This post originally appeared in August 2006.
Not a lot of time for posting today, I am busy grading and resting.
Yesterday on campus, I ran into a colleague I hadn’t seen in several years. "Max" and I were hired around the same time as adjuncts in the early 1990s; I eventually was lucky enough to get a full-time job. Max (who taught sociology and psychology) was not. He taught at PCC for a number of years, and then gave up his dreams of teaching and went into the business world. He told me yesterday, as we greeted each other, that he’s back to "adjuncting" again — his business success has allowed him to return to his original passion of college teaching, even if only part-time. He’s maybe a decade and a half older than I am, somewhere (I think) in his mid-fifties.
I never saw Max teach. But I vividly remember a discussion we had a few years ago, not long before he left the college. He was in the faculty lounge one morning, going over his class roster. He stood up excitedly when I walked in: "Hey Hugo, look at what I’m doing!" I came over, and saw that he had placed numbers next to the names of many of his students. My heart sank; I thought Max was going to share with me some new and complex grading theory that would be very tedious to have to listen to.
But it wasn’t about grading: "Hugo, I’ve ranked all the girls in all my classes!"
I was stunned, staring at the sheet. He’d ranked them two ways. One, "ordinally", from 1 (the "hottest" in his estimation) up to about #20 (there were that many women in the class). Then, he’d put a second number (in a different color pen) next to the first number. This reflected, he explained, where the girls stood on the classic 1-10 "objective" scale. His #1 in the class, therefore, ranked as an 8.75.
I was so bewildered, all I could think to ask was "Max, how long did this take you?"
Max told me he did this with every class each semester. It took him a few weeks to make decisions, he explained. "I can’t make a final decision on where they rank until I see them in different outfits; it’s usually not until the midterm week that I am sure of what numbers they deserve. But hey, Hugo, you should try it — it’s objective and subjective grading at the same time!" And with that, I got a slap on the back and off he went.
I really agonized for a while about confronting Max about this. The temptation to "let it go" was overwhelming. I was certainly still quite tentative in my commitment to challenging older men. But after running Max’s story by a friend of mine who was an active feminist (and not on campus), I summoned up the courage to confront him. Of course, it didn’t go well.
I invited Max into my office, and I told him how uncomfortable I was with what he had showed me. I used words like "sexist" and "unprofessional". Max became very indignant. "This is bullshit, Hugo. I’m only doing on paper what every man does in his head. I’m honest about it — but you, you’re a fucking self-righteous fraud!" And he stomped off. Later, he came up and apologized for his language , but not for his "ranking system." And having said my peace, I let it drop. When I saw Max yesterday, I instantly flashed back to our fight over his "rankings". Honestly, I’m surprised I hadn’t remembered it earlier to blog about it before.
This story ties in nicely with the theme of yesterday’s post about feminist men and assertiveness. It also dovetails with the vital issue of accountability in fantasy as well as in action. (I wrote a long post about sexual fantasy and integrity in March.) And in that context, I remember that Max had been right about one thing: many men do in their minds what he was doing on paper — "ranking" their students, colleagues, and acquaintances on their sexual desirability. He may have been more brazen than many, but he was hardly unique.
As a teenager, I learned that "ranking" girls was one of the chief pastimes of my peers when we were in a single-sex group. And I’ll be the first to admit that in those years, I happily participated. We had long debates about whether "Cindy" or "Lisa" was the hottest girl in Mr. Fletcher’s biology class. And of course, even at that age, I figured out the desperately obvious: the real pleasure in sharing these rankings lay in the fact that they acted like glue to cement male friendships. I was shy and insecure and eager to make friends with guys, and at that age, more than willing to use sexual objectification as a tool to bring me closer to them. Homosociality in action indeed!
It was telling to me that Max was so eager to share his ranking system. It wasn’t enough for him to establish "control and power" over the women in his classes by secretly evaluating them on their looks without their knowledge. Whatever pleasure that brought him was insufficient — he needed to share his efforts with another man. I suspect that he hoped I would react with pleasure. He knew that he and I shared some of the same female students, and that perhaps we could spend a few happy minutes together discussing and rating their physical attributes. And to be candid, for a split second, the idea did seem appealing to me. I’m grateful indeed that for me, the charm of his "system" vanished so fast!
Obviously, I don’t rank my students this way, even in my mind. It’s unethical, it’s anti-feminist, it’s immoral, you-name-it. As a married Christian feminist twice the age of my students, to do so would be antithetical to everything I profess. But I still run into men (including some of my current colleagues) who from time to time are eager to "bond" over a shared discussion of the relative and objective attractiveness of their students, co-workers, or simply women passing by. Sometimes, the temptation to "get along and go along" still kicks in for me, though I resist it. The lure is not in the power over women, or the excitement of evaluating women who would no doubt not give the likes of us a second glance. The lure — the terrible, destructive lure — is that in sharing fantasies and "rankings" men can become closer, recreating as adults the "boys only" clubs of their childhoods.
Max is back on campus. (And his real name, obviously, ain’t "Max.") And I’m wondering whether to bring up the ranking system again, or leave it be. He’s not violating an official college ordinance, after all. Maybe what he’s doing is harmless. But from the perspective of his students, the idea of him continuing on with his "system" bothers me still. I’m not yet sure what, if anything, I’m going to do.
I had a political science teacher my last semester at PCC who would walk up to girls’ desks, stand over them, and blatantly look down their shirts. I remember several vulgar references to women’s bodies, too. I regret not speaking up about it to him or an official. Anyway, this is heartbreaking. Now I’m wondering if any of my professors ranked me based on how I looked in my outfits…
This reminds me of my ex. I was 18 and he was 33. He was an adjunct at a CC (not mine) and he mentioned looking at girls’ feet in his classes, even an embarrassing time or two where he thought they’d caught on. His status as a teacher of people my age didn’t come up much in our fantasy life, surprisingly. In fact, the fantasy was more exciting to me than him, I think, so I was usually the one who brought it up when it did come up.
