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I did not graduate from an all-girls school. I graduated from a women’s college.

The distinction between those two becomes more than just a case of bandying words. It can be a distinction of identity, a motivating force or a defensive explanation. It can even serve as a call to ideological arms. Most often, though, the distinction materializes in the form of a correction.

“Don’t you miss men at your all-girls school?” an unsuspecting person might ask.

“Women’s college,” I would politely, but firmly, correct them.

“So, Kristin, what classes are you taking this semester at your all-girls school?” a distant relative might inquire over lunch.

“Women’s college,” I felt impelled to reply before I could move on to answer his question.

And so on, in countless variations. At the end of four years of undergradu- ate education at a women’s college, this obsessive desire for the correct term has become automatic. It becomes the most obvious signal of the general outlook that women’s education fosters. I call this way of thinking “The Feminist Reflex.”

That the Feminist Reflex is a shared phenomenon became clear to me when I attended a conference alongside my fellow tutors for our college’s Speaking Center. One of our peers, a male student leading a particular seminar, made the mistake of wishing to clarify that my coworkers and I represented an all-girls school.

“Women’s college,” one of my coworkers cut in without hesitation. Every female in the room hooted with laughter and broke into applause.

It seems that women’s colleges always feel the need to come out swinging. They must forever defend their existence by outlining the value of single-sex education to review boards, funding sources, the press, parents of prospective students and prospective students themselves. From the moment she accepts her offer of admission to a women’s college, a new student has signed on for a long tenure in defensive mode. It begins with her fellow high school seniors: Is she crazy? Why on earth would she want to attend a school without men? Is she a lesbian? Does she think she’ll become one? All too often, it seems the prospect of attending class in one’s pajamas without giving it a second thought is not enough to answer for the old-fashioned yet somehow radical notion of single-sex learning. Small wonder, then, that we women’s college advocates begin to develop a Feminist Reflex very early in the process.

The Reflex isn’t just made up of excuses. It stems from much deeper philosophical roots, nourished by the noticeably feminist angle attached to everything a women’s college has to offer. It grows in a community that counts Women’s Studies as an academic major, in which Shakespeare’s role not as the greatest writer of all time but as the mouthpiece for a patriarchal early-modern society is an accepted basic premise. The Feminist Reflex examines everyone’s assumptions, quickly takes offense, refuses to just let things go—much to the annoyance of anyone, male or female, who has not spent four years in that kind of environment and who only wishes to make polite conversation at the dinner table.

When my father proudly informed his friends that I had accepted my offer of admission from Agnes Scott College in Atlanta, they couldn’t resist a few jokes over their beers.

“Uh-oh Jim,” came the argument as they good-naturedly jabbed him in the ribs, “you’ll have a bra-burning radical on your hands for sure.”

I didn’t burn any bras during my time at Agnes Scott, nor did anyone else—bras are expensive for one thing, and an Atlanta city ordinance restricts open fires. But the lack of incinerated lingerie results more from the fact that in spite of all the combative defensiveness, the presence of campus organizations like the Feminist Majority Leadership Alliance, the “radical” professors and an environment overflowing with estrogen, equality for women was not something we discussed much. Not because we didn’t care about feminist issues: I certainly do, and many of my friends were Women’s Studies majors. We didn’t talk about feminism because, paradoxically enough, at a women’s college, feminist issues don’t come to mind very often outside of class or extracurricular activities.

Let me explain. Feminism, as I see it, reacts against the basic notion that women are somehow inherently inferior to men, and objects to any patronizing way of enforcing that view. Not too difficult to get behind. A feminist generally also feels that women are just as worthy as—and perhaps, when we’re feeling good about ourselves, even a tad bit smarter than—men. This idea pervades everything about a women’s college, and it gives rise to the Feminist Reflex: We are not girls, you patronizing jerk, but women, embodying the full range of maturity and glory that word implies.

But here’s the thing...at a women’s college, I suddenly found myself surrounded by strong, intelligent females who could easily conquer the world but still made time for weekly gatherings to watch old Disney movies. I discussed matters of great importance with them during class. I ate lunch with them every day. I went out on the town with them at night. And amazingly enough, we never sat around plotting the violent demise of the patriarchy. We actually rather liked men. Surrounded by each other, we felt no need to spare much thought for the idea that women could be smart and independent, because that idea seemed so natural as to be almost silly. The stereotypical Feminist Reflex, that tempestuous set of angry questions and defenses, is a byproduct of women’s education. It is never the goal.

The summer after graduation, I worked as a teaching assistant at a summer-school program for gifted students. I had been assigned to the session held at Duke University’s Marine Lab on the coast of North Carolina, teaching the only literature course amidst a group of marine science classes. When I arrived at staff housing the first day to unload my bags, I was delighted to learn that I had been given my own room. The sign on my door, though, gave me pause. The announcement identifying my room was simple, printed in bold black letters on a white piece of paper: “Kristin Hall: The Girl Teaching Assistant.”

Women’s college, my Feminist Reflex automatically corrected.

Immediately my mind flooded with questions. What did it mean that I was the only female teaching assistant in a group of male instructors? Further, what did it mean that I was teaching the only literature course, that there were no female T.A.’s for the science courses? Should I check the signs on the male assistants’ doors, and if their signs said “men” instead of “boys,” did the fact that mine dubbed me a “girl” reveal a chauvinist attitude on the part of the Residential Director?

I laughed at myself. I took a picture of the sign, making a mental note to email it to my friends from Agnes Scott later.

Then I entered my room, unpacked, and prepared to be a knockout at my job. That, after all, is what a women’s college trained me to do. 

A member of the Agnes Scott College class of 2007, Kristin Hall recently returned to Atlanta after earning an M.A. in Shakespeare Studies in Stratford-upon-Avon, England.  She currently works for the Education Department at the New American Shakespeare Tavern.