Teaching Dangerously: When Feminisms Collide

A common (although not universal) goal of feminist teachers is to create a "safe environment" in the classroom. The meaning of that term, however, varies considerably—some hope students will feel they can share personal feelings and experiences without fear of judgment, some that students will feel they can state their opinions without fear of challenge, and some that students will feel safe to explore intellectual arguments without fear of ridicule. Nevertheless, in each case there is the expectation that teachers will do something to protect students from harm or discomfort.

In reality, no teacher can consistently protect his or her students from harm or discomfort. Even the most authoritarian teacher, who relies solely on lectures and squashes all student participation, cannot know how course materials will affect individual students nor control how students interact with each other. For example, hearing a lecture on wife battering may open raw wounds in some students, while hearing fellow students snicker during a lecture on gay rights may hurt other students. In this article, I provide a case study of an especially "dangerous" class in which students were deeply divided into different (although still feminist) camps.

As I will describe, in more participatory classrooms (like my own), the dangers multiply. Any time teachers encourage students to share feelings, opinions, experiences, or intellectual analyses, the possibility exists that others will respond with incomprehension, indifference, defensiveness, anger, or repugnance. Those dangers multiply further when teachers themselves challenge students to provide better evidence, more careful definitions of terms, more thoughtful analysis of alternative viewpoints, or a more logical grounding for their own positions. Even when teachers do so because they believe in their students' intelligence and merely want their students to develop their ability to think critically, students often interpret such actions as attacks that reflect their teachers' lack of faith in their intelligence.

Participatory classrooms are dangerous for teachers as well as students. A teacher who writes complete lectures in advance can carefully consider the political, legal, or emotional dangers inherent in a given topic and either choose his or her words carefully or skip a topic altogether. For example, a teacher might decide to lecture on childbirth but not abortion or might write lectures using the pronouns zie and hir to avoid offending transgendered students—a difficult strategy to enact in ordinary speech without considerable practice. In contrast, in more participatory classrooms the teacher cannot choose words in advance, cannot predict how students will respond to class discussions, and cannot know what topics or questions the students themselves will raise. As a result, even the most conscientious teacher risks lawsuits (if students claim discrimination), poor student evaluations (if students find a topic or approach threatening), or even dismissal (if administrators believe a teacher has behaved improperly or has simply cost the institution too much political capital).

Over the years, numerous articles and books have addressed the specific dangers faced by both students and feminist teachers in classrooms that contain antifeminist, racist, and homophobic students. These articles typically frame the latter students as "resistant" to feminist teachers and focus on creating a safe environment for the other students, especially those whose experiences of difference place them outside the U.S. mainstream (e.g., Macdonald and Sanchez-Casal; Bell, Morrow, and Tastsoglou; Titus; Gotell and Crow; Higginbotham).

As both women's studies and feminism have become more institutionalized, however, a new pedagogical challenge—and danger—has emerged. At schools where women's studies has had a strong presence for many years—such as Arizona State University, where I teach—many of our students have taken one or more courses in the field previously. Others have been raised by feminist parents, and all have grown up in a culture in which basic feminist principles of gender equality have gained at least rhetorical support. As a result, in some classes the greater challenge comes not from anti-feminist students but from the conflict between two different types of third-wave feminists. For want of better terms, I refer to these two types as "difference feminists" and "empowerment feminists." Difference feminists view gender and sexism as deeply embedded...