Dear David Gilmour,
As a woman writer I’d like to say thank you.
No, honestly, thank you.
Thank you for being privileged enough, culturally tone-deaf enough, and even just plain stupid enough to say that you don’t love women writers enough to teach their works in your class. Thank you for saying what so many other male professors think but are afraid to admit. Thank you for opening up this huge fucking can of worms that most people are happy enough to pretend doesn’t even exist.
Seriously, thank you for reminding me that, as a writer who happens to be female, I will always be a woman first and a writer second.
Oh and thank you especially for throwing in that little racial comment about how you also don’t love Chinese writers, because you might as well shit all the beds while you’re at it, right?
But thank you. Thank you for proving how very unequal the world is when it comes to female writers and queer writers and trans writers and any writer whose skin isn’t lily-fucking-white. Thank you for pulling back the curtain and showing the dark, misogynist, racist underbelly of academia. Because when people like you pull shit like this, everyone is finally forced to pull their collective heads out of the sand and accept how very biased the academic world is.
Look, I’m not here to tell you what literature you should love or not love. None of us can help which writers resonate with us while others, though we can admit that they are technically proficient, brilliant with language, and certainly not without talent, fail to move us. We like who we like. I get that.
What I don’t get is how very little self-reflection there seems to be in your discussion of which writers you love and why. Have you ever wondered why you might possess such a bias against female writers, Canadian writers, and (apparently) Chinese writers? Have you considered what influence your own professors and their prejudices have had on you and how they have warped your perspective and taste? Have you thought about the fact that your own relative privilege means that without serious thought and introspection it’s going to be a real fucking challenge for you to understand the context and nuance of writers who don’t fit the mold of cis-gender white male?
And maybe what I really want to know is if you were ever up for that particular challenge, and if the answer to that question is yes, then I need to know when the fuck you got so literarily lazy that you could no longer stretch yourself enough to inhabit a skin that didn’t resemble your own. Because that’s what the best literature does, right? It takes us completely outside of ourselves and forces us to view the world from a completely different perspective. If done well enough, that experience changes us. Hopefully it makes us better people. I don’t understand how you could ever become a better person if you only ever read books with protagonists whose take on the world is, ultimately, not so very unlike your own.
I also want to tell you that as a professor, your first responsibility is to your students, not yourself. Like a good book, a good professor should change a student. The best teachers that I’ve had in my life have been the ones who’ve taken me out of myself and made me see the world in an entirely different way. Passion for what you teach is, of course, incredibly important and can’t be discounted, but so, too, is the ability to extend yourself beyond your own petty likes and dislikes in order to give your students a well-rounded view of literature. How can you possibly be doing that when every year you devote all of your time to re-hashing all of your favourite books? How can you open someone else’s eyes when you refuse to do anything but perpetuate your own biases? And honestly, if you can’t challenge yourself when it comes to how and what you read, how can you ever challenge anyone else?
Finally, I want to ask you how, as someone who is a writer who also happens to be female, I am supposed to process this. When you say that you “teach only the best,” what should I take away from that? Am I supposed to just sadly shake my head and assume that my vagina* prevents me from ever writing anything interesting or good? Am I supposed to laugh in a world-weary way and say, “well, that’s just one man’s opinion,” as if your opinion isn’t symptomatic of a much larger problem within academia? Or am I supposed to think that you are somehow trying to throw down the gauntlet, as if you could maybe bully women into writing something that you love?
Because the thing is, I’ve got my own fucking gauntlet to throw down.
I’ve got a dare for you, David Gilmour. I dare you – I fucking dare you – to spend six months reading nothing but writers who aren’t white cis males. Read female writers. Read Chinese writers. Read queer and trans and disabled writers. Read something that’s difficult for you to love, then take a deep breath and try harder to love it. Immerse yourself in worlds and thoughts and perspectives that are incredibly different from your own. Find a book that can change you and then let yourself be changed.
I’ll even put together a top-notch reading list, if you like.
In return, I will let you teach me to love one of the books on your curriculum. I live in Toronto; I can easily audit one of your classes. Prove to me that you’re a decent professor, and that the books that you teach will, in fact, change me the way that the best literature can and should.
I’m totally up for this if you are.
Sincerely,
Anne Thériault
*Not all female writers have vaginas, and not all people with vaginas are female. However, since in my case my sex aligns with my societally-expected gender, and because I love the word vagina, I’m gonna run with this.
The Belle Jar 
Nicely said!
*WILD FUCKING APPLAUSE*
thank you!
Ditto!!!!!
