Break the Code

My last post exposed some ambivalence among faculty about the role of “official” teaching evaluations from students. Most of us do want feedback on content, but there also seems to be a general consensus that the weight given to student evaluations is out of kilter with the actual hard work that goes into teaching. I also believe that most students are not well informed about the purpose of evaluations.

As many of us are seeing last semester’s teaching evaluations return to us, let me help you read between the lines of those anonymous student comments that aren’t really about your teaching at all. It’s time for one of my favorite segments at CoG, “What They Say and What They Really Mean.”

What They Say in the Written Evaluation: “This class was one of the best classes that I have ever taken.”

What They Mean: “This class was one of the best classes that I have ever taken.”

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What They Say: “This is the worst class that I have ever taken.”

What They Mean: “This class challenged many of my most basic assumptions and required me to work hard.”

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What They Say: “This professor was really condescending.”

What They Mean: “I can’t take criticism.”

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What They Say: “This class required too much reading.”

What They Mean: “To pass this class, I actually had to crack a book on my own time.”

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What They Say: "This class was so easy it was a joke."

What They Mean: "After years of reading student complaints in evaluations, this professor has simply given up."

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What They Say: "This professor is a leading scholar in the field."

What They Mean: "This professor assigned hir own book as required reading."


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What They Say: “This was one of the funniest professors that I have ever had.”

What They Mean: “I didn't learn a damn thing, but the professor should be given a late-night talk show.”

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What They Say: “This professor was filled with lots and lots of energy.”

What They Mean: “I think that this professor might have a cocaine problem.”


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What They Say: “The professor should post the lecture notes on-line so that we can have something to follow in class.”

What They Mean: “The professor should post the lecture notes on-line so that we won’t have to go to class at all.”

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What They Say: "This professor is a fool."

What They Really Mean: "My hubris as a first-semester freshman leads me to believe that I know more than the people who spent the past twenty years studying this topic."

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What They Say: “Discussion during class was often filled with awkward silence.”

What They Mean: “My classmates didn’t do any of the reading and therefore had nothing to say.”

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What They Say: “The professor has the worst taste in clothes that I have ever seen.”

What They Mean: “I have no idea about what constitutes an appropriate professional relationship and will probably be fired from my first job.”

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What They Say: “This class should have had more films.”

What They Mean: “I was often too drunk to pay attention to the lectures.”

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What They Say: “This class had a lot of films.”

What They mean: “The professor was often too drunk to lecture.”

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What They Say: "This class involved a lot of discussion of the cultural significance of Wonder Woman."

What They Mean: "This class was taught by GayProf."



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What They Say: “Grading for this class was totally unfair.”

What They Mean: “I am getting a ‘F’ in this class.”

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What They Say: “Grading for this class was totally fair.”

What They mean: “I am getting an ‘A’ in this class.”


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What They Say: “There was too much reading about women in this class.”

What They Mean: “I think women should be chained to the stove.”

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What They Say: “This class was so unfair. I passed the AP test in this topic and yet I still ended up with a ‘C.’”

What They Mean: “I have confused high-school competence for university-level work.”

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What They Say: “I was really disappointed that we didn’t talk more about battlefield strategies in this history class.”

What They Mean: “I get most of my information about the past from the History Channel.”

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What They Say: “I was really disappointed that we didn’t talk about more contemporary novels in this literature class.”

What They Mean: “I think John Grishman is the pinnacle of American literature.”

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What They Say: “This professor was too strict.”

What They Mean: “I had fantasies about this professor spanking me.”


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What They Say: “This professor had a political agenda.”

What They Mean: “This professor didn’t allow me to spout off about my political agenda without evidence to support my point.”

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What They Say: “I shouldn’t have to read about gay people in a class that is required for graduation.”

What They Mean: “My religion teaches me to think of gays and lesbians as less than human.”

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What They Say: “The attendance policy for this class treats us like we are children.”

What They Mean: “I had to cancel a two-week vacation in Paris because attendance was required for this class.”

