As a third year student of English and Politics, I have always found myself to be quite opinionated and eager to share. Recently, however, I have become accutely aware of an incredibly relevant and relatable problem both in and outside the classroom.
During my afternoon politics seminar, full of highly educated upperclassmen, I felt myself silenced. I had read and understood the material, I was incredibly excited to debate what I had read, and I walked into the classroom initially with little to no doubt in my abilities. This was swiftly remedied.
Despite my usual overenthusiastic and loud demeanor, I found that everytime I began to speak, one of the louder and more aggressive male students in the class would interrupt me only in order to give their interperation of the exact same subject. This happened 5 or 6 times, and once I had noticed it in my own experience, I began to notice not only that the pattern continued with other female students, but that the general dynamic of the rest of the class reflected this. Despite the seminar being evenly split between males and females, the males dominated the majority of the conversation. It could easily be said that the female students in the class might just be more timid or have less to say, but this is not the case. Speaking for only myself, I have never had a problem speaking in front of people or in class and the subject being discussed was of great interest of mine, yet those interruptions stuck with me for the rest of the period. It was incredibly difficult even for me to find places to interject and share my point, and the women in the room with less outgoing personalities than myself would never be able to find themselves a forum for which to voice their opinions and understandings.
Of course the men would never have known that what they were doing was patriarchal and deafening. Nor would they ever concede that they themselves had contributed to a wholly misogynistic society. Nevertheless, it is incredibly important to not only notice these subtle but deadly inequalities, but actively try to stop them. In my field, along with many others, asserting myself ‘like a man’ in conversations would overwhelmingly become recognized as the ‘bitchy’ way out, yet a man doing business in the exact same manner is seen as just a man doing his job. To the male dominating the conversation, the female student next to me who isn’t able to get a word in edgewise is seen as timid while I am seen as the threat, whether or not her ability to synthesize and engage in debate is stronger than him or I.
With this in mind, I have come up with some steps for surviving in this setting.
1) Speak Loudly. Scream Actually. If the people in the classroom down the hall from you can’t hear, you’re being too quiet.
2) Never stop talking. If you stop talking, they could tell you that your points are invalid [because you’re a women]. None of that.
3) Include primal grunts to convey that you yourself can understand the plight of man.
4) Don’t even bother to do the readings, just rely on your new-found status within the classroom to drag others down (that’s right, one of the guys in the class hadn’t even done the work)
5) Be born with a penis, because apparently that is the most qualifying factor of any occupation.
Obviously this list is satirical, but that’s only because I have no solution for this problem. The only advice I can give is to be that bitch, because maybe, eventually, we can normalize female success and greatness and go from being ‘that bitch’ to ‘that person’.