning run in the Arroyo, and was treated to the sunrise, the sight of a lone coyote, and a number of very happy ducklings cavorting in the water under their mother's watchful eye. Folks who say LA has no expanses of natural habitat just don't know LA very well at all...

A young woman whom I know well was ordained this weekend at Pasadena Mennonite Church. I've known Michelle and her husband for a while; she just finished up her degree at Fuller Seminary, and the two of them are off to be missionaries in China with Mennonite Mission Network. Mennonites, like Episcopalians, first began ordaining women to the pastorate in the mid-1970s. Like the wider Anglican Communion, contemporary global Anabaptism remains split over the issue of women's ordination, though the main Mennonite bodies in North America largely support it. Still, Michelle says that some Mennonites whom she knew told her privately, with regret in their voices, that they could not support her calling, merely because of her sex. (I note with happiness that the first woman to be called to a Mennonite pastorate in Colombia was ordained this month).

I've been thinking about women and men in power a lot this week. (There's a nice post about women's ordination at Noli Irritare Leones, check it out.) I'm an exuberant supporter of women's ordination; some of the best pastoral care I have ever received has been from women. I like the fact that my particular church is committed to a gender balance in all leadership offices. I don't doubt for a second that my church is stronger because we are able to enjoy such a diversity of leadership styles.

But in my self-centered little way, thinking about Michelle's ordination led me to think about my own role as a man teaching women's studies. I have three female colleagues who teach women's history courses here at the college; since I first taught the course in 1995, I have been the only man to do so. In the early years, my female colleagues were quite candid with me about their disapproval. They didn't want me teaching women's studies for several reasons, ranging from the fear that I might be a lecher to the conviction that my incarnate maleness would render me unable to empathize with women's struggles to the same degree that a female instructor could. I didn't buy into those arguments then, and I don't now.

The one argument they made that troubled me then and still troubles me is this one: a professor in an "activist" field (gender studies and ethnic studies in particular) is not merely a lecturer and a facilitator of discussion. He or she ought to also be a role model. My women's studies class this semester has ONE man enrolled; boys have never constituted more than 15% of the enrollment of any given section I have taught in the past decade. For these largely female student bodies, a woman teacher can be a role model of a successful, intellectually gifted feminist in a way that I can never be. My classes are largely composed of women from working-class backgrounds; only a quarter of the students are "white", many are first or second-generation immigrants from Armenia, Vietnam, El Salvador, and other places in which strong female leaders are a darn sight rarer than they are here. Having a man in a position of authority is familiar to them. What, I wonder, are they missing by not having a woman teach them this particular subject?

Many of my students say, and I don't take this as a compliment, that they would rather take women's studies from a man because they assume that a man would be "less biased." I hear that over and over and over again. It's a stunning conclusion to draw, isn't it? It's a perfect example of the unearned privilege I have as a man. When I deliver one of my (if I may be immodest) stirring lectures on the growth of early American feminism, and I rail against the injustices of laws of coverture and the like, none of my students accuses me of "having an axe to grind." When I talk about the myriad and often unnoticed ways in which our culture still privileges men, none of my students assume that I am "bitter", or "angry" at having been personally jilted by a man. Where my enthusiasm is seen as passionate righteousness, my colleagues' enthusiasm is seen as "feminist ranting and raving". It isn't fair.

I know countless strong, dynamic women who would rather be taught by, coached by, and supervised by men. (Some attribute the recent success of Geno Auriemma, the great Connecticut women's basketball coach, to the fact that his recruiting openly plays on the desire of so many girls not to be led by another woman. That's another post altogether.) It seems undeniable that for some young women, the relationship with female authority figures is an uncomfortably complex one. It just seems simpler and easier and infinitely more familiar to relate to a man in a position of power.

I have no intention of giving up my role as a gender studies prof. I think I bring something important to the classroom, and I can be a role model of another sort to boot. But as I rejoiced this weekend in Michelle's ordination, I was reminded that we don't just need more women pastors and professors (though we do) we need to work hard to change the attitudes of both men AND women towards women in positions of authority. Too many of us who call ourselves enlightened still like to be in work or classroom or pastoral settings where ultimate authority is in a man's hands; too many of us are still flummoxed by strong women leaders. And I'll be darned if I know what I can do about it.

