This past week, I had the good fortune of being able to not only attend, but present my paper on Literacy in the Feminist Blogging Community at my first-ever international conference.  The Contemporary Women’s Writing Network conference in San Diego was a great place to connect with fantastic women and those who write about women.  It was great fun to present, as well, with a woman from York who is writing about feminist bloggers for her PhD dissertation!  As you can imagine, we had much to talk about.

Although I attended many other panels and learned much about Margaret Atwood, women and adolescence, and other interesting female bloggers, I feel I learned more about the academic community than anything.  Surprisingly (or not so surprisingly), this is still a community for which gender binaries still exist in full force.  Every panel I attended discussed the differences between men and women, or how men appear in books versus how women appear in books, or how men write differently than women do.  There didn’t seem to be much of a discussion about, say, how feminism or feminist ideas can help men better function in society, or what benefit men might get from reading women writers.  There was also not much discussion about the trans community or anyone that may exist between the gender binary.  Granted, I did not attend all of the panels, but from what I saw from the titles of the presentations, this conference was very much fitting of the title: Contemporary Women’s Writing Network.

This is also a community for which feminism does not seem as problematic as it does in the internet community.  In fact, it is a way of being for many of these women and men, almost comically and overtly stereotypical.  For example, Tim was there with me because we turned this trip into a little vacation.  He, naturally, came to see me present since, you know, he was already there.  Another man who was attending the conference asked him what he was presenting, and Tim informed him that he was my fiance and there to see me.  The man proceeded to poke fun at us a bit, saying I wasn’t much of a feminist if I couldn’t even present a paper by myself.  I wasn’t actually a part of this conversation, or I would have given him a piece of my mind, but this is just an example of the sorts of things I overheard throughout the conference.

Not only was much of the focus on women and only women, but privilege at this conference was obvious.  Not so much white privilege or heterosexual privilege so much, but definitely economic privilege.  This may seem obvious considering that this conference was academic in nature and, therefore, mostly professors and students from esteemed universities were in attendance, but this was so much so that I felt a bit out of place.  This is not to say that I am not economically privileged; I am.  I attended a small, private, expensive school for my undergraduate education and I also attended a small, private, expensive school for my graduate education.  However, I felt as if I was the only person presenting at this conference who was not teaching in a university in some capacity – even as a TA – or working on her PhD.  When asked what university I was affiliated with (as I was asked on more occasions than I can count), I said I had just graduated with my MA from [insert grad school here].  When asked where I was teaching, I responded [insert high school here].  I then received the typical shocked response from almost every participant: “You teach high school?  And you’re here?“  Why yes, why shouldn’t I be here?, I wondered.  Why shouldn’t high school teachers work on other pursuits besides high school education and take pride enough in them to visit conferences and present papers?

I think there might also have been a bit of surprise that I was attending this conference without any affiliations, that is to say, without any university to support me or reimburse some of my expenses.  Then it occurred to me: Do people do independent research?  If I wanted to further my work about feminist blogging, would I have to re-affiliate myself with my university?  Or would I need to continue on to a PhD?  Would it be possible to continue the research and write papers and attend conferences on my own?  It saddens me to think that I may not be able to fly solo and continue doing the sort of work I want.  And it saddens me even more to think that there are many people out there who could be writing excellent papers and attending conferences and really changing the face of academia but who don’t necessarily have the means to attend colleges and work towards advanced degrees and fly cross-country to academic conferences.

But, all-in-all, it was a spectacular experience to be a part of this conference and to interact with so many wonderful writers and thinkers.  Although I found it quite problematic on many levels, and felt the need to write about the problematic nature of it all here, it was more rejuvenating than anything.  I found myself wanting to blog and tweet so much of what I learned while I was there (but made myself not do it so as not to waste valuable time in San Diego!), so you can look forward to some more blog posts about many of the interesting sessions in the very near future!

