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Thoughts on Gendered Language Use in the Classroom

October 22, 2024 in Education, Feminism, Gender & Sexuality | No comments

Two gendered restroom signs, slightly askew in space

I try to create an inclusive space when I teach, and that means everything from learning my students’ names (even when there are a lot of them!) to not having policies that would make people feel unwelcome (like, I don’t require students to ask me to leave the classroom for any reason; I figure they’re adults, I should treat them as such, plus such a policy might single out students with a disability or medical condition requiring them to stand and stretch their legs or visit the bathroom regularly).

This sense of trying to be an inclusive teacher also extends to how I use language, and how I encourage my students to use language in their writing and speaking. And here, too, my goal of teaching critical thinking skills creeps in, as it often does, because it turns out that being attuned to social justice concerns (those foregrounded in inclusivity practices) also correspond with acknowledging the complexity and diversity of the world around us, and responding with curiosity and empathy rather than trying to wedge everyone and everything into narrow boxes.*

All of this is why I don’t use “male” and “female” as nouns, and why I’d encourage others to give it some thought as well.

 First, the history of these words makes it clear that they have a very specific meaning and narrow usage, which I don’t think should be generalized to “hello, I am addressing a group of humans outside of a medical/reproductive context.” According to the Oxford English Dictionary, “female” popped up in European languages in the 1300s to mean “A person of the sex that can bear offspring; a woman or a girl.” In addition to the noun usage, female also has an adjective meaning: “That belongs to the sex which can bear offspring (contrasted with male); characteristic of or relating to this sex.” And while I’m less upset by the use of the word as an adjective, it still has that icky reproductive-connotations thing going on. And for what it’s worth, I’ll point out that there are way more entries under the adjective section of the word than the noun section of the word.

Second, I believe addressing people as males and females is potentially exclusionary. I look at all the wealth of information we have about different genders (there are more than two!) and sexes (also more than two!) and I think, why would I address people using binaristic language that’s bound to leave someone out? Maybe someone in my classroom is intersex, trans, or non-binary. Remember, according to some research estimates, around 1.7% of people have an intersex condition and around .5% of the U.S. adult population is trans so combining those facts and knowing that if I teach around 100 students every semester means I’m gonna choose less exclusionary language, even if it only helps one person in one hundred. Not all of these identities are visible to the naked eye, either, so it’s entirely possible that there are others in my classroom who don’t know they’re intersex yet (I mean, I haven’t had karyotyping done, have you?!), or they’re exploring their gender identity, or…there are so many possibilities, I’d rather err on the side of being more inclusive.

Third, as Carrie Cutler points out in a Slate article, “female” is often an adjective used to manage the meaning of a noun…when it’s assumed the noun is a broad category that usually includes men. So we’d say “female scientist” because upon hearing “scientist” one might assume we were talking about a dude scientist. And something about that just sets my teeth on edge, that we have to keep specifying that it’s a woman doing the job that used to be only done by men, and we still need modifiers to do this work instead of just assuming that women can be included in the catch-all profession of scientists.

Fourth, there are some, uh, connotations. In the Slate article linked above, the author points out the use of “female” in song lyrics (which I shan’t reprint here) to refer to sexually available women. And I think this is an equity issue: women are often discussed in terms of their sexual availability and desirability to men (let alone how we might feel about ourselves or one another!), and until men undergo the same level of objectification women do, I’m gonna be a little prickly about it. Not that feminism should be a tit-for-tat leveling of the playing field so everyone gets equally dehumanized, but these discrepancies bother me, since I don’t think any gender is more sexually anything than another.

As one researcher in STEM writes, this has professional implications too: “In a work setting, would you refer to the Vice Chancellor as a girl? Probably not, because we are accustomed to being respectful to people in senior positions. So should we extend that respect to women in other roles as well? (hint: yes)”

Some scholars go so far as to argue that gender difference (often expressed in terms of sex difference) exists in the first place to police who has access to power, and honestly, I’m not far away from this stance myself. In Sex Is As Sex Does: Governing Transgender Identity by Paisley Currah, for example, it’s argued that:

In European, and, later, American legal traditions, gender difference was codified in laws designed to limit the rights and resources available to white women. From coverture to inheritance laws to the inability to vote to exemptions in the criminal sphere for marital rape, the law’s distincions illustrated how deeply patriarchal norms were incorporated into state structures. (20)

Oh, but that’s all changed, we’re sooo much better, yay feminism has done its job, you say? Currah (and I) would disagree: “gender subordination remains one of the organizing principles of domestic life, the workplace, and cultural production” (24). Why on earth would I use binaristic language that supports this historical and ongoing suborbination?!

Finally, there’s the question of audience. When I’m addressing my college students, I don’t really need to say “Greetings, males and females, today in class we’re going to read…” because drawing attention to my students’ (presumed) biological sex is simply not relevant in most if any classroom settings. Is it relevant in other settings? Gotta say, I’m drawing a blank. The 2024 Paris Olympics brought the debate about biological sex traits in elite sports to the public stage, and I mostly don’t feel qualified to weigh in on it (see my response here); yes, there tend to be some distinctions between the bodies of cis men and those of cis women in terms of muscle growth, metabolic functioning, and so on, and in certain sports those differences may matter. However, I know from research (and honestly, having a lot of trans friends, whom I appreciate sharing their experiences with me) that the human body is extremely malleable and responsive to hormonal interventions, so I don’t see it as my place to weigh in on this except to urge us all to remember that bodies have so much diversity and variation beyond the element of sex, it just doesn’t make sense to me to make it a really rigid distinction unless the athletes in that sport agree on it. (and please recall, one of the boxers who fought Imane Khelif was basically like “yeah, whatever” when her biological differences were brought up, so if athletes within the sport aren’t bothered by it, I don’t see why non-athletes should be bothered by it).

