I just happened to look over at VBD, and apparently the female RR had inspired them to bloviate too. I quickly tire of endless comments on a thread, but I did find this from Stacy Thomas, which is part of their invitation:
“Over its first two years, this round robin generated a lot of discussion, which is one of its goals. I have come to decide that pinning it down to a particular mission is difficult. This tournament means different things for different people. Some have told me that they think it is important because girls aren’t invited in equal numbers to other competitive round robins or that they don’t receive equal recognition for their successes. Some people have told me that it is important to them because they think that within the debate community we have constructed our own gender norms in terms of stylistic and behavioral expectations both inside and outside rounds that impact the experiences of those involved. Some people have told me that this event is important because for whatever reason many of the top young women in the activity choose to quit after high school while many of the young men stay well into college to help educate the next generation of debaters. This tends to result in seeing fewer female judges in late elimination rounds, at least on the TOC circuit, and can become a self-fulfilling cycle since it is hard to stay in an activity in which one feels a sense of isolation. Some coaches, especially, have expressed concerns to me about their talented female debaters, even when experiencing early success, giving up on the activity over time, leaving all together or losing their love for the game as they progress through high school.
“All of these statements are debatable in their own right and should be discussed in our community. I still am evolving in terms of my own opinions. Personally, this year, I’ve decided to continue this tournament because many people I care about in debate have asked me to hold it again, from students to coaches to judges. And, the letters I received from girls who attended last year made me feel the importance of this event even if I can’t always articulate those feelings. I know this tournament meant something special to many of the girls who came last year, that it generated new friendships, and that it helped motivate some debaters, coaches, and judges in their passion for an activity that I truly believe is life-changing. For me, that is enough. I guess it is unavoidable that this tournament make some kind of political statement. It is near impossible to avoid flame wars online these days on the debate boards. Last year, I was told simultaneously that this tournament didn’t allow for enough discussion about gender in debate and that it focused too much on the issue. What I hope isn’t to create some kind of revolution in debate or even really to make some grand statement to the community at large. What I hope is to create an important personal experience for those who attend. It is about the participants for me. It is a weekend for them. It is their space. So, I hope you will choose to join us for a unique competitive experience that is both intellectually and socially stimulating, supportive, memorable, and fun.”
Girls hanging out with girls, in other words. At that level, it’s hard to argue with. Sometimes I like to hang out with the guys, some times I don’t. No difference, really. Take it on the face value. That’s pretty much what CLG’s comment is speaking to. At the point where it’s just people of like hanging with people of like, it is not only unobjectionable but pleasant. (BTW, in the recent Sailors trivia quiz, no one was able to locate the Islands of Langerhans, so I feel CLG’s pain. So does Pip, the Diabetic Wondercat.) Stacy’s articulate explanation of what she’s doing, as well as her summary of the general issues that may or may not surround the activity as a whole should answer any questions about the purpose, need or goals of the RR per se. As she says, however, those issues raised, remain.
The WTF thread, which as I say I didn’t read all of, covers all sorts of territory. There’s a belief that Digressive debate is inherently male, which is pretty silly, unless it’s a veiled insult (i.e., only guys would be so dumb as to run this bloody nonsense). I mean, all the classic ethical philosophers lived in much less enlightened times than these pomo/CT authors, and we don’t claim that as a result girls are inherently hampered when they run Kant or Locke (or that they are inherently aided when the run the proto-feminist Mill). There’s claims that the Digressive judges are blatantly anti-female, and I might be willing to accept that at some level, if only insofar as I can’t figure out why all these college guys aren’t hanging out with college girls, if you get my drift. In other words, do I detect a sort of loser-ism in the college kid who spends every available moment of free time back in the high school environment? Graduate, for pete’s sake. Move along, there! Could these judges harbor some true anti-female feeling based simply on their social maladroitness? Do cod salt well? Come on, now. But this isn’t sexism, it’s just sort of sad. Give back to the activity, yes, but get a life, too. If you’re not planning on being a secondary school educator, your presence is suspect, even if your actions are pure. Unless someone is paying you an awful lot of money, and even then… But I’ve been down that road before.
The question remains, as Pajamas (AKA Pyjamas) brings up and CLG echoes, whether we lose all but the top of the female population after the first blush. Someone on the WTF thread tried to offer statistics to support this theory, but the sample was too small and too politically weighted (TOC attendance) to be meaningful. But the perception is there, and it may reflect reality. I just wonder if it’s endemic to debate, or if it pervades other high school activities as well. While it’s self-satisfying to look at debate in a vacuum, it is
part of a very active, very complex system known as high school, peopled by very active, very complex individuals known as adolescents. I would wonder if there are not factors aside from those intrinsic to debate that cause this drift, but that could only be proven if the drift exists in the first place, and then if it exists in other activities as well. Given the former, I’d be surprised if not the latter. But I have neither statistical nor anecdotal data to offer one way or the other. I believe it, nonetheless; just don’t ask me for a card on it. The point being, why should debate be any different from anything else? No relevant difference having been shown, I go with the lack thereof.
