View source for New York Women's Studies Association Brooklyn Colloquium


== Transcription from NYWSA Brooklyn Colloquium Women’s Studies in the University: Frontier or Backwater? (1977) ==

Note: This colloquium was held in support of Farley’s tenure at Brooklyn College: CUNY.

(11:28) MODERATOR:
Okay. We are holding comments and questions until everyone has presented. Thank you, very much. Our second speaker will be Pamella Farley, who is assistant professor of English and co-coordinator of Women’s Studies here at Brooklyn. She is currently on the Steering Committee and the National Coordinating Council of the National Women’s Studies Association and, until we got the recent New York Women’s Studies Association going, she was a state coordinator. Her presentation is entitled The Rat in the Box: Oppressing Ourselves in the University.

TUCKER FARLEY:
I surrounded myself, I can see, with all kinds of publications that make me feel better. (Audience laughs.) One of them is Conditions, this is Issue Number 2 – it’s just come out – where I found a wonderful article on Black feminist criticism, and another one is the latest edition of Chrysalis, which has a very inspiring piece in it by Audre Lorde, who is teaching a class and expects to be with us later. Another piece is Adrienne Rich’s Toward a Woman-Centered University.

I used all of those in thinking about what I want to say today. And, I realized that the first thing I had to say was that I was scared. And I sat down and tried to figure out why I was scared and what my fears were. I realized that I wanted to talk about the function of oppression… about doing ourselves in… because I… I believe that oppression doesn’t work unless we participate in it, somehow. And I wanted to look and see how we participate – how we let this happen – and I wanted to talk about its context in the university, and that meant talking about the university function in society and explaining the oppressive elements of the university in society, and that meant turning the system upside-down. That meant standing on the bottom and saying I didn’t want to be on the bottom anymore, taking a very critical look at the top and everything on top of me, and trying to turn it upside-down. So when you do that, you get scared you’re crazy. And when you get scared that you’re crazy, you shut up, or you go crazy, or you make a series of modifications of your own behavior.

I have had the fear that if I give a new theory of social reality that I have been working on, I suppose, for the last 38 years – but certainly consciously in the last few years when I have been going unconscious because it’s so dangerous – that if I give that new theory of social reality that other people will think I’m crazy. That it won’t be just me that thinks I’m crazy, but that other people will think I’m crazy (that’s confirming, of course, the rumors that I am). And I find it especially dangerous to be doing this at my own workplace; I live and work here at Brooklyn College. This is… this is a home for me, and to expose myself here in public where I work has also seemed to be very dangerous, and contributes to why I’m scared.

There are reasons, I think, for that fear. I don’t think I’m making them up. I know that I have been accused of being “political” and not “intellectual,” that there is a difference between “being political” and “being intellectual,” and if I stand here and give my new theory of social reality and people understand its implications, they’ll say, “Oh that’s just political,” as though it weren’t also an intellectual piece of creative work which involves challenging all the major explanations of the world today. As though that were not intellectual. If I give this theory, if I speak from this theory as I act from it, then that challenges the myth of objectivity in the university; the university teaches us that we are supposed to be objective, that we are supposed to stand in some Olympian place with no biases, and never speak from a bias, and give everyone what is called a “fair hearing,” and hear all sides. But, when we look at what “objectivity” is in the university, we find that it looks very suspiciously like white, like male, like people in some sort of authority position. And, in fact, that comes to be the definition of “objectivity.” And if you don’t agree with that position, you’re called “not objective,” you’re called “subjective” (which is another word for “woman”).

So, if I am true to myself, I am a white woman, I am a lesbian, I am a feminist. If I am true to myself, then, there is no way that I can agree with what they call “objectivity” without lying. I would have to start lying. If I insist on speaking the truth from my perspective, then the university… and if I insist on speaking the truth from my perspective and insisting on the right of others to do that also – other people who are not included in the white male authority position: black people, third world people in general, people who are not authorities in this society, people who are workers, women – if all of these people, I insist, should be allowed to have their perspectives spoken in the university, then I can be accused of “abrogating academic freedom,” of insisting that these things should belong and therefore telling other people what to do and not letting them be free to be white, male, exclusively authoritarian.

