Yesterday in French class I was lamenting to my close friend that I had no idea if words shaped thought or thought shaped the words we used, specifically in the context of sexism. I used to think that what a person believed was expressed by the words and discourse they employed, but after a long conversation with a different friend, I am no longer sure. However, the point of this post is not that I overcame my confusion over discourse and rhetoric (I didn’t). What DID happen was that my conversation over my confusion turned into a discussion with other women in my class about sexism and then… (Yay!) feminism! We discussed how it’s understood, the negative connotations surrounding the “F-word”, even how feminism is utilized (or not utilized) on JMU’s campus. By the time I heard my French professor yelling at us (Don’t even ask what she was saying, I literally NEVER know) there were at least five of us engaged in this conversation.
The spontaneity of this conversation was a really hopeful occurrence for me. In the course of a ten minute conversation, not only did I feel like I was building relationships with my friends, but I gained a window into how other women felt about issues that have bothered me for a while. For instance, we all agreed that the competition amongst women for the attention of men on campus was both frustrating and sad. The notion that women are literally fighting amongst themselves over men and wasting their energy and time in this manner as opposed to building friendships or having fun is just pathetic. I got to share my belief that even though identifying as a feminist can have negative connotations, reclaiming that word can allow us to redefine it and break down common myths or assumptions surrounding it. “So what? It was just a conversation about things that interested you, of course you liked it.” Well maybe, but that’s just a small part of it. You see it was consciousness-raising in all its glorious form, and it was spontaneous! Again, this might not seem like a big deal right now but keep reading and you’ll see why I got so excited….
For some background, consciousness-raising groups have long been a trademark of the women’s movement. Women would meet to talk about the implications of different social, political, or personal issues in their lives and how those connected to the oppression that they experienced. According to an interesting guideline I found on by the Women’s Collective, goals of consciousness-raising are
1. Understanding one’s self in relation to one’s society
2. Specifically, understanding what it is to be a woman in a patriarchal society that oppresses women
(http://www.uic.edu/orgs/cwluherstory/CWLUArchive/crguidelines.html)
My introduction to women’s studies class was very similar; we would read literature on different feminist issues and then discuss how that literature and the observations or arguments within it, interacted with our day to day lives and our experiences of being women (there were no men in the class). As enjoyable as this was, I always wished that this wasn’t such a formal process, that consciousness-raising was something that I could begin in just a casual conversation or interactions. I’m never one to do things by halves so….
Well, to confess, last year I went on a little bit of a personal consciousness-raising adventure. I decided that conversations and recognition of commonalities amongst women was the key to both recognizing oppression and confronting it. I began to purposefully bring up conversations about feminism with my friends and family. On the friends front things went… well they went. I would bring up the “big F” (usually with very poor timing); a few of my friends would say they thought women should be equal with men, the end. With my family, ummmm, that was an entirely different ballpark. Let’s just say that I’m “going through a liberal feminist phase right now.” But don’t worry; I’ll grow out of it when I enter the real world. Needless to say, my consciousness-raising adventure turned into a big slap in the face. My friends were all either tired of hearing about it or, (if they were my guy friends), too busy making feminist jokes to really care if I uttered a phrase beyond “feminism is…”
So I gave up for a while. Not with talking about feminism, but with hoping that others around me, particularly women, would engage me in a conversation about it. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe in consciousness-raising, it was more that I was worried my peers were too apathetic or too blinded my post-feminism to see any point in even trying.
With all this in mind, now maybe you can see why yesterday was so exciting for me. I had a consciousness-raising conversation with women I didn’t know too well in a random classroom on JMU’s campus before a lesson on French verb tenses (yeah it’s okay to throw up a little, they make me want to puke too). I feel inspired, I feel happy, but most of all I feel hopeful. Maybe my peers aren’t really apathetic, maybe they’re waiting for a new dialogue, a new method that allows them to relate to issues that aren’t really so new. Maybe instead of forcing conversations about topics that people aren’t familiar or comfortable with, I could have just been in the moment with them and learned to engage in such a manner that I created a space where we could have open, real dialogue. Lesson learned I suppose.
ShoutOut! James Madison University 