yellow dress

"Teachers are often unaware of the gender distribution of talk in their classrooms. They usually consider that they give equal amounts of attention to girls and boys, and it is only when they make a tape recording that they realize that boys are dominating the interactions.

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."

—

[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)

Holy crud, so glad I read this. Reblogging for other educators.

(via eupheme-butterfly)

As a girl who would not be shut up and would not tolerate teasing or abuse from boys in my class and was several times sent to such higher authorities for it, reading this is extremely, extremely vindicating. I was lucky, though, because being a particularly bright, advanced student for those grades, they generally took my side and I never got into any severe or lasting trouble. Again ,this was luck, and shouldn’t be the rule.

(via eruditechick)

I was going to write that exact last paragraph; WOW.

(via supersandys-space)

(Source: colinfirthhasmoved)

E3 - Impressions

autumn-sacura:

E3 was great! Just look at all brand new games they give us!

Just look at protagonists! Isn’t it great, how modern technologies let developers create so many different characters?! Just look at divercity of facial hair! Or how many hues of dark brown used for their hair!

psychopacifist:

mr-cappadocia:

alimarko:

If you are a man and you use intimidation techniques to win arguments/debates with women, I cannot and will not trust you. Yes, even without you realizing you’re doing it.

Are you a male? Are you winning the debate? I’ll accuse you of using intimidating tactics and shut down the conversation. No, I don’t have to actually prove you were using intimidating tactics. In fact, I could just say I perceive you were doing so, Mind you, *I* can use intimidating tactics all I like, and that’s okay. But not you. That power is reserved for me. Also, if I hit you repeatedly and you call the cops you’ll go to jail. Not me. Because my feminist sisters ensured all the criteria that determines who the police take away are male oriented. So it’s okay if I hit you. But you can’t hit me. That power is reserved for me.

You privileged and oppressive fucking male.

See mr-cappadocia in action. Notice how he puts words in her mouth, with a sweeping generalized point that to criticize male intimidation techniques must mean she wants to hog intimidation techniques for the female gender’s exclusive use. Let’s not even consider the possibility that to engage in debate without any party having to feel intimidated might be an aspiration of the OP’s. No, when mr-cappadocia finds your posts in the feminism tag, he gets to invent all kinds of ulterior motives for you and still call you unreasonable.

What exactly is mr-cappadocia’s objection here? A blogger in the feminism tag is frank about a bias of hers, and—rather than live with his privileged position over those who would hold such a bias and be content with the fact that most folks in and out of these debates will never critically examine whether or not this bias is justified—he has to bully her and make the conversation about the legal ramifications the poor oppressed men must face when they hit women. (And prove her point in the process with no irony intended. Wow!!)

We can deduce that his aim here derailing her post is not to posit any sort of challenge to the OP’s argument itself. Actually, his aim is to discredit specifically her experience. This is not for her benefit or his own, so much as reinforcing the patriarchal dynamic of debate in general, to keep women silent about their experiences. This is implied gaslighting on an epic scale, to the effect of: “Do you feel intimidated ladies? Well too bad, I’ve got debates to ‘win!’”

How exactly does one “win” a debate?

I mean, sure, in school they have debate teams, and one team “wins” based on how well they present their arguments according to a classroom’s criteria of what constitutes skillful debating. But when you win according to that curriculum, you only prove that you know how to pass a class. And on the internet when you “win” a debate, that just proves you know your audience and you know how to milk them for approval. And in politics when you win a debate, it means you know how to get your way.

But isn’t there a point to debate beyond getting your way? Isn’t that kinda what the OP is trying to get at here? The function of debate beyond “winning” and “losing,” to actually convince folks to rethink things, and get each other to question things?

You’d think mr-cappadocia, a self-styled skeptic, would’ve worked this out for himself by now, and moved past the idea that debates are for “winning” and “losing.”

But of course, as dearly as mr-cappadocia holds skepticism and the importance of questioning everything, there is one thing he will always refuse to question: his own misogyny.

My class today

Me: So when you see the 4 year old boy pull the little girl's hair...
Students: He likes her!
Me: Now they are around 11 or 12 and he grabs her arm and wrestles her to the ground even though she calls him a jerk and yells at him to leave her alone.
Students: That is just how boys are.
Me: Now they are 18 and he grabs her arm and--
Students: Oh, that's not okay.
Me: Really? How would he know? How would she know? How would you know? You just told me that for the first 17 years of these children's lives that you thought it was cute, sweet, and natural for a boy to grab a girl and be rough with her.
Students: Oh.
Me: Oh, is right.

sanityscraps:

caffeinatedfeminist:

You feel bad that someone is angry at you for having male privilege?

Try having it proven to you every day of your life when you read the news and hear what has happened to your fellow women

That men will murder, rape, abuse, deny employment, take away decisions about my body from my control, and treat me like dirt

Simply because of my gender.

Misandry irritates.

Misogyny kills.

THIS.

"I asked all of the gay male students in the room to raise their hand if in the past week they touched a woman’s body without her consent. After a moment of hesitation, all of the hands of the gay men in the room went up. I then asked the same gay men to raise their hand if in the past week they offered a woman unsolicited advice about how to “improve” her body or her fashion. Once again, after a moment of hesitation, all of the hands in the room went up.

These questions came after a brief exploration of gay men’s relationship to American fashion and women’s bodies. That dialogue included recognizing that gay men in the United States are often hailed as the experts of women’s fashion and by proxy women’s bodies. In addition to this there is a dominant logic that suggests that because gay men have no conscious desire to be sexually intimate with women, our uninvited touching and groping (physical assault) is benign."

— Gay Men’s Sexism and Women’s Bodies by Yolo Akili (via plightofthepretty)

thegoddamazon:

brashblacknonbeliever:

Why do white boys/men always feel like they need to interject their opinions where it’s not needed or wanted?

Because they’ve been conditioned to believe their opinion is the only important opinion and that nothing is credible until they say it is.

(Source: fymodernfamily)

"If a woman wants to see the nature of a man, tell him “No."

—

Bev Jo (via marjchaos)

And then you’ll see that it’s really men who are the irrational and hyper-emotional ones (p.s., anger is an emotion and males with an entitlement complex excel at expressing it, especially towards women and girls who don’t or refuse to succumb to his bullshit).

(via the-uncensored-she)

all-about-male-privilege:

Whenever a few of my male friends make sexist jokes or remarks in my presence, they then turn to me and say something along the lines of ‘oh, yeah, we can’t say that around you, you’re a feminist’.

Male privilege is the inability to recognize the inherent problems with what you are saying, even when they are repeatedly pointed out to you.

sainthannah:

Rebloggable by request. The statistic about women being killed by intimate partners was found here.

shorm:

If you think that representation doesn’t matter, that’s probably because you’re already represented.

"White women and black men have it both ways. They can act as oppressor or be oppressed. Black men may be victimized by racism, but sexism allows them to act as exploiters and oppressors of women. White women may be victimized by sexism, but racism enabled them to act as exploiters and oppressors of black people. Both groups have led liberation movements that favor their interests and support the continued oppression of other groups. Black male sexism has undermined struggles to eradicate racism just as white female racism undermines feminist struggle. As long as these two groups or any group defines liberation as gaining social equality with ruling class white men, they have a vested interest in the continued exploitation and oppression of others."

— bell hooks, Feminist Theory: From margin to center (via orindamoraga)

fuck i love this so much. fucking BOOM

(Source: fearandwar)