Still bad being a woman in philosophy

What is it like to be a woman in philosophy? It means to be constantly underestimated and undervalued, and to only be seen as a sexual object by faculty members. This started as an undergraduate, when a faculty member decided that me being interested in his work was synonymous with me being interested in him sexually or romantically, and is ongoing every time people don’t take my viewpoint seriously because I am a woman. What’s just as bad or even worse is that when I try to address the sexism in this overwhelmingly male faculty (I am a graduate student), everyone (mostly men) denies that it’s been an issue and they always blame people’s mistreatment of me and my ideas on some other factor. It’s tiring. I am considering quitting.

What it’s like to be out of philosophy

After all the ups-and-downs, ins-and-outs, rough-and-tumble politics of a graduate career, as a “woman of color” (a term which I despise, but for which no adequate substitute really exist), the final nail was hammered into the coffin of my philosophical aspirations just over two years ago. My Ph.D. program expelled me, under the thin veneer of academic failure. Internal appeals failed me, and the prospect of pursuing external appeals through various deans and administrators, even should they succeed, seemed to exhausting to consider. As information about how other (white, male) graduate students were treated, it became clear to me that had I received even slightly comparable consideration and treatment, I would have been able to finish. No one will ever admit my expulsion had to do with race or gender, and indeed, there is a very good story about why I was expelled and department policies. On paper, it is all legitimate. The story completely fails to explain why white, male students were not subject to the letter of the law, and given chances I was not owed. The message was clear: THEY can fuck up frequently and continue, but YOU are always a fuck-up and we will run you out.

There was definitely a grieving process. After all, a Ph.D. in Philosophy had been my singular objective for more or less a decade – my entire adult life, at the time. I organized my life around, I made my choices to reflect it. It occupied a significant portion of my emotional life. It defined, in part, who I thought I was.

That was, as I said, about two years ago. As life moved on, my life changed form. Though employed as a philosophy professor at a community college, and, thus, technically a professional philosopher, I began to mentally disassociate myself from the profession. I no longer identify as a professional philosopher. When, in social settings, someone says, “You are a philosopher?” my joking response is to say, “Shhh! Don’t tell anyone!” and promptly change the subject. Rather than regularly checking blogs, I wandered onto them only occasionally – sometimes realizing months had passed since I’d visited them (once a daily activity) – and then only in some sort cathartic rubber-necking type moments. I signed off of email lists and gave away books (well, not all of them, but a lot of them). I stopped listening to philosophy podcasts, and gradually eliminated all but a few philosophers from my social life. The ones who are still in my life are people with whom I, as a stringent rule, never discuss the profession or philosophy at all, except as a passing remark here and there.

I became involved in legislative advocacy for higher education in my state (so I still deal with plenty of, uhm, colorful behavior). I subscribed to the local symphony. I went to hear bands and traveled to places where I wasn’t going to conferences. I made friends who are artists and real estate agents and accountants and school teachers and chefs and most definitely not philosophers.

I realized recently that I was happier than I had been in years. In fact, I was happier than I had been since I first started taking philosophy classes as an undergrad. This realization was both joyous – that I had recovered from such a brutal and unfair ending to my hopes and ambitions – and melancholy – that something, which I had loved so much and brought me so much joy when I first encountered it, had been reduced, through the racist and sexist actions of its principle advocates – to a increasingly distant memory that is better banished from my life.

I wonder how many people out there feel the same way.

If you care about climate, why not listen to me?

I don’t want to go into too many details because I suspect the people I’m referencing read this blog. I’m a female graduate student currently, and my department is attempting to address a number of problems associated with climate. It’s just so frustrating to have faculty ask me for advice on what to do, at the expense of my own comfort in the department, and then not listen to what I say. It’s even more frustrating when they then turn around and ask me to do extra work to help them, because I’m “important” and “knowledgeable.” If I’m so knowledgeable, shouldn’t they believe me when I tell them about problems with climate? It’s disappointing to be here, especially since I know that it’s likely nothing will ever happen to make this department more welcoming to future female (and other minority) students.

Obviously!

I posted the link to this blog on my facebook page. I promptly had two conversations with men who suggested that the negative stories must be old ones, since surely there is not much sexism in philosophy these days.