All of those things happen to women’s studies programs. They happen to feminists working within women’s studies. They happen to any of those groups of people who do not fit that description. So for me to have those fears is understandable and realistic on a very important level. If I fight for the right of those of us who do not hold that perspective and that power – poor women, working-class women, working-class men and women, black and third world women and people – then I am accused of lowering standards. We know who belongs in the university and who doesn’t. We know what’s wrong with the City University of New York since open admissions. This is what I hear from my colleagues. They call that “standards” in the university – we mustn’t lower “standards” in the university by letting them in, by letting them get too strong, by letting them take over. And, somehow, we all know who the “thems” are.

If I fight, if I fight for my right to speak and to be with other people who stand where I do, then I’m “difficult.” I have a “difficult personality,” I’ve been told. And if… if I fight for my job, I’m “contentious.” And we don’t want “difficult” and “contentious” people in this community – this family – that is the educational system’s image. If I insist on speaking from myself and being true to myself and those who stand with me, and if I insist on putting my own interests before those of the white males in the hierarchical positions of authority, if I put myself before them – if I put my self before them – not only am I “radical and crazy,” but I am a lesbian, and I’m bad for other women. I’m bad for children. I’m bad for the university. I’m bad for society. If I stand up for myself and people who stand with me, then I’m bad. I’m a troublemaker: I have made the trouble, I get labeled a “troublemaker” as if I have made the trouble. And if I talk about it, I am concentrating on “a narrow view.” I’m “taking a single perspective.” I’m “only looking at the women’s side.” And besides, that’s “faddish.” It’s “not really important.” It “won’t last, and it doesn’t belong here.” All of those charges have been brought against women’s studies programs and feminists in them – and outside them. If I organize with other people – especially successfully, if we succeed in building a strong women’s studies program, a returning women’s program, a women’s center, if we succeed in building a New York Women’s Studies Association, a National Women’s Studies Association – then, the accusation is “political,” “manipulative,” “devious,” and, “tricky.” “Irresponsible and not reliable.” 

So, those are some of the reasons that I felt some fears in coming to Brooklyn College – my workplace – and saying what I really thought today. Because, I have to see that the university (with its liberal ideology developed in the 19th century when the university system moved from being one exclusively for people of the leisure class and clerics to being a divided system between liberal arts and vocational education when people in the society were divided between being managers and owners and being workers in the system so that we had tracking in education which has intensified since then) …that origin of the liberal arts university, and the system of oppression that I want to describe, are one in the same. That this is a place which is supposed to be for breadwinners (who are supposed to be men), this is a place which is not supposed to be for women. That fundamentally, we are not supposed to be here, that when we are here we occupy somebody else’s space. And, when I went to college, this is what I was told, not to expect to go to graduate school because graduate school was reserved for men who would be breadwinners and I would be just taking up a space for somebody who could use it better.

Not much has changed in the centuries since the 12th century when the university became a system exclusively for men. But what has changed is that we have an evolving ideology with a series of tokens and concessions to that ideology of democracy, so that some women, some poor people, some blacks are necessary to validate and legitimate the system. And we should know – those of us who are here – that we are privileged in some way, that most women in this country, that most black people in this country, that most poor people in this country are not, and be sure not to let ourselves be used against those of us who stand with us.

In the university, we are being trained to develop our intellects. I was looking back over some of the premises of my own university education and my college education, and I came upon a clipping that I had cut out in high school, or that I had been given in high school, and kept above my desk and I had taken it with me to college, I had buried it while I was married and teaching high school, I had taken it with me when I had gone back to graduate school (not knowing whether I was graduate school material), and it seems to have come with me to New York. It says:



Education can help people make decisions based on reason rather than emotion. Never in our lifetime has there been a greater need for such decisions. The minds of men are plagued by conflicting ideas and ideals, and logic is being replaced by falsehood. The universities of America and the world can instill in the leaders of tomorrow a purpose, a realization of responsibility to our fellow men, a process of thinking based on unselfishness. It is our hope that education succeeds in this task.