Hm, okay, when are other contexts where we might wanna say “males” or “females”? Do I ever want to signal something that feels very womanhood-specific to my fellow females? Not really, because I don’t care to enter any debates on how we’re defining femaleness and womanhood. For example, if the connotation of female relates to reproductive bits, are we still calling cis women who’ve had hysterectomies females? What about trans men who started out with that kind of anatomical equipment but ditched it? I don’t see a need to get into the weeds with this sort of thing, so I’ll say what I mean: “Ugh, I’m on my period and it sucks, who can relate?!” and that gets the job done in my opinion. Or if I want to talk about experiences of having my worth tied to my perceived beauty or sexual availability, then I’ll address fellow women, noting that this leaves room for people to weigh in whether you’re cis or trans, because trans women are women and they’ve had many of the same experiences as me, whereas some people who started life with XX chromosomes and a uterus might have had similar experiences at first which then diverged if/when they transitioned to something less binary or something more masculine. I think my choice of language lets people opt in or out of these kinds of conversations as they choose, and I’m okay with that.

At the end of the day, I’m not the language police. I’m not here to grade you on every single aspect of language use, though I will point out places where I think there’s room to grow in terms of word choice, nuance, and so on. If this is a language choice that you are consciously making and you’re aware of all its implications and you still want to run with it…you do you! We can have one conversation about it in class (which has already happened this semester) and that can be it.

Also, language is constantly evolving! Maybe in 5 years this conversation will be completely irrelevant for whatever reason. That’s fine too. I’m going to make the choice that makes the most sense to me right now, based on what I know and on my desire to signal to the broadest audience possible that yes, you belong here in my classroom, and learning is for everyone.

Defending gendered language that reinforces a binary is a weird hill to die on in my opinion, but whatevs.

 

*Bit of a rant here and I didn’t want to derail myself while still getting to my main point, but holy crap, fascist and bigoted and authoritarian belief systems are so lazy. Like, they are utterly devoid of both critical thinking skills and empathy, both of which absences annoy me to no end, I mean, at least pick one of the two to go with?! Every -ism or -phobia out there is rooted in essentialist thinking, generalizations, and stereotypes that are simply not true, and if the people believing these things took like 2 seconds to look at history or at the variety of cultures and human variation around the world they’d see the mounds of evidence disproving their irrational and mean-spirited beliefs, but I guess they’re not gonna do that because a) it’d take some effort and b) they’d have to admit they were wrong, and nobody likes that, especially when you’ve made your whole identity into hating some group you think takes away your power. Oh honey, late-stage capitalism has already done that, you really think we queer people are somehow outdoing corporations in making your life miserable?! There would be far more sparkles involved if we ran this shitshow!

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A Concise and Snarky Guide to Writing Academic Book Reviews

September 11, 2024 in Academia, Writing | No comments

A series of books with colorful spines stacked to form a rainbow pattern

I’ve been writing book reviews for over twenty years now, but when I began, I didn’t really know what I was doing. So to help my colleagues who are newer to this area of academic writing, I’ll share what I’ve learned over the years!

This blog post is structured in the way that makes most sense to me: understanding what academic book reviews are, who their audience is, how they should be structured and styled, and miscellaneous concerns (which are range from the amusing to the deeply ethical). Also, putting this up front so nobody misses it: this is unpaid labor, unfortunately, but you should at least get a free book out of it. If someone’s asking you to write a book review but not making sure you’re getting a copy, what even?!

First, why do book reviews exist? Well, nobody has time to read every new book that comes out in their academic discipline every year. Even the superstars who can hyper-focus don’t manage it. So it’s helpful when academic journals – and I think every major academic journal does this, someone please correct me if I’m wrong – have a section where they publish reviews of major books that have come out in the last few years. And here’s another unfortunate caveat: academic publishing is sloooow, so sometimes a book isn’t reviewed til after it’s been out for a while, and if the journal is held up in getting the most recent issue out (which happens a lot, say, during/after the major disruption of a global pandemic), a book review may not appear for a while, up to 3-5 years after a book’s publication. So it’s not a perfect system, but it’s what we’ve got.

Who is the audience for book reviews? Mostly fellow academics, but as the ivory tower crumbles, we get a whole bunch of people in our audiences who are alt-ac or part-time or some flavor of adjacent to academia, so we can’t necessarily assume only a specialist audience. Plus, gatekeeping is stupid, so we will get lay experts and folks who have put in the time and work to learn how to do research in a given field, whether or not they have degrees in that field.

Because we expect a disciplinary specialist audience for book reviews – or readers who are close enough, or adjacent or interested for other reasons – the tone and style of book reviews tend to be on the slightly formal side, with jargon allowed if it’s commonly used in the discipline. So for example, I’m one of the book review editors at Marvels & Tales, which is the premier North American journal of fairy-tale studies, and hence I expect my readers to have some sense that fairy tales go deeper than Disney, to know what I mean when I refer to structuralism or the ATU index, to know the names and contributions of a handful of major scholars, and so on. And if they don’t know those things, I expect them to be proficient enough researchers to learn them on the fly, in case anything in a text isn’t quite making sense to them.

