When I tell people I’m going to college, I am met with the question (and I’m sure most students can relate) — “”So, what’s your major?””
As much as I dread this question, I know it’s coming whenever I sit down next to a relative or strike up a conversation with a new acquaintance. However, I don’t dread this question for the reason you may think.
Unlike those who struggle to decide what they are doing in college, I know what I want to study; I’ve decided, I’ve declared. When I say, “”Actually, I’m a critical gender studies major”” it is like opening Pandora’s box.
There are those who don’t know what critical gender studies is. To them, I explain that it used to be called women’s studies but that title was somewhat erroneous because the emphasis of study is on taking a critical look at gender, rather than celebrating women.
There are those who are shocked that there actually is such a major. “”There’s actually a class in feminist theory?”” they ask. To them, I explain that there are a number of classes on feminist theory in several different departments, as well as classes on gender in art, literature, music and science.
But the response that I despise, the one that makes me seethe with anger, is the reaction that I was met with by an Earl Warren College student who shall remain nameless.
“”That’s awful,”” he said. “”I won’t hold that against you.””
While I’m sure, to him, invalidating my whole purpose in college was all in good fun, I thought it was ignorant and just disrespectful. He was an engineering major. Engineering is a field I find completely and utterly boring. However, I know it is a hard field that requires the time and dedication of those who don’t find it a yawner. So, I graciously fake my interest, put on a contrived inquisitive look — I would never tell someone their major is “”awful.””
If you think I’m overreacting, you’re wrong. I’m not an overly sensitive person, but some things go too far. When you insult my major, you are insulting more than the classes I take, and the work I do. You are insulting my entire ideology.
I am a feminist. I know to some people feminism is the other f-word, but I embrace feminism despite the social baggage it brings. I’ve never burned my bra or shaved my head and I’m not a proponent of all-female communes.
However, if challenging a society where women earn 73 percent of what men earn offends you, I’m not sorry. If studying the gender constructions that oppress men and women bothers you, I don’t apologize.
I chose my major because during my entire four years of high school English, I never read a single novel by a female author. To me, this lack of perspective was not only wrong, but boring. With the exception of Lewis Carroll’s Alice, I don’t think many men write novels with female protagonists. It’s only natural — authors write about what they know, and it’s a hard, hard thing to step out of your own shoes. I don’t blame Dickens for creating the neurotic, psychotic Miss Havisham and the evil Estella, I just wish I could have contrasted her with Jane Eyre or Emma.
I don’t think the lack of female voices was a malicious effort on the part of my teachers. Yet that’s what is so interesting about gender to me. How, on a subconscious level, we can accept the absence of an entire half of the population. How all my English teachers looked at their curriculum, and didn’t blink an eye when all they saw were Dickens, Joyce or Ibsen; how the Bronte Sisters, Virginia Woolf and Alice Walker were simply left out.
I felt then, as I do now, that my experience in high school English was more than just my personal disappointment in never reading “”Emma.”” To me it seemed obvious that 30 years after the women’s movement, it was still important to study gender, because some things are still not right. To borrow a phrase from the women’s movement, the personal is indeed political.
So, the next time you get on your engineering high horse and knock my major, think about what exactly you’re criticizing. That men and women can be equal partners? That Jane Austen should be taught alongside Charles Dickens? I hope, and don’t think that any students at this school would ever say men are superior to women. What they don’t realize is that it takes analyses and studying to break through the glass ceiling.
And if you are one of those people who think feminism is the f-word, I have another f-word for you.