What Women?

Marcia Yudkin remembers almost choking at Cornell

- Marcia Yudkin

"We should look upon the female state as having as it were a deformity, though one which occurs in the ordinary course of nature." - Aristotle, The Generation of Animals, 4th century BCE

When I was a student there in the Seventies, every other Monday evening the Cornell University Philosophy Department convened in a tournament called ‘Discussion Club’. The event began promptly at 8 o’clock. The night’s presenter would gallop out onto the field for no more than twenty minutes, kicking up dust with a position on so-and-so’s objections to whoever’s theory of such-and-such. Then a challenger trotted out for ten minutes, letting his banners fly as he charged the lead rider with cunning thrusts of reasoning. Then anyone present could jump in with prances or parries, lunging with their logical lances or just strutting their smarts. At the close of action at 10 o’clock, rarely was anyone declared a victor or some truth acclaimed by the crowd. But scored points mattered, and carried over in the minds of all the regulars, bout after bout.

“We should look upon the female state as having as it were a deformity, though one which occurs in the ordinary course of nature.”
– Aristotle, The Generation of Animals, 4th century BCE

At the door of the classroom where the joust took place, some junior fighter had been delegated to hand out cigars, on which even men who did not normally smoke puffed while watching and participating. Alice, Joanne, and I – the three women in the first-year graduate student class – would sit at the back, cranking open windows and waving as much smoke out of the room as we could.

Attending this event month after month, we women choked in more ways than one.

Coming To Cornell