The morning after The Morning After
Following a citation in one of the texts I was reading a few months ago, I finally picked up a copy of Katie Roiphe's The Morning After in the library last week. And, taking a day to look at some non-blog-related (at least not directly) texts on Saturday, I found myself going cover to cover on this particular book. While it didn't take me so long to read it, it's been sitting in my cerebral colon since, proving somewhat more difficult to digest. Bear in mind that my primary motivation for reading this text was that I believed it spoke about the experience for women within the academy, and this is one of my core areas of interest. One of the issues Roiphe takes up is that of sexual harassment (between male and female faculty, though she focuses on male faculty/female students). Roiphe's presentation suggests that the result of a slew of sexual-harassment charges has led male faculty to become over-wary in their relationships with female students, resulting in actual discrimination against female students as their male teachers are reluctant to extend extra curricular advice/support to them for fear of the consequences.
First, there's an assumption of heterosexuality here.
Secondly, I think it's interesting that the idea of cozy chats with faculty behind closed doors (Roiphe does not find the open office door conducive to productive discussion) should be so advantageous for a student's academic career. Is the university such an old-boy's-network that excellent references find their way only to those who engage in after-hours over-coffee repartee with their professors? Indeed, Roiphe seems to think this central to the academic experience
connections with faculty that are
While I have learned a lot from the faculty at the institution where I study, and while I value every insight and suggestion I have been offered and enjoy my supervision sessions very much, I just don't have time for lengthy meetings outside of that. I work a part-time job, I have errands to run, meals to cook, reading and writing to get busy with. I hope that I have earned decent references through my participation in classes and the written work I produce. It might be nice to have a coffee with my supervisor sometime, but I wouldn't ever like to think of it as some kind of networking. To me, that brings to mind golf-with-the-boss schmoozing. My reading of this part of Roiphe's text seemed to suggest that in order to get ahead in academia it was wise not to play oneself out of this game.
It is important to recognize Roiphe's perspective as privileged and white, speaking from an Ivy-league American institution. I realise that the academic location of Roiphe is probably very different from those of my own experience, and do not deny her truth-claims with regard to the edginess in faculty/student relationships, though I have not experienced it myself. However, I feel really umcomfortable with the simple acceptance of an academic institution as one where perhaps 'who you know' is as valuable as 'what you know' and where jostling for position and favour (competing with your fellow students) are part of the status quo, from my point of view it would appear to be more useful to challenge this status quo than to chastise women for the spanner their activism has thrown in its works.
In 'Sisters of the Yam: Feminist Opportunism of Commitment to Struggle', bell hooks detects the competitive edge in the author's writing describing
Do read bell hooks' piece here, it offers an excellent critique of Roiphe's text, focusing on her failure to acknowledge the constructive contributions to dissent by many feminists other than herself and her omission of any acknowledgement of class or race differences.
First, there's an assumption of heterosexuality here.
Secondly, I think it's interesting that the idea of cozy chats with faculty behind closed doors (Roiphe does not find the open office door conducive to productive discussion) should be so advantageous for a student's academic career. Is the university such an old-boy's-network that excellent references find their way only to those who engage in after-hours over-coffee repartee with their professors? Indeed, Roiphe seems to think this central to the academic experience
The flexible hours combined with the intensity of the academic world would appear to be fertile ground for connections, arguments over coffee
connections with faculty that are
intellectually as well as professionally important
While I have learned a lot from the faculty at the institution where I study, and while I value every insight and suggestion I have been offered and enjoy my supervision sessions very much, I just don't have time for lengthy meetings outside of that. I work a part-time job, I have errands to run, meals to cook, reading and writing to get busy with. I hope that I have earned decent references through my participation in classes and the written work I produce. It might be nice to have a coffee with my supervisor sometime, but I wouldn't ever like to think of it as some kind of networking. To me, that brings to mind golf-with-the-boss schmoozing. My reading of this part of Roiphe's text seemed to suggest that in order to get ahead in academia it was wise not to play oneself out of this game.
It is important to recognize Roiphe's perspective as privileged and white, speaking from an Ivy-league American institution. I realise that the academic location of Roiphe is probably very different from those of my own experience, and do not deny her truth-claims with regard to the edginess in faculty/student relationships, though I have not experienced it myself. However, I feel really umcomfortable with the simple acceptance of an academic institution as one where perhaps 'who you know' is as valuable as 'what you know' and where jostling for position and favour (competing with your fellow students) are part of the status quo, from my point of view it would appear to be more useful to challenge this status quo than to chastise women for the spanner their activism has thrown in its works.
In 'Sisters of the Yam: Feminist Opportunism of Commitment to Struggle', bell hooks detects the competitive edge in the author's writing describing
Roiphe's construction of a feminist arena where the chosen (young, white, and privileged) don their boxing gloves to see who is the better feminist
Do read bell hooks' piece here, it offers an excellent critique of Roiphe's text, focusing on her failure to acknowledge the constructive contributions to dissent by many feminists other than herself and her omission of any acknowledgement of class or race differences.
2 Comments:
I teach this text or excerpts from it once in awhile, particularly her discussion of sexual harassment. I often find that a certain type of female students love this text. Usually, the women who are active in the "good" sororitites, who have a hypersexual dress (perhaps showing off their birth control patch with their low rider pants). I am puzzled by these women, because they embrace a rhetoric of "we don't need that feminism shit; we don't need to be protected." They buy into Roiphe's view that feminism is all about "victimhood" rather than recognize the empowerment that comes from a feminist consciousness.
These very same women spend a great deal of their social life vying for male attention from frat guys. Moreover, we know that women students as a group have far better test scores and GPAs and the men are not doing so well. So, in my opinion, these women are using their sexuality to "bait" a rather dumb, unreconstructed sexist frat guy. Somehow this will make these women feel powerful--to be recognized by the male. The men are simply not their intellectual equals, nor as mature as they are. And, these same men will use their frat connections (which are far more powerful than sorority connections to get better jobs than these women who worked harder than them!) I don't know if you have read _I am Charlotte Simmons_, but it does a good job of describing the dynamic I am talking about here.
I also noticed that many grad students--during my career--would like the Roiphesque post-feminism (or Paglia) if they had, in their view, "broken in" with the boys. However, to sit at the table with the boys required them to basically never bring up what they perceived to be injustices or sexism. They had to adopt this discourse of: why do you need to be a feminist? Why not just be good at X? What contributions does feminist thought make to X?
Many of them found out that the "boys" weren't there for them as they went looking for jobs!
Aspazia, thank you for your insight. I sometimes feel a little blinkered as my only campus contact this year has really been with the Centre for Women's Studies (which is, interestingly enough located above the University Commercial Services offices and not in any proximity to other academic depts.) and I haven't had so much contact with students from other departments. But yes, I imagine that Roiphe would have her appeal to the groups you describe. Despite my problems with many of her views, I am glad I have read this book and I am glad that it was published. It is good to open up this discussion and if this is a text that students find accessible and appealing then at least it offers a gateway into the issues themselves.
BTW Wow on the low rise jeans/birth control patch image. I haven't seen that here in the UK.
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