Frat Brats and the Women's Studies Class: 1976

I so admire you for taking 'Women, Culture and Society!'"

Do you know that sickening feeling that comes when somebody praises you for doing something over which you had very little control? Well, that's how I felt when the handful of radical types at my college would flatter me for being one of only two men in our school's first Women's Studies course. Not that I had anything against women, of course. But the reality was that the class fit my schedule, and I knew the professor was an easy grader. I didn't think much about it one way or the other. I mean, we had a course in "American Ethnic Groups," in which all the students and the professor were white. Such was life in a small Catholic liberal arts college during the Seventies.

Apparently, however, some of the guys in our school had other feelings about the Women's Studies course. Mostly members of the jock fraternities, these assholes would walk by the classroom and make assorted noises and gestures. Why escaped me. The professor was well-liked by everyone, and certainly not the angry man-hater feminist sometimes portrayed in the media. Remember the old joke?

Q: How many feminists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: That's not funny!!

Well, she certainly wasn't one of those! As for the students, most were hardly radicals either. Most were first or second year liberal arts or business majors, all white, from mostly Irish or Italian blue-collar backgrounds. Typically they listened to disco music and wore designer jeans. This was not the Birkenstock-wearing crowd who hung out at the organic food collective.

As for the course content, much of it consisted of the professor's singing the praises of the child-rearing practices of the Israeli Kibbutz settler movement, in which kids were raised communally, with little close contact with their parents, in what were called "Children's Societies." Most of us had never heard of a Kibbutz, and their practices sounded strange. She also complained that women were pretty much disadvantaged in every single situation in society. I remember doing a presentation on the matter of women with disabilities, after which she asked me if it was true disabled women had more trouble than their male counterparts. No, I replied, I think that the men have more problems in some ways, due to notions of independence, being the Provider, etc. She couldn't accept the idea.

I am not sure how much I learned in Women, Culture and Society. However, I did notice something rather shocking about sex roles towards the end of the term: the guys making the funny noises and gestures were some of the most popular men on campus - and their fans included several of my fellow Women's Studies students.

As for the Kibbutzim, I learned later that many child care experts did not approve of their methods, and some research showed that kids reared in such a manner had, as they say, "issues" later in life. Surprise. Their philosophy sounds quaintly naive in retrospect.

As for our professor, she was denied tenure, something that the school did routinely to anyone who did not tow the rigid Catholic line. Recently I did a web search on her, and found that she's teaching social work in another part of the country.