Blogging doesn't equal being heard.
Apr. 30th, 2007 10:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
franceslievensThe day after I write a gigantic rant which ends with the urgent demand for a new route within feminist thinking, my newspaper has this as a headline: "Bad grades caused by testosteron". (Sorry only a headline, the actual article is hidden behind a subscription wall.) No, it's not about secondary school students doping themselves, and then getting even worse grades. It's about the fact that boys underachieve in school when compared to girls. I've seen this train of thought on the internets before (and I've seen the irritation it provoked). Now it's irritating me, because it says that schools are built around so-called female values of obedience and neatness, and boys can't cope with those, because of the inherent agressive and energetic streak testosteron gives them. Just a couple of remarks:
(1) What do we do with cat-fighting girls? Do they have too much testosteron and therefore we just put them on the pill to turn them into purring kittens?
(2) Now can someone point out the femininity of said values to me, because they could just as well be the last bits of patriarchy that still lives in this society.
(3) This might as well be a good piece of research, but no-one will know since the newspaper decided to make it into a caricature with that headline. There are no questions for follow-up research, no solutions as to how to get the boys involved without disrupting the class structure. There's only the fact, but in this case it doesn't really speak for itself.
Usualy I try not to rant and rave in the class, and I try not to tell them things that I'm not sure of. Younger kids think anything you tell them is the truth. We talked about boys and girls this year – the differences in perception. Then I can only tell them over and over that the boyish boy and girlish girl don't ever exist. But then there's research like this, presented in the newspaper as if my idea of equality between the sexes is only a fable.
(1) What do we do with cat-fighting girls? Do they have too much testosteron and therefore we just put them on the pill to turn them into purring kittens?
(2) Now can someone point out the femininity of said values to me, because they could just as well be the last bits of patriarchy that still lives in this society.
(3) This might as well be a good piece of research, but no-one will know since the newspaper decided to make it into a caricature with that headline. There are no questions for follow-up research, no solutions as to how to get the boys involved without disrupting the class structure. There's only the fact, but in this case it doesn't really speak for itself.
Usualy I try not to rant and rave in the class, and I try not to tell them things that I'm not sure of. Younger kids think anything you tell them is the truth. We talked about boys and girls this year – the differences in perception. Then I can only tell them over and over that the boyish boy and girlish girl don't ever exist. But then there's research like this, presented in the newspaper as if my idea of equality between the sexes is only a fable.
