Mary Gaitskill: evaluation

Transcript context

…One final question after this. Yes, go on. Well, they’re upset. They’re really, sometimes, quite aggressive. They really need you to express things in a very conformist way. Not all students. Some students really are still very open-minded and questing and want to know a lot about a lot of different ways of looking at things, but some of them are very rigid now and really only want to . . . I handed out a piece of writing by an African American critic — very well known — named Hilton Als. He is writing about Flannery O’Connor, who he loves. In the first page, you see the N-word. They didn’t know that he was African American right away. They saw the N-word. One of them says, “On the first page, there’s the N-word.” I’m like, “I feel it’s no, yes, he can — ” Honestly, in fiction, personally, I don’t have a problem with anybody using that word. My God, he ought to be able to use that word. They were just so rattled by seeing it. They didn’t quarrel with it eventually, as I explained, “Read the whole piece. There’s a lot of context to this.” But they’re so reactive to certain words. Even the word retard. It appeared in the story. They were upset by that. I’m like, “It’s just a story about kids. They would use that word.” It’s just like they want everything to be so — I don’t know what the right word — policed. They’re so afraid of the use of certain words and terms and exploring certain mindsets that is very difficult for me. If you present it in the right way, they’re usually okay, but you have to go through so much presentation. I don’t understand why they think that it’s going to make the world a better place. I understand the impulse. I respect the impulse to want to make the world a better place and to stop insulting and attacking people who are already being insulted and attacked. I understand where it came from. There used to be a lot of unchecked gross racism sometimes in schools. I could tell you stories about that, so I understand the impulse. But this really nitpicking, minute, over-policing of language — this is just a nightmare. Most trans students are not like this. Most trans students are very . . . If you use the wrong pronoun, they’ll correct you, but they don’t really care that much. They get it; you just forgot. But one person I had recently didn’t actually clarify in her . . . You get a piece of paper with their picture, how they want to be referred to in terms of pronouns, how they identify. She did not identify as a trans person. She identified as non-binary, and she did not specify what pronoun. Some people who identify that way aren’t particular about it. They’re fine with how you’re responding to them, how they present. She presented as a female, so I called her that, and she didn’t correct me. In her student evaluation, she was really angry that I didn’t support her trans identity. Well, she didn’t identify that way on her . . . That is a very strange mentality to me. Also, she could have emailed me and said, “I prefer to be called they/their. ” I would have done it. ns identity. Well, she didn’t identify that way on her . . . That is a very strange mentality to me. Also, she could have emailed me and said, “I prefer to be called they/their.” I would have done it. She said she was afraid to do that because I was just such an aggressive person. I don’t understand that. She didn’t even try. I don’t believe she was cringing in terror before my incredibly aggressive personality, because she would know that if she complained about that to the administration, they would have been all over me. That’s a mentality that I see a lot now. It’s not just that they want to be called a different pronoun than has been the norm for a long time. It’s that they’ll hurt. Somebody like that person will act as if they have no power in the situation and that they’re too afraid to say anything to you, or they are unable for whatever reason. That is bewildering to me. I encountered that type, not just in terms of pronouns, but just generally people who don’t seem to feel they can express themselves, and then blame you for it. That is very new, and that is what I find more disturbing than anything.…

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