Erotic Mentoring: women and men in a relationship.(MOVEABLE TYPE)

Male norms and assumptions dominate higher ed, and most senior faculty are men. In Erotic Mentoring: Women's Transformations in the University (Left Coast Press 2006), Dr. Janice Hocker Rushing says women relate to a male "trinity:" university, mentor and internalized critic.

Greek and Roman myths offer images for the ways women on campus let men define them or struggle to define an independent self. They're patriarchal retellings of older myths that once honored the feminine divine.

Like many academic women, Rushing played by the rules, teaching and working nonstop. She wrote about feminism and myth in thick academic style that sanitized her subject matter. "I have found that our stories must be buried in order for us to be 'successful,'" she wrote.

Promotion to full professor, midlife and a published book hit all at once. Suddenly her body went into full revolt. She did no more academic writing for two years. She wanted to play and plant flowers. She wanted to be around women. Erotic Mentoring is about her story and those of women she talked to over the next 10 years. It is personal and accessible, breaking all the rules.

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Molded to men's ideals

Pygmalion was a mythical sculptor who carved his ideal woman from ivory or stone and then fell in love with her. Similarly, the ivory tower and men within it try to shape women to fit their ideals.