Comments

[Brian]

I'm not sure how relevant this, but I overheard an interesting conversation at church on Sunday. I belong to a small church, and our one minister is a woman. During Lent she wore (traditional?) black robes. Now's she back to her white robe. An older gentleman remarked how glad he was that she was back in white. He said black was fine for male ministers, but that it was unbecoming for a female pastor to wear black. I don't know if he has a problem generally with female ministers, but he still comes to church. Who knows?

[annika]

i recently saw a full grown deer run across the Metro tracks at California near Arroyo in Pasadena. In the middle of the day too.

[Ben Keen]

I think it's possible to get way too scrupulous with this.

I'm a PhD student in math - my advisor is one of the two tenured women in the department, out of 60 or so. Am I being a good guy by being her student (I've had other students ask me if I was going to have trouble finding a job because my advisor's a woman; the answer is NO.) or a bad guy because I'm maybe denying a mentoring opportunity to a female student?

I think such considerations are very small; what matters is how one conducts oneself. Since you're telling the truth, I don't think you should feel bad. If your speech is sometimes taken more readily for bad reasons (you being a man, in this case), the meaning of that speech is to lead the students to discard those reasons.

[Lorie]

A large part of my undergraduate work (for my major in radio, television, and film) was in media studies, a field that is really an umbrella for a number of topics. In my sophomore year, I was in some really generically named distro - "mass media and society" or something - and our instructor was a visiting professor from, I think, UCLA. Although it might have been Stanford. (Yeah, I know, the two are very different, but I had visiting profs from both places.)

We started off that course with such high hopes - she was fresh blood, young, dynamic, with awesome credentials - she had everything that we thought would make a great teacher. We were wrong, though.

This instructor sent an undeniably clear message that if you weren't a "double minority," then you couldn't possibly ever come to a full understanding of what she was teaching. I took this class with a very diverse group of students (which included Filipino, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Mexican, and African-American kids, to name a few), and every one of us had come to the same conclusion. If you were a white guy, you'd never get what she was talking about. If you were a white gal or a non-white guy, you might approach nirvana, but you'd never fully achieve it.

When those of us who were foolish enough to speak up in her class offered opinions during class discussions, she'd almost always rip us to shreds, often even going so far as to say things like "You're a white woman, so there's no way you can really empathize with what happens in Mi vida loca."

TV and film studies is a department overflowing with profs that some would call "militant feminists," but Lynn was the only instructor who treated us like our opinions weren't valid because of the gender/race we'd ended up with. The others would challenge our theories, would play devil's advocate, would grade on a very hard line - but they treated us with respect.

And unfortunately, as in all areas of life, one bad apple can really mess up the barrel if you aren't careful. Some people would have one experience with someone like that and might become concerned that it would happen again if a similar professor was brought to campus. Of course that's silly, but that's how a lot of people work, I think.

[Elizabeth]

Amen, Hugo. I've had a female preacher for most of my life. Now that I am church hopping, it kind of stinks that the only female Presbyterian preacher in town is the one whose preaching style I dislike the most. I wish there were more choices!

As for male and female Gender Studies profs, I never had the opportunity to take a Gender Studies class with a male prof. I only took two classes (Intro to Gender Studies and the History of Women in America) and both were taught by women. I might have been more cautious about taking a Gender Studies class from a male, and I probably would have been less comfortable sharing in class with a male prof. I don't know though, since it was never an option.

[Hugo]

Terrific comments, all of you... thanks so much. I do think about what you wrote, Elizabeth, in terms of female students "opening up" to a male prof. And Lorie, I am sad that you had such an experience; all too often, I hear similar stories...

[Amy]

I've had both male and female Gender Studies profs and I've loved all of them. I was initially more skeptical of the male prof, but as I've commented before, he is one of my favorite profs. Further, I think it was a good experience for me because it's often hard to believe that there might be men out there who are feminists and who can be emphathetic to "women's issues" and in that class (not to mention your blog) I found that there are actually men in the world who are passionate about the subjects. I'm lucky to have had fantastic Gender Studies profs that I've felt comfortable voicing my opinions to in class and meeting with during office hours. In my experience their gender has been fairly irrelevant and I think they'd be happy to know that.

We do have a long way to go as far as accepting women in authoritative positions. I'd love to see a woman coaching an NBA team or even a men's college b-ball team (that hasn't happened yet, right?) no matter how many people tell me it will never happen. Personally, I would much rather work for a female-owned or managed company as I've had better experiences in those situations. Unfortunately, they're a little hard to find.

[Hugo]

They'll be easier to find when you're running one of them.

[Elizabeth]

I work for a female-owned company - they are out there!