I sat at the bar with a man I’ll call Ian sipping whiskey as he explained me to me.
“You are a woman of passion,” Ian said. “I get you.” And then, as if maybe I hadn’t gotten it fully, he repeated himself, “I get you.”
I was of two minds: laugh in his face or ask him for more. I couldn’t decide which impulse to follow so I picked up my drink instead.
“You’re a lover,” he continued. “I can see what you want. To surrender, be ravished.”
I met Ian on the dance floor at my cousin’s wedding. After the music stopped, he threw around phrases like “divine connection” and “deep gentleness.” I come from the Bay Area. This kind of language “spoke to me.”
When Ian informed me of my desire to surrender and be ravished, surrender was an active verb. The subject in a sentence with an active verb does something. “She” runs/jumps/wins/fights/speaks. In my case, she surrenders. Ian had put ravish in the passive mode. She does not ravish; she is ravished.
I reminded Ian he’d met me three hours ago and that his metaphors were stock, but I didn’t slide off the bar stool and walk away with my drink either.
After the bartender yelled last call, Ian asked me to go for a walk. Even though I hadn’t been particularly nice to him all night, Ian was putting on a good show of being in love-struck awe of me. And so, we walked.
As we wandered, I let Ian drape his arm around me. Sometime around 3 am, I let him kiss me. A little later, I let him touch me. When he directed my hand to his erection, I said, “Nope,” and pulled away.
The next time Ian leaned in for a kiss, I stopped him and said I felt like, all night, he’d been trying to spit game. Which is to say, use charm, wit, and honeyed words to flatter me, hopefully ending in my consent to sex. All that hustle, compressed in one phrase.
In response Ian kissed me, and guided my hand towards his crotch.
“I already told you I don’t want to do that,” I said, my voice hard as his erection. I started to say “I’m sorr—” and caught myself.
“You don’t have to be sorry,” Ian cooed.
“No,” I said. “I’m not.”
*
Citizens of the Midwestern city where I live spent last April recovering from a vicious winter. The undergraduates at the large state university where I study and teach were particularly elated by the ebb of the cold. Warm weather meant nightly porch parties on the roofs overhanging the rundown houses in the student ghetto where I park my car.
On the first semi-balmy evening in months, I was walking through this neighborhood when I heard someone yell. I looked up at the house in front of me. A swarm of 19-21 year old men were up on the roof. Six held beers, one held a sign: SHOW US YOUR TITS!!!
“DO YOU ACTUALLY EXPECT THAT TO WORK?” I yelled.
The Two Chainz throbbing from the stereo drowned out my voice. Then, two young women walked by. The men on the roof yelled SHOW US YOUR TITS!!! and the women giggled.
I considered walking in to the house, climbing the stairs, crawling onto the roof, and demanding they explain what they’d been thinking when they made that sign. But I didn’t. I dislike confrontation. Instead I got in my car and I left, regretting my passivity for days until one of my colleagues offered his thoughts on the situation.
“They wouldn’t have been able to hear you,” he said.
“Well, no,” I agreed, “the Two Chainz was too loud. But if I had gone up there—”
He interrupted, “No. That’s not what I mean. It’s a bunch of guys drinking. Even if some of them did see it your way, do you think they’d admit it?”
He had a point. He even suggested arguing with them might have gotten physically dangerous for me. I told him that it all made me feel depressingly powerless.
He nodded. “When stuff like this happens, I bring it up in a place where I have influence—my classroom.”
*
When I reach the door of the room where I teach, two of my students, let’s call them Alexa and Marguerite, rush me.
Alexa says, “We need to talk.”
“Now,” Marguerite says.
I know what they want to talk about. A personal essay written by their classmate “Ben,” which they’re about to workshop. The two young women are furious, and their reactions are valid. The version of himself Ben creates on the page is vile. His persona says things like
I like my glasses how I like my women: sitting on my face.
And
I JUST WANT TO FUCK YOU AND KICK YOU OUT OF MY BED BECAUSE THERE’S NOT ENOUGH SPACE FOR BOTH OF US.