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It came to my attention during my blogging break, courtesy of Emily Heroy – Founder of  the Gender Across Borders blog and fellow Equality 101 writer – and Liza Donnelly – Cartoonist Extraordinaire – (If you’re not at least following these ladies on Twitter or reading their work, you should be.  Now!) that maybe saying “I am a feminist” is maybe not the exact correct thing to be saying.  It’s no secret that feminists throughout history have worked extremely hard towards equal rights for women.  But it’s also no secret that they haven’t historically worked very hard towards equal rights for all women.  bell hooks noted this (I can’t remember the exact essay in which she noted this, so forgive my lack of citation.  If anyone knows, feel free to drop a comment.), especially in the way feminism tended to be for the white, upper-middle class women, not for poor women or women of color.

Today, we see people claiming to be feminists and actively working against women – see anything written about Sarah Palin in the past month.  We see women actively excluding other human beings from the fight for equal rights (Emily didn’t exclude other people in this post, but I refuse to link to the post that did).  We see women telling other women how to be feminists.  Apparently, my feminist card was taken away from me when I chose to get married and have a big wedding.  It’s going to be torn up into little pieces when I write later about the crisis we’re seeing with boys and education and how we need to work to catch them up.  Or when I blog about how my future husband and I are going to share money.

I can’t remember the last time I was so disillusioned with a community of people.  If you read through some of my earlier archives, you’ll see how enchanted I was with this blogging community; I even chose to write my Master’s thesis about it!  It was so wonderful to finally be surrounded by women who supported one another.  And now it seems like these women supporting one another are just doing it in the same way as they did in high school – they’ve formed little Twitter-cliques and feminist groups, only worried about who is tweeting whose links or who is saying things that can be attacked or disagreed with or about who to criticize next for voicing opinions.  This isn’t activism.  This is cattiness masquerading as activism, which, in my opinion, makes it even worse than just plain old nastiness.

It’s no secret that I’ve been pretty disappointed with this community for a while.  But I don’t think I’m disappointed with feminism in general.  In fact, there are some really great women out there writing some really great things, and over the next few weeks, I’m going to try to highlight some of those posts (let’s start with Sophia’s blatant sarcasm regarding the Rules of Feminism).  I’m honored that these people even give this blog the time of day, but I’m not so much honored to call myself a feminist anymore.  Saying “I am a feminist” makes being a feminist all that I am, and makes it tough to do anything that anyone might consider “not feminist.”  So, like bell hooks, I’m no longer going to say I am a feminist, but more simply that I advocate feminism.  I advocate lots of things: human rights in general, better treatment of teachers, equity in education…. and the list goes on.  These things aren’t wholly what I am – although they can be all-consuming.  They are simply things I stand for.  I’ll stand for feminism, or for a feminism that is inclusive and intersectional.  But I won’t let it become all of me.

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After much planning and hard work, Equality 101 is back up and running!  Go check us out!  We have great new writers and content planned for you to enjoy.

http://equality101.net

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Story time!

My freshman Honors English teacher and speech team coach, Mr. John Hires, sat us all down on the last day of school my freshman year and just looked at us.  He sighed a deep sigh and put his hands on the table, arms outstretched.  He said: “I wish there was more time.  I wish I had more time with you all.  You were such a great class.  I want to discuss the meaning of life.  What is the meaning of life?”  We all laughed and the bell rang, ending our time together as a class.

Little did I know, this would be more or less my last memory of Mr. Hires.  He passed away my sophomore year, and this was one of the most heartbreaking events during my time at my high school.  He was an amazing teacher – inspirational, encouraging.  Treating us like adults instead of like kids.  Talking to us like we knew what we were talking about.  Always wishing for more time instead of counting down the days until summer vacation. 

I wanted to be a teacher like that.  I still want to be a teacher like that.

