Reactions to "The Crazy/Bitch Narrative About Senior Academic Women"

Last week's post, The "Crazy/Bitch" Narrative About Senior Academic Women, struck a nerve. After tweeting it there were immediate retweets, responses, and then it went viral. In the past six days the post has been viewed 37,000 times on my blog, published in the Georgia Straight, picked up by the Chronicle of Higher Education, and I gave an interview today on Roundhouse Radio with Minelle Mahtani.

I'm glad it generated discussion and spoke to so many women (and men). Many wrote that they saw their own experiences in the post and that it helped call out a larger pattern usually attributed to individual failings. A Tier 1 Canada Research Chair wrote that she felt broken and wanted to quit, but that my blog gave her strength: "I won't let them clip my wings."

It's also discouraging to learn just how widespread this pattern is. People have noted it happens in all professions, especially male-dominated ones, where it pays to disparage and distance oneself from women. The vilification of senior women shows the intolerance we have for women with power.

The blog also ignited exchanges between women across generations. Below is a powerful exchange between members of my own academic "family:" My "sister," the amazing NiCole T. Buchanan, and our "mom," the brilliant and fearless Louise F. Fitzgerald.

NICOLE T. BUCHANAN

Jennifer Berdahl's blog resonates...the master's tools seem to be passed down through the generations, creating the same narratives over and over again.

Being told not to work with my collaborator, Isis Settles, and she being told not to work with me (we'd bring one another down)....

Being reminded that when I was hired, everyone liked me because I was so "nice" (code for "stop being a bitch")...

Being reminded almost daily that I don't belong in their Ivory Tower (it was never intended for my kind anyway)...

Being told my research, my writing, my very being, isn't "good enough" to be valuable in their eyes (code for "no one cares about women of color, start doing real research)....

Being pointed to and discussed as a "subgroup" in a faculty meeting and no one said a word (don't they all agree anyway?)...

Seeing my students nearly broken, demoralized, and I can't protect them (what made me think I could).....

To all the senior "bitches" who strengthened me so I could go back and fight everyday (some are tagged here), thank you.....

LOUISE F. FITZGERALD

It breaks my heart. But I also feel very much like a window opened - this is a conversation we should all have had long ago, but which, by its nature, we couldn't have.

No one wants their students to have to deal with this garbage or for them to be torn between loyalties to the "powers that be" and their private doubts or affinity for the "bitches" who fiercely try to protect them while also trying to just keep on "keepin' on".

I noticed the reserve among some women students, their desire to be involved in what we were doing but also keep their "real" research going with the Big Boys, because that's what would pay in the end. It was sad but it also seemed like a reasonable survival strategy to me, so I supported them too -- and have happily watched them grow and survive and change and now spend their lives doing explicitly feminist research or other forms of social justice. But that doesn't address the problem of what to do.

It is a little humbling to spend one's entire life addressing this problem and find at the end that one has nothing more helpful to say than "There is a lot of safety in numbers".....which is another way of saying "They can't fire all of us".

The part that definitely HASN'T changed since I started in this game in 1974 is the need for women to "coalesce as a group" (smile) as we used to say. NiCole [Buchanan] is right - the strategy is divide and conquer - without the first, the second can't happen. Yes, there are individual heroines who are strong enough to go their own way - I think of Kim Lonsway who wanted to do work that could only really be done in a research institute, couldn't find one, and then said "I can be a research institute" and went out and was one and still is, a major voice in ending violence against women. BUT not everyone is blessed with those capabilities or strengths.

So.....one of the ways my eyes have been opened here is by doing some work with poor women who have been sexually harassed by their landlords, usually slum lords, and property managers. (I promise to link this up!). One of the differences between housing cases and organizational cases is that there are invariably many (8, 10, more) victims, most of whom don't know each other, all of whom tell virtually identical stories of powerful men who use their keys to get into their apartments, who promise to cut the rent if they get a blow job, etc. etc. These women are the poorest of the poor, single mothers, almost always African-American, many with criminal drug histories at constant risk of eviction. They make, as the lawyers say, "very bad victims". But at trial, a funny thing happens - it is an amazingly powerful experience to watch 17 women walk across the courtroom and testify, one after the other, none of whom know each other, and all of who tell the same tale. Such cases are virtually always won for the victims.

My take? One woman (any woman) is a bitch. One woman (any woman) is a liar and a slut. One woman (any woman) is a whore or a prostitute.....but FIVE women, TEN women, that's a GROUP - and the bigger the group the more powerful the voice.

Not that this is news to anybody - we've known all this for at least 50 years; but sometimes I think we forget it - after all, it's a "new generation" (yes, we thought that, too) and maybe we can skip the work of consciousness raising, and group support, and all the trappings of Second Wave feminism that are now sort of embarrassing to many. But we need to get past that - remember our roots and our strengths. Do the work to break down the barriers (junior women, senior women; faculty, students; "real faculty"/academic professionals), it is the only way to destroy the individual narrative.

One woman is a bitch; a group of women is a force of nature. It just takes a little nudge to get started. Kudos to Jennifer and NiCole for the nudge. Now what?????