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Rachel Bloom

Professor Vaughn

ENGL 2089 Intermediate Composition

29 November 2017

The Future Is Feminist: A Look at Student Feminism on Campus

Angry man-haters. Bra-burners. Unattractive lesbians. Womens Studies majors at all-

female colleges. A group of women filling the streets of Washington, D.C., screaming about

their vaginas and sporting hot pink pussy hats but becoming triggered when a man holds the

door for them. These are typical ideas of what feminists look like in the United States, and while

these stereotypes may be true in a few cases, they certainly do not hold up at the University of

Cincinnati. The UC Feminists Fems to its members is a uniquely structured student group

that brings together people from all backgrounds in support of intersectional feminism and social

justice. There was no research available on feminists or student organizations as discourse

communities, so this research first and foremost establishes the UC Feminists as a discourse

community. It goes on to explore the unique structure that separates UC Feminists from other

organizations, both in and outside of the UC community, and the way that group members

display their identity as UC Feminists. This includes how they integrate that identity into other

aspects of their lives, and the struggles that they may face in sharing their feminist views in

different spaces, specifically those related to stereotyping. For this research, I attended two

meetings and took notes, and interviewed several group members, both from the general body

and the executive board.

Linguist John Swales outlines certain criteria that must be present in order for a group to

be considered a discourse community. The first is that the members have a broadly agreed set of
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common public goals (24). This is absolutely true for UC Feminists, which has a goal of

teaching and promoting intersectional feminist ideals. They do this mostly through meetings, but

also through documentary showings and setting up tables with promotional material to recruit

members on campus. UC Feminists will also lend its support to other organizations and events

for example, the executive board is currently planning to partner with the 1 in 3 Campaign, an

abortion-positive student group, for their Reproductive Justice Action Week in the spring, and is

part of a coalition that is organizing a protest of white supremacist Richard Spencers upcoming

speech at UC.

A discourse community must also have what Swales calls mechanisms of

intercommunication among its members (25). UC Feminists utilizes a weekly newsletter to

reach a broad base of students from a list of emails, to inform them of upcoming meeting topics

and other events happening around campus. Another method of communication is through the

meetings themselves, which are largely discussion-based. This is also how the group meets the

third criterion, using participatory mechanisms primarily to provide information and feedback

(26). Information about upcoming events and calls for volunteers are given at the beginning of

each meeting, and the subject matter of the meetings themselves is meant to educate members on

an aspect of the social justice that the group promotes.

Meetings of the UC Feminists take one of two forms: information is briefly presented and

an open discussion follows, or there is a longer presentation, perhaps in the form of a short film,

and a shorter discussion or activity follows. For a longer presentation, a guest speaker may be

brought in to share their expertise on a topic. For example, at one of the meetings I attended, the

group hosted a representative from the Student Wellness Center. Because it utilizes or hence
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possesses one or more genres in the communicative furtherance of its aims (26), the group

meets the fourth criterion of a discourse community.

In order to meet the fifth criterion, a discourse community must have acquired some

specific lexis (26). There is absolutely a specific lexis present in the group, and it is very similar

to the lexis used in intersectional feminist circles everywhere. Words like intersectionality, or

the way that race, class, gender, sexual orientation, and other aspects of identity combine, or the

list of isms ranging from common terms like racism or sexism to lesser known ones such as

ableism, colorism, cissexism, and sizeism are necessary to know in order to keep up with the

discussions. Because this is a student group, though, there are also terms that are specific to

campus organizations and issues that combine with the terms common to all feminist circles to

create a special lexis for UC Feminists. Finally, a discourse community must have a threshold

level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discoursal expertise (27).

Members usually enter as first-year students with a basic knowledge of feminist principles and a

desire to learn more and be more active. More experienced members, usually the group leaders,

lead introductions so that younger members can become familiar with the rest of the group, and

explain how meetings are structured. Over time, the younger members become accustomed to

the way the group operates, and can then participate fully.

