Can I have more sexism, please?

[TerraPrime]

Re: Marie August

For the record, I am a weak female. I'm not capable of lifting heavy things. So I am not offended when it is correctly assumed that I don't want to do lifting, and that I would not be as capable.

Yes, many women are quite as capable as men. But generally, men do have more upper body strength.

Just because the assumption happens to be correct when applied to you, it does not follow that making that assumption about you is justified. It actually boggles the mind a little bit that you seem to be arguing otherwise, that because you happen to fit the assumption that it's ok if you were the recipient of that assumption.

Plus what eef said

Re: Xray

I am worried that the flappy bit will get caught in the trebuchet's mechanism.

If your bit is floppy when you're in touching distance from the giant wooden trebuchet, then you're just not doing it right.

Re: Every

Looking at the other posts, it kind of seems like this lady makes a habit of feeling imposed upon and/or offended.

Yes, let's use ad hominem argument whereby we show that the person making the argument is a terrible/flakey/un-trustworthy person so that we can then dismiss the actual issue. I find it to be extremely convincing.

[Every]

Re: Every

Yes, let's use ad hominem argument whereby we show that the person making the argument is a terrible/flakey/un-trustworthy person so that we can then dismiss the actual issue. I find it to be extremely convincing.

I just find it interesting that so many of the posts seem to be about taking umbrage at some very small imposition or slight. I also find it very ironic that she seems to be comprehensively following her own 'five steps to misery and unhappiness'. Is considering the previous history of a writer automatically an ad hominem attack?

[Kalbear]

What? He - or she, the blog doesn't specify - sends out one email in which they use the word 'dads' where they should have said 'parents', and suddenly they're an irredeemably sexist arsehole who needs to be publicly shamed and humiliated? Don't you think that's overstating the case, just a wee bit?

I was talking hypotheticals. Though to be clear I think in general most men fall into this regardless; they simply have no pressure to redeem.

[Kalbear]

Double post shenanigans.

[wolverine]

Guess you should have paid more attention in your social deviance and normative values courses, yes.

Put it another way - do you think telling a sexist asshole in a private mail that they were sexist will change anyone else's attitude? The important point isn't to shame this guy; chances are he's not redeemable anyway. The point is to show him shamed in front of his peers. The lesson isn't for the teacher. It's for the rest of them. Humans in groups largely tend to go with the rest of the group in views - which is why it's important to not let shit slide if it happens. Because most people just follow along and don't think about it.

But hey, I'm sure you've always punished your students privately and never done anything to shame them in front of their peers.

First of all I agree with what Every said and was thinking the same thing.

And to shaming them: I hope I have never shamed my students to that extreme in front of their peers. There have been occassions where I think I went a bit too far and I have appologized to the students for how I handled it. Any time this may have happened it is due to the students behavior, not for a possible mistake in wording. I am just wondering about the lesson that response teaches to all the young minds exposed to this. That if you are offended you deal with it by publicly shaming the offender. That you do not care about changing their viewpoint, rather you care about revenge.

In my experience, this type of response often galvinizes the offender and puts them on the defense immediately. Making them much more resistant to change and listening to your point.

But whatever, if you think public shaming is the best response then have at it. I think there are better ways to deal with it. The said teacher may have had no idea that was offensive or exclusionary. I am guessing you think they are therefore a moron, but it seems like an extreme reaction for a likely unintended slight. Why can't you talk to the teacher and explain what was wrong with their wording, if their reaction is to brush it off then move on to something more public or whatever you want to do. I just think in this situation the teacher deserved a chance to respond before trying to shame them.

[Happy Ent]

A (presumably underpaid) teacher forgot that he or she is living in a culture of fear perpetuated by (presumably) overeducated parents who put the state of unknottednes of their own knickers above all other concerns, certainly including the prospect of a potentially fun school project for their children.

I’m siding with the sexists, and proudly so.

[litechick]

Yes, the email was making a sexist assumption that only men were capable and/or interested in doing the job.

The appropriate response would have been to 'reply all' and ask if women were allowed to participate. I think that just that question would be enough to reveal the sexist assumption and embarrass the person who wrote the original email.

I agree with those who say that the penis mom's reaction was counter-productive and just shifted the argument to the irrelevant use of the word 'penis.'

