Arrgh. I know, know, I wrote a long response to this thread before I had to be away from my desk for two days, and I come back to discover it's not here! Curses.
Let me try to reconstruct the important bit. Mainly it was a response to Persephone's response to me--
I'm sorry, I don't know how to read your first sentence. But I make choices, I chose to respond to you in the other feminism thread. As far as cynicism goes, I'd say that that response and the above post come from a place of not feeling cynical towards Barbelith for a change. Because how I usually express my cynicism is through silence, you know? I spoke because it actually seemed possible to be heard, and Barbelith seemed worth it. For the first time in a long time.
I'm so relieved to hear this, although obviously it should be a matter of concern for all of us that you've felt that disheartened. I think the confusing part of my posting resulted from my own welter of confusing reactions to your first posting on this thread. When you said, I don't care if Barbelith is a hostile environment; the fucking world is a hostile environment, and I live in it. But I don't take Barbelith seriously as a feminist space, I think that's kind of a merry joke..., I read it as being directly addressed to the attempt in this thread to open up a space for f-i posters to explore ways of making Barbelith more friendly, so I read your post as essentially saying: "You all are a bunch of idealistic fools if you think anything can be done to make barbelith more woman-friendly; just suck it up and deal: the world's harsh."
So, I really misread your posting. Whew. The context you provided makes your thinking much clearer to me.
I do know that "where do I begin" feeling, however, all too well, the one that makes me feel like: this is hopeless. Why try?
I don't feel hopeless about the board, however, as Cherie and others have said. I am also used to dealing with people of much more ill-will, less ability/interest in focusing on extended written argument, and more interest in tuning me out as much as possible to get the bare minimum amount of learning in, in my teaching life. This is very depressing.
But recently a friend of mine went to Cuba and was talking to an old man who participated in the Revolution and who still believes in the best ideals of it, still believes that-- despite all the setbacks, problems and internal/external challenges and disappointments--it's possible to create an egalitarian, socialist utopia. When she explained that she often feels a pretty deep despair about everything, he explained, gently, that we young Americans want everything here and now and give up too easily. He's thinking in terms of 500-year spans of history. Cuba's experiment is a meme with a long, long growth term, for him.
As a teacher, I find that long view perspective somehow useful and strangely practical; it's pretty easy to get frustrated when at the end of a "long" 4-month term, the "best" students have sailed along pretty much on their own energy and the books we're reading, the ones in the middle may have gotten a few bad jokes from my lectures and a somewhat garbled version of whatever I was hoping to do with them, and the ones who entered the term struggling, are still struggling. (In fact, so much of my teaching is working on "unlearning" things, that some students may actually come out doing worse on some levels. Maybe even most students, actually.)
Anyway, I have had to reframe my thinking along those lines (although still 500 years makes me say I don't think we have that much time left, frankly, what with global environmental degradation alone proceeding apace...). But what it reminds me of, is that social equality really is a much huger thing than me, this place, or this poor human in front of me who I'm about to blow my stack over. I still have to do my best, but I believe--and it really is a matter more of faith than logic; something I need to believe in so I can get through the day--that most teaching happens when I'm not aware and deliberate; and the biggest things are happening on a level that I'm not fully aware of or in control of. |
