Besides wannabe hall monitor Karens, we are now beset by a plague of grumpy old men who belittle women for their accomplishments. The latest is Joseph Epstein, who graduated and received a BA in absentia. What does that mean? Did he get a BA because he took up space? This is a man who believes that homosexuals are the curse of civilization. Now, he can find nothing else to belittle Jill Biden for except that because she has a doctorate in education, she shouldn't call herself a doctor because she hasn't delivered a baby? Well--yes she has--two babies in fact. Since when do you have to be a doctor to deliver a baby? By that logic, police, cabdrivers, and homeless people can call themselves doctors, because representative individuals from all of these groups have all delivered babies, kiddo.
Every women who has ever earned anything has put up with these grumpy old men. In the 1930's, doctors discouraged adolescent girls from going to college, because too much book learning would ruin their uteri (I am not making this up). That was about the time that the AMA engaged in their disinformation campaign smearing midwives and claiming that pregnant women would do better than going to hygienic hospitals, where male doctors would take over their pregnancies, because birth, rather than being a natural part of a female's life cycle, was now a medical disease. Anyone who has ever watched "Call the Midwife," knows that with the establishment of the NHI, came the training of lay midwives, who attended women in their homes. You called the midwife for delivery--she called the doctor if there were any complications. Complications are medical problems. Birth is a natural part of a woman's life cycle.
I remember the first semester I taught at a community college in Brooklyn, the male supervisor sent to critique my class spent an enormous amount of ink claiming that I was dressed inappropriately (I wore a sky-blue knee length skirt and a long-sleeved black shirt, with blue pumps). This from a man with sketchy personal hygiene, ripped jeans, and a dirty plaid shirt dotted with cigarette burns, an addict who smoked during his class (right in front of the "No smoking, no drinking, no eating in the classroom" sign). Why--because he could He had tenure. A few years later, the then chair of Hunter College started his evaluation of my class with the observation that "the lecture hall had an insufficient amount of oxygen in it." Why--because he could. He was the chair. Of course, I have received a plethora of praiseful enthusiastic, positive reviews (one, from a professor who became the president of CUNY who started her observation with, "I was treated to an enjoyable lecture by Prof. Kahn.....)"
Community colleges are difficult places to ply one's trade. Dr. Biden--note the proper title--, like all females, is belittled by the grumpy college students who call her (in rate my professor) "a very bad teacher, half her student(sic) falling the class (sic). I'm in good company.