And
I have a choice to make: fuck her raw or be a bitch.
To fuck raw is slang for unprotected sex. Though the line’s content was base, it stood off the page. The fricative f ricocheted off the hard c of “fuck” and clanged against spare, single-syllabled “raw.” “Be a bitch” alliterated, and the whole thing scanned, perfect iambic pentameter minus one beat. It was a line, which, as a writer, I envied.
In the essay Ben has unprotected sex. The young woman texts him the next day to say what we say when we’re still finding the words to express our feelings and immediate needs: I hope it won’t be awkward between us. The young woman’s boyfriend had broken up with her the night before, the night she and Ben had later had sex. In response to her text, Ben wrote, “If you’re not a slut I don’t know what is.”
*
This is how words awe me: arranged just so, they alter the fabric of existence. Slowly and subtly, instantly and spectacularly, words become weapons or shields.
This is how words incense me: too often, men who want something from women mix words to make incantations. Permuting them until Open Sesame! an order is found that convinces, charms, or commands a woman to shrink, doubt, or unbolt.
*
The morning after the wedding, my family was gathered around a table in the hotel dining room. I walked over and sat down next to my newly wed cousin.
“So, Ian,” I said. “Quite the Don Juan.”
My cousin reached for a piece of toast and buttered it slowly. “He likes to think so.”
If he had a slogan it would be “Never More Words Than You Need.”
My cousin took a contemplative bite and added, “But he has made some money off of it.”
Which is how I learned about the dating system Ian had developed and sells.
Ian’s system is designed to give users linguistic techniques to “persuade” the user’s ex-partner to restart a relationship. To learn more, you have to purchase the system. I would like to learn more. But there are roughly a thousand reasons why I’m not going to buy it.
When I learned about Ian’s system, the night snapped into focus. Clearly he had been using the same principles in conversation with me. It had been a game, all along and after all. I had known it, had felt it, but still, I had played.
*
When the DJ played the last song of the night, Ian pressed his body to mine. I pulled back. “I’m not dancing like that with you in front of my family,” I said.
“It looked like you had no problem dancing ‘like that’ on your own in front of your family,” he said.
What he meant was only slightly more sinister than what he implied.
You already expressed sexuality without me. You can’t refuse to express it with me.
The problem lies in the logic. Ben’s problem was logical too, he saw room for no more than two options. Have unprotected sex or be a bitch.
*
Sometimes related events cascade in a weirdly neat way. Ben turned in his essay three days after I met Ian. Ideas about language and power surged through my mind and I had to say something. I logged on to Facebook.
Today’s challenge: mediating reactions to a wildly misogynistic personal essay, which included lines such as “I like my glasses how I like my women–sitting on my face” and “I have a choice to make: fuck her raw or be a bitch.”
Two young women called the writer out. I bow to these two for not dialing down.
In any classroom, away from the booze-soaked influence of fratlandia, it’s possible to reach young men, where feedback on their words can penetrate the defenses of bro culture and violent sexual bravado. Defenses that, it turns out, are paper-thin.
#FeministPedagogy #TeachableFeministMoments #emPOWERmentOfLanguage
The next day, a man I barely remember from college, Eric for our purposes, wrote a response that began “I obviously haven’t read the piece in question, but…” Eric then explained why the parts of Ben’s essay I’d quoted were not misogynistic, but “just expressions of male sexuality.” He scolded me for sending the message to Ben that “his most deep-seated, instinctive, emotional feelings are unacceptable to women and society and he should feel guilty for feeling them.”
I restrained myself for five whole hours before responding. During the time, I contemplated misogyny. Had I really meant misogynist? Was I confident in my understanding of what the word signifies?
I looked it up. In The Oxford English Dictionary Misogyny is simply “hatred or dislike of women and girls,” a definition simultaneously so vague and so narrow that the ease with which it can be slipped out of is laughable.
It’s not impossible to find men who openly claim to despise women and act accordingly. In my understanding of the formal definition, it would be entirely sound to label the actions or speech of these men as misogynistic. But for the rest—men who don’t hate women, who actively seek women’s company to social or sexual ends, and still say things to and about women that make their nervous systems sing with rage—does it follow that this language cannot, unless it explicitly expresses hatred of women and girls, be called misogynist?
