I got an email last week from Abby (not her real name):
I work in a Feminist Center on my campus and we have recently welcomed a new director to our center. Upon meeting her I used her first name not even thinking about it, and was corrected by a different person who told me she would prefer me to address her as Dr. so and so.
As we work in a feminist center that focuses on outreach and education about feminist issues and ideals to students, I found her request to be addressed as Dr. to be anti-feminist and pompous. Incredibly pompous. I wouldn’t be so bothered if I worked in a center that didn’t focus on feminist ideals. It creates a very clear hierarchy, and thus who’s opinions and views are valued more – hers. It clearly has nothing to do with formality, as she is not going around calling us student workers Ms. and Mr. so and so. It has everything to do with her need for people to toot her horn. I understand she worked hard for a Ph.D, but if she really needs anyone and everyone to keep congratulating her on it by way of calling her Dr., that’s plainly arrogant.
What it says to me is: I’m a better feminist than you because I have a Ph.D. And I have a Ph.D because I had the money and the means to get one. I find all of if very reflective of her feminist philosophies. It may seem harsh, but I really question whether I can consider her a feminist because of it. It just goes against so many feminist principles.
There are a pair of conflicting ideals that appear in response to Abby’s note.
On the one hand, we live in a world where the Ph.D. (and other terminal degrees) are important markers of accomplishment. Some people feel that it’s vitally important for members of groups who have not traditionally earned such degrees (meaning anyone other than white men) to display them proudly in order to send an inspirational message. Abby’s director may believe that young women not only need to see older women with Ph.Ds, they need to see those women addressed with the kind of respect that was once reserved only for men.
And of course Ph.D.s take money. They also take sacrifice, often the sacrifice of a larger community (like spouses and parents). To refuse to use the title, some folks think, is to discount the sacrifices others made so that one member of the family could earn a Ph.D. It’s one thing to be falsely modest on your behalf, another thing altogether to be falsely modest on behalf of those who helped you along the way. Parents have long bragged about their “son, the doctor”. Isn’t it important that they be able to brag about their “daughter, the doctor” as well?
I’ve written before of my personal disdain for the title “doctor”, and my refusal to hang my diplomas on the wall. But I come from an academic family; both my parents, as well as my brother, have doctorates. My paternal grandmother earned her Ph.D. at the University of Vienna in the 1920s. We were raised to see diplomas on the wall or an insistence on titles as vulgar ostentation, evidence of “trying too hard” or “showing off.” But that’s a position of privilege rather than a universal truth, and I freely acknowledge the distinction. Those who are the first in their families to earn something — and those who are particularly mindful about setting an example to those they teach or mentor — may find that using or displaying those titles are essential ways of honoring one generation and inspiring another.
In an academic setting, where the professor has the gradebook and the student doesn’t, the use of first names may suggest a false equality. It may even strike some people as a disingenuous attempt to cover up the power differential. Using the term “doctor” may seem more honest under such circumstances. Of course, the term “professor” (which, used generally, can encompass those with and without Ph.Ds) solves this problem neatly.
But Abby has a point about the danger of hierarchies. Feminism at its best is more than just giving women an opportunity to compete in traditionally male spaces by traditionally male rules. It’s about changing those rules and reimagining those spaces. Most of us know the oft-quoted line from Audre Lorde: “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.” An insistence on titles certainly smacks of the “master’s tools.” It does privilege one kind of knowledge (the sort that comes from writing a dissertation and having the money for grad school) over other kinds of knowledge. Trust me, I have many colleagues who don’t have a Ph.D. who’ve taught me far more about the business of teaching than my fellow holders of the doctorate.
While it might be fine to use titles as a sign of respect for a particular kind of sacrifice, insisting that the title “doctor” be used for Ph.D. holders strikes me as it strikes Abby: incompatible with a feminist commitment to the kind of egalitarian values one might expect in a campus women’s center. A female professor who wishes to be addressed as “doctor” in a classroom setting is one thing; to expect that in an explicitly feminist space like the Women’s Resource Center is something altogether different. A Women’s Resource Center should be a place where traditional campus hierarchies are called into question, where the focus is as much on nurturing the spirit as it is on disciplining the mind. There’s no inconsistency in being “Jane” when one is in the campus WRC, and asking to be called “Dr. Doe” in a more explicitly academic setting. And if I were able to speak to Abby’s campus director, that’s the advice I’d give.
It’s a dangerous thing to be too enchanted with the master’s tools.