James Paul Gee states that in discourse communities, what is important is not language,

and surely not grammar, but saying (writing)-doing-being-valuing-believing combinations

(484). These combinations are what he calls Discourses, and this idea is absolutely relevant when

it comes to the UC Feminists, where the main reason that members come together is their shared

belief in the value and necessity of intersectional feminism in the world, and more specifically,

the UC campus community. The valuing-believing comes first, and the saying (writing)-
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doing-being comes when members join and learn the ins and outs of the community. In

watching the group and speaking to members, it becomes obvious that, as Gee says, Discourses

are not mastered by overt instruction but by enculturation (apprenticeship) into social

practices through scaffolded and supported interaction with people who have already mastered

the Discourse (484). Longtime members know how to phrase their contributions to discussions

and how to articulate their experiences to add a new perspective to the issue at hand, whereas

new members are only just learning through the enculturation process that Gee defines.

The fact that members come together initially because of similar values and opinions is a

double-edged sword. All members that I interviewed said that they joined UC Feminists because

they wanted a community where they knew that their core beliefs would be shared by others, but

these common beliefs put the group in danger of becoming a sort of echo chamber where ideas

are only being reflected and there is no room for new or challenging ideas and perspectives. The

reflecting of ideas back and forth has become part of the combination that Gee describes, and

because of this, offering conflicting ideas, even if they are shared politely and meant to expand

the discussion, is considered to be wrong in this space. This serves to alienate some members

one member in particular shared with me that she often felt like she could not speak up in

meetings because she was worried about what other people would think of her ideas and

experiences. Another said that she feels somewhat out of place as a woman of color in a group of

white women, because her priorities are different due to her experiences as a racial minority.

Despite these failings, structuring the meetings as discussion-centered and promoting

themselves as a space for people to be open and share their experiences is a big draw for new

members. With the exception of one member, everyone interviewed had joined the group after

attending the student organization fair, an annual Welcome Weekend activity where student
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organizations can promote themselves to new students (the exception joined because she saw a

poster on campus). Every member mentioned that they were actively looking for a group like UC

Feminists, where they could talk to like-minded people and have open discussions. Not all

student organizations offer this in fact, every member interviewed who was involved with

other organizations stated that UC Feminists was a very unique organization compared to other

groups.

The uniqueness of UC Feminists is obvious from the beginning of a meeting. Meetings

are held in the Womens Center in the Steger Student Life Center, an open space with couches

and coffee machines, rather than in a classroom. This informal setting helps to facilitate open

discussion, and is apparently a large part of what attracts members to meetings; last semester,

when the Womens Center was unavailable, Fems met in a free space on the sixth floor of the

Steger building, and attendance declined severely. Another difference is in meeting organization:

Fems meetings, as stated before, are entirely discussion-based, whereas other student

organization meetings have a more rigid agenda. One Fems member, Tayla Smart, compared UC

Feminists to the meetings of other organizations that she belongs to. She used Botany Club as an

example, and stated that it was more about learning. So, the president of Botany Club will teach

us stuff at the beginning and then well either do a little activity or go to the greenhouse

afterwards (Smart). Obviously different organizations choose the structure that works best for

them, but it is clear that the open and relaxed structure of Fems meetings is valued by the

members.

Another crucial difference between UC Feminists and other organizations is the

executive board. The makeup is largely the same; Fems has two co-presidents, a vice president,

secretary, treasurer, program coordinator, and social media chair. The difference comes in the
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accessibility of the executive board. Executive meetings are announced every week and follow

immediately after the larger group meetings, and anyone can attend, even if they do not have an

elected position. Interviewed members stated that unless they were on the executive board

themselves, they did not know when or where the elected officials of other groups that they were

members of met every week.

As a social justice organization, visibility is extremely important to the UC Feminists.

They pride themselves on putting themselves out there around campus by being present at

other progressive organization events, such as the recent student and faculty forum on the

upcoming action against Richard Spencer. More than that, though, members clearly identify

themselves as feminists in everyday life, and not only through making their views heard. Sale of

t-shirts is a major source of revenue for the group, and you can spot members on campus wearing

This Is What a Feminist Looks Like, The Future Is Female, or Feminist shirts. Buttons are

also very popular among group members, and no one at a meeting is seen without at least two on

their backpack.

This level of visibility means that members are easily identified, which could cause

problems in other aspects of their lives, and especially in other groups or discourse communities

that they may belong to. Gee writes:

Finally, and yet more importantly, we can always ask about how much tension or

conflict is present between any two of a persons Discourses. We have argued

above that some degree of conflict and tension (if only because of the discrete

historical origins of particular Discourses) will almost always be present.

