Hmm …

… How Sexism and Machismo Shaped the Iowa Writers’ Workshop | The New Republic. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Aggression’s first chapter focuses on a woman: Flannery O’Connor, the Workshop’s most famous graduate. A college graduate from Milledgeville, Georgia, and a devout Catholic, O’Connor, who enrolled in the Workshop in 1945, was “the brilliant misfit” in a class full of ex-GIs, men whom a classmate remembered as “a pretty riotous bunch, very hard-living people.” She dreaded reading her work in class and often asked a male classmate to read for her. When she did read aloud from what would become her first novel, Wise Blood, Engle was shocked at her description of a sexual seduction. Aiming to correct what he saw as inaccuracies—stemming from what he supposed was “a lovely lack of knowledge”—he called her into his office, then suggested they adjourn to his car, where she might feel more comfortable speaking about her own sexual history. O’Connor went with him, but said nothing about her own sex life, nor did she revise her fiction. She went on to win the O. Henry Award three times and the National Book Award for fiction in 1972.

A lot of the “boys” described herein sound like tough-guy-wannabes. Genuine tough guys — I’ve known a few — don’t advertise. They just get going when the going gets tough.