The NJCL’s Devaluation of Women
As female classicists, we deserve better.
Part I of II
Countless times this year in my high school Latin class, my peers and I have discussed yet another problematic organization or publication in the Classics sphere. Unfortunately, I cannot say I’m surprised by the National Junior Classical League’s intense gendering of activities at their 2020 convention.
I am just deeply disappointed.
There are multiple toxic elements to their program, but most immediately shocking is one of their “couples costume” options: Pygmalion and Galatea. This myth, of a misogynistic sculptor crafting a sex toy and rape victim, is emblematic of larger patterns within the convention. In almost every female-designated role or dramatic monologue they provide, the NJCL implicitly and explicitly sexualizes a woman’s value (especially troubling given the age of the convention’s participants). By doing this, and by also presenting toxic material for male students, they create a blatantly hostile environment for young women in Classics.
The first way they accomplish this is by portraying women as ultimately helpless objects of sexual desire. Galatea is literally immobile as Pygmalion, framed by the NJCL as her lover, rapes her (and continues to do so once she gains sentience). Since Pygmalion is both like a father to Galatea and also lusts after her (he carves her out of stone to have sex with her), the story holds some troubling implications beyond the objectification and sexual assault.
Marking monologues as “male” or “female” serves no practical purpose except to betray organizers’ preconceived notions of gender.
Then, there is the NJCL’s extremely binary approach to the Dramatic Interpretation and costume contests in their convention programming. Why is the Dramatic Interpretation contest classified by gender when the pieces in their Latin Oratory contest are titled by difficulty? Perhaps the NJCL is concerned performers deviating from societally imposed expectations of their assigned sex will violate the “sanctity” of the myth. Meanwhile, they violate the sanctity of the female mind by promoting a rapist and victim as boyfriend and girlfriend. As for the Oratory competition, if they were to follow the same logic, they would have to mark all the pieces as “male,” since women were never given a spot at the Ancient Roman podium. That seems not to have changed much.
Marking monologues as “male” or “female” serves no practical purpose except to betray organizers’ preconceived notions of gender. Although a female-identifying participant is allowed to dress up as any character in their costume competition, the characters selected for the contest speak volumes. Furthermore, there is no space in the competition for non-binary students and nearly every other option is insulting to a female classicist. All the male pieces contain platitudes about “great men” who wage war and gloriously rule Rome. In contrast, all but two of the female-designated pieces come from Clive Harcourt Carruthers’s Latin translation of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. In all of the pieces drawn from this source, Alice is hopelessly confused after being thrown into the title fantasy world. For the past four and a half years I have worked just as hard in Latin as any of my male peers, and offering Alice alongside serious (if deeply problematic) myths and histories is incredibly condescending.
Although not the subject of this article, I’d like to recognize the scholarship around whether Lewis Carroll was a pedophile, and that in writing Alice he fulfilled a pedophilic fantasy. Jenny Woolf of Smithsonian Magazine provided an excellent summary of these ideas in 2010.
The NJCL’s treatment of young women in their dramatic interpretation contest is offensive, dangerous, and encouraging a potent form of toxic masculinity that already pervades Classics.
Finally, in the Male Poetry section of their dramatic interpretation competition, NJCL includes a passage from Ovid’s Ars Amatoria. This piece, essentially a guide for how to “pick up” women in Ancient Rome, is horrific in its transparent condoning of rape. Even though the text is often characterized as an “amusing” satire, to encourage male students to perform it is sickening. Regardless of how serious its contents were meant to be taken, misogynistic “pick-up artists” treat the Art of Love as a kind of holy grail.
The NJCL’s treatment of young women in their dramatic interpretation contest is offensive, dangerous, and encouraging a potent form of toxic masculinity that already pervades Classics. They should not have to be told this, but this material is unacceptable, and I urge the organization to change its programming.
Otherwise, I shudder at the thought of what submissions they might receive for their “Modern Myth” contest.
For the second part of this series, click here.
For an in-depth annotated bibliography on violence against women in antiquity (including an analysis of the Ars Amatoria and Metamorphoses), please read mine and Olivia Shuman’s piece on Diotíma.
