Let me begin with a piece of lore, a pedagogical anecdote: In an introductory composition course that I taught at a mid-sized, southeastern regional university, my students and I were discussing providing evidence for arguments in upcoming papers and the kinds of evidence that were available to them. During our discussion, I asked students to pretend that they were writing a paper that argued for more funding for AIDS research and asked them what kinds of evidence they would include. Several students mentioned statistics about the number of HIV positive people and statistics about the increasing rates of infection. Others remarked that they could quote doctors like C.Everett Koop or famous personalities such as Magic Johnson or Elizabeth Taylor. One student then raised his hand and asked, “Could you write about homosexuals?” Both his smirk and his tone suggested his distaste of the topic, his deigning to speak of such an unseemly subject necessary only because of the hypothetical paper topic. It was as if he attempted to say “homosexuals” without the sound of the word actually touching the inside of his mouth: “ho-mo-SEX-u-als,” followed by an unseen but clearly implied shudder. (I might note here that this particular student had issued several strongly conservative positions at this point in the semester, although never before in such a self-righteous, mocking manner.) As a young teacher and a self-identified lesbian, my first impulse was to avoid what was about to follow, to sum up his point in a tolerant way for him, and to bulldoze on past; yet as a feminist teacher,

I did not want to misrepresent his position, and I also did not want to leave unacknowledged what was already a prejudicial slur. So, I asked him, “What about homosexuals?” His somewhat surprised response, his seeming not to believe that I might not understand the implication, marched out in four/four time: “Well, what they do.” My rejoinder: “What do you mean exactly, Chris? That they go to work, that they go to the grocery store, that they go out to dinner? What exactly?” He floundered for a response, his face blotchy and also, I think, his reality questioned. This moment and others before and since it where hate speech has been issued in my classes have spawned a crisis of faith for me. I strive to treat my students in the manner that I advocate for the culture treat all its citizens, respectfully, honorably, seriously. After all, part of my ideol/pedagogical mission aims at convincing the students themselves (they, as am I, are in part forming that culture) to do the same. But, if I aim at creating not just egalitarian classrooms but liberatory classrooms, hoping that in some small way such action pushes for an egalitarian, liberating culture, how do I, in a nonhypocritical way, interact with students who seek to subvert my objective? If indeed I am a feminist teacher who respects difference, should I not then respect difference of opinion and allow such speech to stand in my classrooms? If I squelch such hate speech, am I heaving my feminist principles just to prescribe beliefs that I hold, like some kind of patriarchal thought police? Do I subvert my own liberatory teaching theory when I judge what is ethically acceptable speech from my students and what is not?