And, this became my motto. (Laughter in audience.) And I was very good. I learned how to make decisions based on reason rather than emotions. I learned how to suppress those sources of creativity, inspiration and feeling that are the most powerful sources of my strength, and I learned how to think very rationally. I am very bright. I think very well. That’s how I can repress myself so well. So, one of the functions of the university is to teach us all to be daughters of Athena. Some of you were here for the East Coast Women’s Studies Association Conference that we held at Brooklyn. And, on our logo, you may have seen the head of Athena, who you may recall sprang full-bloom from the mind of Zeus. She never had a mamma. She was the rational intellect, and she was armed. That’s the image of the woman in the university. And it hurts. It hurts. 

So, this system that I came to talk about is a place in which women don’t really belong, except for the tokens. It’s a place which trains us to use our intellect and suppress our emotions. And, it’s a place which appears as benevolent. It’s a reflection of a civilization whose ideologies we are expected to teach and learn, which inherently and by definition is hierarchical, is sexist, and is racist. Any institution which reflects the hierarchy of this society will have those characteristics, though many of us in the institutions may fight against that. The university is in loco parentis for the state, for a state formed by a bourgeois revolution in the 18th century, where rights were built on property and women didn’t get the vote until 1920.   A benevolence which masks a control just as in the family, where the function of the mother is to rear her children – to “civilize” her children – to love them, and to control them, to do that. And it may not be in our interests to participate in that way. So to come to Brooklyn College – and I see my Dean back there, listening – and to say this, in public, at the place where I work, is very scary. So, I’m scared. And that’s the introduction.

My metaphor for that system… I think of myself as pinning this above my desk and going through and being the good girl, and making good grades, and being an honor student, and doing all the right things – oh I did them well – always beating myself that I didn’t do them better (of course I never let myself feel good about it). And, an image that occurred to me to describe my marriage several years ago comes to my mind – it’s appropriate also for this process – I thought of a person who had a stomachache. And so she would take medicine for the stomachache and her stomach would get worse. So she’d take some more medicine, and the stomachache would get worse… so she’d take some more medicine, and the stomachache got worse! And the medicine was poison. And it’s hard to believe that the medicine that we take is poison. And it’s scary to say it (whispers) especially in the university. It’s scary to say that. If we take medicine that is poison it turns strengths into weaknesses. If I am afraid of being powerful because I will be accused of being a castrator, then I make myself weak. If I am afraid of standing where I am as a feminist because I am afraid of being called “a contentious man-hater,” then I make myself weak. If I am afraid of giving you my new social theory because I am afraid of being called “crazy” (or afraid of being fired), then I make myself weak. And if I am afraid of being effective because I will be called “political,” “manipulative” and “not intellectual,” then I make myself weak.

But since I know this analysis of the system – and it really isn’t that new, people have been talking about it for a long time, it became an important crisis in the ‘60s – how come I can still feel paralyzed by my fear? I get the image of the rat (this is where my title comes from, The Rat in the Cage)… I read in college about “induced paralysis”; induced paralysis is when experimenters put a rat inside a cage. They teach the rat to get its substance, its subsistence, its food, its nurturance… to press a bar. When it presses the bar the food will be given to it. And then, when the rat has learned to press the bar for food, they put the electricity into the bar so, if the rat presses the bar to get food, it gets electroshock. So of course what does the rat do? It huddles, afraid to make any kind of move. It’s paralyzed. It goes unconscious. It can be sick. And I have identified with that rat. (Scoffs/chuckles to self.) That rat has been, for years, a very powerful image for me. And when I am ratting on myself – when I am being a rat – I forget things. I forget to say important things. I’m a very articulate, good speaker but I can get up and forget to say the most important thing that I meant to say. I can sit down and think, “Ugh, Pamella, why’d you do that?” Sometimes I forget I heard things. Sometimes I lose the point, or speak beside it. Sometimes I side-step and move off in a tangential direction. Sometimes I’m simply silent when I shouldn’t be. Sometimes I have laughed when there was nothing funny, probably in fear of the accusation, “Oh she takes herself too seriously.” Sometimes I don’t really understand what’s going on. I don’t let myself know. I don’t let myself be very clear, what is going on. At the International Women’s Historian Conference that took place in Maryland last week, there were reports from countries all over the world, and someone gave the U.S. report and they talked about Houston. And they said the right wing is so strong, and so organized, that we’re gonna have to hold for what we’ve got, and lesbians and black women are gonna have to wait for another time. And I couldn’t believe I had heard that. It reminded me of the crises in the suffrage movement of the last century, and I couldn’t believe that I had heard that. And I got myself all confused, because I knew… I was at International Women’s Year Conference in New York State, and I knew that we had tested every single delegate there, would they stand up for ERA, for abortion, for gay rights, yes they all said they would… and this person was a delegate. And I thought, “Gee, that’s the kind of issue you give up in a fight if you have to, you don’t give it up before you go as a strategy!” And the more I thought about it the more I was sure that that’s what had been said, but I needed a reality check. I thought, “Pamella, maybe you’re paranoid. You know sometimes that happens. Maybe you’re paranoid.” And I had seen a Black woman near me, nodding her head, as this woman talked, so I went up to the Black woman the next day when I had figured out what had gone on and that I had done this to myself, and I said, “Did you hear what I heard? This is what I heard… did you hear that?” She said, “No…” she said, “I’m not sure…” she said, “I was nodding my head that we had to hold to what we had. That’s what I was nodding my head for.” She said, “Maybe she did say that…” and then, she said, “I’ve been away for 12 years, I don’t feel that I really belong here. I’m not sure what she said.” And she was doing the same thing in her head that I’d been doing in my head, and we sat down and we compared notes and we figured out that we had ratted on ourselves. That we had gone so unconscious in not being able to believe that we’d heard that, that we couldn’t respond at the time. We had to respond later. And we did.

