RB 11/14

Sitting quietly for an hour didn’t agitate me. But I don’t say much, anyway. I will write, however, that it’s not everyday a teacher gives the female students verbal control of the classroom. Once that I know of. The experience was productive for those who feel it was productive. Ultimately, if we are to have equality, dialogue between men and women is essential, but that’s no reflection on Tuesday's exercise, which served its own purpose.

When the Notorious ROG introduced the exercise, he used a Cixous quote: “Every woman has known the torture of beginning to speak aloud” (163). He gave the women, several of whom said they relate to this quote, the task of speaking aloud and the men the task of experiencing what it’s like to not have a voice.

Some other examples of people having no or little voice because of their gender:
—Women’s right to vote was not federally protected until 1920, with the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment.
—Of the 435 congressmen in the 110th House of Representatives, 71 (16%) are women—an all-time high. Hardly representative of a country where women outnumber men.
—The word congressmen is masculine.
—Of the 100 senators in the 110th Senate, 16 are women—an all-time high.
—Of 42 US presidents, none has been a woman. (Yes, I need to be reminded of this.)

Those are a few examples on a national level. (My choice of examples reflects the sports-fanatic spirit in which I’ve followed the 2006 elections.) There are plenty more examples, like the ones the women near us can share from personal experience—and did share on Tuesday evening.

I thought the guys did well in their silence, considering the sometimes derogatory remarks about men in general. But, according to the blog posts, not all the women feel the same way. I asked a friend of mine who is in the class what she thought of the males’ behavior. This is where dialogue comes in. She agreed with me to a certain extent, but pointed out some behaviors that had bothered her (but hadn’t bothered me), such as a few of the guys’ passing notes among themselves and snickering.

One of my male classmates argued after class that the exercise was unfair because if it had been the other way around and the women were silenced, then the exercise would have been politically incorrect. This is like the argument of a Rush Limbaugh caller decrying BET because, if there were a White Entertainment Television, then people would raise hell. The fact is the majority of the media has a white entertainment bias. And the majority of speaking forums, including our forum controlled by women in the company of men, do not reflect an appropriate regard for the voice of women.

“Lord, grant that I may not so much seek to be understood as to understand.”—from Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi