“Alliances Matter:
Why Men Can and Should Teach about Feminism”
By David M. Jones
For our panel today, we were asked to focus on three questions related to men and feminism: first, what leads us to teach feminism; second and third, can or should a man teach courses or topics on feminism. While my short answer to each question is “yes,” I have carefully examined my ideological history and experiences teaching women’s studies to be more certain of my response. Not all of the varied aims of women’s studies and feminist activism are directed toward the sensibilities and status of men, nor should they be, but men are still an important audience for feminist discourse and should play a more active role in teaching feminism.
Thinking about the first question – what leads me to teach feminism – the answer stems from my belief that alliances matter in the struggle for progressive social change, and that allies must be enlisted to support the aims of ending sex and gender discrimination. The histories of justice-seeking movements in the United States can help to illustrate why alliance building is necessary as a follow up to and a complement to the concentrated efforts of a dedicated base of activists, such as suffragists in the 19th century, young black students involved in sit-ins in the early 1960s, or protestors against the second Gulf War in our time. Social movements often follow a trajectory that begins with radical activists confronting oppression with direct action, even when a cause appears unpopular. If the efforts of an activist base are successful in calling attention to unjust social practices, a sizable minority or even a majority of the wider population may decide that they have a stake in the movement’s success, making possible such historic legislative achievements as the 14th Amendment with its equal protection clause, the 19th Amendment recognizing the legal right of women to vote, and the Educational Amendment of 1972 with its Title IX clause outlawing sex discrimination in schools.
A third phase in the trajectory of justice-seeking movements can occur after legislative and legal landmarks. During this third phase, activists and their allies must continue their efforts to implement change, a challenging task even in the wake of earlier successes. History shows that much of the public will continue to resist change long after progressive movements have made achievements that seem to hold so much promise. Thus, half a century after the Brown vs. Board decision, and thirty years after Roe vs. Wade, large segments of the population remain hostile to policies of desegregation and reproductive freedom, and we are seeing the steady resegregation of American society and persistent efforts to overturn a woman’s right to choose. In such a climate, the question arises of how wide and how deep is public support for the core and consensus aim of feminism: to insure the full participation of women in the governance and everyday life of the nation. If we agree that the core humanity of every individual should be respected and nurtured in private and public life, then it follows that the work of men as well as women is necessary to insure progress toward that goal. And, progress must be made even though a large portion of the population lacks the knowledge of and commitment to the aims of feminism.
In this climate, a significant number of male scholars have begun to study the history of feminism and to use what they have learned to transform their lives and teaching. These efforts have resulted in a growing body of scholarly work that theorizes the relationship of men to patriarchy, to women, and to other men in interpersonal and institutional contexts. Thus, the more central place of feminist studies within the academy and shifts in the status of women in the United States has entered into the socialization and training of male scholars. This trend improves the prospects for collaboration and mutual support between male and female scholars interested in feminist change. In the text Engendering Men, Joseph Boone aptly suggests that among younger scholars, women as well as men have been trained “in feminism…by men with feminist interests,” and this training in feminism has had an impact “both in their lives and in their scholarship” (Boone 22).
Learning about feminist movements and feminist pedagogy has been essential to my own growth and development as a scholar and in personal life. I grew up with an awareness of feminism from middle childhood on, in part because I passed through middle childhood just as women’s liberation movement was making national headlines in the early 1970s, in part because my family was headed by a single female parent, and in part because living through and witnessing the struggles of African Americans for justice made me keenly interested in other justice-seeking movements. It seems to me that a stalling of progress toward racial justice and toward sex and gender equality has occurred for similar reasons – the difficulty in finding new allies beyond a base of supporters, and the successes by neoconservatives in using their institutional power to energize a backlash against progress toward social justice. Of course, the rhetorical contest between progressives and neoconservatives isn’t waged on an even playing field – the increasing concentration of wealth in the hands of a relative few, ubiquitous corporate ownership of mass media, and the long shadow left by an age-old legacy of sexism and racism are challenges that progressives must face as they work for change. Given these challenges, we must apply whatever wisdom we can gain from past social movements to our present efforts for change. From my perspective on black cultural history, the lack of allies always proves to be a grave threat to progress, as is demonstrated by rise of lynching and Jim Crow after Reconstruction, and in the difficulty in maintaining a national political presence for African Americans after the collapse of the Black Power movement.
University classrooms provide opportunities to work for progressive change using tools of feminist pedagogy, and I believe that men can and should be engaged with such teaching. However, not all feminists would support the inclusion of men in such a capacity, for several reasons. It might be argued that men are not fully capable of understanding the experience of women, and that the entrenchment of men in privileged positions within social institutions will invariably impede women from making progress. Similarly, one might suggest that a question of trust is relevant to this issue. If female students are more hesitant to discuss difficult issues before a male instructor, perhaps they would best be taught by a female instructor who appears less threatening to such students. Furthermore, there are ongoing efforts by feminist women to organize their peers in support of social change. In same-sex settings, women may design agendas for change based on values and experiences that are commonly held among each member of the group, and the results may reflect the interests of women, without compromise or deference to the interests of men.
