From: Peter Calamai, Southam News, Ottawa

Re: Latest claims of female superiority

It looks bad this time fellows. They've come out ahead again. It sure doesn't appear to be a fluke. Women are more literate than men. (p.29)

In thinking about women and literacy/education, we have to consider how heterosexism operates, as well as the gendered construction of work. Typically, women are "kept down" by the men in their lives. The "dumb broad" may well be smarter than him, but, if she's "smart," she daren't let him know it. The risk for women in going to classes can be considerable. Men say that they want their wives home to care for the children, but many men are also threatened by the fear that they will lose control over "their women"; ownership of their minds, as well as their bodies. The threat of education to men - and women's desire for it - is harrowingly portrayed in the true story of Francine Hughes for whom the desire to continue to go to school was so strong that, when her husband beat and humiliated her, repeatedly insisting that she stop going to school, she finally murdered him.

The threat of women's learning to the male ego is comically portrayed in the film, Educating Rita, it's a story I've heard over my years of interviewing women, and it's a story I've lived.

From my research in literacy over me years, I've come to think of "literacy as threat/desire" for many women in heterosexual relationships, particularly where further education would mean that they had acquired more schooling than their husbands. The experience of literacy as threat/desire differs fundamentally from the experience for men, where literacy is not bound up in some dynamic of longing and repression that it is for women. This difference is born of male dominance, often in its crudest forms. While Francine Hughes' story is extreme, the dynamic it reflects is a common one: women longing to become educated, to transform their lives, and repressing that longing because of the opposition of the men they love, and the fear that taking an independent step could mean the breakup of their family. Sometimes the opposition they experience is subtle; often it takes the form of a fist Literacy as education for women, poses a threat to male hegemony in the family; a threat to male dominance that few male egos can withstand. Men do not want their women to be more educated; they do not want their authority in the household challenged.

When I've talked about "literacy as threat/desire" (that is, the desire of women for literacy and the threat of violence, subtle or overt, posed to them by the men their lives if they actually act on it by attending programs), I've been met by women at a range of educational levels who've told me that the story reflects their own experience. While I don't want to deny that women seeking to improve their literacy are in a different situation from women seeking higher education, the divide of class does not erase - or account for - the control men demand over our bodies and minds. As long as men are threatened by the prospect of our independence whether it be an independence of mind, body, spirit or the material independence of having our own source of income, education, as the potential conveyor of these resources (whether real or imagined), poses a threat to established patterns of male dominance. There are women in my graduate classes for whom their education is a threat to their relationships. Divorces are not uncommon, as many of us know, when the woman chooses to pursue her education; sometimes that pursuit follows a divorce when the woman decides, at last, to do something for herself.

I still hear Maria's words of longing echo - "I want to be somebody, you know" - a refrain I've heard repeatedly in various forms over the years. For women, the desire for education comes with a longing to be SOME/BODY. Why, I wonder. Are our bodies so stomped upon that we feel we are NO ONE without education? And then...? How does heterosexism play into all of this? Men so desperately needing to be "right", to "know", yes, to appear, at all cost, to be "competent" - to what extent is it at the cost of the lives of the women in his life?

To return to the original theme of this essay, the establishing of one quarter of our population as "illiterates" as OTHER, I want to find ways past this. Looking at the commonalities and differences in our situations as women is crucial. I think, too, that we have to shift our focus from literacy to education; and from functional to critical practices. Yes, reading and writing are important, especially for women who desire to "be educated" more than men do. (Il)literacy has become so overworked a concept that it's not meaningless - quite the opposite - it's laden with the ideology of non-personhood, of threat, of cost, of danger to "our" well-being. Its reference to the specific skills of reading and writing has been lost; to label 1/4 of women in Canada as illiterate is to drive a great class divide among women. While we must not lose sight of class differences, we must guard against naming material differences as differences in competence in everyday knowledge and functioning, in ability. It is also to create a city of the "other," a social, cultural and educational ghetto. The middle classes are offered college courses in English; the poor, literacy classes - if they're lucky.