The correct way to phrase the request would have been to indicate the necessary skills and physical capabilities required and let people decide for themselves whether they are the right person for the job.

Weakness can certainly be excused but it is not to be celebrated.

***

I am reminded of a particular show many years ago when I was a stage hand. The road guy said he needed 4 guys to be truck loaders. As it happened, there were 4 people standing right there, just one of us happened to be female. He made it clear non-verbally that he wanted us to summon another man to be the fourth. One of the other hands spoke up and said 'how about litechick? She's tough.' The road guy acquiesced, I did fine and he simply remarked that he had never had a woman load his truck before.

I will always have a warm feeling for the guy who spoke up for me, since I was too shy to speak up for myself. Over the years, I have come to understand that most people who make sexist assumptions aren't nasty people trying to hold me down. The most frequent circumstance is just a total lack of experience with seeing women in particular roles. They get used to it pretty quickly and then it's no big deal. It can be a little frustrating to be on the leading edge of their learning curve but we all have to help each other out.

As in many situations, I dislike the War of Words and would rather just load the fucking trebuchet/truck. If it's progress you want, that is the better way to go about it. If you just want to be right and start a fight, then I suppose you send the penis email.

[Isalie]

Gotta hate being a teacher at a time like this. Personally I wouldn't have made the same mistake, but who knows, maybe it wasn't a mistake, maybe most dads in the class concerned are lazy bums that never show up for this type of thing.

Come to think about it, the solution would probably be to fire one teacher and hire a media relations person at each school to avoid disasters like this.

[Centrist Simon Steele]

Maybe it was one of those ill advised "let's get the dad's involved" things my school always does. Moms seem to be involved in everything at the school level so my principal has taken it on himself to get all the fathers engaged, especially those "bad" fathers.

[TerraPrime]

As in many situations, I dislike the War of Words and would rather just load the fucking trebuchet/truck. If it's progress you want, that is the better way to go about it. If you just want to be right and start a fight, then I suppose you send the penis email.

I'm just using your response because it's the latest one, but the response actually goes to others who said similar things, too.

Here's the thing: there are different ways to fight the same battle. Some of you prefer not to engage in exchanging emails or writing angry blogs. Fine. We each do our own thing. What I can't get behind, though, is the implication that if you write an email or an angry blog post, then it means that you're not really putting the kids' best interset in mind, and instead, you're just grand-standing.

Frankly, I think that line of reasoning is a load of first-grade bullshit.

The point is not just about helping the school set up the pumpkin trebuchet. It is about the other things that simply showing up to help or a private email exchange cannot address, namely, the already disseminated and propagated notion that women are not good at activities that require physical power. What people on the other side of the issue seem to ignore is that the message was sent to all the parents, and all the kids. It's already out there. If you think that the message is sexist, then shouldn't your solution target that effect, as well, and not only focus on volunteering? After all, there will be parents and students who saw this notice, but who would not come to the event. To them, your silent demonstration of just showing up to help is going to do diddly squat.

But beyond finding that argument to be complete bullshit, I also disagree with the assessment that what she did was actually harmful, or counter-productive. Prejudice thrives on silent approval. If someone says something biased, and it is not challenged, then not only is that person emboldened to continue, but all the listeners are getting reinforcement that this type of biased statements are socially acceptable. I believe that someone absolutely must make a public point in disagreeing with the wording of that message, lest we give the impression that we approve of it. Do you want to be assumed to approve of the sexist language in that message?

Furthermore, I am not sure anyone here is accusing of the author of note of being maliciously sexist. I don't believe anyone here thinks that the teacher rubbed his/her hands together while his/her evil henchman took dictation on a message deliberately crafted to place obstacles in the way of young girls being seen as equals. The teacher who wrote it might indeed be tired, stressed, and overwhelmed by this new extra thing that s/he has to organize, on top of being underpaid and maybe even fearful of whether s/he will have a job to come back to next fall. All of that is likely. But none of that are good excuses of slipping into the sort of unthinking biases that is the glue that holds all of our prejudice together. We know that when asked directly, almost everyone supports equal treatment across the sexes. So why do we still have sexism? It is precisely because despite our intellectual and logically-held beliefs, we slip into these small acts of sexism when we are stressed, distracted, or careless.