Our relationship was bizarre and extreme, and ever since I have always wondered what insanity might be waiting outside the classroom doors of my profs or inside their heads when they aren’t talking.
The fantasies you let yourself indulge in definitely don’t exist in a vacuum. Although I’m aware of how difficult the job market is, I wouldn’t doubt that his inability to maintain a professional stance about the classroom reflects itself in other parts of his work and contributes to being passed over for better opportunities. It seems like the people that like to compartmentalize are often the ones that crumble the fastest, convincing themselves different parts in their life don’t overlap until it finally sneaks up on them anyway.
Besides, I hate any argument that is based on the premise that if everyone does it, it must be okay. There’s a great deal people do, comforted in by its widespread acceptance in culture, that are not in the best interests of their personal growth, health, etc. That’s what I love about this blog, a belief in the possibility of radical self-transformation.
It’s hard to get away from this stuff when you’re a woman.
My class this semester is small – 12 students – and we give presentations often. There is one woman whose presentations are terrible. As far as I can tell, she is either not very bright or strikingly unmotivated, or perhaps both. Yet, she is quite strikingly cute.
And I find myself wondering, with annoyance, whether the professor enjoys her cuteness enough to make up for the fact that her presentations are idiotic.
And I realize I want him to like me more because I’m smart even though I’m not cute.
And, wow, is that kind of thinking (projecting all kinds of thoughts onto my professor, mentally competing with this other girl for his approval) messed up. I mean, that is really sick on my part, never mind what he actually thinks about any of us.
To be honest, sexuality aside, I think intentionally ranking your students on any attributes is sort of horrible. I mean, I realize the grades at the end of the semester will form some kind of a ranking, and in the meantime you’re bound to notice that some are smarter or more engaged or more interesting (etc.) than others, but even if the numbers represented “degree of liberalism” or “likelihood of asking an ignorant question” it would seem kind of wrong, not respectful of the dignity of the students. I’m not sure that makes sense, but it’s how I feel.
Wht goes on in a person’s head can jolly well stay in there. It doesn’t have to come out. What you describe is, well, unprofessional, as well as time-wasting, and does not belong in a classroom. As for whether this fellow can keep his physio-emotional responses from corrupting his actions even if he shuts up, I don’t know. That’s a skill that not all people may have the talent to learn.
If Max is still there now, 3 years later, I suggest you discreetly check up on him; you might be able to tell if he has changed his ways. If not, raise hell. Thanks.
What I can’t help but wonder is how is ranking of their physical attributes affecting their grades? Is he really able to look at their work objectivity?
“What goes on in a person’s head can jolly well stay in there. It doesn’t have to come out.”
Yep, that’s it in a nutshell–the line, honestly quite easy for me to see and draw, between “what everybody does involuntarily” and “sexist, unprofessional and way beyond the line.”
Becky raises an astute point, which I was surprised to see absent in the OP. Having the girls in your class ranked on a scale of physical attractiveness probably has little or no effect on grading the girls in the middle, but what about the girls at the top or bottom of the list? Can we be sure that “Max” isn’t – even on a subconscious level – doing one of the following four things:
a. giving the hottest girls slightly better grades to please them
b. giving the hottest girls slightly worse grades to exercise a kind of power over them or to balance out the social, academic and professional advantages of being attractive
c. giving the fugliest girls slightly worse grades out of being “turned off” by their appearances
d. giving the fugliest girls slightly better grades out of pity
For that potential alone, I would consider Max’s list a dismissible offense if I was his boss. Perhaps he was only doing what most men would compulsively do in their head. But, just like the ability to explain complex principles and events in an engaging manner, the ability to judge every student solely on their classwork and participation without other influencing factors is (or should be) a prerequisite to being a teacher, especially in institutions of higher learning.
I doubt that any teacher (male or female) is able to avoid ranking (or at least judging) the physical attractiveness of their students to some small degree. But the fact that Max is so comfortable with this way of thinking as to write down a list on paper and show it to a colleague calls into question his ability to suppress that kind of sexual evaluation and judge students, objectively, on their academic merits.
I really don’t think there’s anything wrong with students (or workers, for that matter) engaging in this kind of ranking of their opposite-sex peers (or same sex if they are gay), because I’m sure women do it almost as much as men (though I imagine it’s not as much of a social bonding thing with them). However, it’s a totally different story when you’re talking about someone in a position of authority doing it to people over whom he/she holds any degree of power or control of their individual success or prosperity.
Max’s rating system is appalling for so many reasons. To my mind, one of the biggest reasons is that creating an environment conducive to learning is an important part of an instructor’s job. In Max’s case, it seems that the fox is guarding the hen house.
TB – and imagine how little attention the male students in his class are getting.
A rare moment where I agree with Hugo, even as MRA. Such behavior as teacher is not acceptable.
This person called ‘Max’ must have psychological brain-damage, he is unfit for a teaching job and should be removed.
Generally I am for examinations where computers are doing the job of checking the results. Most young people have to pay for education and deserve a fair treatment.
@mythago – As men we are accustomed to be ignored or treated as 2nd class citizen. It would be interesting however to know, if women (the big majority of teachers are females) have also such a ‘Ranking the boys’ behavior.
However, if the person himself (or herself) is not speaking out about to another person (like in this case where ‘Max was informing Hugo’) how can you know?
For sure, such people regardless their gender, should not work as teachers. They should be intelligent enough to look for other employment.
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