“If you’re not a slut I don’t know what is.” In this moment, the pen may as well be the sword. The problem is that only when the intent to harm is so clearly present and the insult so overt, that it’s accurate to apply the label “misogyny.”
Let the record reflect I don’t consider Ben a misogynist. If I only had his essay to go on, I’d probably say I that I did. But his eyes changed my mind. Actually, not his eyes but the skin underneath. As Alexa and Marguerite called Ben out on his words, I watched this delicate skin tremble. If I had been sitting even one foot farther away, I’d have missed it. But I was close enough to see it, and because I saw it I also saw that Ben wasn’t walled off for good. A few sharp words for his peers and his puffed chest caved.
Ian had not been misogynist that night at the wedding, and he wasn’t being misogynist in the Facebook comment he wrote responding to Ben’s essay. In his comment, Ian condemned gynophobia (his word, not mine) and called for boys and men to divorce their self-worth from the acceptance or rejection of women. Despite the woman-positive message, I was not pleased. Ian was still manipulating words—testing to see if a “feminist” language like gynophobia would result in an Open Sesame! moment. It wasn’t misogyny, not by the book, but maybe that just points back to the narrowness of this word’s definition and shows yet another way misogyny can be maddening to pin down.
Occupying a position of power in relation to language creates magnanimity. I was Ben’s teacher. In that role I had the power to police his language. With Ian and the men on the roof, I had no such influence. It is why it feels easy to excuse Ben but condemn Ian, and the young men with the sign. Despite the power dynamics of each situation, they all raise the same the question: when you find yourself in a situation where language is power, how will you use it?
While I’m here I’ll say this: these words are for Alexa and Marguerite, who said their piece and didn’t apologize. They are for the young woman in Ben’s story, in the hopes that she can erase the label of slut from hers. And they are for Ben, who is learning that power comes not only from words that are hard but from those that are vulnerable, those that are raw.
Tags: Alessandra Wollner, desire, language, sex, the butter, writing
Really amazing piece! Thank you.
This was so elegantly and eloquently written, about a subject that is hard to write with such composure. Well done, indeed. Thank you for sharing and for being so damn thoughtful about all of these interactions.
“When you find yourself in a situation where language is power, how will you use it?”
Thank you for this gorgeous piece.
Beautifully written. I get so tired of talking about these issues again and again but your piece felt, counterintuitively, refreshing to me.
I don’t know why, but this piece made my heart pound with fear.
Yeah, me too.
Same! I was practically sweating. I’ve had too many experiences with guys like Ian who would do the generic charming act, and then get really pushy and hostile when it didn’t ‘work’. Or guys who would make a huge scene if you called them (or another man) out for misogynist language. This piece captured those interactions so perfectly.
Thank you, drikbenedict. I had the grand mama of essays that capture these slippery interactions, Rebecca Solnit’s “Men Explain Things to Me,” strongly in mind when I wrote this.
Me, too! My blood pressure was going up as read each section. This mess is so intricately woven into the fabric of our society, that it’s hard to extract without seeming like you want to unravel the whole damn thing (good parts included). At least, it is for me. It’s frustrating because on a certain level and in the past I have been complicit in this type of behavior. And then, trying to have a discussion when all you do is end up playing mind/word games.
Also “I obviously haven’t read the piece in question, but…”. That’s a fine piece of mansplaining/trolling.
#ProudShrew
I’ve been struggling a lot with my heterosexuality and every time I read a piece like this, it really reinforces why.
Me, too. I’m queer – I’m not exclusively attracted to men – but I keep dating them, and I’m feeling increasingly confused and conflicted about the power dynamics and social factors involved. The guys I date are good people, I like them (I wouldn’t date them otherwise), but even among men who I like and care about there’s often a callous disregard for women that sneaks in on occasion. I don’t know if this is what you’re referring to in your comment, but it’s chilling for me, as is the way I’ve heard men talk about women when there are no women present.