I agree that same-sex organizing can be an effective tool in the context of a larger movement for change, but in the end, the goals of equal justice and cooperation across difference are best served by the collaborative work of women and men. In a collaborative setting, women and men can both contribute their subjective experiences towards an understanding of the relational character of sex and gender. Including men and women in cooperative work for change helps to remind us that not all women support the aims of feminism, and not all men oppose them. Confronting difference within the ranks of women or men encourages activists to develop a rhetoric of inclusion, that does not shut off those who disagree with feminism today, but treats its opponents as potential allies tomorrow. Feminist activism has everything to gain from engaging with diverse perspectives on sex and gender, including the perspective of men, and a cooperative struggle across familiar lines of identity is best suited to support the “survival and wholeness of entire people,” as Alice Walker puts it, even if a committed womanist might still act as a separatist “periodically, for health” (Walker xi).
My view is also supported by Erik Wingrove-Haugland, who has argued that responsible men can and should work for greater equality between women and men in the military. In an article in Minerva: Quarterly Report on Women and the Military, Wingrove-Haugland acknowledges that power is more widely held by men in the armed forces, but adds that “male leaders cannot simply refuse to exercise their power; the question is whether or not they will exercise it to promote equality for women.” His essay implies that if men are effective at critical thinking and sincere in their commitment to gender equality, then men “do not need to understand the situation of women fully” to work toward a fair balance of power. However, to be effective agents of change, men must examine their attitudes and past actions carefully, and then use “interpersonal, linguistic, and pedagogical methods” to challenge sexism (Wingrove-Haugland).
Feminist pedagogy has provided men as well as women with methods for teaching against sexism, and I have found several of these methods helpful in women’s studies courses that I have taught. The three courses I have taught so far include Black Women’s Feminism, Black Macho and Black Superwomen in Recent American Film, and Sexism in the Sixties. The instructional design for the sexism course worked the best, as it featured several collaborative learning projects, and included close reading of primary documents written by second-wave feminists. As we moved from early discussions of the suffrage movement to the personal narratives of Elaine Brown (former head of the Black Panther Party), a depiction of Huey Newton in a one-man play, the manifesto and film treatment of the life of Valerie Solanis, and the documentation of sexism by many feminist authors, the class become increasingly willing to self disclose. Nearly everyone in the class became willing to share stories about the difficulties they encountered in work, family life, and intimate relationships. I even shared a few stories myself in the comfortable setting that we all created; and yet, we paid rigorous attention to the assigned reading and to the set of concepts related to sexism and social change that I had planned to teach. Under this set of conditions, a class of about 35 mostly lower division students engaged in a remarkably thoughtful and revealing conversation through most of the term, with several female students emerging as classroom leaders, and conservative as well as liberal students speaking up with their political views. While the wonder of that experience has proved impossible to duplicate so far, I have effectively used collaborative learning in other courses, and I have a new willingness to self-disclose in order to establish a stronger connection to my students.
Reflecting on that experience and acquainting myself with research by men in feminism, I recently read an article by Peter Cornish, a scholar in the field of psychology. His article provides a clear and brief outline of how men can transform themselves personally and prepare to work toward the aims of feminism. In a study of several men who have confronted their own sexism, Cornish writes that men might begin their personal transformation with an “acknowledgment…and acceptance of conflict” that exists in their performing of gender roles. Second, finding a supportive community allows men to experience conflict and vulnerability in a safe space. Finally, to quote Cornish, “personal growth and transformation depend[s] on the extent to which the men had explored the conflict, the power, and the pain with others in the context of vibrant, diverse, and progressive communities.” Every venue that we work in as faculty – the classrooms, committee meeting rooms, auditoriums and dinner parties where we encounter the larger community – can be the contexts where we encourage the kinds of transformations that feminism calls for. Male scholars who support feminism have an important role to play in encouraging these transformations, which must take place in diverse cultural settings, as Cornish suggests.
In closing, I’d like to add that research and teaching in the area of feminism has been an indispensable part of my education, and working with female colleagues in the women’s studies program and other contexts has enriched my life far beyond the classroom. In my future work, I will encourage others to learn from the history of feminism and to apply feminist pedagogy in the classroom. My experiences being the only African American (and sometimes the only male) in many professional and personal settings have reinforced my conviction that the best hope for future progressive change is to build alliances that celebrate human commonality, and demonstrate for our students that (as June Jordan has written) “freedom is indivisible.” While we all can benefit from the comfort and even the catharsis that single-sex and single-race settings can provide, our students and our society are best served by cooperative, feminist-inspired work by women and men to challenge sexism, racism, and every other threat to freedom and justice.