Really scrounging for that scandal eh? From that same article you breathlessly berate:
“Virginia Woolf is the only writer that interests me as a woman writer, so I do teach one of her short stories. But once again, when I was given this job I said I would only teach the people that I truly, truly love. Unfortunately, none of those happen to be Chinese, or women.”
This man must be hung out to dry because of his taste? Because you don’t agree with his opinion? Someone call the thought police! It’s sickening that people like you latch on to one sentence and try to cause grief … all because you don’t agree with his opinion and his curriculum.
University is meant to be a place where opinions and thoughts can be shared openly, even ones that not everyone is going to agree with. ESPECIALLY ones that not everyone is going to agree with. People like you, raising non-issues like this are the sole reason why people outside of academia don’t take it seriously any more.
Yes, university is for sharing opinions. But not *teaching* them. He wants to have a class discussion about the books he thinks *should* be on the syllabus while still teaching a well-rounded and accurately representative list? Go wild.
well maybe all of you should start a “women’s studies of literature” class. theres already a women’s studies class so why not make one so you can JUST LEARN about female authours? then all of the men, and women who arent raging feminists can enjoy david gilmours class without all of you running around bitching and moaning.
Well you really conveniently picked out the bit of that paragraph you wanted, didn’t you? It isn’t that one sentence. It’s the whole thing.
“I’m not interested in teaching books by women. Virginia Woolf is the only writer that interests me as a woman writer, so I do teach one of her short stories. But once again, when I was given this job I said I would only teach the people that I truly, truly love. Unfortunately, none of those happen to be Chinese, or women. Except for Virginia Woolf. And when I tried to teach Virginia Woolf, she’s too sophisticated, even for a third-year class. Usually at the beginning of the semester a hand shoots up and someone asks why there aren’t any women writers in the course. I say I don’t love women writers enough to teach them, if you want women writers go down the hall. What I teach is guys. Serious heterosexual guys. F. Scott Fitzgerald, Chekhov, Tolstoy. Real guy-guys. Henry Miller. Philip Roth.”
You will please note the following sentences: “I’m not interested in teaching books by women.” “What I teach is guys. Serious heterosexual guys.” “Real guy-guys.”
Those are the sentences that make us say “Excuse me? What’s wrong with women writers? What’s wrong with homosexual writers? Trans writers? Literally everyone on this planet who is a writer and isn’t a heterosexual man?” This is not a “non-issue”. Your final argument that this is the reason people outside academia don’t take it seriously is completely false and grossly exaggerated. There are many reasons that people don’t take academia seriously anymore and none of them have to do with people calling others out on their extreme bigotry. Also, she’s not trying to cause grief. She’s making a response to David’s asinine assertion that the only authors worth reading are heterosexual males, because apparently anyone else (with the exclusion of Virginia Woolf) is crap.
Next time, don’t pick out only that part of the paragraph that serves as evidence for your argument. Use the whole thing.
…BURN!
Yes, University is meant to be a place where opinions and thoughts can be shared openly. It is also meant to be a place where people expand their cultural horizons and increase their knowledge, and not a place where professor’s individual opinions determine what is taught. As long as there are professors of literature who only teach white, cis, “hetero” male writers and pass off NOT teaching women writers as just a matter of taste, and not a sign of deeply-ingrained bias within the academy and society at large, then sexism and racism are more likely to continue to exist and flourish, implicitly and explicitly. What is precisely dangerous about Gilmour’s comments is that he doesn’t even see them as sexist or racist, and that people like yourself can shrug it off as “just a matter of opinion.” Maybe we should look a little closer at what supposedly harmless “opinions” demonstrate about our social biases and prejudices.
Also – as an academic and a teacher, in most universities a literature course possessing no female writers or writers of colour would be a big red flag, and in my department a course like that wouldn’t be accepted – and for good reason. So this is not just a “non-issue” that some people are getting upset about, it is also a matter of professionalism. It is depressing that U of T, one of Canada’s biggest and most prestigious universities, is totally a-ok with this.
For some reason, I disagree with your last point. I see no reason that a department should force books on a syllabus just because the author is of a certain gender/skin colour. Further, statistics will show that there is certainly a greater amount of men writers before the 1950’s or so. It would be quite feasible to teach a class on romantic literature and have a majority of white males as the authors. Such a class might not even have any female authors and the class could still be worthwhile. Heck, even in the context of the class that Gilmour is teaching, there could be statistically more men’s works than females, just given the preponderance of male authors at the given time period.
However, David Gilmour is very clumsy with his words. For someone who spends his days working on his communication skills, he certainly knows how to provoke a storm. Heck, who knows?, maybe he’s just trying to draw up some attention and publicity.
