[lbo-talk] Spanish promiscuity or German erectile dysfunction?

[Wojtek S]

MIchael Y: "What do others think of this scenario? I used to teach
workers in Johnstown, PA. Steelworkers mainly, and therefore mostly
men. It could be a rough group, profane and macho, to use Wojtek's
word. No grades and none of your standard teacher-student inequality.
I asked a women with whom I taught if she was interested in teaching a
class. She said yes. I was glad since we didn't have many women
teachers in this program, and she grew up in a mining town nearby and,
I thought, would be connected to the students because of this.
However, she lasted one term. She couldn't deal with the men. I was
disappointed, thinking that she should have dealt with the situation
from the beginning, and if she had, the class would have gone
smoothly. I wondered, too, if the authoritarian atmosphere of the
college classroom, to which she had no trouble adapting (I had
observed her class at college, and a woman I know told me that she was
extremely dismissive of views with which she did not agree), !

 hadn't made her incapable of dealing with the more egalitarian (if
male and somewhat macho) classroom of steelworkers."

[WS:] I think women in positions of authority (such as teachers) often
face the threat of not being taken seriously and tend to resort to
formal procedures to maintain their authority.  My wife often tells me
about teachers eagerly using disciplinary means against even mildly
disruptive students instead of trying to de-escalate the situation.
However, de-escalating means abandoning the authority position and
developing a more personal relationship with the student, which
carries a substantial risk of being altogether dismissed or even
attacked.  So it is a lose-lose situation: if she tries to play by the
formal rules she is seen as a bitch, if she tries to be develop more
personal approach she is dismissed as being "too feminine."  Sticking
to formal rules and authority structures at lest gives her some backup
which she otherwise does not have.  So the reaction of your colleague
is hardly surprising - she could hardly afford giving up the only
defense she had in this situation.

-- 
Wojtek

"Modern conservatism is just a neoliberal gloss on medieval domination."