Female Wesleyan Student Wants Men to Participate Less in Class

Female Wesleyan Student Wants Men to Participate Less in Class

This student could just try asserting herself more aggressively. Isn’t that an easier fix?

Campus Reform reports:

Female student demands men ‘step back’ in class discussions

Male students who talk too much in class are oppressing their female peers, a Wesleyan University student contends in a recent op-ed.

Tara Joy, a freshman who came to Wesleyan from an all-girls high school, writes in The Wesleyan Argus about how the excitement of her first year of college was dashed by the realization that some of the men in her classes “talked constantly.”

“Despite making up less than half the class—[male students] managed to dominate every single discussion,” Joy lamented of her male peers in her First Year Seminar.

Joy reports commiserating with her female friends about this, only to hear a near-universal response that “of course the boys talk more,” and “that’s what boys do.”

Joy paints this as a manifestation of oppression and gender inequality, arguing that despite constituting 57 percent of the college population, women are consistently denied the same classroom opportunities afforded to their male classmates.

Joy does not entirely blame male students, however, asserting that teachers and professors also play an unconscious role in enabling men to dominate classroom discussions by creating a “chilly climate” that implicitly or explicitly encourages male participation over female participation.

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