Western Culture is, unfortunately, a largely male-dominated world before the 1900’s. A large body of art, literature, painting, theatre, etc was created by men. Some of the above genres are virtually untouched by women. That doesn’t mean that one shouldn’t seek to explore those works, but that certainly doesn’t mean that they should favour them solely because the author is female or of colour.
Wow really scrounging for that reason to comment condescendingly eh? From the same article you breathlessly berate:
“Look, I’m not here to tell you which literature you should love or not love. None of us can help which writers resonate with us while others, though we can admit they are technically proficient, brilliant without language, and certainly not without talent, fail to move us. We like who we like. I get that.”
This blogger must be hung out to dry because of her criticism? Because you don’t agree with her opinion? Someone call the cliche police! It’s sickening that people like you can’t see the intrinsic irony of lambasting a writer for expressing a criticism while doing almost exactly the same thing only very stupid and without meaningful intent.
Blogs are meant to be a place that even idiots can handily distinguish from universities, which are not the same thing as blogs, but which you seem to have got confused. ESPECIALLY ones that not everyone is going to agree with. People like you, raising non-issues like this one are the sole reason why HEY STUPID THIS IS LITERALLY A PERSON OUTSIDE OF ACADEMIA TAKING SOMETHING IN ACADEMIA SERIOUSLY THAT IS WHAT YOU ARE COMPLAINING ABOUT JESUS CHRIST GO AWAY AND HAVE A NAP.
It’s been over 24 hrs Penny, really looking forward to your reply to Kat’s response to your comment….
Agreed. If he represents misogyny, it has just been met with misandry. “what so many other male professors think, but are afraid to admit.” Arrogant to say the least. Perhaps he might have taken her seriously, if not for the charming cover photo.
Let me use an analogy.
I am an astronomer. If I was asked to teach Intro to Planetary Astronomy by the department I come to work for, I couldn’t decide to only teach about Planetary Rings because I absolutely love rings and have a grudge against Mars. The students would be upset that I was obviously skipping material, since most students know there are more than Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. My colleagues would be upset that I’m glossing over their loves in a course that’s supposed to cover a wide swath of astronomy and that, if it was a course for majors (who will take more courses), they will have to fill in holes I left in my former students’ education instead of or in addition to teaching whatever they are supposed to be teaching.
Now, if I wanted to teach a graduate seminar or lead a journal club or mentor undergraduate researchers on planetary rings and cover the exact same thing, I’d be welcome* to do so. Because then I’d be saying ‘this is a narrow-but-deep course/group’ not ‘this is a broad course, but we’re cutting out wide swaths of the writing world because I don’t like them’.
It doesn’t matter if I like planetary geology or Mars, they are important to the field and my students’ education is more important than my tastes.
* Well, provided the intro course still got taught by someone.
Life is Like a Box of Chocolates… You never know what your going to get… But Penny needs a good swift kick in the ass I think…lol and thats all I got to say about that!!!
This message has been brought to you by the greater populous of the Milkyway Galaxy…
your comment suggest abuse towards women..HOW DARE YOU
Penny,
There is a big difference between saying “I chose a list of writers I love and, as it happens, none is female” and saying (a quote from the article) “I’m not interested in teaching books by women… Usually at the beginning of the semester a hand shoots up and someone asks why there aren’t any women writers in the course. I say I don’t love women writers enough to teach them, if you want women writers go down the hall”
You seem to have missed that point – it’s one thing to say that “none of my friends happen to be XXX” and another to say “I would never be friends with someone if they were XXX”.
Gilmour is not quoted as saying, as you imply, “none of those happen to be Chinese, or women.” He’s saying “none of those will ever be a woman (or Chinese) because they are unworthy.”
Are you unworthy? Are you comfortable to be judged because you lack a penis – something that Gilmour apparently views as an essential part of being a “worthy” writer (necessary, if not sufficient).
What if he felt Jews weren’t worthy? or Native Canadians? or any other recognizable minority?
God, I love you so fucking much right now. And all the other times.
that, my friend, is TRUTH
Clapping over here x
That was an excellent letter, nicely done.
Yes!
OOsh. I’m so looking forward to his reply. I really hope he has something to say. A most excellent letter, driven with articulate perfection from the very base desire in all of us to exist on an even plain. 😀
Yeah! What they all said!
Reblogged this on FEMBORG.
I love your letter; and I would LOVE to see your reading list!
Also want the reading list, please!
I was thinking the same thing. Let those of us who are more open minded in on the fun too
Was just thinking how much I’d value that reading list myself. Glad I’m not the first (or only) to request it. Please?
i add my voice to the chorus. bring forth the reading list!
