on teaching women studies

i am in love with my intro students right now. they speak up in class, they bring up issues that i can't, and they are super duper wonderful in general. i don't care if they like me or not and i'm not too concerned about what kind of feminist they think i am. i do care about how they engage with the material and i think they're getting it.
i love teaching about feminism. today i got to talk about radical feminism and the miss america protests in 1968 and 1969. this was the first group of student that didn't defend the pageant. i loved listening to their contributions.
i also loved that i got to talk about Radical Women and what they do as an organization. i'm afraid that my students will shut down if thy know my personal politics, so i keep that fairly under wraps and i think i have them convinced that i'm catholic. i think it is pretty darn funny...you know...since i am an atheist. anyway...so, Radical Women is a great organization and is affiliated with the Freedom Socialist Party. you should check them out @ www.radicalwomen.org
they have some great events coming up in both seattle and portland.
back to my students...
whenever i get in front of an intro class, i feel like i'm going to run into a whole lotta resistance, but that isn't really happening so far. usually the really resistant students are pretty vocal about it, but these folks aren't doing that.
what i really love is that i feel good when i come out of that classroom and i always have a line of students who want to talk with me. they have me a little enchanted right now.