So, there's this topic I've been mulling over for a while now. The discrimination and harassment officer came to give a lecture to us TA's at our weekly meeting. The thing is, its kind of a sensitive topic, and I really don't want to ruffle any one's feathers. On the other hand, if I don't ask, I don't learn, so please try to keep an open mind and realize that I am not trying to offend. Each paragraph covers a different issue I am struggling with, and opinions/insights on any or all of them would be helpful. Here goes.The ombudsperson, who's gender will remain ambiguous for the sake of my point, and whom I will refer to as Sam(-antha or -uel), came in to speak about discrimination in the student environment. Sam started with an introduction about race, and race stereotypes, then gender and gender stereotypes. There was quite a bit of statistical data to back up Sam's claims but it was clear that these were issues of personal relevance rather than pure conclusions from the data.
The claim that really surprised me, and one that Sam enforced particularly vehemently was the distinction between girl, woman, and lady. I have never paid any attention to the difference these labels imply. In fact, I would have even said they are synonymous. Sam took great exception to this fact, stating that a girl, is a female human shy of age 18, a woman is a female human aged more than 18 years, and lady is a class distinction and social assumption. I tried asking questions, and any time I said girl, Sam fiercely interrupted me and would not let me continue until I had said woman, at which point, more often than not, I forgot what I was asking. My professor raised his hand at one point with a reply to Sam taking exception to the term lady, stating that lady was a compliment, synonymous with gentlemen. Sam replied by asking how a lady was expected to behave, and they argued back and forth for a while before Sam conceded that my professor was just from a different era. My professor is ancient. I wouldn't be surprised to hear that he had witnessed the colonization of the western United States. And Sam is quite old, all grey hair at the least, but not at retirement just yet. My question is, in this day and age, with reasonable young adults such as myself and my readers, is this still a valid concern? I've always used, guys/girls, dudes/lady-dudes, bi*ches/c*cksuckers, whatever...
The second issue that I found surprising was the need for "women only" manufacturing classes. The reasoning behind these classes is that when in a class of dominantly male students, the females tend not to take initiative and therefore don't learn the machines as well as a guy would. In order to address my issue with these special classes, lets take an example: genderless people (which is the ideal in an educational environment). Student A and B go into a shop class, and student B takes hold of the machines, makes the part, and does the work, while student A stands behind B and watches. Then when both tested, student B gets a pass, and student A fails. Why? Because student B did the work. Student B took the initiative to actively learn while student A did not. So the grade seems fair? Or should we make a class where only student A can attend, and make sure student A gets the education that he/she was unwilling to apply him/herself toward? Perhaps this is the method that is used in high school, but college is voluntary, only students who want to be there pay that much money to go. If student A doesn't want to learn, fine, right? But what if student A is a girl, and student B is a guy? now all of a sudden student A should be given extra opportunities to learn? should be given "women only" classes? That tastes a little like "special privileges" doesn't it? And isn't giving special privileges to women a recognition, even a validation, of their need for such treatment? Isn't a "women only" class simply underlining the fact that people think they can't do as well and so should be treated differently? Perhaps there is another metric I'm missing here. And when I asked Sam if there was, the answer is that the school is trying to raise the number of women in attendance in the engineering program. Which I also disagree with, because if you make special compensations to raise the statistics in one group, that's equivalent to padding your data, which I find ironic for the school of engineering and applied science.Last is very similar to the previous issue, except that instead of gender, it involves race. Being half Asian, but not looking it, gives me the unique perspective of seeing both sides. I'm treated as middle-class white-America by my peers and friends, yet I am a minority, especially here in Colorado. I visited the multicultural center once, and have never gone back. I was treated with a little bit of scorn because I don't actually look Asian. So here is this middle-class white guy coming into the center looking for some help. Needless to say, not the warmest welcome one would expect to receive. My issue with this is the same as my issue with gender, and again, I suspect it arises from ignorance about all the intricacies of the issue.
The conclusion that I have come to is that compensation and special treatment are not effective means of breaking down sexual and racial barriers in an institution. In fact, I would posit that it causes the opposite of the desired effect by drawing real, tangible, boundaries between the different race and gender groups. Perhaps it makes the numbers look better, but what should we be more concerned with, attendance numbers, or segregationist thought?
The unfortunate result of all this is that I've now begun to notice. Notice the fact that some of my student teams only have 1 girl in them, notice the teams that have girls as the team leader, or notice when a girl is doing active work in the machine shop. Notice when an Asian is doing the writing, notice when a black student is giving the presentation. And worst of all, once or twice, the thought "wow, good for them" fluttered across my mind. Where once I wouldn't have noticed, I now distinguish, where once I wouldn't have cared, I now feel the differences. I once was blind, but now I see, and that is definitely not a good thing.
-Ty
first image courtesy of Wikimedia
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