Are you me? This pretty much nails my feelings exactly. I know not all men are like this, I’ve dated a lot of nice men, but exactly as you said, there seems to be this inate inability to actually SEE women. It’s not intentional (I assume) but it results in this feeling of dismissal because I’m not really a real person to them like other men are. I can manage to ignore it until it crosses over into this territory where it actually feels dangerous. I guess, I just find it exhausting trying to find a man who doesn’t feel this way about women and wonder if it’s even worth bothering? I’ve never had a romantic relationship with a woman, but wouldn’t be averse to one. I find my greatest support, compassion and understanding with other women and sometimes I just think, ugh dudes, why do we tolerate this shit? Wow,really needed to get that off my chest!
“but even among men who I like and care about there’s often a callous disregard for women that sneaks in on occasion”
I HAVE EXPERIENCED THIS AS WELL
(back when I was a girl anyway)
Me, too. Sometimes I can tell from the header that an essay is going to be “that” kind of story, and I immediately tense up, just waiting for the other shoe to drop. It’s sometimes depressing how common such stories are, but I will never not read them – I really admire the people who are able to write about these difficult experiences, and do so with eloquence and artistry, and I really value the Toast community for being such a kind, supportive group of witnesses and warriors.
“but I will never not read them” – this is so familiar and I tell myself over and over again to stop because I already have a pretty heavy load of anxiety issues & pent up rage. But I keep on reading these stories because I can’t /not/ read them. Moth to a flame. They need to be read though.
Don’t be thrown by my name: former woman here, and not entirely binary in my male identity. My heart pounds too. Only a year ago these men were preying on me. Now it’s rare. I’m grateful, but it’s unfair.
I really enjoyed this piece and the journey it took me on; thank you.
I think one of the difficult things regarding terms like “misogynist” is that they are so powerful that we can hesitate to use them; a similar word is “racist”. I have found it helpful to not apply these labels to individual people (at what threshold of misogyny does a person deserve the label misogynist?) but to individual actions.
When I think in these terms, my interpretation is that Ben is not necessarily a misogynist, but he has done and said some misogynist things. I like this better because it helps me to focus on the nuance of the situation instead of making binary judgments about individuals, and it also acts as a defense against all of the people who will try to mansplain away reasonable criticism.
I tried to explain in a feminist bible interpretation class that when you call a woman a whore or a slut, it has a dramatically different meaning or implication than anything you call a man. The men in the class (at least one of whom was there to Tell Women They Are Wrong) did not understand at all, and point blank refused to understand.
That class almost made me quit divinity school because the men in it behaved so despicably and disrespectfully toward everyone involved. Then I flipped a switch in my brain and now I give zero fucks. If they don’t like me or my ideas, they can stay the fuck out of my way.
“If you’re not a slut I don’t know what is.”
I find Ben’s choice to use ‘what’ instead of ‘who’ somewhat telling.
As if the very act of casual sex for a women reduces her to the status of an inanimate object.
Wow. Yes, great observation. Serves to make Ben’s essay even more terrifying.
This is a very thoughtfully written piece, and although it upset me, I am glad to be reading it and these excellent comments.
I have to say that I disagree with this interpretation of the concept of “misogynist.” When women are seen as objects to be manipulated for the pleasure of men, and those men teach other men how to use language to manipulate, I can’t see it as anything other than an utter lack of regard for the agency of those women. And in that, there is a a very simple, very distilled hatred for women as autonomous human beings with a life and a will of their own, that gives them any other option than sleeping with those particular men.
How that can be interpreted as anything other than misogyny is beyond me.
I also tend to see misogyny in a lot of places, twisting into shapes like the one you describe. But I also appreciate the author’s struggle with how slippery it can be to pin down. Especially if your medium is words and their precise meanings, this is a word where many have strong agendas about what it is allowed to mean.
Indeed.
Men like Ben seem to have very little trouble hating girls and women that dare step out of the little box of propriety that has been constructed for them.
