In Which I Rant About Bitches' Rights

I last wrote here about the bi-weekly gatherings of Cavaliers at a nearby dog park, and the strenuous attentions that Bisou has steadily received from the "ruby humper" since her earliest infancy. Unlike another owner of a Cavalier bitch--who fled from the first play session crying "rape!"--I have been reasonably good humored about the goings on. Bisou doesn't seem cowed by the persistent male, and she rather enjoys running from him. Needless to say, she has not yet come into her first heat. The minute she does, she will go into dog "purdah" for the duration. Halfway between her first and second heats, when the hormones have done her growing body all the good they're supposed to, I will have her spayed.

Today I received an e-mail from the organizer of the Cavalier gathering diplomatically informing me that the owner of the "r. h." has suggested that there be a male-only gathering from 10 to 10:30 a.m., to give the boys a chance to play without being hampered by tempting bitches, after which time the bitches will be allowed to join the group.

Never in my wildest dreams did I expect to become embroiled in a feminist dispute on behalf of my bitch, but here I am. This may sound weird, but the first thing that came to my mind after reading the e-mail was my high-school religion teachers, who were forever warning us girls against becoming an "occasion of sin" for our pimply male classmates. Then I thought of the blame-the-victim prejudice that let so many rapists go free. Then I remembered how in Spain women were not allowed in church unless their head was covered and their sleeves reached to their elbows, lest they inflame male worshipers. From there it was but a step to the veil and the chador....It's long been my opinion that these are only means for men to reassure themselves of their virility (as in "I have so much testosterone that if I see so much as a woman's little finger I may lose control") and have little to do with real women at all.

But we're talking about dogs here. And what I'm wondering is, why not have a special "bitches only" play time, where the girls can romp unimpeded by male lusts? I was always a proponent of women's colleges during my higher ed career. I never dreamed that I would become a "bitches' playground" advocate. But I am. It's only fair. Especially since spaying Bisou will not necessarily stop the obsessive behavior of an unneutered male.

My task now is to find some way of communicating the essence of this without upsetting the humans involved--they are genuinely nice people whom I would not for the world offend. Help!

Oh, and by the way, why is "bitch" an insult in the English language?

Tenure-Track Tales, Part The Third

Another faculty committee I got elected to, that first year, was the Faculty Council. It met once a month for lunch in the President's Dining Room--a dimly-lit, dark-paneled space with the feel of a basement rec room-- to discuss the agenda for the upcoming faculty meeting.

The Faculty Council never did much in the way of business, but the lunches were good, the President was a genuinely good man, and the meetings gave the dominant males of the faculty the opportunity to blow off steam without the danger of anything ever coming to a vote.

Yet again, I was the only woman on the committee. At the first meeting, I stood alone while we waited for the President to arrive, watching my colleagues smoke their pipes and top each other's tales of student ineptitude.

At last the President came in and we all sat down. Pleasantries were exchanged. The food was served. The chatter died down and an expectant silence filled the room. The gravy was congealing on the chicken breasts but nobody made a move. What was going on?

Then the President cleared his throat. “Dr. Cobb,” he said, turning to me. I gave an involuntary start. Was he going to ask me to say the blessing? Was he going to ask me to leave the room? “Dr. Cobb, would you kindly pick up your fork?” I stared at him blankly, but did as he asked. “Ah, now,” he said with a smile, “we can all have lunch.”

Tenure-Track Tales, Part The First

When my husband and I finished graduate school in the early 1970s, the market for advanced degrees in his field (physics) and mine (Romance languages) had all but dried up. Students were into relevance rather than what was good for them, so quantum mechanics (and the math prerequisites) and French literature (and the language requirements) were not on their lists of exciting courses.

Twenty-eight years old, with two toddlers and two brand-new degrees, we decided that we would take the first job that appeared in a geographic area that offered any promise of employment for the other one.

I sent my resume to the South Atlantic Modern Languages Association in hopes of getting some interviews at their annual meeting, and was ecstatic when I got five responses. I left the children with my husband, flew to Atlanta, and checked into the hotel, feeling worldly and successful. I spent the next day in interviews. These were conducted by language department chairmen, elderly (to me) gentlemen who, after painting in detail their struggles with the inevitably barbaric administration of their university, gave vent to their appreciation not of my academic record, but my physical attributes. They said things like “Well, young lady, you certainly won't have any trouble attracting MALE students to your classes.”

How do you respond to something like that? On the one hand, the compliments meant that the guy liked me and might give me a job, which I and my family sorely needed. On the other, was this what I had slogged through a Ph.D. for? On yet another hand, hadn't I been taught from the cradle that a girl's first duty (well, second, after being smart and virtuous) was to be pleasing in every way?

So I did my best to smile and endure and ask the kinds of questions that would make me intellectually respectable. But through that long day I became more and more tense and uncomfortable. Then came my last interview. Amazingly, it was with a woman, a kind of wonder in those days, the chair of a large language department at a large southern university. And, for the first time that day, we talked about languages, and literature, and my ideas about a liberal arts education. I felt weak with gratitude and relief.

I got some offers out of that awful day—one of them from the woman chair-- but they were all for non-tenure-track positions, given the sorry state of academia at the time. (A tenure-track position is one out of which, if you are approved after five years, you can only be fired for moral turpitude or acts of terrorism.)

One particularly oily chairman did offer me a tenure-track job in his department. He invited my husband and me to meet him at a restaurant in a neighboring state to discuss details. But he was so leeringly disgusting during the meal—did things like slide his hand down my back as he helped me out of my coat—that I told him my professional goals had changed. Besides, his college was in a backwater town in no need of physicists.

Meanwhile, the country was going down the tubes. The President was clearly a crook, gas was expensive and hard to get, and the price of tomatoes was going through the roof. That was when I planted my first garden—a row of tomato seeds right under the eaves of our rented house. Thirty little seedling struggled up despite all odds, only to be slaughtered like the Holy Innocents at the first torrential downpour.

Then a letter came from a liberal arts college in Maryland, inviting me up for an interview. Wonder of wonders, the letter was signed by a woman, the department chair! We left the babies with my mother and drove up. Maryland in those days looked like Vermont—rolling hills, prosperous farms, charming villages. I fell in love.

The department chair was not only a woman, but a Cuban exile who ruled beningly over a German who believed in—guess what—punctuality; a Frenchman whose wife packed a bottle of red wine with his daily lunch; a Russian bedecked in diamonds who taught French part-time; and some recent American Ph.D.s who believed in alternative (meaning gay) lifestyles and deconstructionism.

My predecessor had been a bi-polar Frenchwoman who used a cane, dressed exclusively in floor-length white tunics, and scared the students to death. I was welcomed with open arms. We moved into a “faculty apartment” carved out of the former slave quarters in the oldest house in the village, and my husband promptly found a job within commuting distance.

I plunged into my job teaching French and Spanish language and literature like a house on fire. This is what I had read all those books, written all those papers, fallen asleep in the library stacks, endured oral and written exams, defended my dissertation for! And in the worst job market since the Depression, it had all paid off.

At a college party a few years later, one of my German colleagues, well in his cups, told me that when I came for the interview, he and several others had happily voted for me. “This one's got good legs,” they told the Cuban chairwoman. “Hire her.”