Otherwise, we tend to prefer clear, direct language; since book reviews don’t have a single overarching idea or argument or thesis statement like academic articles do, you don’t need to get into the convoluted phrasing that many academic authors churn out. Tell the reader what the book’s about, how well you think it accomplishes its aims, in which contexts it might be useful, and you’re basically good to go. This can generally be done in around one thousand words, which is handily enough what the suggested word count at my home base journal is.

How you structure a review is somewhat subjective; commonly you’ll see an opening paragraph describing the premise of the book, some middle paragraphs going through the book chapter by chapter or topic by topic, and a concluding paragraph or two talking about the book’s strong points, flaws, and/or potential uses. But I’ve seen reviewers choose to go through a book’s points in terms of themes or arguments instead of chronologically, and that’s fine too. Sometimes it helps to add context, like if you know that the author has recently pivoted in their career from researching X thing to researching Y thing, or if you know that a book covers a controversial topic in a field.

Speaking of controversy, how blunt should you be if you don’t like the book or disagree with its premise or findings? Well…it’s unlikely that a complete pile of trash will make it through the academic publication process, since that takes years and will have multiple sets of eyes on it. But it does sometimes happen. If you think a book is legit terrible, you can always contact the review editor and be like, “is this book even a suitable fit for your journal? my impression was…” or whatever. Even if a book is not your cup of tea, it probably wouldn’t have been published if it had absolutely no merit, so your job is to locate those good things and mention them.

An academic book review, however, needs to do more than summarize. This is not just your high school book report genre; yes, you should include some summary so your reader gets a sense of what the book is about in case they haven’t read it yet, but you need to also do the brainier heavy-lifting to identify the significance of this book in a larger academic context. Here are some topics you may want to touch on your book review:

  • How well the author is positioned to write this particular book (what are their credentials? have they published in this area before?)
  • What the author is using as evidence, and how they obtained it? (if analyzing, say, a collection of fairy tales, as happens often in books we might review for Marvels & Tales, when/where was the text published, and in which language, and if not in English, who translated it? if the book’s author did their own fieldwork to collect/obtain cultural data, what are the details of that situation?)
  • Which methods and/or theories the author is bringing to this project (major trends in fairy-tale studies, for example, have included structuralism, feminist theory, queer theory, disability studies, Marxist/cultural studies, psychoanalysis, and more recently, critical race theory)
  • What the author’s main claims are (a.k.a. their thesis statement or central argument; what is the point of this book, what is their “go big or go home” moment, etc.)
  • What the the book’s contribution is, or how we might conceive of its overall significance (is it a new translation of an important text or something more minor, or perhaps the only translation that exists in a given language? is it the first book applying X theory to Y topic? is it poised to become a foundational text in a certain subfield, or does it continue a conversation that a foundational text began?)
  • In which contexts the book might be used, or might prove useful (is this something you’d assign in a college course? or is it more likely to gather dust on your bookshelf until you need it for a super specific project?)
  • And, specifically continuing to think about which kind of college course this might be useful in, are you thinking more of a general, “intro-to-???” course, or more of a specialized course for majors, or even graduate students? If you don’t feel prepared to address this, consider whether that’s because you’re out of touch with something you should perhaps be in touch with in order to be a good fit for this review, or if this is legit an academic gatekeeping issue because despite having one of the best educations in your field you’ve never been given the chance to supervise grad students (*stares in yes, this is meant to sound like something I’m personally upset about*), you can always ask a colleague who’s more in touch with that experience for their thoughts on it

Finally, you may get lucky and score a book that doesn’t relate to anything political or controversial, but that seems unlikely in this current world. Journal editors may reserve the right to tone down incendiary language, or ask you to reframe your comments. Commenting on outright misogyny, racism, etc. is usually acceptable, and if you want to get a bit sassy with your tone, I know that I as an editor am fine with that choice. But again, be aware that there’s often a lag between the submission of your review and its appearance (possibly up to a year or two or more, thanks to academic publishing moving soooo sloooow), so a clever remark about a current event may end up not-so-current once your review goes live.

This may sound like a lot, but don’t be intimidated! As my co-editor at Marvels & Tales, Julie Koehler, points out, book reviews can be a great first publication for newer scholars simply trying to get used to getting published. The process is very similar (being in touch with editors over email, revisions, etc.) and this can still go on your CV, so you can get acquainted with the process and get a nice-looking publication out of it. This familiarity with the process might help you be less freaked out when it comes time to try to submit a journal article.

Staying on that topic for a moment: we editors are only human, so please give us grace, and we’ll try to extend the same to you. If you find you absolutely cannot complete a book review you agreed to do, please get in touch! We can have you mail the book back to us and we’ll find another suitable reviewer. Even though it feels crummy to have to back out of an agreement, please don’t wallow in shame and ignore our emails. And I’ve been on both sides of this; I currently owe two reviews to two different journals and they might be, errr, three-ish years overdue, which I definitely feel crappy about, but none of the editors have reached out to reassign the book or be like “wtf, mate?” so I am gonna try to buckle up and get them done over winter break (which, granted, is what I said last year). So…we know stuff can get weird, it’s fine, just keep us posted and let us know if an insurmountable obstacle arises so we can make another plan if need be.

Seriously, we’re not here to be downers or gatekeepers. However, with academia trending towards contingent labor rather than full-on tenured professors, it’s becoming a strange situation. Like, in my NTT (non-tenure-track) position, research and publishing are not technically even in my job description…so I guess I do them for funsies because I’m an overachieving masochist? And service at my university “counts” for more in my job evaluations than service to my discipline more broadly, so this time-consuming review editor job I’ve taken on…basically does not “count” for my actual-pays-the-bills job, unlike for my tenured colleagues who teach lighter course loads (for more money!) since they have research and publishing expectations built into their jobs.