I love that picture so much
Reblogged this on inkstains.
What a fucking egocentric “Handsome” (jerking off ) fuck of a man a man can be. He puts my kind MALEs to more shame… pathetic…good job Anne Thériault…well said here…
A magnificent response, which I am passing around.
His interview reads as if told by a giddy high schooler hiding a half-boner in his pants because he teaches “dirty books”; as if he assumed it was his privilege to inform us of what ‘real’ books are.
I love your reply and have shared it with friends because you’ve hit so many nails squarely on their little round heads from word one. “Thank you for opening up this huge fucking can of worms that most people were happy enough to pretend doesn’t exist.” Amen, Ms Thériault.
That guy needs to be in therapy! He’s working out his personal issues in front of his students.
please remember he teaches imaginative literature, not ethics.
Reblogged this on alix sobler and commented:
Nailed it.
❤
Reblogged this on The Eclectic Poet and commented:
This is brilliant.
As my friend Lyn mentions, “This may be well deserved, but it should be noted that Gilmour does not represent the “academic world.” He does not have a PhD. He is not a professor, but an instructor.” All the more reason to hope that a deserving, under-employed PhD is hired in to replace him.
Great post! Please do follow-up here if you happen to be taken up on your challenge!
(where “here” is your blog, rather than, you know “here.”)
THIS is why I read your blog. Thank you.
Hurrah!
Standing ovation.
As a lover of great literary art, and of women and humanistic culture, I would like to remind readers that what mitigates this discussion IN FAVOR of Mr. Gilmour and what does appear to be his clear CULTURAL bias (try finding any modern poet with as much original beauty as Emily Dickinson), is that we are talking about aesthetics not ethics or morality. If he is well-read and a good communicator, he should be ENCOURAGED to teach his passions. What we don’t want is only one version of aesthetic value which must follow some particular ethical line. Open society, open minds. Aesthetic beauty should be free of cultural obligation.
yeah, this guy is the opposite of an open mind, dontcha think>
POST THE READING LIST!
I left Toronto years ago but I use to know David back in the day when we all hung out at the Pilot Tavern. This was before he shocked me by becoming a writer as I never thought he had the staying power to finish something like a novel. He was just as opinionated then as he appears to be now. But the other truth is that you are in fact feeding the beast. He loves this kind of discussion. The best way to handle him is to simply say ‘David who?’ Afraid I am unaware of anything he has done. Must be rather mediocre”
The problem is that ignoring the voices of privileged, entitled jackasses doesn’t make them–or, more importantly, the attitudes that they hold in their unexamined privilege and entitlement–go away. Gilmour will continue teaching his Man’s Man’s Literature (at list for the duration of this term), and thus continue teaching impressionable university students that there’s nothing worth reading that’s written by anyone other than middle-aged men.
maybe that’s the answer: call it a Man’s Man Lit Class, and don’t pretend to be representative. Let those who love Hemingway, Faulkner et al and wanna read about bull fights have at it! but don’t call it ‘representative of the greatest literature’. In poetry it was Birny-Purdy-Layton school of ‘great white male’…..that pissed me off in grad school. Although to concordia’s credit, they had great women instructors/poets, and I learned a hell of a lot about women poets and authors in my Lit classes.
Flaubert, Wilde, Proust….Gay writers all…and in the pantheon of greats…
Why not focus on text, rather than insipid identity politics?
Quite simply, there is no female playwright worth an Ibsen, Chekhov, etc…
Bellyaching ad hominems about gilmour being a grumpy white male isn’t gonna solve anything.
and what did you just solve? remind me.
Thank you Anne. Thank you.
Love this post so very much.
As a white male disabled (autistic) writer and ex-UofT educator, I have always (even as a teen) found Gilmour’s writing offensive. Actually even if I was not autistic I’d find him offensive. I’m not slagging virginia woolf as she was the first female writer that I connected with with, but many came afterwards. I don’t expect him to cease being who he is. What really bothers me is UofT. Do they have nothing better to do than hire journalists as faculty members? In my day, to be teaching at UofT you had to be at the top of your game with real scholarship behind you… not be at the bottom of your game and not remotely academic. Luckily there are other schools that do a better job of scholarship.
You guys are missing the point, He is merely saying chinese and female writers are not his raison d’etre. The guy is being modest at best. If he was a clothing designer and said the same thing, would there be as much hoopla, doubtful.
Nothing to add but BRAVO. Well said, and thank you for saying.
Well spake. As a voracious reader, (traded up on my addictions some years back!), I am so grateful for your letter to such a creepy “professor”. He makes me cringe – he is missing so very much. Enough said – you are my hero for today! Thanks buckets.