He taught us his favorite play, Our Town by Thornton Wilder.  I love that play.  It was the first play I directed as drama director at my previous school.  Every time I think of this memory of Mr. Hires, I think of Emily’s monologue at the end of the play.  She’s died in childbirth, and the Stage Manager – the narrator of the story – allows her to come back to see a day in her life, one last time.  As she is getting ready to leave her worldly life, she says:

Emily: Oh, Mama, look at me one minute as though you really saw me. Mama, fourteen years have gone by. I’m dead. You’re a grandmother, Mama! Wally’s dead, too. His appendix burst on a camping trip to North Conway. We felt just terrible about it – don’t you remember? But, just for a moment now we’re all together. Mama, just for a moment we’re happy. Let’s really look at one another!…I can’t. I can’t go on. It goes so fast. We don’t have time to look at one another. I didn’t realize. So all that was going on and we never noticed. Take me back — up the hill — to my grave. But first: Wait! One more look. Good-bye , Good-bye world. Good-bye, Grover’s Corners….Mama and Papa. Good-bye to clocks ticking….and Mama’s sunflowers. And food and coffee. And new ironed dresses and hot baths….and sleeping and waking up. Oh, earth,you are too wonderful for anybody to realize you. Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it–every,every minute?

Stage Manager: No. (pause) The saints and poets, maybe they do some.

Emily: I’m ready to go back.

It is a beautiful moment in the play, and totally reflective of what I think is the right attitude – for education and for life.  Thanks, Mr. Hires, for teaching me that.

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Roundtable discussions are my absolute, most favorite thing to do with students in my English class, and the last roundtable of the year always makes me a little sad.

I’m sure most of you can figure out what a roundtable discussion is, but for those of you who don’t know, it’s an activity during which I ask all of my students (sometimes 30 in a class) to move their desks into a large circle around the perimeter of the room, and then for the remainder of the hour, we talk to each other about whatever we are reading at the time.  I sit in the circle with the students, too (which is always funny when someone walks into the room with a pass, because they look around the circle and say, “Where’s your teacher?” every time!), and my purpose is to gently direct the conversation, but more often, I find myself just listening and participating with the students, adding a few insights here and there.

Roundtables are amazing, because the students can all see each other, and we are really on the same level.  I start the first roundtable of every year by telling them about King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table (it’s also amazing how many of them don’t know that story), and how King Arthur decided to have a round table instead of a rectangular one because, with a circle, there’s no head of the table.  All participants are equal, including myself.  Of course, that’s not really true.  They still look to me for the “right” answer frequently, although that happens less and less every time they do a roundtable. 

As you can imagine, the first roundtable of the year is somewhat a battle.  They look at me; they don’t talk to each other; when they do talk to each other, it’s never about the literature; sometimes, they’re so shy about sharing their ideas that they won’t say anything at all.  But as the year goes on, students who have never said a word in class before become the star players in the roundtable.  Students who might never care about literature are excited to share their ideas.  Some of the most critical thinking I’ve ever seen comes out of these roundtables, and so the last one of the year always makes me a little sad.  But also happy and incredibly proud that my students have come so far.

Yesterday, we were discussing the book (and video), The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch – which is a great way to end the year, and a really easy book to discuss because the students can relate to it and they really like it – and the students were coming up with ideas I’ve never thought about left and right.  They were saying things like, “I liked it, but all he talked about was work.  Even though he talked about his childhood, it was all stuff that related to his work.  I know he said he didn’t want to talk about his family in the video, but he could have talked about life outside of his job, right?  I  mean, there is life outside of a job, right?” 

And there was more where that came from. 

These students just blew me away, and I told them as much.  When I did, and I told them how proud I was of how far they had obviously come this year, they all just looked at me and smiled.  This happened twice – two classes, same results.  And these were two of the best moments of my teaching career.

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Last night, the English department at my college treated the Masters students to dinner as a congratulations for finishing our thesis papers and the program.  It was a really wonderful evening, and it really didn’t set it until last night that I’ve finished my Master’s.  It feels good, but it’s also bittersweet.  I will miss my classmates, and believe it or not, I will miss the work – the writing, the discussions, the reading… all of it.