In my own field of folklore studies, we have spent a long time (seriously, decades) bemoaning the lack of professionalization of the discipline, but ironically, can we really call ourselves professionals if we literally can’t make a full-time living doing our jobs? As I point out in my article “Theorizing from the Margins” (Journal of Folklore Research, Vol. 58, No. 3, 2021), this tension has rather sobering implications: “Putting the burden of service to the discipline on those who are not employed fulltime within the discipline—and in the US context especially, where lacking full-time employment might mean lacking health care—is an odd contradiction at best, and an unethical, exploitative practice at worst” (105). So uh, be nice to us because we’re canaries in a very concerning coal mine.

A couple of miscellaneous considerations as I wrap this up:

  • Whoever wrote the book you’re reviewing might, gasp, read the review! This point hit home for me recently since my own books are now being reviewed, and I have been abjectly grateful at every kind word tossed my way, whereas critiques have hit me pretty hard…I guess I’ll develop a thicker skin regarding this kind of thing with more experience! Just something to keep in mind as you pen your own reviews.
  • We book review editors… hm, how do I say this… don’t have any real power. Or influence. Or anything beyond the ability to write some emails and get presses to send out free books. We don’t have any sway with our own press, like the ability to tell when exactly an issue is coming out, or to get deadlines moved. So you can ask us when your stuff will appear in print, but we legit don’t know, and we can’t do much about how slowly academic publishing moves.
  • Academic publishing is exploitative and relies on free labor and I seriously don’t know why I keep doing it so, like, while I give good research/writing/editing advice because I’ve been at it for 20 years, maaaaybe take some of this with a grain of salt and try to make better life choices while you still can, kids!

I hope this was useful! I really do think book reviews are a great way to get more involved with your field or one you’re getting better acquainted with, as a scholar or aspiring scholar or other category of (hopefully healthier) human entirely. And if you’ve never published anything before and want to give it a shot, despite how broken academic publishing is (did I mention the whole “expected to work for free” thing?!), book reviews are a pretty chill way to do so.

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Stop Asking Teachers When School Starts for Us

August 29, 2024 in Academia, Education | No comments

A stick of books by a beach shore.
Photo from Unsplash by Link Hoang.

We get it. You’re a well-meaning friend, acquaintance, or family member who is curious about how our lives are going or wanting to know when we’ll be more or less available to hang out. Perhaps you’ve got your bowl of popcorn out, preparing to watch the demise of American education (especially higher ed) and you want to know when it’s okay to tap out for a bathroom break, so you don’t miss anything spectacular.

But please, stop asking us when school starts. It’s tantamount to a personal attack at this point.

See, for many of us teachers, summer break is when we can relax and breathe again. I know I went a bit feral this summer, letting my side shave grow out and barely wearing makeup (which is worth mentioning since, without makeup, my face looks like that of a hungover 15-year-old; hardly ideal for a college professor).

Many of us are returning to hostile work environments: we can’t say gay, we can’t respect students’ pronouns and nick/names, we are told to arm ourselves because gun violence is *shrug* inevitable in schools. Granted, some of us face hostile environments at home as well, so I suppose for some teachers, returning to school in the fall is a relief.

Plus it’s not like I laze around eating bon-bons in the summer; first of all, they would definitely melt all over me in the Indiana summer heat, which is made both worse and weirder by global warming. Second, I’m pretty much always working (writing, dancing, etc.), I just get to eat lunch at home instead of meal-prepping for a week’s worth of lunches, and that is a special summer-time joy for me, since I also delight in visiting my local farmer’s markets to pick out fresh produce to cook throughout the week.

The rhythm of summertime life allows many of us the rest we so desperately need, as so many teachers are teetering on the edge of burnout. It’s been worse, of course, in the pandemic, with the pivot to online teaching (and I swear, if anyone says “pivot” to me in a regular conversation I might just scream, that’s how sick of it we are), along with the larger emotional loads we carry when our students need additional help figuring out things that are more intuitive in IRL settings, and the expectations that we do more with less that, well, teachers have basically always had put on us.

And I’m in higher ed, where at least I don’t have to buy crayons for my students out of pocket (but I’ve watched my mom and countless other teachers do so over the years). We have, however, been informed that due to budget cuts we will be responsible for moving the trash from the bins in our offices to designated trash cans around campus. This is not hugely burdensome – which I can only really say because I have minor invisible disabilities, which is not true for all my colleagues – and hopefully this new policy will lead to many riffs on the “taking out the trash” jokes; maybe while taking out the trash we can also take out neoliberalism and the eagerness to embrace AI? (my new fave rant on the matter is here, I don’t know who this person is other than a data scientist but I love their brain)

Thus, any reminder that school is starting soon is also a reminder that we teachers are tasked with the gigantically important job of helping guide our culture’s young, while not given adequate pay or supplies or support to fulfill said task. It’s a reminder that our time without grading papers and checking for plagiarism is over, and if there were ever an onerous task, trust me, it is having a policy stating that AI use in the classroom is plagiarism, but still knowing I’ll need to enforce this policy, which both is an energy drain for me and something that feels like quite a failure, given how I try so hard to give extensions on papers when requested and assert to my students that I want to read their thoughts, not stolen words that have been sifted through a mediocre sieve, like the crappiest confectioner’s sugar to go atop the world’s worst cupcake. That I still have to eat, because it’s my job.