I agree with your disagreement. I think the word “hatred” can be really confusing (and derailing) in the context of the dictionary definition of misogyny, because at face value our culture only tends to think about active and clearly visible kinds of hatred. But there are more subtle, less visible kinds of hatred. They can certainly be seen, but many people – especially the privileged – are not trained to detect them.
Agreed. I think people get caught up on the violent immagery of hatred exemplified by verbal or physical abuse. It’s like saying that unless the KKK is literally burning crosses on your lawn and screaming obscenities at you, then you haven’t encountered racism. Misogyny has it’s basis in fear and control. Ultimately, fear of the power of women to create life and the desire to control it based on historical property and inheritance laws. It’s not a huge leap to hatred for men realising that their control is slipping.
It’s not purely biological though: men (collectively anyway) fear all women, regardless of whether they are capable of bearing children. Infertile women, post-menopausal women, pre-pubescent girls, and trans women are not excluded from this deeply ingrained fear and hatred. Although I def buy the historical basis in biology with regard to property/inheritance. I just…I’m confused about why all inheritance didn’t just go through matrilineal lines. Seems like it would be less ambiguous.
REGARDLESS, MISOGYNY (or whatever this insidious thing ought to be called) IS TERRIFYING
It’s such a trap & it’s so taken for granted & there’s often no socially “acceptable” / “polite” way of escaping, like you have to say “no” and “no” from a woman is rude or whatever, it’s bullshit and it’s dangerous and it really fucking blindsided me growing up. Like, I’m a man now, but I’m pretty sure I identified as a girl when I was a kid, and going from child to teenager & watching how people – especially men – changed in how they reacted to me, from patronizing to predatory, was unexpected and, yeah, really fucking scary.
I feel like I need to take a shower. Very well done.
My mind is spinning from the intelligence and sensibility of your essay so I’m rendered rather speechless. Fine, fine work. Thanks.
Stories like this reinforce for me how difficult the role of the creative writing instructor is. How do you respond to student stories that seem to express vile fantasies, but have the plausible deniability of being fiction? When a student can claim that they’re simply explorations of a character who would do/say/think these things?
Honestly? I think one option is to say, “We have enough stories like this.”
Hey this is Allie–Ben’s essay wasn’t fiction–it was a nonfiction piece!
D: D: D: D: D: That is horrifying!!!! I’m so sorry…it literally didn’t occur to me that someone would present himself that way without the fig leaf of it being “fiction.” Apparently my eyes noped right over the part where you described it as a personal essay. Apologies.
Sometimes in nonfiction, I’m frustrated by how much authors can sanitize and sanctify themselves. Ben clearly didn’t have that issue. I think I’d use that as a lesson for the class in some way…
That is one! Another is that if you are truly trying to depict a character that thinks terrible things but you as an author do not endorse those terrible things yourself, you strategically deploy details that call attention to how alone this terrible person is in their thinking. AKA dramatic irony. Truly, writing that supposedly fictionalizes or satirizes something despicable but is indistinguishable from the despicable something is bad writing. Writing women as flat characters is bad writing. The perfect topics for 101.
Awesome, thank you.
I know Stephen King is not generally regarded as great literature, but he is a masterclass on this. His portrayal of a truly terrifying domestic abuser in Rose Madder pretty much exemplifies how to write a character who thinks and does terrible things, while showing how twisted this makes a person and how the cycle of abuse, if unbroken will persist in churning out broken, angry people.
This was really fantastic and gave me a lot to think about in terms of how I deploy language. Thank you for sharing.
Great piece. Thank you.
The more I think about it, the more curious I am to learn what the assignment was. I am trying to think of an assignment an instructor would give a student that would even remotely invite such topics and language.
It doesn’t generally have to be “invited” (which I must admit is a word I find rather problematic in this context). Students who have been frequently told that their writing is powerful, or who have been socialized to feel that truly personal writing is always max-level visceral (which young writers tend to associate with a dismissal of consideration for the audience), will often test the limits of the assignment and instructor if given any choice of topic.
