“Doing it Herself: Cultivating a Feminist Ecological Ethos as a Female Graduate Student”

by Sarah Fischer, Laura Rosche, and Megan McCool | Xchanges 15.1, Spring 2020

Relation-Relating: Megan’s Story

For Ryan, Myers, and Jones (2016), relating emphasizes the ways that women rhetors’ ethē are “socially constructed” (p. 195). For a female rhetor, therefore, three general modes of relating with people develop: “collaboration, connection, and coalitions or alliances” (p. 195). Thankfully, I have been lucky enough to experience these different modes of relating throughout my life. But as I reflect upon my time during graduate school, I have realized that these three ways of relating have been bound up together, inextricably linked in the relationships that have helped me to cultivate a feminist ecological ethos in graduate school.

Collaborating with Sarah and Laura is a way of relating I have relied on to breathe life into the isolating moments that can often accompany academic work. I have spent countless hours speaking with both of them about the ideas we were grappling with in our coursework. They are the ones who help me see things I missed in my own readings of texts. They are the ones who continually push me to think about ideas that matter. Collaborating in these ways has allowed us to connect over shared experiences of being in the same graduate program but also our shared interests in feminism and social justice that extend beyond the work we do as graduate students.

Finally, Ryan, Myers, and Jones (2016) remind us the last general mode of relating for female rhetors is through coalitions or alliances (p. 196). Due to the collaborative and connective nature of our relationships, coalitional and allied aspects of our friendship have been a natural progression. Laura’s choice to interrupt the rhetorical tradition in her qualifying exam helped pave the way for future members in our program to do the same. Additionally, when my apathy was stronger than my desire to understand if there was a pedagogical reason for our lack of female-authored texts, Sarah took the collaborative and connective mode of relating a step further into a coalitional approach that enacted feminist principles in our daily lives. While this coalitional kind of relating isn’t always met with a warm reception, these strong feminist friendships have helped me uncover some of the small ways one can rely on daily feminist actions to foster an ecological ethos. Female rhetors’ relation-relating has taken various forms I haven’t discussed due to my own limited experience, but I hold on to the hope that everyone can develop supportive, empowering relationships with the people in their lives. Because you are not alone. You belong here.