However, some people experience more overt and direct conflicts between two or

more of their Discourses than do others (for example, many women academics
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feel conflict between certain feminist Discourses such as traditional literary

criticism) (485).

Members were first asked if they felt any conflict between their membership in UC Feminists

and any other groups they may belong to, including other student groups, their academic majors

or classes, or their friend groups. The general answer was the same: they do not advertise their

membership out loud, but when asked, they do talk about it. One member, the vice president of

Fems, has a different perspective. As a member of Undergraduate Student Government, she

spends a lot of time around people with more conservative political opinions, and makes it a

point to mention that she is actively involved with UC Feminists. For her, Fems is a way to make

her voice heard where it would otherwise be silenced, and she uses her membership to stand up

in conservative-dominated spaces (Smith).

Members were then asked about conflict between UC Feminists and their primary

Discourses that is, what Gee describes as our original and home-based sense of identity

(485). Here, the answers were very different. All members felt the need to hide their membership

in UC Fems from their family members, because their families were especially conservative and

sharing feminist ideals at home would cause uncomfortable levels of conflict. Even the vice

president, who stated earlier that she prided herself on being able to stand up to her conservative

peers, said that she felt uncomfortable talking about Fems at home (Smith).

Why do members feel the need to hide their identity, either actively or selectively

depending on the space they are in? This comes from the fear of being stereotyped. Just as Tony

Mirabelli talks about the prevalence of stereotyping restaurant servers as dumb and unable to

find a real job (539), feminists are stereotyped in a number of ways, from angry women who

hate men, to lesbians, to easily offended, childlike women. One member, a first year, mentioned
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that when she brought up having joined the UC Feminists in a phone conversation with her

parents, her father started calling her a snowflake a term often used by conservatives to

describe liberals. Snowflakes are easily offended and require safe spaces where no one can

insult them by disagreeing with their opinions. The social media coordinator for the UC

Feminists mentioned the messages she receives through the groups Facebook page (Gilligan).

One man in particular messages the page every few months, despite the lack of response from

the social media coordinator or anyone else with access to the page. He says things like, You

guys should stop fighting for equal rights by wearing vagina hats and having your tits out and

God damn you guys are just oblivious to everything. One member has a particularly

complicated relationship with this stereotyped identity:

This is what people think of us. I feel like I cant put this club on my resume,

because employers might look down on me. Id rather have them see my GPA, or

the fact that Im in [the University Honors Program], or my volunteer experience.

But they see UC Feminists and they immediately see the negative stereotypes.

Im proud of being in this group, but I feel like I shouldnt beI feel like I cant

be (Weisend).

Looking beyond the stereotypes, who are the UC Feminists? They are a diverse group of

people from all genders, races, religions, and academic backgrounds, coming together to support

a cause that they believe in. They are motivated students eager to become literate in

intersectional feminist discourse and improve their campus community. Student groups like UC

Feminists provide a unique space for students to express and empower themselves, and are often

the first chance that students have to become literate in chosen Discourses. It is clear from

looking at the experiences of the members that this group gives them an opportunity to separate
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themselves from primary Discourses that they might not agree with. Although the main goal of

UC Feminists is to educate the campus community on intersectional feminism, they go beyond

that goal by providing students with an opportunity to establish themselves in a chosen

community and find their own place away from their homes and primary Discourses. Despite the

problems that they face, from stereotyping to echo chambers, this community truly shows that

the future is feminist.

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Works Cited

Gee, James Paul. "Literacy, Discourse, and Linguistics: Introduction." Writing about Writing: A

College Reader. 1st ed. Ed. Elizabeth Wardle and Doug Downs. Boston: Bedford/St.

Martin's, 2011. 482-495. Print.

Gilligan, Jordan. Personal Interview. 15 November 2017.

Mirabelli, Tony. "Learning to Serve: The Language and Literacy of Food Service

Workers." Writing about Writing: A College Reader. 1st ed. Ed.

Elizabeth Wardle and Doug Downs. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2011. 539-554. Print.

Smart, Tayla. Personal Interview. 13 November 2017.

Smith, Megan. Personal Interview. 15 November 2017.

Swales, John. "The Concept of Discourse Community." Genre Analysis: English in Academic

and Research Settings. Boston: Cambridge UP, 1990. 21-32. Print.

Weisend, Madison. Personal Interview. 15 November 2017.