Come Closer to Feminism: Gratitude as Activist Encounter in Women’s and Gender Studies 101

Abstract

© 2015 by the board of trustees of the university of ill inois There are many things that can impede teaching and learning in the Introduction to Women’s and Gender Studies undergraduate classroom. Most teachers can probably rattle them off in five seconds. A well-known challenge is teaching students about “bad news”: rape on college campuses; shooting deaths of unarmed black teenagers; aggressive social control of women’s lives and bodies through legislation and court rulings; stigmatization of immigrants; escalating violence against trans women; and the entrenched racial and class system that has led to the extraordinary rise in mass incarceration of people of color and women. To make matters worse, the introductory course, which is typically offered as a general education requirement at many institutions, attracts students with “open hostility to the subject matter” (National Women’s Studies Association 10). For many teachers of introductory women’s and gender studies, we are in the position of introducing bad news to an already hostile audience. To deal directly with this dilemma, I have been rereading Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, and taking inspiration from bell hooks’s Feminism is for Everybody, but a profound influence on my teaching recently is the voice of an American teenager, Julie Zeilinger, the author of A Little F’d Up: Why Feminism Is Not a Dirty Word. Zeilinger addresses young women’s negative emotions about feminism in a clear, humorous, and relaxed way. She analyzes foundational feminist issues and women’s history, and she covers contemporary media and body image, bullying, human trafficking, hook-up culture, cyber-stalking, racism, and the challenges of global feminism. Some have correctly pointed out that Zeilinger does not go into sufficient depth about these topics, nor does she thoroughly explore the implications of her own background. She refers to herself as a “privileged white girl” from Pepper Pike, Ohio, and she mentions that her racial and economic privilege is “definitely something that’s shaping this book” (83). Others complain that A Little F’d Up lacks historical and theoretical nuance, making it too simplistic for university and college classrooms. And some find Zelinger’s use of teen vernacular distracting and, at times, disrespectful. While these misgivings must be taken seriously, the author’s book—which was Come Closer to Feminism: Gratitude as Activist Encounter in Women’s and Gender Studies 101