as i walked from [1984] anthropology, i talked to some girls. one said another teacher (eckford) was making her cry. and that he tells her he is "too sensitive."
i mentioned this to the counselor at holmes hall, a woman of the older generation. i just stormed in and began sobbing and asked if there is counseling available. the counselor said "too sensitive" is code for a feminine perspective. and that as more women get more advanced degrees, hostility for them takes these subtle or not so subtle forms.
i told the girls that the free tuition will not be such a savings when i add up all the grief it has caused me.
i told them that i have never been pushed this far.
i marched up to social sciences department chair [1984]eckford 's office to let him know [1984] thinks "bitching" is okay for the classroom.
[1984]eckford said put it in an email.
[1984] eckford was very sympathetic when i described how awkward it is to be around an agressive male who shouts and gives into his anger and base instincts.
it is bringing out the worst in me.
[1984] told me of the way his friend is harassed for being a woman in a high position in her job and that people say its because she has "tits and ass," a phrase which resonates with hostility and a phrase which [1984] bartelt used when i asked him if he could be more respectful.
ask him about his "asshole hypothesis."
[1984] loves to take up 20 minutes explaining how there are two kinds of people in the world, assholes, and non-*holes.
contextually, [1984] was illustrating how mad he is for people thinking he's french, not german. hence, "bitching." european cultural pride can be so irrational, anyway. like what? is there something so wrong with being *? why get so angry?
and then he was saying he would be "*ing" at us if we skipped class or were late or something like that. hasn't he heard of the blogosphere? why not try to make a reputation for diplomacy, kindness, helpfulness, gentleness. i wouldn't let my children around people so foul mouthed.
when i told the ASO that their cruelty to sheila, and their protection of the harassment and intoxication of a minor was so offensive, compounded with the verbal abuse and salacious language of lanzer, lewis, and [1984]bartelt---would lead me to tell my sister
DO NOT GO TO A SCHOOL LIKE THIS.
and indeed, i told my sister.
my sister is brilliant, gentle, and elegant. i want so much more for her!!!!!!!!
i wrote bartelt a hand written note about how hard it is to come to school as i struggle with rape trauma, depression, and agraphobic-like symptoms.
why does he have to be so aggressive? "i have no sympathy for anorexia and bulimia" he said tuesday.
hearing all this agressive speech just makes me feel bad. it makes a lot of us feel . . .
the girls told me to take back the word * and even the word *. i don't use these words.
that if the teachers are going to be so disrespectful, it's okay to take those words back.
at vanderbilt, i studied simone de beauvoir, luce irigaray whose language theory bears similarity to anthropology's sapir whorf hypothesis, that language shapes the way you see the world.
i read virginia wolf, naomi klein, erica jong, all the old feminist philosophers till i was blue in the face.
i had teachers like william franke, who speaks latin, greek, italian, french, german. he studied at oxford.
his presence was like that of an angel. every word from his mouth was like poetry.
he taught augustine and dante.
david wood taught nietzsche and heidegger. he advocated ethical vegetarianism. he brought in a piano recording of nietzsche's little heard compostion, which sounded much like schubert.
dr john carpenter was expert at japanese art history, and dealt delicately with issues of gender, belief, nature, commerce in the floating world, ukiyo-e.
i am so thrilled he has a great job now at the university of london. he deserves it!
http://www.soas.ac.uk/staff/staff30727.php
he told me not to drop out of school. tat it was students like me that make teaching worthwhile.
he didn't understand the financial strain i was under. or maybe, he could imagine.
sara beardsworth taught the graduate level kristeva seminar, and allowed me to come to her classes.
she was patient and gentle and deliberate in her manner.
this was my philosophy teacher!!!!! she was so graceful and kind and respectful!!!!! i remember it.
Sara Beardsworth | ||
| Associate Professor | ||
| Ph.D., University of Warwick | ||
| Nineteenth and twentieth century European philosophy, Hegel, critical theory, feminist philosophy, psychoanalysis. Author ofJulia Kristeva: Psychoanalysis and Modernity. Editor of Julia Kristeva’s Ethical and Political Thought: Spindel Conference Proceedings. Articles on Kristeva, Freud, Irigaray, Adorno, and Benjamin" | ||
and then idit dobbs-weinstein bears no words. she had to sue vanderbilt to keep her job. she introduced me to blanchot, to shoah, to prospero's books, to dead sea soap, to fava beans. she walked with the grace of a ballet dancer. she told me something about being young, and coming into focus. she wanted us to learn as many languages as possible. she had greek and latin and hebrew and french and german.
our classes were actually like cutting deep inside etymology and text.
"festine lente," she would say: make haste slowly.
she hinted at how poorly she was treated by her colleagues, whether because of anti-semitism or sexism or . . . don't you wonder?
one of the LACC women told me how hard it is to raise a child and go to school, and she feels faculty are insensitive to her needs.
amazingly by the time i got to the health service, i was in tears.
i found jerome hard at work on a legal defense at holmes hall.
he has such a great legal mind. i told him i was so proud of him, and that my mood shot from zero to 100.
he asked me what happened in my life to make me so sensitive to discrimination and justice issues.
i told him racist police brutality, and the racist lynching of a boy when i was a child in my neighborhood in nashville tennessee. and the racist families who whose kids wouldn't play with my brother and i because we played with danielle and and danjele.
and then i told jerome, almost getting killed a few times.
getting my skull stomped on by a deranged psychotic man. getting stranggled by another deranged one. hit over the head by a carjacker. life is fragile. i should be dead. everything that happens is extra!!!
after you have almost been killed, after you have fought for your life, after you have been abused, everything is different.
there is a different kind of courage, after atrocity.
after torture.
in a sad haze after visiting [1984] and passman and jerome robinson who is working on sheila dharod's appeal and the holmes hall student health,
i sat outside theater class on the second floor of administration. it was wonderful. the teacher is great. i have stopped before to listen outside. he talked about shaw, gorky, ibsen, checkov. lighting and color and set design. magically i was transported to a more innocent time. my brain felt so happy to be around literature again, and creatives, and a genuinely enthusiastic non-hostile manner. next week they move on to theater of the absurd, my favorite, although i am fascinated by the theater of cruelty of antonin artaud.
