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Show 173 WHEN YOU'RE THE ONLY MAN IN A SESSION ON WOMEN'S MYSTICISM: 13™ CENTURY TO PRESENT, the first thing you have to think about is where you want to sit. There are five parabolic rows of maroon chairs spreading from the presentation table like sound waves from which to choose. Do you assert your patriarchal position front and center right away, or lurk in the insidious backroom margins, as though just keeping tabs on an otherwise man-free zone, making sure nothing gets out of control? Then there is right in the middle, but maybe that gives off the impression that you have no interest at all in women's mysticism, that you're there because you heard it would be a good place to pick up women. You're distressed by how judgmental you've imagined some of these scholars of women's mysticism to be. After all, you have a legitimate academic interest in Women's Mysticism: 13th Century to Present. Although, if you can be hypothetically disparaged for coming to a panel solely to pick up women, does that somehow mean there's something to it? Women's mysticism scholars are hot, and you think you remember someone telling you that at least one in ten people in a session on Women's Mysticism: 13th Century to Present is straight. |