Sometimes this is a good thing. And sometimes you get graphically transphobic descriptions of ex-girlfriends, which was my lovely experience last week. Did I “invite” verbal attacks on people who don’t fit this student’s notion of gender performance when I asked for an essay about gender in the novel? I think instead that he was testing what could fit as a personal example and went much, much too far. We don’t have to “invite” hate speech for it to show up at the party.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to even remotely suggest that the assignment actually invited any of this. It would have been more on-point if I had asked about what kind of assignment a student might perceive invites such things. But then, even that does kind of sound like the assignment is to blame, when really I expect that the it was the dude and his dudeness.
It really does seem to be that, the dudeness … or at least so I prefer to tell myself! “Hmm, how can I make this essay really stand out from the crowd? A shot of my Authentic Manly Self!”
I would actually really love to see a study on off-topic essays based on gender of instructor. I’m not sure it has anything to do with it, but I’d love to see.
My creative writing classes had plenty of open-ended topics: ‘a 2000-word short story’ for example allows for almost any topic or language
Oh man, you would be SHOCKED by what students will twist an assignment into. Sometimes they just have something they NEED TO SAY and my request for a standard five-paragraph essay on Emily Dickinson will turn into a seven page rant about abortion.
… are we at the same university?
I teach there too. A research paper on backscatter technology became a screed about how the TSA needs to do its job and “get out there and find the terrorists.”
Jesus, I have BEEN that student. Even now I’m embarrassed to admit what I wrote in comparison to the topic.
I still find myself justifying it internally, eight years later: “I was in a bad, weird place” or “I was having a really hard time”. It still won’t erase the look of utter dismayed disappointment my lecturer fixed on me when I showed up for the exam.
There is definitely misogyny both in viewing women as deals to be closed with a good sales pitch as opposed to equals with agency and their own valid desires, as well as in measuring the worth of a woman or any person by their sexual choices or actions. I do agree with the sentiments expressed in this piece.
That said, because this doesn’t just deal with gender issues, it deals with language, with words, I’m confused both by this narrative and by the definition of nonfiction here.
First, a distant college acquaintance named Eric made a bland but uninformed defense of Ben on Facebook. Later, Eric is suddenly Ian, the pickup artist the author only spent a handful of hours with, and now they’re Facebook friends and his comment transforms the original one from “hey guys just want to express their sexual selves” to throwing around terms like gynophobia? Obviously some editing for consistency would help, but on top of that, how much of this was fictional vs. factual?
I thought the implication was that two separate guys Eric and Ian both left comments on her post.
Amazing piece. Thank you for writing this; it says so many things I’ve felt but never put together.
Did Ben consent to having his essay quoted and being called out here? This feels very questionable in re teacher/student ethical obligations.
He did–I sent it to him first before sending it anywhere else.
and his name is changed
Awesome. Now I’m gaining a little respect for him. How did he respond to this article? Did he respond?
Ben was very gracious. He said the piece made him uncomfortable/ashamed but wouldn’t ask me to change anything because though it was hard for him to stomach, it was fair critique. When I write CNF my moral code is this:
Though my version of events might not strike my subjects as flattering, I endeavor to write representations that include as much clear-eyedness and empathy as I can muster in the hopes that the combination will make subjects feel how I’ve written them is fair.
This reminded me of a poem I wrote after a date ended badly: http://atlas.csd.net/~cantelow/cgi-bin/poem_com3….
i feel like a missed a section… “eric” responded to the facebook post, then a few paragraphs later it’s “ian” who did? good essay, i just got confused there.
both did–the man from college, “eric” AND the man at the wedding, “ian.”
hmmm yeah seems more clear now. let’s just chalk this up to a temporary case of white dress/blue dress >_>
This piece is amazing, it also makes me wish that every article written about a social or political issue, especially nuanced ones, could be written with not only the flair for language, but also the vulnerable and thoughtful insight you use. I’m a die hard fan as of right now.
I’m sorry but I fundamentally disagree with saying that Ben isn’t a misogynist because he acts abashed under scrutiny. Furthermore, “called for boys and men to divorce their self-worth from the acceptance or rejection of women. Despite the woman-positive message…” just doesn’t scan for me. It’s, I guess I’ll call it an overly ameliorative interpretation; that message could just as easily mean “stop paying attention to what women think” which hardly seems woman-positive. I’d also (reluctantly) suggest that the author dive a little deeper into the pick-up-artist culture that Ian is involved in, because the things Ben was writing could come right out of it.
