How my life has been enriched by "mansplaining"

These days one frequently finds complaints by women about "mansplaining" - especially those truly annoying experiences where a man with little knowledge explains (often inaccurately) something to a woman who is a verified, recognized authority and expert in that very subject.  This is especially likely to happen to women who are authorities and experts in fields viewed by the backward among us as "masculine" like technology, science, medicine, engineering, politics, and many others. Women are also understandably and reasonably annoyed when men start to lecture them about the nature of women, women's biology, psychology or life experiences, especially when the man's ideas are contradicted by women's lived experiences. So just to be clear, I'm not denying the reality of the problem of "mansplaining" as experienced by all too many women today.

However, an enormous amount of the knowledge and skill I have today comes from being a willing listener to many men, who over the years liked telling women about some interest or passion they had. Sometimes the things men told me were things I already knew, but if I hadn't sat through that part of the explanation I never would have gained the additional knowledge or skill that they had to impart that I did not already know.

It started with my father. Sometimes I would take one of my math homework problems to him, even though I already knew how to work the problem because after he had explained my assignment to me, he would go on and show me something from his college homework. As a result, I learned about powers, roots, and logs at an age when my peers had just learned long division. If I went to him with a question about geography he might start telling me things about air travel and aircraft and the airline industry.

In school, I quickly figured out that boys and later men liked to show off to girls, to explain things to them, and that this became even more important in college with men explaining things to women. I only took one science in college - general biology - but I learned a lot about chemistry and physics from getting young men to explain and show things to me. I also learned about wine, gourmet food, about classical music, folk music, foreign films, motorcycles, race car driving, ten-speed bicycles, sports cars, fencing, the printing industry, modern art, audio equipment, electronics, broadcasting, existential philosophy, psychology, British culture, and a hell of a lot of other things. Many of the things that I learned from all these men eager to explain things to women helped me get and advance in jobs after college.

I became a safer, more skilled, driver because one of my boyfriends in college had been a race car driver, and I was a willing listener and student. I can get into and out of tight parking spots that flummox other drivers. I still, to this day, can out drive most people on windy mountain roads because of those lessons.

I'm not saying that everything a man every explained to me held information of value. Nor am I saying that I did not also learn much from women. What I am saying is that my life and my career as a sociologist and college professor, has been richer and held greater depth, because of many things I learned from men - boyfriends, friends, friends fathers, acquaintances, strangers at parties and many other places - who wanted to explain something to me.

The All But Not Quite Most

I  have been a college teacher for 36 years. It has, for the most part, been a very rewarding career. Seeing the faces of students when they "get" something is the biggest "high" in life. Continuing interaction with students in and out of the classroom is very gratifying. Some of my students even became life-long friends. As rewarding as the experience has always been I have still hankered after some formal recognition. I occasionally wished that at least once I could receive a teaching award.  Every college I've worked at has given teaching or faculty awards, and every few years I'd think it would be nice to receive one.  About six months ago, I finally made peace with the idea that I was never going to get a plaque or a certificate and that the only teaching reward I really needed was the intrinsic  positive value that comes from making a true connection with a student. 

Then suddenly a month ago I got an e-mail telling me that my college president wanted to nominate me for a prestigious, state-wide teaching award, one that came with not only a plaque but a significant size check. The downside was that there was a lot of work to be done on the applications - two different essays to write and a detailed accounting of everything I'd done for the past 20 years to demonstrate my commitment to teaching and to life-long learning. I was thrilled just to be nominated. It didn't matter than I was going to be one of a dozen nominees. Just to know that my own college administration acknowledged my contributions was enough. It took me six days to pull together all the materials for the nomination, but once I did, I set the entire matter aside and did not think of it; being nominated was more than enough. 

A couple of weeks later, out of the blue, I receive an e-mail from my college dean issuing me congratulations on winning the teaching award.  Not only did he send these congratulations to me, but he copied them to every single person in our entire five campus college organization.  His congratulations incorporated an entire e-mail conversation from the community college system office and the leadership from other colleges.  As I read over the previous e-mails, it seemed to me that my dean was incorrect, that I had merely been chosen as the community college system's nominee to be forwarded to the state-wide selection committee, not an actual winner of the award. 

I sent some queries back up the hierarchy, wondering if perhaps I was merely a nominee rather than a winner. What I got back restated that I was the "winner" of the award.  I still didn't trust this fully, as the information I had received about the award said in several places that one requirement of a "winner" was to be physically present at the awards ceremony in September, which suggested that the final decision was not announced until that ceremony.  But over the next ten days I was barraged with congratulatory messages from colleagues who had received the initial e-mail. I slowly began to think of myself as a "winner" rather than a nominee - a shift in expectations - and even began to think about ways that we could use the prize money. 

I was still cautious enough not to accept an invitation to do an interview about the award. I explained to the reporter that the award was not official, and that I was uncomfortable doing publicity until I was officially notified. I copied my e-mail to the reporter to the chair of the selection committee in hopes that I might get some clarification of the time table. 