I am perfectly ready to assume that the teacher who wrote the note totally did not mean to say that women cannot perform physical labor. I am guessing that s/he would be quite embarrassed that they let that word slip by them. But the effect of that slip of the tongue is that the message did indeed convey a meaning that is exactly opposite to what s/he did not intend. We don't need to pillory her/him, but we do need to confront that message and point out why it is a bad message, and we need to do it publicly, and we need to not make excuses for the mistake.

Finally, to those who think that this is such a trivial issue: people do internalize these messages. Not consciously. They might even actively fight it. But these messages do take a toll on many of them. Some have the personality and mental fortitude, or parental guidance, to ignore these types of garbage, but others don't. My friend's 3rd grade daughter told her once that she is not good at the math homework because girls are not supposed to be good at numbers. I have come across a student who did not consider applying to med school because women are better off as nurses. I don't know about you all, but I see evidence of this sort of sexism almost daily, and I'm not even a woman. So no, I don't think we're over-reacting to this incident. I think we're under-reacting to the other 99.9% of incidents of casual, unthinking sexism.

[Lightning Lord]

I see my female students in PE classes standing in a group watching boys play soccer and basketball. I've seen them get 1/5th the time the boys get to try hitting a baseball off a tee. I've seen them playing games with NERFed rules, making it less challenging for them.

So, yeah. Terra's pretty spot-on here.

[Marie August]

Put it another way - do you think telling a sexist asshole in a private mail that they were sexist will change anyone else's attitude?

Yes. Based on the little bit I know about this "sexist asshole," I do think that a private piece of mail might have made a difference. It is a lot less likely that it will make any difference by publicly shaming him. As we can see from this example, it made no difference. No one changed, no one learned. There was just drama.

The important point isn't to shame this guy; chances are he's not redeemable anyway. The point is to show him shamed in front of his peers. The lesson isn't for the teacher. It's for the rest of them. Humans in groups largely tend to go with the rest of the group in views - which is why it's important to not let shit slide if it happens. Because most people just follow along and don't think about it.

I don't know. In a large group situation, people are more likely to feel empathy for the person that gets humiliated and verbally attacked. A lot of people aren't comfortable with confrontation, and even more uncomfortable with group confrontation.

[Vrana]

Aaargh! Ate my post! And for once I typed out the whole story too!

Great post TerraPrime!

as for OP:

1. Not a parent, but been in similar situations, so yes.

2. I honestly thought the penis email was quite brilliant, though I'm not sure if I'd have done the same thing myself. Probably something closer to litechick's question on whether women can come too, but that probably has more to do with swedish sensibilities on keeping it low key than any aversion to the mass-email method.

3. Yeah, heaps. I practiced martial arts on a relatively high level for 4-5 years and competed nationally, quite often for the smaller competitions there'd be no female contestants to go up against, and very few female coaches and organizers. Our club was 15 guys and me, which led to a lot of unwanted commentary.

To be fair, the regular guys I practiced with would account for my strength and agility when being matched up with me for sparring, but never go easy on account of me being a girl, though would as they would have for anyone, adjust strength based on weight and reach. They never patronized me, or at least gave it up once they got to know me for a few sessions and more often than not when I was too tired or couldn't be arsed, they'd be the ones who'd answer a lot of patronizing commentary at competitions, which did a lot for my confidence. Speaking up does heaps, not just 'proving yourself.'

A story: So every now and then at the club we'd get newcomers keen to try it out for a session or two, they'd be paired up with one of the regulars, and every now and then through rotation the responsibility fell on me. (I'm not even going to go in to the fact that I more than once got the comment 'so they pair you up with the girl for the first few sessions to land softly, eh?') We'd start off doing simple techniques and guards, and then, towards the end of the practice we'd do what's called skin-touch/shadow sparring, essentially you maintain speed but soften your blows considerably, almost like a tap, as an exercise in control and to avoid hurting yourself as a newbie.