I say I don’t love men writers enough to teach them, if you want men writers go down the hall. What I teach is girls. Serious lesbian girls.
Would that have garnered the same outrage?
I read his interview, and I think he’s really boring. Chechov, really? Phillip Roth? Manly men? Grow up and come out of the sixties, natural teacher. Sheesh.
I love women writers, and am apt to read them a lot sooner than reading male writers. I think writers with vaginas think better and are more sincere, than the writers without vaginas. And I like saying the word vagina too, so I’m going to run with it.
Seriously though, great post and I think your words ring truer than his ever will.
Nicely put! And I too would also like that reading list! I love reading books other people have been inspired by 🙂
But why are we even calling Gilmour an academic? Oh, I see U of T pays him a salary. So, I guess we should be saying “why?” to that point as well. I think Bill Boyle’s comment though is right on, and I wouldn’t even bring up this question, except our tax dollars are at work here, folks!
*standing ovation*
What the hell is wrong with the folks at the University of Toronto that they condone this mindset?
Saw this on my Facebook news feed … thank you. I am a writer too, I want to be known as a writer not as a male writer. Why is it that ‘we’ ‘they’ ‘I’ put everyone and everything into some kind of box. Is it the tyranny of naming? Keep fighting! The power of your prose is an inspiration.
Thank you for writing this! You hit the nail on the head.
Also, to your point: “…I want to know when the fuck you got so literarily lazy that you could no longer stretch yourself enough to inhabit a skin that didn’t resemble your own.” He basically disregards all women writers, but somehow feels like he can stretch himself enough to write from a woman’s perspective in his new novel?
Anne,
Way to go and Thank You. You are an inspiration that things are going in the right direction. Let’s see if he takes the dare but I don’t really care if he does, I just love that you put it out to him.
Absofuckinlutely brilliant…and thank you for giving me the words I could never have written 🙂
This is fantastic. Keep going you self important feminist cunts with nothing better to do but swap off wiping the sand from your cold baron vaginas while looking for things to bitch and moan about on the internet. You’re going to make Mr. Gilmour a whole lot of money from all this free publicity. Big stunt right before a big book release. No publicity is bad publicity folks so why don’t you take that big girl middle finger and shove it up your undoubtedly hairy twat, or ass hole since you’ve not so swiftly turned a comment about personal interest into an issue surrounding a hatred towards trans sexuals.
Can I get a copy of that reading list? It sounds fascinating! Unlike our protagonist, I LOVE experiencing new perspectives.
Fucking, Brilliant. My vagina agrees.
Because you don’t love something doesn’t mean you hate it, or don’t respect it, or don’t appreciate its value or its importance. He’s teaching what he’s compelled to teach, what he feels connected to, what he loves. That’s his right. He doesn’t owe anyone anything. No one does. The only power he has over you is the power you give him.
I love the idea of hundreds, nay thousands, of people reading the mind-blowing, culturally diverse list Anne is challenging Gilmour to read. While Gimour continues to seek pleasure from his guy’s guys. Smells like sweet revenge to me!
He’s not a professor, he’s an ex-CBC radio announcer who had a show called “Gilmour’s albums.” I’ve read his previous works and find the most surprising thing in the article the fact that one of his books has been longlisted for the Giller. Had he said, “Take ‘Women’s Literature’ down the hall, I teach Men’s Literature’ here” his piece might have been useful. I don’t know if they still teach “Women’s Lit” in universities, but if so he’d have been pointing out that if one professor teaches books only written by women, it’s fine for another to teach only books written by men.
But the reason he gives: “I teach only the best” and that turns out to be exclusively “manly-man” books, is dumb. It makes me think Gilmour wants to be a part of the big boys’ writers club, which he must imagine looks like Bart’s tree house with “No girls allowed” posted on the door.
Grow up Gilmour. It takes more than trashing women and minorities to be a big ol’ tough writer guy. You have to be big ol’ tough writer guy who writes great books.
“Thank you for pulling back the curtain and showing the dark, misogynist, racist underbelly of academia. Because when people like you pull shit like this, everyone is finally forced to pull their collective heads out of the sand and accept how very biased the academic world is.” — There’s no way Gilmour should be taken as typical of the academic world as a whole. He’s a benighted preening idiot whose opinions would appall most of the people I know from the academic world and which are IMO grossly unrepresentative. There are certainly other sexist, racist defenders of a circumscribed canon out there, but also a LOT of profs who teach wide-ranging, canon-busting curricula with passion and rigour. (Gilmour even admits as much himself by pointing the reader “down the hall” to the other teachers.)