As I read Stacy in her later posts (on the “moved” thread in WTF’s forums, and again I apologize for not reading everything too closely but, you think I’m long-winded?), she too seems to believe that the problem of sophomore drift does exist, and is not limited to debate. More to the point, she calls to task the sexism in the culture as a whole, which is as it should be. I mean, as a feminist I would expect her to be knowledgeably attacking the status quo if it were worth attacking. What I see from my personal-history perspective is what I can only call backpedaling by the movement itself, or at least by women themselves, whereas from her perspective she just sees not that much gain. But we’re seeing the same things, and only theorizing upon them differently. Equal pay for women, for instance, may still be an issue, but when I was in knee pants, unequal pay for women was expected. Women in power positions may be far from reflective of the number of women in the population, but again, when I was in knee pants, powerless women were the expectation. We’re talking poor representation today, but we’re no longer talking flukes. But again from my perspective, as my pants have gotten longer, why haven’t we moved further along than we have? In other words, I’m not pointing out the difference between now and then to say I’m satisfied with the numbers we have now; I’m only showing that they’re better than they were. But they are not good enough. Where did the momentum go? What happened?
There are some possible answers. First is that women are not suited to power and have failed at it. This is laughable on face, but think about it. The single biggest factor that mitigates against an individual woman’s momentum in the world is child-bearing. It’s not that having children turns a woman into a lesser person, but that having children sidetracks a woman from her career. Sometimes it’s a matter of weeks or months, sometimes it’s a matter of years, and if you factor in economic status, sometimes it’s forever. This is a hard issue to overcome, and until we provide at the very least a measure of universal childcare that does overcome it, it’s not going to go away. Further, we need systems in place to allow women the freedom to control the early years of child-raising however they see fit: this needs to include not going back to work at the earliest possible moment, but giving a few years to formative childrearing. This may be simply too utopian, but until we reach a point where a woman can be away from the job for a considerable amount of time without penalty either to herself or her children, the problem will persist. The richest, most competent, most powerful women going into childbirth with those advantages of money and and competence and power will probably do okay, but the rest are going to be set back. Until the setback is culturally erased, it is going to have its effect. Either we accept that this is the way it is, or we find ways to fix it. It’s as simple as that.
Second, we can blame the slowness of feminism on the fact that incorporating civil rights is just by its nature a slow process. Well, yes and no. It is a slow process to change the way people think, but if people are thinking wrongly, how much time do we give them? One only need look at blacks in America for an answer to that. It took a hundred years post Civil War to seriously institute rights protections, and fifty years after that we still live in a racially divided country. What part of that is the way it should be? What part of that is permissible because that’s just its nature? If anything, the way people think about women is even more entrenched than thinking about race, if such could be imagined. We prioritize sex higher than we prioritize race in virtually all aspects of culture. Does that mean 150 years from now we’ll be marginally better off than we are today, but we will not have solved the problem?
Third is that the culture that feminism is fighting against it is almost too powerful to break. As I said, beliefs about gender are about as entrenched as any beliefs we have, prioritized in culture above almost all others. Among the reasons for this is the simple biological aspect of male and female, all that chemical stuff that goes on in the nether regions of our brain that connects us to the amoeba. Didn’t Sagan refer to that as the lizard brain? The instinctive, animal, innate, unthinking us? Okay, then, that may all be true. My brain reacts to gender on a totally instinctive level. Fine. I’m instinctively afraid of the dark as well, being a diurnal mammal, but ever since we’ve invented light bulbs, I stay up sometimes until 9:00 or even 10:00 at night and hardly ever trip over anything. The point is, if we are philosophers, working to understand ourselves, with that growing understanding of our natures ought to come a purpose of directing those natures however we can to acting in an ethically sound and just manner (which sounds vaguely like LD to me, so you may be just the right audience for this). We ought to seek to know ourselves in order to build a better world, not simply to accept the world we’re in with shrugging resignation. I didn’t buy on for that particular interpretation of the animal. (And part of my brief against pomo/CT is its shrugging resignation, plus its self-satisfaction at its cleverness at finding something to shruggingly resign itself to.)
But of course I’m not talking about feminism anymore, and I want to get back to that. I want to look a little more closely at girls and how they are raised. If everything above is true, than how we raise our children may be the most important test of our beliefs, and the best way we have to change the world. And as educators, we get an extra shot or two at it because of all the other people’s children who come our way. Interesting…
No comments:
Post a Comment