You could contribute to these reminders, or you could just say that you hope the semester starts off well for us, and perhaps leave some wine and chocolate at our doorstop while you’re at it, since between the low pay most teachers see and the continuing attacks on academic freedom at all levels of teaching, we’re gonna need it. I’m not saying I’ve been having increasing panic attacks leading up to the start of the semester, but I’m not not saying it either.

So, thoughts and prayers please…or not, because I’m an atheist-voting, agnostic-leaning Jewish-flavored human. Let’s go with tots and pears instead, because I am a very food-motivated critter, like many both domesticated and undomesticated creatures.

Or, maybe things will be okay. I lost my ID on campus a few days ago (darn those dresses with pockets that are not very deep!), and was emailed the next day to let me know that someone found it. I met some of our incoming students and they are inquisitive, lovely humans. I am working with colleagues to design some new courses that will address lesser-known aspects of history and culture while teaching critical thinking skills, and those are some of the things I love most about my job, seeing the students reach those “aha!” moments about how complex culture is, how important it is to do good research, how much we all have yet to learn about this ridiculously cruel and and wondrous and multi-layered social world we inhabit.

In case you’re wondering, today’s the first day of classes for me. So wish me luck (and again, not gonna say no to wine), and wish all the other teachers and learners and support staff and really everyone in education good luck as well. Help us do our jobs by not traumatizing us with reminders about our jobs, maybe instead using that energy to vote in people who trust teachers and understand that there is something worth saving here.

See you on the other side of the semester, and solidarity to you, my fellow teachers.

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Workaholic Missives: Work Hard, Play Hard

February 29, 2016 in Observations | No comments

One of my “play hard” moments, on an aerial hoop at Cirque Indy.

Welcome to the next installment of my Workaholic Missives post series, wherein I talk about my philosophy behind work/life balance (or lack thereof, as some would have it).

I know it’s trite, but I try to live by the phrase “Work hard, play hard.” I like the website Get Bullish’s take on this: “If it isn’t extremely productive or extremely pleasurable, just stop. Either eat something healthy that takes five minutes, or have a huge decadent meal with friends for two hours. Either go to the gym and work every fucking muscle in your body like an Olympian, or stay home and find someone to make out with.”

Basically, the idea here is that if you’ve got limited time in which to be awesome, either spend it being as awesome as possible, or recharging as aggressively as possible. I know, the idea of recharging aggressively seems weird to some, but that’s how I’ve been exploring work/life balance in the last few years, and I’ve really enjoyed it. This blog post shares some of my strategies for making it work.

As a freelancer, I run the risk of always working. There’s always another proposal to write, a blog post to pitch, or a project to write, revise, etc. I know this is ingrained into me by academic culture to some degree (see my post on normalized weekend work at Conditionally Accepted), but I’ve also had to navigate the “you should be working more!” ethos of freelancing. Piling one on top of the other has not necessarily been that healthy for me.

Luckily, I’m all about the self-care interventions. And sometimes that means aggressive self-care: taking a weekend off to travel because I’m on the verge of burn-out, or scheduling a massage after a lunch date but right before a work date followed by rock climbing (a.k.a. last Tuesday). I take care to always meet my commitments to others, backing out only when it’s really dire, but I match that persistence with a commitment to myself as well: to engage in what is healthy and pleasurable as much as I can possibly fit in, justify, and/or afford.

The “work hard” part of the phrase means that I try not to waste time on things that are not-work, assuming that I have the energy and the mental focus to put in good work. Since I do a range of activities in my freelance life, it could mean deciding whether I have the attention span to do something related to a college class I’m teaching (lesson planning and grading papers tend to take the most focus, whereas small tasks like recording attendance are less strenuous) or whether I should do something on social media that’s less obviously related to a project I’m on, but could help promote my work in ways that might be fruitful later. It could be the difference between “work on my book proposal while I’ve got the brain power for it” and “send out inquiries about a performance opportunity for my dance troupe because those are halfway scripted already.”

The “play hard” hard of the phrase means that I take my relaxation seriously, and I try to fill it with activities that not only recharge me, but about which I’m passionate. That can be a tricky balance: for instance, I truly love dancing, but sometimes I’m just too tired from all my other stuff to really make a serious go of a night out dancing. So it might mean practicing at home a little bit, followed by watching performances by some of my favorite dancers, in order to get that creative charge going. When I’m totally worn out and can’t brain anymore, then I’ll do something low-key that I still really love, like reading a novel or spending time with someone I care about. Watching trashy TV tends to fall pretty low on the list… yes, even I have a few guilty pleasure TV shows, but I tend to combine them with social time (my life partner and I have a list of shows we’re working our way through) or with introvert time (like if I can write in my journal or knit while watching a show).

On the flip side, the “play hard” aspect means that if some relaxation or social activity doesn’t really appeal to me, and I don’t have a good reason to do it regardless, I’m probably going to turn it down. My free time is too limited for me to spend it in an activity that doesn’t serve me.

So, yes, I’m very mercenary in how I make my choices with my free time, in large part because of this need for balance that I perceive. On that note, time to make a shopping run for a dinner party, before working out, before a lunch date, before teaching a dance workshop, before spending the rest of the day working on grading and writing. Like ya do… if you’re me.

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Workaholic Missives: Mercenary As F*ck

January 6, 2016 in Observations | No comments

Indy Monumental Yoga

Me being choosy with my time, at an event that combines belly dance and yoga, two activities I fiercely carve room for in my schedule.

In my last Workaholic Missives post, I described how most social engagements pale in comparison to the thrill of saving the world through education and art. That leads to a question I’ll discuss here: how on earth do I figure out what’s worth doing when I’m not working?

