Woolbright,+Meg.+The+Politics+of+Tutoring..+Feminism+within+the+Patriarchy

Woolbright, Meg. "The Politics of Tutoring: Feminism Within the Patriarchy." WCJ 13.1 (1992): 16-30. In Murphy, Christina and Joe Law. Landmark Essays on Writing Centers: 227-239.

Woolbright details a tutoring session in which a tutor (graduate student I assume from context) who is committed to feminist principles attempts to negotiate those principles with her authoritative role. Though she "helps" her student to write a feminist interpretation of a Hemingway text, she does so by taking an authoritative stance and instead, according to the tutor, "wrote the paper for her" (235). Woolbright suggests that this is due to the tutor's entrenchment in the patriarchy, being concerned about the student's success in the class, even though she asserts at the beginning of the session that she wishes the student would go by the student's own notes rather than those of the teacher. Her good intentions (to use Grimm's term) give way to her dependency on the patriarchal power structure, and thus "the result is that at the end of the conference, [the student] is far more alienated from language and from herself than when the conference began" (238). Woolbright suggests that the desire for 'correct' answers should have been named in the conference, because to not do so is to be complicit in the patriarchal structure.