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What They Say: “This class would have been better if taught by an American.”

What They Mean: “I am a member of the KKK.”

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What They Say: “The lectures were monotonous and boring.”

What They Mean: “I have confused attending university with watching television.”

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What They Say: “This woman (or African American, or Latino/a, or Asian) professor clearly favored women (or African American, or Latino, or Asian) students.”

What They Mean: “I don’t like taking classes that aren’t taught by a white man.”

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What They Say: “This professor didn’t care at all about students and was really detached.”

What They Mean: “This professor expected us to be adults and do our work.”

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What They Say: “This class really stimulated my interest in this topic. I frequently went to office hours just to talk more about the material. I have now declared this topic my major.”

What They Mean: “I am secretly in love with this professor.”

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What They Say: The professor was often late to class.

What They Mean: This professor secretly fights crime on the side.

Pride for Sale

Because I lack the ability to manage a calender, my recent trip to MFT accidentally coincided with Boston’s Pride. Given this year’s somewhat well-meaning, but misguided and intellectually weak, militaristic theme, I am not entirely disappointed. From most reports, it was a bit of a yawn (Though I was more than pleased to see Governor Deval Patrick marching).

Many cities across the globe mark gay pride in the month of June. In the U.S., this always brings a complicated mixture of feelings and opinions from within the queer community. Those living outside of major urban areas feel excluded from Pride events. They (rightly) argue that those living in areas like New York or San Francisco have little understanding about the daily struggles of being queer in a place like Caldwell, Texas.

Likewise, some queer folk wonder about the term “pride” itself. They suggest, with a certain logic, that same-sex desire is no better or worse than opposite-sex attraction. It is, they argue, therefore nothing of which to be proud. It just “is.” In some ways, this type of questioning suggests the many concrete changes that the gay pride movement has brought about in North America. It seems a bit premature, however, to declare that type of victory as sexuality is still one of ways that this society organizes people.

For myself, I have lately been wondering about the ways that Pride rallies have become sponsored by liquor companies or other firms that seem more interested in pink dollars than any real sense of social equality. Don’t get me wrong. I think that Pride Parades still have a place and I am not ready to toss them aside quit yet. Who doesn’t love a party?

What does concern me, though, is that Pride marches have become disconnected from the revolutionary intent that brought them into existence. Beyond drinking Stoli for a day, there doesn’t seem to be much about Pride that is tied to real sexual freedom in this nation.

According to the accepted history, Pride events started in June 1970 to mark the one-year anniversary of the Stonewall Inn Riots in New York City. Those riots had pitted some mighty angry drag queens against an abusive police force. Raids on gay bars like the Stonewall Inn were an accepted, if not celebrated, part of law enforcement for most of the twentieth century. On June 28, 1969, however, the patrons at the Stonewall Inn had enough and decided to shove back at the police. Personally, I always suspected that Judy Garland’s death on June 23, 1969 contributed to much of the anger within the community (She was so young! Just 47!).



The following year, on June 29, 1970, members of the Gay Liberation Front and thousands of men and women marched from Greenwich Village to Sheep Meadow in Central Park, proclaiming “the new strength and pride of gay people.” The New York Times covered the event, giving an unusual number of references to the different colors of silk banners that the participants waved. In between all the descriptions of rich purples and deep greens, the paper did manage to quote some of the march’s leaders. Michael Brown, one of the key figures in the Gay Liberation Front, stated their goals explicitly, “We will never have the freedom and civil rights that we deserve as human beings unless we stop hiding in closets or in the shelter of anonymity. . .We have to come out into the open and stop being ashamed or else people will go on treating us as freaks. This march is an affirmation and declaration of our new pride.”

In another instance, a 27 year old carpenter stated his reasons for marching. “It serves notice on every politician in the state and nation that homosexuals are not going to hide anymore,” he said, “We’re becoming militant and we won’t be harassed and degraded anymore.”