The answer: to be calculating and strategic and self-serving, while being up front and honest and not mean about it. In other words, to be mercenary as fuck.

I’m going with the definition of mercenary as self-serving, or doing things only when they benefit oneself, not necessarily in the sense of only doing things for money. That’s more aptly communicated by, ya know, calling someone a capitalist. Apparently the Latin origin of the word refers to someone being for hire, and while money came to be important to the definition, the idea of being in something for personal gain remains central to my understanding of it.

Since deciding not to pursue a full-time career in academia anymore, I’ve had to be more mercenary with my time on a professional level. I love academic research, writing, and publishing… but it doesn’t pay like freelance writing does (or at all, really), so I can’t devote very much time to it. I love teaching, but adjunct wages make it so that teaching isn’t the best use of my time either, so I only teach one class a semester. And so on.

I’m not the only alt-ac scholar who’s had to disentangle herself from the lure of academic time sucks with an eye toward self-serving career goals. But I also apply this attitude toward my non-professional life, which is where things get sticky.

Invitation to hang with friends at a bar? Facebook event involving a signing/reading/viewing? Dinner party? Drum circle? Those all sound lovely, but what do they do for me? Since I am not, in fact, a machine (or an ice queen, as rumors might suggest), then an event’s “what it does for me” might be as simple as “helps me relax.” Also acceptable answers include “I get to reconnect with friends,” or “I get to practice dancing,” or “I get to interact with a topic I work with professionally but in a low-key environment where I don’t have to be the one presenting/leading/teaching it.”

Not everything I do is work-related (surprise, I know), but I consider almost everything I do through work-related lenses, applying the same mercenary filters to assess how an activity benefits me or helps me reach a goal. Spelling it out like this can make me sound calculating, but hopefully it also helps the people in my life understand why I do what I do. And maybe it helps others like me feel less alone and outside the norm.

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Workaholic Missives: brb, saving the world

December 9, 2015 in Observations | No comments

A selfie as I’m on my way to teach (while undoubtedly juggling a billion other tasks in my head).

For the second installation in my blog series on being a workaholic, I’d like to talk about my lack of social life.

If you know me IRL, you might be thinking, “What?! Jeana, you have a thriving social life, what on earth are you talking about?!”

And… to a degree you’d be right. When there’s an event or a group that I prioritize, I’m there. For example, I’m dedicated to promoting the belly dance community in Indianapolis, so I’m teaching classes two nights a week, spending other nights rehearsing or performing, and so on. I help run a local sex-positive meet-up group, so I’m visible in that community. And so on.

Except I don’t actually have that many personal social commitments. And I prefer to keep it that way.

Part of the way I experience being a workaholic is an intense commitment to, and inflation of the significance of, the causes which are important to me. So it’s not just that I’m an educator, it’s that I’m saving the world through education. I’m not just a sex educator, I’m saving the world through sex education. My research and writing and teaching and blogging and dancing and art are all part of my mission to bring progressive thought and acceptance of non-heteronormative sexuality/gender and bodies of all kinds to the rest of the world.

I have the fervor and zeal of a new convert, and in some ways that’s true: since turning away from academia and pursuing an alt-ac career, I’ve felt newly infused with a sense of purpose and a drive toward relevance. Getting a PhD was fun, but I wasn’t overly concerned with improving anyone’s life but my own for the majority of that process. Now that I’ve hopped on the alt-ac bandwagon, and become more of an activist in sexuality circles, though, I’ve become rather outspoken about the need for more education (sexuality and otherwise) in pretty much every aspect of life. And it fills me with a righteous sense of passion and indignation and must fix this now.

Hopefully this doesn’t sound naive, but I truly believe that educational opportunities and communication skills and tolerance for diversity can help save the world. So when someone asks if I have time to hang out, time during which I could be blogging or preparing a lesson plan or conducting research or networking at a sexuality professionals meetup – all converging toward this glorious end goal of saving the world – of course the answer is no, I don’t have time to hang out.

Be right back, saving the world.

It’s cool to get coffee with you a couple times, but I have more important things to do.

Gotta cancel that lunch date… it’ll be my only time to blog today. And so on.

It’s a harsh reality of my world that most people aren’t as interesting to me as my work is. There are exceptions, of course, since I’m not a total hermit: the people I make an effort to stay in touch with, to include in my life, to see somewhat regularly. But the majority of the people I encounter, while lovely individuals, simply do not hold my attention in comparison with (or rather, in competition with) my work.

I do this mental math every time I receive an invitation to a social event, whether it’s a group thing or a one-on-one hangout. I hate to admit this publicly – or at all – but it’s what happens in my brain.

If this is the price I pay for helping to change the world through education, well, I’m kinda okay with that. I try to train the people in my life to not take it personally. Not sure how much success I’ve had, but ah well… since this is is Workaholic Missives post I can point people toward it in the future, right?!

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Workaholic Missives: A Love Letter

December 7, 2015 in Observations | No comments

Me, in front of my bookshelf. Because my books are part of my workaholic lifestyle.

This post marks the beginning of a new blog series I’m writing, titled Workaholic Missives.

I’m writing this series because:

  • I’m a workaholic
  • I don’t think being a workaholic is necessarily a bad thing
  • I don’t have the time to explain to every individual in my life what this is all about
  • Hence it’s easier to blog my thoughts on being a workaholic, and send links to everyone I know

Granted, that last sentence is a bit flippant, but only in the sorry/not sorry sense that seems trendy these days.

Honestly, I love being a workaholic. I think it’s enriched my life, and made my time in academia as enjoyable and productive as it could be, given how exploitative an institution it is. I derive a profound sense of value from filling my days (and let’s be honest, nights, because I’m writing this at 11pm on a Sunday) with work.

