Dale Spender, an Australian feminist who has been a strong advocate of female rights in this area, noted that teachers who tried to restore the balance by deliberately ‘favouring’ the girls were astounded to find that despite their efforts they continued to devote more time to the boys in their classrooms. Another study reported that a male science teacher who managed to create an atmosphere in which girls and boys contributed more equally to discussion felt that he was devoting 90 per cent of his attention to the girls. And so did his male pupils. They complained vociferously that the girls were getting too much talking time.
In other public contexts, too, such as seminars and debates, when women and men are deliberately given an equal amount of the highly valued talking time, there is often a perception that they are getting more than their fair share. Dale Spender explains this as follows:
The talkativeness of women has been gauged in comparison not with men but with silence. Women have not been judged on the grounds of whether they talk more than men, but of whether they talk more than silent women.
In other words, if women talk at all, this may be perceived as ‘too much’ by men who expect them to provide a silent, decorative background in many social contexts. This may sound outrageous, but think about how you react when precocious children dominate the talk at an adult party. As women begin to make inroads into formerly ‘male’ domains such as business and professional contexts, we should not be surprised to find that their contributions are not always perceived positively or even accurately.
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[x] (via neighborly) As a teacher, I give girls what I hope is a lot of attention. I don’t know if I give girls their fair share, but I aspire to, especially after noticing that boys are willing to use their greater share of teachers’ attention to get girls who they feel aren’t being quiet and docile enough punished. I have therefore acquired a reputation for “caring more about the girls.” This has had two marked results: Some straight boys have gotten more hostile toward me, and most girls have gotten more confident around me. This makes me think I’m doing something right. Longer thoughts on how this phenomenon relates to sexual harassment in classrooms, if you’re interested: The girls figured out I won’t report them if they hit boys who are sexually harassing them, I’ll only report the boys. This led to an increase in how often girls got the last word and boys got smacked in my classes, and, also, to a DECREASE IN HOW OFTEN GIRLS GOT SEXUALLY HARASSED. The sexual harassers seem to have been depending on the sort of “equal blame” and “retaliation is never warranted” and “don’t hurt others’ feelings” perspectives so many schools try to instill in kids; the sexual harassers were usually the ones bringing me into the situation by saying, “Miss, she hit me! You should write her up!” Once they figured out I was only ever going to respond, “If you don’t treat girls like that, they won’t hit you,” the girls got more confident and the sexual harassers largely shut the fuck up. In schools, fighting against sexual harassment is often punished exactly the same as, or more severely than, sexual harassment — a lot of discipline codes make no distinction between violence and violence in self-defence, and violence is ALWAYS the highest level of disciplinary infraction, whereas verbal sexual harassment rarely is. Sexual harassers, at least in the schools I’ve been in, rely heavily on GETTING GIRLS IN TROUBLE WITH HIGHER AUTHORITIES as a strategy of harassment — creating an external punishment that penalises girls for and therefore discourages girls from fighting back. Sexual harassers are willing to use their greater share of floorspace to ask to get girls who won’t date them punished. By and large, teachers do punish those girls when they swear or hit. Schools condition girls to ignore sexual harassment by punishing them when they speak up or fight back instead. Once the sexual harassers in my classes understood that girls wouldn’t be punished for rejecting them, they backed off around me. And there started to be a flip in what conversations I get called into — girls are telling me when boys are being nasty (too loud and dominant), instead of boys telling me when girls are being uncooperative (louder and more dominant than boys think they should be). (via torrentofbabies) reblogging again for the wonderful commentary. (via partysoft) To the writer of this extensive comment, I’d just like to say this speaks to me on a very personal level, understanding what these students are going through. I myself have suffered from a great deal of gender discrimination in school and as it’s my last year of highschool now I feel like I should reflect and share some of my experiences for your reading pleasure. The earliest instance I can remember started in 4th grade with the most blatantly sexist teacher I’ve had the misfortune to know. I had been called out on and been in the principals office more times than I could count for things I rarely ever did that I saw my peers doing all the time because of my gender. Also in that year I can remember my teacher making our school work harder for me and getting all the hard questions it was obvious no one knew, while I watched these same peers not notice as they were given straight A’s for the simplest assignments consistently for a whole year.
5th 6th and 7th went without similar incident for the most part because I’d managed to find a decent school environment. 8th grade came around and I can remember being late to leave school, it only being my classmate (who’s name will be left unsaid) and I at at the time. I can remember finding myself put in a full nelson by said classmate soon after and being held against the cold steel lockers, not even realizing what was going on. I can remember that moment very clearly and I can say with a fair amount of certainty that if my mother hadn’t walked into the room to fetch me I’d have a far worse story to tell you all. (said classmate was later expelled for having sex in the cabinet of the English room) I remember “joking” about the moment with other classmates, no one believing me or saying I was overreacting and the like and to this day I have a peer who used to flat out shove me into the hallway walls because I was “In the way” who has decided it is her god given right to hug me whenever she feels like it despite my constant insistence for her to stop. And I have had tons of people tell me I’m overreacting to this too even though considering some of the things mentioned here, surprise non consensual contact seems justified. Anyone reading this right now is thinking…something, I honestly don’t know what and it’s not my business, but if you’re angry about my story I won’t disagree with you. I lived it. I know people of all kinds live this, and worse, on a daily basis. But I think we need to be more careful when it comes to trying to “level the playing field” so we don’t swing too far the wrong way and just make another group of victims. No girl should ever have to go through what I went through, we can all agree on that, but I ask you to consider this: I’m a guy, I don’t want to be the replacement victim. Thank you… |