So, it still happens. Even though I have an analysis – I’m sure she had an analysis, there’s no Black woman in this society today that doesn’t understand sexism and racism – why would I rat on myself if I had an analysis? Well, one answer is that there is power out there, and that power is exercised, oftentimes against me. But another answer is – and we have to be honest about this – that we also do it to ourselves. Why do we do it to ourselves? Why do we believe the rat image? Why did I identify with that rat image? I am not a rat in a cage. There is no cage around me. This university is not a cage. This society is not a cage. I am not in prison. Why do I believe that I am a rat? Why do I emotionally identify with that image? And I began thinking about what unconscious tricks we can play on ourselves and where it comes from, and how these mechanisms function in our psyche, and then I began thinking about the nature of the psyche in this society. And I realized that the psyche – the picture that we have of the human mind – is a reflection of that civilization: which is hierarchical; which puts white on the top, and Black on the bottom; which puts men on the top, and women on the bottom; which puts reason on the top, and emotion on the bottom. It’s most famous exponent, Freud, had other labels for these terms, but what he was really doing was depicting a model of the human psyche in which that which is emotional, that which has to do with the sources of our creativity, our strength, is fearful and must be repressed in the interests of civilization. And this is what we have been taught is the image of the human mind… the image of mental health. The function of the human psyche has been developed… the model for the function of the human psyche has been developed as a reflection of that hierarchical civilization which is built-in racist and sexist… and by “hierarchical” let no one think that I do not mean class divisions, which are strong and functional. 

So that’s a pretty strong range of forces against us, some of which we swallow and which reside as the mechanisms of our very being, and it’s not surprising that we can then, somehow, turn ourselves against ourselves. It’s wonderful that we’ve been able to be as strong and effective as we have been. Already we’ve begun to create alternatives, and to push for more space within the university. And there are people in the university who are glad that we are doing this, and who would like to join us. Some of them are afraid. It would be very difficult for a woman alone in the university who would learn how to make it not to rat on herself and other women.

So having started out talking about my fears, I have to say that there are reasons that I have been able to get over my fears, and that’s because we do have women’s studies, we do have feminists, because we do support each other, because we are all making a different space.

MODERATOR:
Thank you. Our next speaker is Susan Cayleff, and Susan is a second-year graduate student at Sarah Lawrence which is in Bronxville, New York. She is also a member of the National Women’s Studies Coordinating Council, and she will speak to us about the difficulties and the importance of maintaining feminist methods in women’s studies programs and institutions.

SUSAN CAYLEFF:
This relates really closely with Pamella’s talk, which is kind of surprising because we weren’t… we discussed what we would talk about, but it really hits home… the connections are incredible…. (42:47)

Transcribed by Hadley Smith, April 2010.