[1984] eckfordkindly asked me to write it up (the use of the word "bitching" in class). but really this is just too much work.
too bad my friend g. is so condescending about community college. he is pretty classist and negative like that. he doesn't know what its like to be poor and want an education so desperately, you'd put up with unimaginative professors with anger issues.
cristy passman, ombudsman, said well the guys are "getting off on" the foul language, as if that alone justified it. "getting off" is a vulgar expression. i wonder where she learned it. cristy is normally defensive of the abuse, but in a polite way. but yesterday she calmly explained that if the guys are "getting off" it's okay. harassment. and she doesn't consider it harassment. and it was so much worse in the sixties, blahblahblah.
i met today the gracious jane baxter spilios of the LACC speech department. she has a gracious way, uncommon to our modern era. i told her i heard she's great teacher. it was so comforting to speak to her about language. she spent a long time with me. she is so eloquent, and is appalled at the language i have heard in the paralegal and [1984]anthropology departments.
she is from a different time.
Ms. Spilios was shocked to hear a run-down of the assorted tawdry language young LACC women encounter from their young male professors.
she recommended i cantact passman, but i explained that she is no help. she is cover-up oriented.
she collects a check for nothing, and is rude to me, in a very subtle way.
i like it that she is subtle, whereas, the teachers are more overt, out of control.
i had to explain the crude significance of "getting off" to Ms. Spilios who is not familiar with the connotation of this slang. i think she is almost eighty . . .
in her speech classes she has a specific day when they discuss language No-no's. words that will hurt the effect of your speech, impugn your character, perhaps get you fired, or damage your career. I asked her what it was like to be a writer. i told her how much i admired emily dickinson and virginia woolf. she wrote a book Improve Your Spoken English, a book written for the exchange students at LACC in the fifties. She told me about the vietnam era on campus. and fearing for her safety, when hooligan students were stealing and damaging property, prior to the campus security protection. they had a system, where they would bang on the walls, to mobilize students for defense, in case of riot or attack!
the classrooms promised to protect each other.
 |  |  |  | |
Photo: Jane Baxter |
when i felt such kindness and graciousness from the counselor at the health department and from Professor Spilios, i realized that LACC has a hidden resource for me. As the tears burn my eyes, i realize, i will return to these kind gracious women, who have incredible strength of character, and wisdom.
they are not like the young women, who are so blind to the internalized misogyny and so brainwashed by TV that they think IDIOCRACY at LACC is okay.
these gracious elder women come from a time when politeness and kindness were valuable traits. they obviously value education immensely. they understood. they didn't try to blame me for feeling bad, the way cristy passman does, blaming it on my past, or my sensitivity, and complaining that i am causing too much paperwork.
i think cristy knows that her job could be in question.
she claimed yesterday, "i am just too low on the totem pole" to implement policy change.
she appreciated my offer to help distribute the harassment policy to the classroom bulletin boards.
i could be her free intern, to help stand up for students who are treated poorly.
i told her about my disability access entusiasm.
she gave me a speech about, we do so much. wonderful.
great.
but i don't think she understood my proposal: guerilla videoblogging of class and archiving for edu resource material databases. blah.
i think the internet copyriot open data revolution isn't hitting my campus. we're in a digital divide. arguing for high-tech strategies for disability rights i think is so important.
i told her about my friend with dyslexia. then she tried to blame my friend for being held back academically. i told her it was complicated. she wasn't being sensitive.
susan matranga (OSS director) was excited at first about my ides, but then was kind of rude to me, because she didn't understand my emails.
it was discouraging.
today, the counselor completely understood how demoralizing this classroom arrogance is. she let me sob. she gave me a hug. she comes from a different generation, closer to that of my grandparents, who were extremely gracious. she said i do not have to listen to the teacher's attempts to smother my voice "you have no case."
i spoke later with a friend of how it might be to be civilized and kind.
i think constantly of the film IDIOCRACY, set in a time in the future dystopia.
when i told my teacher, "the moral of the story is not to listen to women" i was making fun of how he gives preference to the boys in answering questions.
and he looked at me like "what?" i said,
"because i am a *."
i have never said this in my life. i think the bad vibes are rubbing off on me. i think i was making parody of his vulgarity, to show him how absurd he sounds. to show him that if he continually disparages women, christians, bulimics, whoever---so far as he's concerned, i am a * and i am *ing.
but i don't think of it that way at all.
i think of it like this: i care a lot about justice and fairness. my mom said my dad cared about fairness more than anyone she had ever met.
sorry about the typos and the bad language.
sorry about LACC.
on my note, i wrote "LOST CAUSE DEPARTMENT"
remembering beck: totally confused . . . he's only a person, who doesn't know *. . .
No comments:
Post a Comment