For a time, the Gay Liberation Front and other radical groups challenged queer folk to interrogate the ways that homophobia and sexism had impacted their own individual psyches. They argued that people with queer desires faced daily psychological (if not also physical) assaults that distorted our self-esteem. Expressing a desire to even kiss somebody of the same sex meant that you were, at best, mentally ill and, at worst, a threat to all of western civilization. Queer men and women consequently had no legal protection against losing their jobs or their apartments because of their sexual desires.

To declare, therefore, that one was “proud” of being a homosexual was a revolutionary idea for 1969. It was a direct counter to the notion that being labeled homosexual was something shameful. Slogans like “Say it Loud, Gay is Proud,” intervened in homophobic discourses and institutions that alleged that being gay meant being alone, miserable, and monstrous. Queer activists argued that every element of society’s expectations about gender and sexuality needed scrutiny and revision. Equality could only be obtained when every adult could explore their sexual interests without fear of social or economic consequences.




That message has sorta gotten lost over the past three decades. Today, there is an increasing tendency among queer folk to misconstrue entering mainstream society as equivalent to sexual freedom. In reality, assuming the values of privileged heterosexuals only maintains a homophobic and sexist status quo. It rewards those queers whose sexual interests and gender identities most closely match middle-class heterosexual standards (Those same standards, btw, don’t necessarily serve the best interests of real-life heterosexuals, either. That, though, is another entry entirely). Some queers become so invested in trying to ensure their own shaky position that they disown other queer folk who don’t fit with mainstream expectations. Bar boys, non-monogamous relationships, or leather-clad lesbians become “embarrassments” to the ever-aspiring assimilationist queer. Rather than fighting for all of our sexual freedom, they seek only to satisfy their own personal ambitions.

Many queer individuals, as a result, reject the notion that there is any ethic of community. They imagine individualism to be the real goal. Indeed, we are even seeing backtracking as some individuals no longer see being out as an important and critical political act that helps all queer people. Far from Brown’s imperative to stop “hiding in closets” 37 years ago, being out is now seen as a matter of personal choice. Rather than a language of “gay pride” or “community,” they revert to tired notions of ambiguity and coyness as if they are something new.



The recording artist Mika comes to mind. Until I learned just how screwed up his personal politics are (and self-serving he is), I thought he had promise. He recently complained, however, that the queer community isn’t taking to his music like he expected. Mika wants the queer bucks, but doesn’t feel any commitment to making a personal sacrifice for the larger community himself.

As a result, Mika refuses to answer questions about his own sexuality. "I never talk about anything to do with my sexuality, I don't think I need to. People ask me all the time,” he told a London reporter, "In order to survive I've shut up different parts of my life, and that's one of them, especially this early in my career, I don't really feel that it's necessary to know in terms of my music.” In other words, it’s fine for other queer people to be out, but I am not going to sacrifice my own career. Mika makes an explicit statement that he cares more about his personal material success than any obligation to other queer people.



I don’t really care if Mika's preference is men, women, or a combination. Obscuring and evading the question, however, is only self-serving and actively harms the queer community. By making sexuality something which “just isn’t discussed,” Mika and others like him make it more difficult for queer people to live open lives. It keeps in place the notion that being straight is superior and being queer is something to be hidden.

Indeed, mainstream society rewards individuals like Mika for keeping quiet about his sexual identity. If an individual is ambiguous, then they are “given the benefit of the doubt” that they are really straight. I have no doubt that Mika would pay some material and personal consequences for publicly claiming a queer identity. If he wants to be part of the queer community, though, we have the right to expect that he cough it up. The closet rewards one person, being out benefits the entire queer community.

In a context where people like Mika thrive, it is easy, and even fashionable, among a certain crew of queer people to disparage ideas like “gay power” as antiquated or outmoded (no pun intended). Such mockery, though, risks undermining the very real challenges that took place in this nation around issues of sexuality.

