A Woman Silenced: My Year In the Academic Fishbowl
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Written by Sherrie McCarthy
I should have read the warning signs in September when we spent an entire hour in a seminar class bashing feminism.
Everyone was too happy to separate themselves from "them." In a self-congratulatory tone, my professor ended the argument with, "I have nothing but respect for the women in the 1970s and the gains they made. We no longer need feminists today because of them."
I felt my throat closing. The fathers of history have spoken again. And from that moment on if a woman was even mentioned, every head in the room turned to look at me. I - as a feminist gender historian - represented women in all of history. And sadly, like so many other women in history, my voice had begun to be silenced.
And even fighting seems to make little sense. Because the professors (almost all men in my department) wear a protective cloak. They have PhDs that prove they can think rationally. And if you want to silence a woman there is no better way than to accuse of her of being an angry feminist. And an angry lesbian feminist means that you're not only ridiculous but crazy as well. Yes, this is the year 2006, and yes, this is my experience in a Masters program this year.
Only this year I have not been ignored. Rather, I have been attacked.
My "No Means No" poster prompted one professor to laugh and say, "In my day, silence meant yes." This same professor, in front of everyone, attacked my paper on gender in the fisheries, telling me that men being hired over women is not a gender issue; it's the way life is and should be. Women should stay home, and any jobs left over can be dealt out as needed. The professor who congratulated feminists of the 70s (even if their daughters are greedy and unfair) attacked my footnotes viciously. My supervisor did back me up - at that moment anyway. However, after the seminar, he sat me down and berated me for not focusing hard enough, for working both externally and internally at the university, for being too involved in my own personal problems. Problems, he repeated, he did not want to hear.
I am not an emotionless archival robot. Yes this person in a position of power over me - who claims he fights for the recognition of gender and privilege in his own academic work, yet refuses to look at issues of learning and privilege occurring right under his nose - has further disillusioned me with the academic process.
Our lives held hostage to the system of patriarchy that is academia.
***
I grew tired, and this entire year has made me more tired and sadder than I have been in a very long time. A recent journal entry of mine read (expletives replaced):
I am honestly beginning to think there is something severely wrong with me. I know the end is in sight. If I can just pull myself together for all of 24 hours, work like mad on this paper, get the footnotes down, get the bib down, get rid of this passive voice that plagues my writing, and write an intro and conclusion that more or less fits what I wrote in the body I am free. I don't give a care about an A. I don't even want a high B. I just want to pass. I want the diploma. I want the pay scale that goes with it. I want to know that the money spent on getting this degree wasn't lost. Because the Goddess knows that what I did not learn in terms of academic knowledge and expanding my ability to analysis, I learned in how school is nothing more than indoctrination. What's really sad is that those indoctrinating you are so wrapped up in validating their own existence they actually see themselves as outside the dogma. I honestly think my profs think of themselves as liberators. What else can it be? Why else are they such anal retentive people if not because they know if they turn the critical eye upon themselves their whole world crumbles. And they will fight like hell to keep that world and all the arrogant pompous self-congratulatory wanking that goes with it.
I am a bit bitter. Yes.
All the truly intelligent people drop out of school.
Everyone I admire intellectually had the guts to scream in their faces and leave. I can't do that. My parents will be crushed. They will have to listen to my aunt go on about her daughter who succeeded and how I'm just a flake. Again attempting to invalidate anything I do to make myself happy. It just makes me sick how its nothing but a giant rat race to not make yourself happy but "achieve" status to make others envy you and make them think your happy. I'll finish the Master's for my family. Then I exit right thank you. Next time people put pressure on my wandering gypsy ways I'm telling them to go play with a goat.
I'm a bit angry today yes. I'm hoping by venting I'll be able to finish this. Because one more "this isn't good enough, a high school student writes better" and I'm going to go insane. It matters not that in the past year my life has fallen apart emotionally. That my grandmother I loved dearly died, that my brother had a baby I can't see because of crimes he committed, and now that baby may lose her father because he has to serve time for what he has done, that my aunt returned home to commit suicide in public and failed, that the man I can't seem to stop loving is in love with a phantom ghost, and every other person who has asked for my affection I turn against because they are not that one person who doesn't deserve it. Or that even within this I struggle to understand what is important and what is not, and why I hold my love ransom for an ideal that I don't even think I agree with.
None of this is important. Properly cited footnotes, correct margins, and a clear argument. That is the stuff life and achievement is created from.
I am only too glad that I never seem to fit. It scares me what I would be if I did.
***
The crowning glory of my graduate career of the year 2006 occurred 2 months ago at a BBQ for the history department.
The "silence means yes" professor bragged that as he was retiring he did not need to worry about sexual harassment. Then he came over to me, stroked my hair and turned to the class and asked, "Do I go to bed or do I attempt sexual assault?"
Everyone but ONE person laughed. I felt the tears well up. As a feminist, as a woman who has fought against sexual assault on crisis lines and in a women's centre, and as a sexual violence survivor, there is nothing funny to me about sexual assault. I threw his hand away and yelled go to bed, and one guy there, one out of everyone, also became upset. He turned to me and said, "We should do something, with the silence comment and what he just did, I am seriously worried about this guy's past." When I brought it up to the other students I was told I was blowing it out of proportion and that it was just the way he is.
No one has called him on it. I haven't called him on it. And I can't do it until after my grade is out. I am prisoner to getting the diploma even when every fiber of my being screams not to be. That is when my being is not beaten into submission and making meek mewing sounds to be the loud mouth advocate I once was. Now it seems I just want to fight for the right to have pleasure in my life.
I know I need to keep fighting. I know that the sexism and anti-woman sentiment and flat-out sexual harassment is NOT my fault.
And yet...
I feel guilt for wanting to fight against this. I want to leave academia plagued with anti-woman sentiment while bragging of their freedom from it. And I pray for the day when academia in all disciplines recognizes and fights for women and their life experiences, that they turn a critical eye on life and their own hidden biases as readily as they do on graduate students. And I also hope for the day that the journey to knowledge is as important as the end result. When perfection is not expected on the first try. Because until we stop holding male ideals as perfection, and we do start accepting the layers that make up our life instead of isolating them, there can not possible be liberation for all of us. Academia and life are not two separate things.
About the Author
Sherrie McCarthy is an almost-liberated Masters student who is happily planning life as a survivor of her graduate program. She has been involved with social justice since high school when she began raising awareness and fundraising for schools for women in Bangladesh. In university she was introduced to the wonderful word FEMINIST and hasn't looked back since. She has worked with her University's women's centre and with her local rape crisis center. Sherrie loves books, motorcycles, travel, challenging people's perceptions and writing about herself in the third person.
My curse is my gift. My nightmares, deep sensitivity, and emotional instability gives the best (and most uncomfortable) inspirations I could ever have. For me, art is passion - and visions are the mirror, which show my feelings and connect me with the rest of the world. Read More...
Sherrie McCarthy is an almost-liberated Masters student who is happily planning life as a survivor of her graduate program. She has been involved with social justice since high school when she began raising awareness and fundraising for schools for women in Bangladesh. In university she was introduced to the wonderful word FEMINIST and hasn't looked back since. She has worked with her University's women's centre and with her local rape crisis center. Sherrie loves books, motorcycles, travel, challenging people's perceptions and writing about herself in the third person. 
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