THE CEA FORUM - Summer/Fall 2010 - Equality of Bias: An Approach to Teaching Feminism in the Composition Classroom

Oct 15, 2026

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A reflective academic discussion explores how a composition classroom assignment and a student’s argument about “crime” and morality can embed biased assumptions about gender. Drawing on scholarship about rhetorical dexterity and feminist rhetoric, the text examines how instructors should negotiate cultural and linguistic differences rather than impose beliefs. It analyzes related perspectives from feminist pedagogy and classical rhetoric to explain how audience-centered enthymemes and instructional authority shape student language and may unintentionally steer beliefs.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages12

Reading Time30 min

AccessFree to download

Equality of Bias: An Approach to Teaching Feminism in the Composition Classroom

Interpreting the assignment and confronting gendered ideology

Rhetorical dexterity and teaching within religious difference

Feminist authority, student resistance, and the limits of proof

Classical rhetoric, enthymeme, and shaping beliefs

THE CEA FORUM Summer/Fall 2010 Equality of Bias: An Approach to Teaching Feminism in the Composition Classroom COURTNEY STANTON Rutgers University-Newark “Crime is a relative thing and should be treated that way. In my country women are physically disciplined but not in America. In one place it is right but in other place it is wrong.” I came across this sentence during a recent tutoring session as I proofread a paper for Paul* , a freshman composition student. Paul’s paper was about the nature of crime, specifically the idea that there are good crimes and bad crimes. His teacher had shown his class Natural Born Killers, a movie which tells the story of two serial killers and the havoc they wreak as they murder their way across the United States. After the entire class had seen the film, Paul’s teacher asked them to write a paper answering general, open-ended questions: “What ideas does the movie present about the idea of crime? What determines the meaning of ‘criminal’? Were any of the crimes committed in the film more justifiable than others?” The first murders committed are of the sexually abusive father and mother of the female lead, and the teacher’s questions suggest a desire for the student to consider the nature of crime, what makes some actions acceptable and some not. * Name changed at student’s request. THE CEA FORUM Summer/Fall 2010 In interpreting the assignment, Paul was quite perceptive; his entire argument, of which the above quote is a tangential snippet, hinged on the idea that crime is determined by morality and morality is not universally defined. Yet, while I was impressed by his astuteness, this sentence troubled me. It bothered me partly because it stuck out as a possible late addition, an idea he thought might sound good but didn’t really feel like explaining, but more because it was just wrong. At least to me it was wrong. It pained me to see an unfortunate truth about humanity, a declaration of discrimination against my own gender, in a single, poorly written sentence. I wanted to shout at Paul and say he was mistaken, that the fact that women were beaten in his country did not make it right, and that it was a crime everywhere. But I didn’t. I did tell Paul that there was a problem with this sentence, but not because of its implied ideology. Rather, I said that it was inadequately developed and that he was not being, in the words of Shannon Carter, rhetorically dexterous. In her article “Living inside the Bible (Belt),” Carter proposes the use of rhetorical dexterity as,“an approach that trains writers to effectively read, understand, manipulate, and negotiate the cultural and linguistic codes of a new community” in composition classrooms (574) . She details her own experiences teaching at Texas A&M University, where a large portion of her students are evangelical Christians. Her article makes clear that, like my own attitude toward Paul, Carter initially interpreted the beliefs of these students as narrow-minded and“irrevocably at odds”with her own academic and pedagogical objectives (572) . She admits that she found herself wanting to enlighten them, open them up to the many possibilities available in the objective world of academia. Yet, she developed the idea of rhetorical dexterity out of the THE CEA FORUM Summer/Fall 2010 realization that, as a teacher, it is not her place to dissuade students from their religious beliefs. She has no right to “save” them from their religion because her beliefs, in the grand scope of universal truth, are no more valid than theirs (Carter 573). Likewise, my belief that women and men are equal is no truer than Paul’s notion that they are not. Feminism, like evangelical Christianity, is a belief system. In “The Other ‘F’Word: The Feminist in the Classroom,”Dale M. Bauer asks a question expressed in one way or another by many composition instructors: “How do we make our authority as feminist rhetors available to our students for their la

FAQs

What specific issue does the author raise about the student’s quoted statement?

The author argues the sentence is wrong and discriminatory toward her gender, and that it is also inadequately developed rather than rhetorically dexterous.

How does the text connect rhetorical dexterity to composition teaching?

It uses Shannon Carter’s concept of rhetorical dexterity as training writers to read, understand, and negotiate cultural and linguistic codes, while recognizing a teacher should not dissuade students from their religious beliefs.

What question about feminist pedagogy is discussed, and what assumption is challenged?

Dale M. Bauer’s question is presented about making feminist rhetorical authority available to students and contravening resistance; the text challenges the presupposition that gender equality is objectively superior to patriarchy.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by SANS