It was nice, however, to share an evening with professors and classmates that was more social than scholarly.  I was sitting next to Tim, of course, but also near my professors.  They were extremely complimentary of my work, which was nice to hear.  They were interested to hear about the conference at which I am presenting my thesis this July.  They were also curious about what I will be doing now that I have my Master’s.  I had expected this question; most teachers don’t get their Master’s in English unless they want to teach at a community college or go on to their Doctorate and teach at a university.  What I didn’t expect was that one of my professors would try to persuade me to “do better things” – his words, not mine.  He tried to persuade me so much, in fact, that the head of the department interrupted him and said, “Stop trying to persuade her to leave high school!  We need teachers like her!”  This topic wasn’t brought up again until the end of the night, as we were saying good bye.  My professor shook my hand and said, “Please consider going on to do better things.”

The fact of the matter is that I could not think of a single, more important thing I could be doing with my life right now.

You see, there are assumptions out there about teachers, and sometimes, those who we think are the most liberal thinkers are the ones who hold on to these assumptions the strongest.  We are mostly women who didn’t actually choose teaching.  We were pushed into it by a patriarchal society.  We were told our whole lives that we should choose a job where we work with people or nurture people, because that’s what women are supposed to do.  And, of course, those of us who teach English or other humanities courses are doing so because we were not encouraged enough to pursue careers in math or science.

Some people truly believe that we couldn’t possibly be teaching high school English because we love it or because we feel at home in front of a classroom or because we have a passion for teaching.  Or because we have a passion for English language and literature.

This isn’t a new concept.  I’ve been getting the same line from people at least several times a year.  “Do something important!”  “You were meant for better things!”  I’m here to tell you, right here, right now, that there is nothing better, nothing more important that I can do with my life.

Of all my choices – and I had many choices – I chose teaching.  And every day I choose teaching.

That said, I’m back to blogging with a more refined purpose.  My goal here is to work to end the assumptions that teachers are either not good enough to do something else or that they’re just waiting around for something “better” to come along.  I won’t write about teaching every time I write, and I’ll leave most of the educational theory and sharing of lessons for Equality 101, but I want to write here to give you all a little insight into my life and my work, and I want to show you all how feminism and human rights play out in my life and my work.

I’m excited to be back to the blogging community, and I’m excited about this new path for my writing.

It feels good to be back.

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Don’t forget!  There’s still time to donate to my Avon Walk for Breast Cancer AND to RSVP for the #chifems April Tweetup!

The Impact of Twitter on Feminism: Its Facilitations & Limitations by Emily Heroy

Feminism makes it way all across the internet–in universities all over the world, news articles posted online, in forums, on Facebook, and (as the title suggests), Twitter. I’ve talked about the impact of social media and feminism in a video interview I did awhile back. But for this post, I want to stress the impact of Twitter on feminism.

Teenagers and Reading by Justine Larbalestier

1. There seems to be an implicit assumption that all teenagers are the same.

2. There’s also an assumption in all these discussions about YA that it is primarily read by teenagers.

3. Another assumption is that a) only reading fiction counts and b) reading is better for you than any other pastime.

4. Then there’s the assumption that there is such a thing as good writing and bad writing and we all agree on what those are.

Smarts, books, teens and fairy dust by Chally

There’s a particular trend in the challenging of teenagers’ reading choices. Everything teenagers read – or everything teenagers are supposedly reading – is baaaaad. It’s immoral! Or it’s sapping their minds! Or they could be reading something better! say the older folk. We must question where such valuation of these books comes from. Is there something particularly wrong with Harry Potter or Twilight?

Beyond the Pale: Is white the new black? by Kelefa Sanneh via The New Yorker

In a marvellously splenetic essay, “On Being White . . . And Other Lies,” James Baldwin argued that America had, really, “no white community”—only a motley alliance of European immigrants and their descendants, who made a “moral choice” (even if they didn’t realize it) to join a synthetic racial élite. And, in the nineteen-nineties, a cohort of scholars took up Baldwin’s charge, popularizing a field of research that came to be known as whiteness studies. In 1994, the white labor historian David R. Roediger published an incendiary volume, “Towards the Abolition of Whiteness.” Paying special attention to unions and strikes, he traced the unsteady growth of American whiteness, a category that eventually included many previous identities that had once been considered marginal: Irish, Italian, Polish, Jewish. “It is not merely that whiteness is oppressive and false; it is that whiteness is nothing but oppressive and false,” he wrote. “Whiteness describes, from Little Big Horn to Simi Valley, not a culture but precisely the absence of culture. It is the empty and therefore terrifying attempt to build an identity based on what one isn’t and on whom one can hold back.”