But – and this is what I’ll explore in the series – being a workaholic takes its toll on other aspects of my life. I might feel personally fulfilled, but people who feel they have some right to my time feel shortchanged. My relationships (family, friends, romantic) have often suffered as a result of my workaholic attitude.

I have a mixed reaction to this. On the one hand, why would I waste time on someone who doesn’t get my values and doesn’t appreciate me for who I am? I’ve dated far too many people who’ve been initially attracted to my independence and drive, only later to condemn me for being too independent and too driven, hence threatening or not invested enough in the relationship or whatever. Those people clearly were not for me. On the other hand, I get that there’s more to life than work. The time I get to spend with loved ones is limited, since our lifespans are limited. I derive a different sort of pleasure from emotional and social interactions than intellectual/work ones, and I know that I have to get better at finding a balance.

It seems that ambivalence is my natural state, so I’m digging in and exploring it. If you’re a workaholic, or have a workaholic in your life – particularly of the academic flavor – then perhaps this blog series is for you. Stay tuned for the next installation, on why maintaining relationships is especially tough.

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Reflecting on New & Old Identities

June 23, 2015 in Education, Gender & Sexuality | 2 comments

Dressed for the academic classroom, posed in front of my voluminous bookshelves.

I’ve had this website for a few years now, and the tagline at the top of the site has always been: “Jeana Jorgensen, PhD. Folklorist, Writer, Dancer.”

Now that’s changed.

The three main words haven’t changed. I may not be seeking full-time employment in academia anymore, but I haven’t stopped being a folklore scholar. In fact, just last month I attended a small working symposium on digital trends in fairy-tale scholarship. I’m a little cranky (to put it mildly) in the general direction of academia right now… but being a folklorist is too ingrained into my identity for me to ever give up identifying as such. It influences how I understand the world around me, how I learn, and how I teach.

Similarly, I’ve been dancing for over half my life, and I plan to dance for the rest of it. I now direct a professional troupe, Indy Tribal, and I’ve learned tons from my students about trust and teaching. Dance is somewhere between a hobby that pays for itself (YAY) and an all-consuming passion, and as such it’s an essential part of my identity.

I’ve grappled more with the title of “writer” than the previous two. I’ve wanted to be a writer since I was in 4th grade, but I gave up writing fiction and poetry (my primary two loves) in favor of nailing nonfiction skills in grad school. And it worked. I wrote and published a lot. Recently, though, I’ve been getting back into the idea of writing more for pleasure, and returning to some of my early ideas about writing. But no matter what I’m writing, or for which audience, writing has been a constant in my life. I write for myself in the form of journals; I write for various blogs; I write endless to-do lists; I write scholarly articles. It’s a part of me at this point.

Now, however, I’m adding the tagline of (Sex) Educator to this website. I have a separate site devoted to my sex education work, but I want this site, which is my main web presence, to reflect that this is a part of my identity too.

See, I didn’t set out to become an educator of any sort, let alone a sex educator, but it’s evolved into a huge part of my identity, and it’s time I recognized that.

I’ve become a person who will have a conversation about rape culture with just about anyone, in the hopes that even though it’s an emotionally fatiguing topic, maybe someone will reach a new understanding of it. I’ve decided to keep adjuncting in large part because even though it’s exploitative labor, I love teaching too much to remove that venue from my life. I teach dance two and sometimes three nights a week, much to the consternation of my life partner and anyone else who likes to see me socially, because I just can’t get enough of it. I educate on gender and sexuality topics for little to no pay more than I should, not just because I’m still establishing myself in the field and am taking those pay-in-prestige opportunities for exposure (mixed bag because of undecutting, I know), but also because  this knowledge is too damn important to not be sharing at every chance.

This is why I’ve added “Educator” to the site tagline, with “Sex” in parentheses. I’m an educator who also happens to be a sex educator. I love making knowledge and concepts accessible and relevant… and I’m particularly good at unpacking the tangled mess of gender, sex, and sexuality, thanks in part to my upbringing. At one time, with only a few years of sex education blogging under my belt, I balked at calling myself a sex educator. Now? I embrace the title.

Anyway, I’m still deciding if I visually like the addition of (Sex) Educator to my website header, but I’m probably going to keep some version of it. It’s been neat reflecting on the process of getting here!

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The Pros and Cons of Small Classes

April 29, 2015 in Dance, Education | No comments

In both the academic classroom and the dance classroom, I’ve noticed that small class sizes present unique challenges and rewards.

Benefits

  • More time to engage with each student. In dance, this means more posture and technique corrections for everyone. In college, this means getting to interact directly with each student more.
  • The class material can be paced and arranged differently if it suits everyone. Due to the fractal nature of American Tribal Style® Belly Dance, it’s possible to alternate between focusing on the individual movements or on the group structures of the dance in a given lesson. That gives me a lot of flexibility as an instructor, and with a small class of students, I can tailor the lesson to their level and their needs. Similarly, I can redirect a lesson plan in the academic classroom if a small-ish group of students has done the prep work and is ready to go to a new place.
  • I get to know each student better, both as individuals and in the context of their needs in the classroom. In dance classes, this means I can keep track of who has which injuries, who needs special attention to posture, and so on. In the academic classroom, this helps me remember everyone’s disciplinary background and call on them by name (because learning a new class’s names at the start of every semester can be tough!).