Best comment here. Tons of abusers act “abashed under scrutiny,” to use your phrase. I think if someone was criticizing me in a classroom about something, even if I absolutely stand by my behavior/statement, my eyes my tremble too, because confrontations are tough and social opprobrium is really upsetting to deal with. I can’t even imagine receiving the text that Ben sent to (or says he sent to) the woman he had sex with, it is so terribly upsetting, and acting contrite does not undo that or let him off the hook for the great contempt that he showed her and all women.
Just adding my voice to the roar of approval for the marvellous and brilliant writing and sentiment of this piece, particularly this:
…still say things to and about women that make their nervous systems sing with rage.
I adore finding people who can express that inexpressible feeling of powerlessness and anger. Thank you!
That was an excellent piece.
I have faced the challenge, when calling out a friend on his behaviour, of defining Misogyny in a useful way. I drew on what I had had to learn the hard way and described it as “Not just a hatred or dislike of women, but an acceptance and embrace of behaviours and traditional values that lots of people will tell you are okay…but which are not okay if you actually look at them and think about it. You have to police yourself, because there will never be a shortage of people to make excuses for your behaviour. Do you really want to operate at their standards?”
A few years later this friend has grown up a lot, and actually mentioned that talk a month or so ago. I always thought the first bit was the clever and erudite part. he told me it was the second half that got to him. That the idea of being “minimum standard” and basing his behaviour on finding a quorum who would assure him he was accepted really offended his sensibilities once he started seeing it.
Wonderful stuff! Thank you thank you thank you. I’ve had to sea with my share of cluelessly-misogynistic writing from entitled college boys in the past; I also do a lot of writing for websites on women’s sexuality and sometimes I struggle with how difficult it is to communicate the ways in which explicit language can be so deftly (or clumsily, as it turns out) utilized within such different contexts. This piece gave me some wonderful insights…and spoke to my own experiences.
I spent my morning dreaming up really condescending responses to Eric.
The best I can do is echo Jeffrey Cranor’s Twitter:
you assume misogyny only exists as overt hatred. when you become an adult, you’ll learn about patriarchy & systemic suppression
I am a grad student at OSU as well. The worst thing I’ve ever graded was an answer to an easy, feel-good extra-credit question on an exam: “Name your favorite primate and explain why you chose them.” “Orangutans, because of all the rape.” I have never had such a pit in my stomach as going back to teach that class and interact with that student. It was truly terrible.
absolutely awful.did you engage the student about it?
Not directly – I gave the whole class a spiel about being respectful and professional, but it was the second time I taught and wasn’t really sure how to handle that conversation. And my course coordinator at the time was the opposite of helpful and responsive.
so sorry to hear that about your advisor. I found my colleague’s advice to use the classroom as a place where i have influence to get a message across to be great advice, and I got to engage with Ben on the content of the essay because I was going to be critiquing his essay anyway, and we had mid-sem conferences, both of which I used as an opportunity to go thru his piece with him almost line by line. Because of the position of power I was in as the educator, I definitely had his ear, but I didn’t chastise or shame him…just walked him through the language and explained the implications he might not have even known were there. If anything like this happens again I’d suggest having a conversation focusing on the connotations of words with the student one on one. That said, it’s so hard to know the right thing to do in situations like that, when you feel totally shocked and floored.
I agree with Sexperimentation! I’m really sorry to hear that your course coordinator was unhelpful. I always think those kind of essay ‘bombs’ are great places to open up discussion and get students to work through those kind of statements critically. Juicy stuff: So, what’s interesting about rape? Is ‘rape’ possible in animals? Biological imperative vs conscious consent in humans?
Where I teach, I get a lot of blithe homophobia and degrading generalizations about prostitutes in student work. I smile, rub my hands together, and think… yummy. Today’s the day for a nice, meaty class.
