Should feminist teachers talk about feminism? And should we show emotion about it?

[JeanneTheRabidFeminist]

I'm really interested in this topic of how feminism and teaching should interact.

Recently, there's been a thread where we've ended up talking about how feminists who teach English Lit (which is my subject) ought to teach. It's tricky to work out, because there's personal ideology, and also (obviously) there's a feminist theory of lit crit. I imagine the same is true of other subjects - so you could be teaching feminist theory without teaching about your own beliefs.

We also got onto the subject of whether or not teachers should show personal emotions - eg., being upset when discussing rape. I'm really conflicted about this, as I know emotion has gendered connotations, but I also think seeing someone who's teaching you getting upset is not great.

Related to this, off MN I've been talking to a friend about trigger warnings, and she's really concerned that these have a bad effect on free debate, and that you shouldn't have them in a lecture context. I disagree quite strongly, but it's the same issue of how on earth we cope with the fact that some teaching is going to raise emotional issues.

What do you think? How would you feel about someone getting emotional while teaching?

Oh - I definitely remember some angry teachers who went too far!

But, I think it's different, isn't it, whether we remember them, and how we felt about it at the time.

There are loads of things teachers did that at the time I didn't blink at, and I now think, wow, that was terrible.

I can remember my English teacher talking about section 28 and deliberately flouting it and telling us she was doing so and why. She was visibly angry but it was clear it wasn't with us, it was an expression of how passionately she felt that this was an injustice. I admired her for that at the time (and still do).