The word I got back was that my caution was warranted. I was indeed a "nominee" for the award - I was my community college system's top nominee, but they were required to send three names to the state organization making the final selection.  So I carefully began to dial back my expectations. By the time that the final decision was made, selecting the third ranked nominee because she taught in a "technical" field, I no longer expected to win. But I was still having to deal with dozens of congratulations from work colleagues as the misinformation of the original announcement spread after the semester started. 

In my personal life catalog 2015 will go down as the year that I almost, maybe, not quite, did not win the teaching award that I had craved for my entire career.

In Memory of Friends Long Gone

Twice in the week I've had reason to think a former student and long time friend Bradford Clay Jones who died twenty years ago this spring. First when the Supreme Court announced their decision on same sex marriage last Friday and  then again on Monday when I learned that the community college system that I serve (KCTCS) had nominated me for a state-wide teaching award (my academic dean says I've "won" it, but officially I've only been nominated, and I like to hold off celebration until things are official).  Both times when I heard the news I thought of Clay and wished that he had lived to see it. 

Clay was a student in my SOC 101 Introductory Sociology course at the University of Kentucky in the spring term of 1981. Clay had come to UK from Russellville, Kentucky a small farming community in the western part of the state. He came with his best friend, a red headed freckled young farmer, whose name I sadly can no longer remember although I can see his face as clear as it was yesterday. They joined the Phi Delta Theta fraternity together, took their general education classes together including sociology, but had different majors and different career/life paths. Clay was brilliant, articulate, wild, crazy, daring, fun, charming. He was clearly a leader among his fraternity brothers.   Clay got his degree in education from the University of Kentucky's department of Kinesiology and Health Promotion.

After graduation Clay entered the Air Force  as a 1st Lieutenant and began corresponding regularly with me. He wrote long chatty letters about work and life. He loved serving his country and was posted on first at Dover, Delaware and then near Kansas City. His job involved providing healthy exercise and activity programs for people stationed at the AF Bases. 

Clay also had an active personal life outside work. He participated with local community theater groups in the communities near the AF bases where he was stationed. I remember how much fun he had with a production of Oklahoma! Although Clay had explored and experimented with his sexual identity in college, it was not until more than a year after graduation that Clay finally "came out" to himself and to friends and family, but not of course to the USAF. This was well before "Don't ask, Don't tell."

While stationed near Kansas City, Clay met the love of his life Gene and entered into a committed relationship. A local minister officiated at Clay and Gene's vows which they considered just as binding as if they had been legal. Rather than face being separated from Gene by the Air Force posting him outside the U.S. Clay allowed the Air Force to learn of his sexual orientation and discharge him in 1984. 

Clay entered the Master of Public Administration in Nonprofit Management at the University Missouri, Kansas City and received his MPA in 1986.  In 1989 he became the Executive director Kansas division American Cancer Society.

Diagnosed as HIV positive in the late 1980's Clay maintained his health for a number of years.  He advocated for AIDS research as a board member of the Kansas City AIDS Research Consortium. In the early 1990's his HIV infection became full-blown AIDS. He suffered among other things from a histoplasmosis infection that spread from his lungs throughout his body. In June of 1995 I received the sad news from Clay's spouse Gene that AIDS had taken its toll and Clay died May 1, 1995. 

I wish that Clay had lived to see same sex marriage legalized across the nation; for him and Gene to have had the full legal rights of married couples. They were married for a decade before Clay's death and yet Gene received none of the benefits a married person should have on the death of his spouse. 

I also wish that Clay could have lived to see me receive this state-wide teaching award for "inspiring" Kentucky students to become contributing members of society. Clay was one of the earliest and most enthusiastic supporters of my teaching career.  I met him while I was still an "apprentice" graduate student instructor, and his friendship over the next 14 years was very influential in my development as a teacher.  By no means the last student to become a life-long friend, Clay was the first. 

Thanks for the memories, Clay. 

pivotal people

I love Facebook. I know that not everyone does, but I do. I love that I have been able to build new ties and bonds with people I've met strictly through the Internet (initially by blogging). I also love that I have a richer connection with the people that I work with and the students that I teach, learning more about their families, their interests, their hopes and fears. But I especially love that I am able to reconnect with people from my past, all the way back to grade school.

Today, I received a friend request from a former student, from my years in Johnstown, Pennsylvania - my first full-time teaching position. We had not lost all touch, corresponding at irregularly for the past 24 years. But now I will finally get to see photos of her husband, her children, her cats, and share more frequently everyday thoughts. Eve mentioned telling her son - now almost college age himself - about me as a pivotal person at a pivotal time in her life. People often speak of teachers and advisers as pivotal, or influential. But as I think about Eve, I realized that she was a pivotal influence in my life at a pivotal time for me.

I was trying to figure out what kind of professor I was, what kind of teacher, what kind of advisor. Eve let me into her life in a way that influenced my ideas about myself as a person and as a professor. She made me feel like I was doing something valuable, because she let me know that I was helping her in her life and career path.

Eve is not the only student to have touched me and influenced me, but there has always been something special about her. Maybe it's because we shared a love of cats (she used to come to my house to visit with my Maine Coon cat Melvin), or because of how courageously she dealt with the internship from hell, or just because she's a wonderful, smart, caring, fun person. I'm so glad that Facebook is allowing us to reconnect on a more regular basis.