Maybe if we had an equal past in which everyone had equal
respect, equal opportunity, equal safety, equal responsibilities, equal space
in education, then everyone would have equal right to centre with their picture
on it. But our universities have not ever been, nor are they currently, equal between
the genders. I have personally dealt with sexism with professors, old men, who
have refused to call on me in class, yet spoke to all the men in my class. I
have felt unsafe walking home from school late, have felt outrage at pretty
much every class at some point or another, when professors make comments about
how their woman students dress, act, their makeup, their looks, which have
absolutely nothing to do with political philosophy. I have been a minority in
every political science class as a feminist, as a woman who does not like it
when my male counterparts speak over me with louder voices and worse ideas. I
have been a minority as a woman period. I am a minority because I am a woman in
university.
Men of certain cultural groups,
or of certain religious affiliation, or with different bodies or minds are
members of minorities, and for that many universities have measures of accommodation
for them, albeit limited. Men as a whole are not a minority, nor are they in
need of special measures to ensure their success. If they are not doing well en
masse in university it is because they are not able or willing to compete with
the newly arrived women in their fields. If they feel like minorities in university
it is only because they are used to functioning in a historically exclusionary
system, which blatantly favours them over women. Point blank. Men as a whole
are not a minority, are not in need of special support. Statistics tell us not
that men need support in university because women are overtaking them, but that
men are simply not used to working as hard as women. Statistically speaking. And
in a system where it is viewed as impossible and unnecessary to create a sexual
assault centre that would service largely women who are abused while in
university, due to lack of funds and will, it is absolutely unbelievable that a
men’s centre is deemed worthy of university finances and energy. Every class I’ve
been to, every time I step into my building at school I am hit in the face with
the realization that universities are
men’s centres. Universities are men’s centres. History classes are men’s
centres. Politics classes are men’s centres. Literature classes, unless
entitled women in literature, or world literature, are men’s centres. My professors’
offices, surrounded by books written by men about men’s things, or about women
from the male author’s mind, are men’s centres.
Look back. Look back less than a
generation ago when women were hardly in university. Are your glasses strong
enough? Mine are and I see women struggling to get heard in a class. I see
women being treated as cute by their all male professors. I see women being
rejected because they’re newly married and it’s assumed that they’ll pop out
babies soon so what’s the point of letting her into university? I see women who
are disabled and whose families discourage from going to school, I’ll get you a
job at the post office honey. Look back and then look around you. There are
women in university. There are a lot of us. We are catching up in enrollment,
and are getting good grades and grants and we are happy about this. But we have
to struggle every day in school and this is because we have a sexist history. A
history in which you would have gone to school and I wouldn’t have because of
what is happening between my legs. Full stop. Look around and see women wearing
pants, something for which my mother was sent home from high school, in the
60s, running to class, taking notes, writing papers and working hard. Look around
at our diverse classrooms full of diverse people and swallow your
self-entitlement. Swallow your history-denying insecurity. Swallow your coffee
as you sit in class, savour it, and stop interrupting me when I speak.