Almost always the new guy I'd be sparring with (in my case they were always guys), would hit much harder than is called for in shadow sparring, missing the point of the exercise, so I'd correct. And often when I did, he'd assume that I was trying to cover up for the fact that I was in pain from his oh-so-mighty blows, that he wasn't even doing at full strength. So often he'd change it up by doing really slow kicks in an effort to... I don't know, protect me maybe? And again, I'd try to correct, pointing out that it was a control exercise and that he was to try to maintain speed.

At some point I'd look over to my master and if I got the ok, we'd do one short 1-minute round of "full-contact" sparring, now of course, regulars never went full contact on a total newbie, but you'd put just enough force in to still show what it could be like. And invariably, when the time came for us to spar "full-contact", the guy would either visibly hesitate, or just go on and say it outright, 'but I can't hit a girl!'

And I'd invariably think 'how about you come at me shitstain and we'll see if you can land a hit?'

[Every]

I understand your point, TerraPrime, and it's a valid one, although I don't completely agree. I think the point many people are trying to make is that the manner in which this blog writer chose to address the problem (snarky email) actually pulled focus away from the problem itself and onto her actions, and that's counter-productive to what she was trying to achieve.

[Solmyr]

This is truly appalling, perhaps the worst thing I've heard of in a while. Legal action might need to be taken to prevent such atrocities from ever occurring in the civilized western society.

I mean, honestly, what kind of barbaric ritual is 'launching pumpkins with a trébuchet' supposed to represent? In a world where millions die of starvation and billions consume unhealthy food, have we really reached the point where we ought to promote wastage of perfectly edible fresh fruit to youngsters? Only yesterday I was reading Raidne's thread about trying to procure healthy food on a tight budget and I was honestly saddened that at the peak of civilization people have to make a choice between frozen beans and frozen ... something else. And now to hear that somewhere nearby, in the same country, people are flinging that same food away ... horrible, just horrible.

I admit I am uncertain what sexism Terra is speaking of, with regards to this, already-shakening story. I would make a wild guess that the monstrous injustice of launching pumpkins only involved male pumpkins - as if it wasn't bad enough already without a gender bias.

[Marie August]

I think that some guys figure that they are being gentlemen by not being willing to hit a girl.

[Lyanna Stark]

I understand your point, TerraPrime, and it's a valid one, although I don't completely agree. I think the point many people are trying to make is that the manner in which this blog writer chose to address the problem (snarky email) actually pulled focus away from the problem itself and onto her actions, and that's counter-productive to what she was trying to achieve.

Is this one of the "but women can't be angry at sexists because angry women are inappropriate" things? Same as "angry feminists shouldn't be so angry because angry people are scary and inappropriate"?

You do realise that sometimes, you just have enough and you don't have the patience to be kind, considerate and extremely understanding to people who should know better. A teacher is among these people who should know much better. If it's a pointed effort to bring out dads, that should be mentioned instead of stating that since the task involves some physical exertion, we want men.

[Marie August]

Whenever anyone gets angry, whether they are male or female, they throw away any chance they had of actually be listened to the moment they lose their temper. People are too distracted by the fact that they are being attacked to pay attention to why.

[Greywolf2375]

I understand your point, TerraPrime, and it's a valid one, although I don't completely agree. I think the point many people are trying to make is that the manner in which this blog writer chose to address the problem (snarky email) actually pulled focus away from the problem itself and onto her actions, and that's counter-productive to what she was trying to achieve.

I disagree - I would doubt anyone here is part of that school system, yet here we are talking about how sexism still pervades even the most simple and basic actions someone can take. Do I think the author of the original email sat at a computer and nefariously created this email? But if a person is going to be sending a message like this they do need to make sure it is worded well.

As far as the "trying to get more dads involved" angle....yeah, no. That's reaching for straws. If that is part of their goal to get more family involved, say so but not being aware that some kids may only have one parent, may have two moms, etc isn't a valid reason to write a poorly worded message.

[a wooden chair]

I suddenly feel much closer to Hereward, by the way. His illicit love affair with a Massey-Ferguson takes on new shades of tragedy when I contemplate consummating my love with a little 800-pound flinger using the Angry Ambassador (the name I have given to my knit-hat phallus). *sigh*

If you really want sexist, look into history where those who operated, loaded, and caused a trebuchet to fire it's load were called "Gynours". Coincidence? I think not.