[100 Challenge] Roberta Gattel_86

Despite Plato, Adriana Cavarero, 1995

Ten years ago, no female philosophers appeared in the MA curricula of Philosophy at the University of Venice. The study modules included lists of men and women if there were any, who had "collateral" roles to the men: that is, they were their lovers, their wives, or their emulators. In short, it is the same story as state school textbooks where the women's question and the female characters who made history either do not appear or are placed in a box at the end of the page.

In my years in the Philosophy department, I only heard two women mentioned: Hannah Arendt and Simone Weil. The former was presented as Heidegger's lover, and her only book mentioned, "The Banality of Evil," was sponsored as a report on the Holocaust, so much so that for years I remained convinced that Arendt was a journalist, not a philosopher. The second woman was treated like a madwoman - lovers of political correctness called her "mystic" - and her name came up every time someone talked about the philosopher George Bataille, who, in "Blue of Noon," had created the character of Lazzare inspired by Weil. Here, too, it took me years to discover that Simone Weil was a philosopher, a political activist, and not the "classic woman with a religious crisis," as I heard her called by a couple of academic professors.

I wondered why, in those years, I had never informed myself about Weil and Arendt when I used to hyper-inform myself about everything mentioned in class. The answer is simple: developing curiosity towards something presented by those who hold the Knowledge as trivial, irrelevant, or ridiculous is challenging. Those who hold the Knowledge – the university professors - in Italy are almost always men and almost always middle-aged men (72.7% of Italian ordinary teachers are men, according to USTAT data from 2022/2023 https://ustat.mur.gov.it/media/1273/focus_pers_univ2022.pdf, with an average age of 51 years).

Those who hold Knowledge carry forward the History that they have been taught, which also supports their authority and prestige. In Philosophy faculty, at least in the years I attended the department, if you were female, you were always the minority: compared to the culture you approached, to those who held it, to your male classmates. It was as if boys were expected to be there to become philosophers and girls to learn the History of Philosophy. Reasoning was not expected from the girls because the seriousness and abstraction necessary to grasp the essence of Philosophy were not seen in them.

Philosophy was not a course of study but an attitude linked to genetics. And the females didn't have it. They could study Philosophy, of course, but not participate in it. Participating in it was for men. It is no coincidence that, according to the data collected by SWIP in 2019 https://swip-italia.org/, the gender gap in the university philosophy sector is among the most pronounced in Italy, with almost 80% of positions occupied by men, not only concerning ordinary teaching but also with respect to associate teachers, researchers, and doctoral students. How does a woman pursue a career in an industry where her gender is in the minority, the prevailing attitude is sexist, and everything around her reminds her that she shouldn't be there?

In my experience, no one ever told me, "This is not your place," but I was told other things, no less severe. When I received top marks from one of the most demanding teachers in the department, some of my male colleagues laughed contemptuously and told me, "It's because you're female." They didn't recognize my grade as a demonstration of value but as a sign that since I was intellectually inadequate for Philosophy as a female, I had been given a treat, like when you give sugar to the dog who brought your ball back to make sure it continues to be good. The actual votes, those that constituted an accurate comparison parameter, were those given to males.

Other male colleagues told me that I was praised because I was beautiful. The professor was old, and my appearance had touched him. In this case, my intellectual capacity and preparation were not taken into consideration at all. My appearance was a pass, and it was understood that whatever goal I achieved would always be interpreted in this light.

The doubt that my excellent results in Philosophy were linked to the fact that I was considered a second-class student or that my appearance pushed those who evaluated me away from impartialityaccompanied me throughout my university career. With the result that I did not even for a moment consider continuing with a PhD: everything I had done up to that point, all the study, the self-sacrifice, even my degree with Honors seemed to me like a farce, a discount I had received, something I had stolen. I had no merit. This feeling of imposture was also consolidated through the feedback from my friends who underlined the rhetorical skills of my colleagues or admired their intellectual passion while they said nothing about me. “How Luigi becomes so passionate when he talks about Hegel,” said one of my roommates, referring to one of my classmates. “You can see that not only he likes Philosophy, but he lives it,” she said as if I were following another course or couldn't understand that ardor.

For my part, it must be said that I spoke little. Feeling out of place, inadequate, or the center of negative attention, I tried to make myself invisible and not make a spectacle of my "passions," even if they were many and strong. Many philosophy professors confirmed what I perceived as "my inconsistency."

Jokes that began with "Eh, you females..." or "We know that girls think like this, but..." were the order of the day. Once, a teacher commented on my silent scene to a question in the exam session: "Don't you know? Don't worry, Philosophy for girls is always difficult...". While conversing in his study, another teacher rewarded me with sincere confidence; he said, “I respect you, and it's something I never feel for a woman. I find women all very uninteresting.

But you are not like a woman but a man." In this patriarchal scenario, women were not absent. There were female teachers and female colleagues, but, unfortunately, they were rarely helpful. The female teachers experienced to the nth degree what I experienced to a small extent as a student: constant questioning of their abilities and academic curriculum. It is therefore not surprising if, to be taken seriously by students and colleagues, they behaved with greater detachment and severity than their male colleagues or if, in an attempt not to show preferences towards students of the same sex, they tended to be more understanding towards male students.

As for the female colleagues, however, it wasn't easy to help each other and try to band together to form a common front. This inability to sisterhood was linked to a double internalization: on the one hand, the capitalist-patriarchal internalization, widespread in academic circles, according to which I can only win if you lose, which placed us face to face as rivals; on the other, the sexist-patriarchal internalization of man as a true philosopher, which led us to seek validation from the male world to feel accepted and considered in our value. This form of consideration would have had no meaning if received from another girl, as the other girl was also a defective being. “Metaphysics means saying “Mortals,” but also “men” and, finally, “Man,” to mean men and women: because, in the order of physis, which the maternal figure safeguards and brings into the world, there is no woman who is a man. Man, with a neutral masculine/universal value, is the term of a language that has turned its gaze away from the place of birth, measuring existence on an end that is oblivious to its beginning [...]. A symbolic male horizon, therefore, opens up, which feeds on dualism: woman/birth and man/death, body, and thought. […] In a symbolic universe that is only male, the genetic ignorance of women is functional to the symbolic order”.