Why Ms. in my classroom makes me uncomfortable

Ms. magazine is in my classroom.  And not just in a "Hey, let's read this article published in Ms. and have a class discussion about it!" but as in "You are required to enroll in Ms.' digital classroom as part of this class...and that'll be $15, btw."  And I feel kinda like...well, like I just drank one too many syllabus + business strategy + liberal feminism cocktails.

Don't get me wrong - there is a special place in my feminist heart for Ms.  It's like the Auntie who pushed to close the gender pay gap and advocated for shared heterosexual household labor and encouraged a bunch of her women friends to get into politics, because that's totally what Ms. did.  So maybe she's a liiiiitle single issue sometimes, and maybe she keeps posting front covers that are kiiiiinda unfortunate (Obama as Superman?  Pepto-pink backgrounds?  And why is Alice Walker staring up at Gloria Steinem?  Second editorship doesn't necessitate the punishment of having to eternally gaze at Steinem's grill.), and her feminism can be a biiiiiit culturally imperialist at times, but you know that you can down a couple of margaritas with her, have a serious chat, and then dance it out.  You'll still disagree, but she's your Auntie and you can't help but love her, even when you are pretty sure she's wrong.  Besides - she made it possible for you to rock your feminism now.  How can you not adore her?

So my queasiness is not specifically about Ms. itself, but more about the limitations of our market politics and what sort of choices Ms. has had to make to expand their readership and keep making the monies.  Specifically, I'm talking about their Digital Classroom.

(Let's put aside the fact that the whole point and beauty of classrooms is that they are not digital or made out of fancy computer pixel dust, but real, filled with real people, all captured in live, up-to-the minute, honest-to-goodness three-dimensional action.  Ahem.  But I digress.)

First, on the sign-up page for the digital classroom access, it explains how educators get a free subscription for enrolling their class.  And students have to pay $15.  Clearly that doesn't make sense because, from my general observations, professors actually have salaries, while graduate and undergraduate students don't, but then, statistically speaking, students far outnumber professors per classroom.  I know I shouldn't knock them for a business decision, and I shouldn't snipe at $15 when most textbooks are a racket industry anyway, but it makes me sad thinking how Ms. seriously thought, "Hey, let's entice a bunch of professors to sign up by making it free, but then we'll charge the students so we can turn a tidy profit."  Not only does this look bad for Ms., but it also makes me uncomfortable that professors are down with this.  Would I, as en educator, ever agree to sign up for something that is free to me but will require a fee from each of my students (with the obligatory exception of free Ben & Jerry's, should Ben & Jerry ever create a digital classroom, and, if so, please God let me live to see it)?  Perhaps I'm too close to the student role to answer this with certainty, but I'd like to think I'd at least sleep on it.

It's not the $15 that bothers me as much as the mandate that I join.  Now, I agree we should support feminist work.  And we should support Ms. magazine in an era where Playboy has a circulation that is 15 times greater.  A world where more people by Playboy than Ms. is sad, and a world without Ms. would be even sadder.  But does our world need Ms. to be a required classroom text?  Every other feminist endeavor requires reflection...but Ms. doesn't appear to invite critical reflection in joining their Digital Classroom.  They just want professors to sign up, and a lot of them, so that even more students students will have to join, too.  What if there is no conversation about what Ms. in our classroom means to us?  

Or, for that matter, what it means to study Ms., to even be tested on it?  The online classroom isn't just access to articles and back issues, but it really does see itself as an academic text, one that is explicitly testable.  The educator account includes access to sample quiz questions and writing assignment ideas.  Ms. as a teaching supplement, perhaps.  But as an academic authority?  I thought magazines were supposed to be informative, or, at times, entertainment...not a series of facts and names to remember like some history text book.  It is the real-world concepts that Ms. exposes us to that are its most important contributions, and these can't be easily tested in multiple choice format.  And while I fiercely advocate breaking the academic/non-academic divide in our syllabi and classroom content, the Ms. digital classroom wasn't exactly what I had in mind.  (It's not really 'non-academic' if only college-educated white women read it...right?).

Maybe one day I'll work for Ms.  Or be published in Ms.  Or take money from the Feminist Majority Foundation.  And if that day comes, I will eat crow.

But at least I will have asked the hard questions.  You know, like a feminist would.