Pride marches developed as part of an on-going struggle for sexual freedom that was fought year round. Queer activists took their militancy to the doorsteps of institutions that denigrated our lives and desires. On May 14, 1970, for instance, members of the Gay Liberation Front disrupted and eventually forced an adjournment of an American Psychiatric Association conference on “sex problems” in San Francisco. The Gay Liberation Front took issue with a particular paper that discussed the use of electro-shock therapy as a treatment for homosexuality. Protesters screamed during the panel “this is barbaric,” “sadist,” and “torture.”

Today it appears that the queer masses have largely abandoned a revolutionary militant stance in exchange for capitalist product endorsements. Last month, George W. Bush nominated James Holsinger to be Surgeon General. Thirty-seven years after the GLF directly challenged the APA, we have a nominee for the nation’s top doctor who has written that “gay sex is unnatural and unhealthy.” Most queer people in the U.S., though, seem largely unaware of this record and are fairly indifferent to politics.

If we don’t continue to fight, however, I promise you that Stoli Incorporated isn’t going to do it for us no matter how many fifths of vodka we buy. It is only if we strive to ensure that all people have sexual freedom that we can claim anything to be proud of.

By the Cover

Books are becoming a casualty of the digital age. Academic publishers, in particular, are hard hit by the changing trends. The presses that publish scholarly works never really turned a major profit, if at all. Now, though, even major university presses are faced with the reality of market demand. Most are simply deciding to publish fewer books which they hope will sell.

This got me to thinking. What is it that makes one book more appealing than another? While the proverbial “judging by the cover” might not work, there might be clues as to the title and author.

Here are books that I imagine would be a hit and others that would be destined for the bargain bin:

Best Seller: Power as a Means of Seduction by Bill Clinton

Bargain Bin: Pantsuits in Every Color: A Wardrobe for Success by Hillary Clinton

Best Seller: My Cat is Smarter than My Husband and Other Regrets by Laura Bush

Bargain Bin: Everybody Poops by George W. Bush

Bargain Bin: The Genius of George W. Bush by Tony Blair

Best Seller: What the Fuck Went Wrong with Our Prime Minister? By The British People

Best Seller: James Bond Made Me a Sex Symbol by Daniel Craig



Bargain Bin: James Bond Made Me a Sex Symbol by George Lazenby



Bargain Bin: My Favorite Recipes (Made With Real Human Souls) by Condoleeza Rice

Best Seller: How to Use Another World Leader’s Incompetence to Distract from Your Own Rising Dictatorship by Hugo Chávez

Bargain Bin: 100 Percent Heterosexual – Except for the Times that I Hire Male Prostitutes by Pastor Ted Haggard

Bargain Bin: Leading an Authentic Life by Liar Ex (Who Told Many Lies)

Bargain Bin: I’ll Shoot You in the Face: A Story of Friendship by Dick Cheney

Bargain Bin: I'll Shoot You in the Face: My Time at the National Endowment for the Humanities by Lynne Cheney

Bargain Bin: I'll Shoot You in the Face: My Relationship with the Gay Community by Mary Cheney

Best Seller: Dear God, Take Their Guns Away by Mary Cheney's Baby

Best Seller: Comedy as a Better form of Journalism by Jon Stewart

Bargain Bin: Lies as a Better Form of Journalism by Rupert Murdoch

Best Seller: The Genius of Star Wars by George Lucas (published 1978)

Bargain Bin: The Genius of Star Wars by George Lucas (published 2007)

Best Seller: My Life in Pictures by Jacqueline Kennedy



Bargain Bin: My Life in Pictures by Karl Rove



Bargain Bin: How Viagra Cost Me a Job at the World Bank by Paul Wolfowitz

Best Seller: We Were Just Shocked that Somebody -- Anybody -- Would Sleep With Paul Wolfowitz by The World Bank Board of Trustees

Bargain Bin: More Hate, More Executions, More Poverty: A Blueprint for America by Texan Republicans

Best Seller: At Least We Aren’t the United States by the People of Canada

Bargain Bin: I Don’t Recall: The Inner Workings of the Department of Justice by Alberto Gonzalez

Bargain Bin: How to Make Smart Choices in Love, Real Estate, and Finance by GayProf