Challenges

  • When people don’t want to participate, a small class can stall. This is worse in the academic classroom than the dance classroom, I think, because in dance classes I can always come up with more drills and more ways to practice. In the college classroom, it’s hard to get people to talk if they don’t want to talk, and if there are fewer potential talkers, well, it’s more likely that there’ll be awkward silence.
  • Sometimes I talk too much. Because of the above point, where a class can stall if there are fewer people contributing, I might get nervous and go off on a tangent or rant. In my Trust and Teaching post, I talk about how teaching should always be about the students’ needs, not mine, but I sometimes lose sight of that in anxiety-inducing situations.
  • It can feel like there are too many possibilities for what to cover, and then I feel paralyzed with indecision. If I’ve got a small, smart group that’s doing the work, and we can talk about anything, then how do we choose what to talk about?

Overall, I enjoy teaching small classes, even though they present some distinct challenges. I feel like the personal engagement between instructor and student is part of the reason why face-to-face education (as opposed to online education) is effective. Small classes afford more of that engagement, so I’ll usually take a small class over a big class, challenges be damned!

***

Well, between this and my Taboo Topics in the Classroom post, that makes 2 teaching-related blog posts this month! I guess with the semester winding down at my university, I’ve got teaching on the brain. I had a really wonderful class full of very bright and engaged students this semester, so maybe this is my way of processing some of the learning I did alongside them.

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Taboo Topics in the Classroom

April 23, 2015 in Academia, Education, Gender & Sexuality | 1 comment

This file was shared under a Creative Commons Attribution image from Wikimedia Commons. Thanks to user Stefan-Xp for sharing it.

Over at my sex education blog, Sex Ed with Dr. Jeana, I have a post called Syphilis in the Social Sciences Classroom. In it, I describe the ways in which syphilis has proved to be a relevant STI for me to bring into my anthropology and gender studies classes.

For all the silence around STIs today in the U.S., you’d think STIs were a taboo topic – and for many they are. As I’ve already discussed, teaching sex education is not the same as encouraging sex, despite the claims of those who believe that teaching about something is the same thing as endorsing it. Add in the (unwarranted) shame and stigma of admitting that you’ve got an STI, or are even interested in learning more (“for a friend,” right?) and it becomes clear that simply talking about STIs is a revolutionary act in many contexts.

I’ve taught plenty of taboo topics (non-monogamy, BDSM, trauma, Freud, feminism) in my college classes, and while there’s no magic trick to getting it right, I’ve found a couple of things that tend to work well for me. Here are some of my favorite strategies:

  • Explicitly acknowledge that teaching about a topic is not the same as endorsing it. This is one example of how I’ll often use verbal communication to the point where it seems way too obvious to even bother saying, which is why I go ahead and say it anyway. I’d much rather sound a tad silly than risk misunderstanding.
  • When introducing the topic, ask students what their impression of the topic is. Perhaps we old fogies are clinging to taboos of our day, while our students might be pretty well over something. Or maybe they’ll shed some light on an aspect of the topic that hadn’t occurred to us.
  • Try to find that balance between acknowledging that a topic is controversial, and introducing it as just another thing people do, hence worthy of scholarly attention. Take, for instance, my approach to kink in the classroom in my blog post And Then I Brought Up Flesh Hooks. Normalizing human sexual behavior – especially when it’s been stigmatized – is a huge mission of mine as a sex educator and an educator in general, and thus I try to talk about things in a not-terribly sensationalistic way. Again, if people are doing it, it’s worthy of study (from the hybrid social sciences/humanities perspective that I’ve come to as an interdisciplinary folklorist and gender studies scholar).
  • Give students time to respond to the topic in a less-structured way, such as journaling, doing an in-class writing prompt, or talking in pairs. Allowing them to process their feelings in some forum other than talking in front of the whole group, or having to answer directed questions from you, can be beneficial.
  • Frame the conversation with a set of rules, boundaries, or guidelines for respectful discussion. I like to remind my students that it’s okay to disagree with me, with the reading/texts, and even with each other, so long as they do it politely. In certain conversations I’ll emphasize that no one’s required to share anything about their personal lives, but only to engage with the material as it’s handled in the class. The way I do this, it’s less about creating a “safe space” where everyone feels 100% comfortable and nurtured all the time, but rather creating a space where people feel supported in speaking up, and where it’s okay to challenge and be challenged.
  • Divide students into groups and have them debate different facets of the topic. Again, this might bring up ideas and issues that I haven’t even considered.
  • Give them an opportunity to make up classroom credit if a topic proves to be triggering or emotionally activating. This might be listening to a podcast, reviewing a blog post, watching a TED talk, or something along those lines. Since I deal with sexual topics a lot in my classroom, I tend to have a lot of these options floating around my brain at any given moment, in case somebody needs to pass on participating.

At risk of being snarky, I’m sure it helps that I have white, middle-class privilege and thus can bring up certain topics without being seen as too offensive. At the same time, being a woman means I probably come across as nurturing and supportive when I don’t necessarily think of myself that way, which may help students feel more comfortable during difficult discussions. I’m not thrilled about these areas of privilege, but I have to acknowledge them, and I might as well try to use my privilege to benefit others, by creating unique educational opportunities.

I’ve never had anyone tell me not to teach a topic, or that I was being too controversial, or that I would be penalized for anything I taught. But I’m sure there’s a first time for everything. In the end, I try to keep in mind that teaching is less about my experience (as much as I might feel like a bad-ass for handling touchy topics with grace) and more about the students’ experiences, and that helps me navigate some of these tricky subjects. In the end, if it doesn’t benefit them, why am I doing it?

What about you? How do you handle taboo topics in the classroom?

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