Testifying to the virtues of teaching at an all-women's college (Mills College, Oakland, California), a male tenured professor of communication and film acknowledges the necessity of making difficult decisions concerning course content and focus. Through several uncomfortable experiences, he has learned what it is like to be gender conscious; he has also felt the frustration of being excluded from certain types of relationships with his students. Many of the courses at Mills take a distinctly gender focus, but some courses should be taught that are not especially tailored to an all-women's student body. In film courses, for instance, a mostly male canon is still the rule, since students cannot go on to graduate school unfamiliar with John Ford, Orson Welles, Ingmar Bergman, Spike Lee and others who have introduced important stylistic innovations. Nevertheless, socially corrective judgments can be made: D. W. Griffith's "Intolerance" can be shown instead of "The Birth of a Nation"; "Gone with the Wind," despite its portrayal of Scarlett O'Hara as both a scheming bitch and hard-nosed survivor, can be shown instead of contemporary blockbusters that do little but exploit the image of women. Furthermore, student participation can be encouraged to offset the imbalance in courses in which the primary material features mostly male voices. Teachers and students can also use the mostly male canons to analyze what criteria have been used to measure success over the years. (TB)