Hang on, did Ian comment on Ben’s facebook comment, or Eric?
This is Allie, the author, and both men did.
There’s a marvelous opening monologue at the beginning of the film version of Kobo Abe’s Woman in the Dunes. It’s not in the novel version, and I can only really paraphrase: men and women demand innumerable proofs of each other’s goodwill.
Your essay reminded me of this, and the way we use language as ‘incantation’ and practice our ‘open sesame’ tricks. If they never worked, people wouldn’t keep using them. I think it’s worth pointing out that women use different but similar incantations to get what they want from men.
The irony is that, using language this way – as incantation – almost always sets up a depersonalizing dynamic. It serves a tremendously isolating world-view because it situates everyone as elements of a transactional interchange.
Meanwhile, if anyone was simply honest and said: “Look, I’m horny and I don’t know you. I’m after sex, and perhaps you might want that too. Not that this could preclude a richer involvement at a later time, but right now… I’m just after some sex. Are you interested?” it might work, or not work, but at least it wouldn’t be committing the sin of dissembling. At least it wouldn’t immediately situate everyone – petitioner and petitionee alike – in poorly written farce. Yet our culture finds that sort of a statement very offensive. It’s as if it’s the one thing you can’t say.
It’s sad that, in a way, “Show us your tits,” at least has the merit of being direct and truthful. And the easy response is just ; “No.” Ian’s long, wordy efforts were basically the same thing, only they were more manipulative and burned much more time.
The term ‘seduction’ is an interesting one. It’s a lovely word, a complex word. I’ve always felt it denoted a kind of delicious portal that led to interesting and exciting places. When one employs seductive language just to get one’s penis stroked to orgasm, it’s such a waste of good language.
damn this is incisive. thank you so much for offering these thoughts. especially that last about seduction. Wish I’d written that.
I do hope the next person who decides to expend seductive language on you has a better sense of the possibilities open to both of you. Hugs.
There's a marvelous opening monologue at the beginning of the film version of Kobo Abe's Woman in the Dunes. It's not in the novel version, and I can only really paraphrase: men and women demand innumerable proofs of each other's goodwill.
Your essay reminded me of this, and the way we use language as 'incantation' and practice our 'open sesame' tricks. If they never worked, people wouldn't keep using them. I think it's worth pointing out that women use different but similar incantations to get what they want from men.
The irony is that, using language this way – as incantation – almost always sets up a depersonalizing dynamic. It serves a tremendously isolating world-view because it situates everyone as elements of a transactional interchange.
Meanwhile, if anyone was simply honest and said: "Look, I'm horny and I don't know you. I'm after sex, and perhaps you might want that too. Not that this could preclude a richer involvement at a later time, but right now… I'm just after some sex. Are you interested?" it might work, or not work, but at least it wouldn't be committing the sin of dissembling. At least it wouldn't immediately situate everyone – petitioner and petitionee alike – in poorly written farce. Yet our culture finds that sort of a statement very offensive. It's as if it's the one thing you can't say.
It's sad that, in a way, "Show us your tits," at least has the merit of being direct and truthful. And the easy response is just ; "No." Ian's long, wordy efforts were basically the same thing, only they were more manipulative and burned much more time.
The term 'seduction' is an interesting one. It's a lovely word, a complex word. I've always felt it denoted a kind of delicious portal that led to interesting and exciting places. When one employs seductive language just to get one's penis stroked to orgasm, it's such a waste of good language.
I agree with Sexperimentation! I'm really sorry to hear that your course coordinator was unhelpful. I always think those kind of essay 'bombs' are great places to open up discussion and get students to work through those kind of statements critically. Juicy stuff: So, what's interesting about rape? Is 'rape' possible in animals? Biological imperative vs conscious consent in humans?
Where I teach, I get a lot of blithe homophobia and degrading generalizations about prostitutes in student work. I smile, rub my hands together, and think… yummy. Today's the day for a nice, meaty class.
Did Ian and Eric turn in to the same person?
I do hope the next person who decides to expend seductive language on you has a better sense of the possibilities open to both of you. Hugs.