A college memory

by Donna Andrews of the Femmes Fatales.

At some point during my college career at the University of Virginia I took a course called Women in Literature. As I remember it, the class was intended to be disruptive--in a genteel, erudite, academic way, but still, disruptive. We were to read only women writers, many of them minor and forgotten figures in a literature whose pantheon consisted mostly of dead white men, and take them as seriously as . . . well, as they weren't usually taken.

It's been a few decades, and it's possible that others in that same class would remember it differently, or not at all. But this is what I remember.

It was a small class, maybe 25 students, and only three of them male. But you had to give them a certain amount of credit for taking Women in Literature at all. And they certainly joined enthusiastically into the classroom discussions.

About that time I read an article. I think it was an article that the professor teaching the class recommended; possibly she even included it in the optional reading list. At any rate, I read it: an academic study that measured the amount of time men and women spoke in mixed groups . . . like for instance, classrooms. The men in this study talked more than the women. A lot more. And they interrupted the women, who tended to stop talking when interrupted; and on the rare instances when a man was interrupted--probably by another man--he was likely to keep talking, thus refusing to accept interruption.

At my classes over the next few days, I was quieter than usual, observing what went on during discussions--and that article was right. Even in our women in literature class. Men were only 12% of the class, and yet they did close to half of the talking. I counted how many times they interrupted the women--and how few times the women interrupted them. And it wasn't just perception--I actually hid a watch in my notebook and timed everyone. The researches were right.

I went off and brooded over this for a while. And then I decided that at our next class, I would talk like a man.

I came out swinging. As soon as our professor asked the first discussion question, I plunged in and talked. Instead of politely conveying my thoughts as succinctly as possible and then stepping aside for the next speaker, I kept talking as long as I had something to say. I interrupted the men, even if I had nothing new to say, or nothing to say at all. (Actually, that doesn't happen too often. I can almost always think of something else to say.) When they tried to interrupt me, I just talked louder. It helped that I have a relatively low voice for a woman, and had learned a few things about projecting it from hanging out in the drama department. The whole trick of talking louder to keep someone from interrupting you worked pretty well, to the consternation of the (male) interrupters.

The other women were mostly stunned into silence. It was me and the boys, and I held my ground. Before the class ended, the men began protesting my behavior to the professor.

Who, bless her heart, figured out pretty quickly exactly what I was doing. And when one of the men became so incensed that he was on the point of storming out, threatening to report me to . . . I'm not sure who . . . she 'splained it all. Much spluttering and vehement protesting. I may have produced the log I'd kept of the last class or two. The professor tied my experiment into some of the discussions we'd been having about women's voices being silenced so articulately that I'm sure a few students suspected she'd put me up to it. But she hadn't. My idea.

It didn't change the world, this experiment of mine. I'm not even sure it changed my life. But it was very satisfying to have pulled it off, and satisfying to think back on it.

In fact, the only depressing thing is that I'm not sure a modern-day experiment would produce appreciably different results.

Hmm . . . might have to try that sometime.

 

Comments

[LynDee Walker]

I applaud your observations and your actions, Donna. Growing up in the south, I was taught from such an early age I don't remember a time when I didn't think this, that I talk too much. It's true that I am pretty extroverted for a writer, and I like to share information when it's a topic I know about and ask questions when it's one I don't. With age, I have learned to jump through longer stories and think through what I'm about to share before I start, with the question of "what value does this add to the conversation?" in mind. Years as a reporter definitely made me better at listening. And observing. And from those observations I would say you are correct: such an experiment today would have about the same results in many places, I fear. I wonder, thinking about my own upbringing, if it would make a difference if, instead of teaching girls to be mindful of everyone else above themselves, we taught them that their voices and opinions are as valuable as anyone else's. I'm trying with own daughters, but have noticed that no matter how "equally" I think I'm treating them and their brother, they gravitate toward letting others go first, being less aggressive, and deferring the speaking floor much more than my son does. I just can't figure out why.

[Brenda O'Brien]

Donna,
Take a look at the new dystopian novel Vox, by Christina Dolcher. Women and girls are limited to 100 words a day! It made me too angry to read right now, but very thought provoking.

[Liz Milliron]

The benefit of going to an all-girls high school - my daughter (now at a mixed-gender university) has no problem holding her own in a class conversation. In fact, when her poly sci professor said he didn't vote, she was the only student who objected (he asked her to stay after class - we both think it was a ploy to spark conversation and she was the only one who bit).

[Deb Romano]

Donna, I am reminded of a literature course I took when I was a senior in college in 1971. The professor had a reputation for having a dim view of women. A question on the final exam asked us to “prove the inferiority of women” by references to specific instances in the literature we had read that semester. I still remember the looks on the faces of all the female students.

[Cath Hoffner]

Go Donna! I applaud you for reading the research and doing the experiment. Leave if they don’t over run the conversation.

[Marla Bradeen]

I love this so much. I do have to wonder what the response to such an experiment would have been like in your other classes. Would the professor have reprimanded you? Encouraged you to tone it down? Or would they have backed your decision to make yourself heard? And yes, I doubt things have changed much. (Also, Deb Romano, that literature professor sounds horrible.)

[catriona]

I think it was Prof. Robin Lakoff (but it might have been Prof. Deborah Cameron) who summed up the apparent paradox of the folklore that women talk too much with the fact that women talk so much less than men. It blew my mind in a linguistics lecture. She(whichever she it was) said "we've been assuming the line between just right and too much is equality. But the line - the ideal - is actually silence."

[Susan C Shea]

A big part of the rationale for women's colleges.

[Elaine Viets]

Good for you, Donna, and good for you for speaking up. Our generation was taught to "listen first, then speak."

[Julie Herman]

Good for you!

[Storyteller Mary]

Brava! I'm reminded of reading a a strategy of women in meeting amplifying each other's comments by referring to them by name, "I agree with Donna's suggestion that we . . . " It also prevents the stealing of good idea by men who then take the credit.