Who-Stole-Feminism.-How-Women-Have-Betrayed-Women

102 WHO STOLE FEMINISM?Fay, Minnie had missed the real point of what the course in freshmancomposition was about:In freshman composition, what we try to give students is a consciousnessabout the social register and the range of voices they canand do adopt in order to get on with business. But it is their combinationof demand and distrust (are you sure this is what I need?are you wasting my time and money?) that propels certain studentsinto resistant postures. Minnie's out-of-class hostility and in-classsilent propriety bespeak a surface socialization that itself resists theinduction process; she desires an academically gilded armor but nota change of self, not a becoming. 27Professor Fay, who is disappointed that Minnie has failed to availherself of the chance to "become," quite sincerely believes that Minnie'srecalcitrant attitude comes from having been "socialized" in ways that"propel" her into a resistant posture. It simply never occurs to ProfessorFay that her own attitude toward Minnie is disrespectful and that it is shewho has been taught by her feminist mentors to adopt a patronizingposture toward women like her. 28Michael Olenick, a journalism major at the University of Minnesota,reported his experiences with Women's Studies 101 in an editorial in theschool newspaper: "When I signed up for a women's studies class Iexpected to learn about feminism, famous women, women's history, andwomen's culture. . . . Instead of finding new insights into the world ofwomen, I found . . . bizarre theories about world conspiracies dedicatedto repressing and exploiting women." 29Heather Keena, a senior at the University of Minnesota, wrote a lettersupporting Olenick's complaint about the atmosphere in the classroom."I was made to feel as though I was dependent and weak for preferringmen to women as sexual partners, and to feel that my opinions were notonly insignificant, but somehow twisted." 30Another class member, KathleenBittinger, thought the professor guilty of stereotyping the male genderas chauvinistic: "I was also told that my religious beliefs and sexualorientation are not the correct ones." 31I wondered what Professor Albrecht, who taught the course, thoughtof the controversy and phoned her. She was warm and personable, andher concern was undeniable. In response to the charges that her coursewas one-sided, she pointed out that students get their fill of standardviewpoints from "the mainstream media." It was her job to give them adeeper truth: "If scholarship isn't about improving people's lives, then