What Makes a Great Teacher? by Amanda Ripley via The Atlantic

For years, the secrets to great teaching have seemed more like alchemy than science, a mix of motivational mumbo jumbo and misty-eyed tales of inspiration and dedication. But for more than a decade, one organization has been tracking hundreds of thousands of kids, and looking at why some teachers can move them three grade levels ahead in a year and others can’t. Now, as the Obama administration offers states more than $4 billion to identify and cultivate effective teachers, Teach for America is ready to release its data.

Five Years by Danine Spencer

Sunday was the anniversary of a really good day. A great day, in fact. It was the fifth anniversary of the day I was admitted to Froedtert Hospital in Milwaukee, Wis., where I where I stayed for the next two months. I’m sure most people wouldn’t commemorate the anniversary of the day they entered a hospital for two months, but April 11, 2005, was a day that changed my life.

Guest Post: Interview with Julie Zilinger, teenage editor of top feminist blog, the Fbomb from Veronica Arreola

We had the opportunity to talk to one of the busiest (and youngest) bloggers on the web, Julie Zeilinger, sole founder of the Fbomb, a feminist blog for teenagers. Let us rephrase: while the blog may be run by a teenager and posted from a teenage perspective, the content is relevant for any feminist young and old.  Zeilinger attracts an international array of young feminists while posting from Pepper Pike, Ohio. In this interview, she tells us how her feminist outlook was shaped,  juggling school, the blog and the way her peers and parents view her.

SAFER: Beyond the Campus by Amanda ReCupido

I recently volunteered with SAFER (Students Active for Ending Rape), where I’ll be writing a weekly blog post that collects news of sexual assault from “beyond the campus” (their mission is to improve college sexual assault policies). Below is my first post, cross-posted here.

Food and Moral Weight by s.e. smith

But the thing I really like about Michelle is that she talks about the structural systems behind the food we eat, and she specifically addresses and refutes the commonly held idea that individual eaters should be held morally culpable for the system they are trapped in. She does not, in other words, think it’s very productive to judge people who don’t have a lot of choice when it comes to what they get their stomachs around. In fact, she thinks, as I do, that it’s actually pretty counterproductive to be berating people for not eating “right” when “right” may not be an option for them.

Take Care of Your Eyes! by Danine Spencer

More women than men are diagnosed with eye diseases such as glaucoma, cataracts, macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy

Women may experience changes in vision in various stages of their lives including pregnancy and post-menopause.

More than 2.3 million women (out of 3.6 million people total) live with visual impairment, including blindness

6 million women (vs 3 million men) have dry eye syndrome, a condition where not enough natural tears are produced.

Day of Silence by s.e. smith

Bullying kills. This is not just about kids being kids. It is about unparalleled viciousness and horrific behaviour. It is about violence and rape and hatred. It is about school districts which stand by and do nothing while their students are literally bullied to death and people are begging for help; the ‘not my business’ attitude harms youths who are being bullied in particular because they are counting on the adults around them to do the right thing and when they don’t it is an act of betrayal. An act which can’t be made up later, when the victim is dead, I would like to point out.

Following up on the F Conference by Chally

But a problem with feminism is that those “other” issues get treated as pet issues that mainstream feminism can pick up once in a while for minority points and drop again. And the sad thing is, intersectionality isn’t that hard a tool to employ. There are so many conventional sites of feminist activism that could centre, for instance, disability along with gender, but just don’t.

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But what do I know? I'm just an English teacher.

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I’d like to introduce to you a brand new blog for teachers and activists!  It’s called Equality 101, and yours truly is a contributing writer in the company of some seriously awesome teacher-writer-researchers!

Of course, I will still be posting education-related posts here, but I will include much of what you find here over there.  So if you’re a teacher or if you’re interested in education at all, head on over and check it out!

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