There is now a lengthy thread on the WPA-L about honorifics, choices, and when to use Dr. It began with a post about Dr. Jill Biden and her use of Dr. in professional appearances with her husband. I believe the mild uproar is due to people seeing her appearance as social when it clearly is a professional obligation, making her earned title appropriate.

As the thread on WPA-L lengthened, it became very clear that female Ph.D.s are being perceived differently by students and others, enough so that an increased use of the title is warranted. The same stories with different names and different locations seem to be happening, and it is a powerful thing to know it’s not just you. If the thread isn’t in the WPA-L archives yet, it will be, and it is very much worth reading. To add my story to the list, I once had a student (male, it’s always male) ask me if I’m doing this teaching thing as a hobby, you know, something to fill the time. He really couldn’t get it in his head that I AM FACULTY, the same kind of faculty as Dr.-Mr. down the hall. He also had a difficult time calling me Dr. and repeatedly called me Mrs. Cadle, which is wrong in every way since Cadle is my maiden name. He of course responded that he only called me Mrs. out of respect, making my insistence on Dr. a petty idiosyncrasy on my part, since, after all, I’m not a MD. However, Dr. is what faculty members on my campus who have Ph.Ds are customarily called. Taken to this extreme, it can only be seen as aggressive resistance on the students’ part to the idea of female faculty, kind of like the old talking pink horses jokes.

I know this is a long and, yes, possibly petty-sounding anecdote, but is it not unique; it happens to many, many women in academia. I wasn’t dressed inappropriately, and that’s another subject that I’ll just shorten into the phrase, “not that mode of dress should matter.” There are respected (male) colleagues here who wear track pants, and more power to them. No, I don’t think it has anything to do with appearance or any subtle unprofessional conduct on my part. I’m well over thirty. I have more than one black suit. When I introduced myself to the class I introduced myself as Dr. I see no way to blame this common misperception/lack of respect on me, although with time it is less and less common for me. Unfortunately, it is still common for women PhD.s in general, and the lack of respect isn’t connected to anything anyone is doing wrong outside of being born female.

Oddly, I’ve come to terms with this and continue to use Dr. in my undergraduate classes. It really doesn’t happen as much as it used to, so maybe I’ve perfected my withering look. However, the lack of respect is always simmering below the surface. Just yesterday I had a student refuse to leave the computer classroom when my class was going to start. “I’m just about to print something.” Hmmm. There is a lab in an adjacent room so I can accept initial ignorance, but not continued encroaching. I gave him a warning five minutes before class started and ten minutes later, he was still there. I eventually had to get tougher and tell him that if he added my class he could stay, but otherwise, it was more than time to leave.Yes, I used humor to mock him out of the room. I simply don’t understand such behavior, unless it is framed in a consumer-culture reference where I am seen as an uppity lab assistant, or a lack of belief in the possibility that a woman could be in a position of authority, which seems to be the underlying issue for all this. I guess since I wasn’t HIS teacher I wasn’t the boss of him. *sigh*

Just to make this all a bit more complicated, I feel less comfortable sticking to the Dr. in my graduate classes. They are in the process of creating professional identities, and one of the things that happens is seeing professors more as co-researchers and co-mentors within the field. There are some professors in my grad school past I called by first name and some I did not, and I think that having the option for more informality is important. At the same time, when I was Acting Director of Composition, I stuck to Dr. across the board as a symbol of respect for the position. Now that I’m not in that administrative position, I’m trying to let go of the Dr. in my grad classes. Especially in the Digital Rhetorics and Pedagogies class, it seems counterproductive because of the strong stance for “mentors instead of masters” that the field of Computers and Writing has. However, as I read story after heartbreakingly funny yet sad story from my female Ph.D. peers on the WPA list, I wonder if I’m throwing away something valuable by not holding the line on being called Dr. In any case, Dr. Jill Biden earned her degree and with it the right to use it.