While I found Pollitt's accusing Daly of being a whiny, spoiled and
out-of-date feminist a bit offensive, reading it made me realize that there
are ways in which Daly's privilege (in contrast to the male privilege which
she is so obviously aware of) might be occluding her own vision. What if Daly
had been an adjunct at BC? Would she have been able to keep men out of her
class? Probably not. I wonder if Daly is working to make sure other
"minority" professors also have the right to control who enters their class
or is this just a privilege reserved for "celebrity" academics?
I have had quite a few people in my classes (that I've taken and taught) that
have been insensitive to the needs of the others in the class. I think of a
particular experience I had teaching a Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual psychology
class where some of the straight people continually tried to find out "how
the gay people knew they were gay" and intentionally distracted us from some
of the reading which made straightness our problematic. Could I have chosen
to exclude straight people from my class? Definitely not. Being an adjunct,
that could have easily destroyed whatever tenuous job security I had (they
needn't have sued, only complained to the department). If those of us on the
bottom of the teaching ladder have to deal with stuff like this, maybe Daly
should as well?