Education and the Fear of the Feminine
Is Education for Girlie-Men?
Katha Pollitt writes in this week’s edition of The Nation that the fear of female pollution continues—in this case, within the bastions of academia. While the five-year old in me thinks that neocon men are afraid that girls will give them cooties, I actually see this as part of a trend that I have written about repeatedly, documenting and railing as pieces of evidence surface.
In short, I continue to believe that there is a crisis of masculinity that underlies many of the reactionary responses to cultural and political change in this country. The latest analysis is offered by Pollitt:
The conservative spin on the education gender gap is that feminism has ruined school for boys. "Why would any self-respecting boy want to attend one of America's increasingly feminized universities?" asks George Gilder in National Review. "Most of these institutions have flounced through the last forty years fashioning a fluffy pink playpen of feminist studies and agitprop 'herstory,' taught amid a green goo of eco-motherism and anti-industrial phobia." Sounds like fun, but it doesn't sound much like West Texas A&M, Baylor, Loyola or the University of Alabama, where female students outnumber males in about the same proportion as they do at trendy Berkeley and Brown. Even Hillsdale College, the conservative academic mecca that became famous for rejecting federal funds rather than comply with government regulations against sex discrimination, has a student body that is 51 percent female. Other pundits--Michael Gurian, Kate O'Beirne, Christina Hoff Sommers--blame the culture of elementary school and high school: too many female teachers, too much sitting quietly, not enough sports and a feminist-friendly curriculum that forces boys to read--oh no!--books by women. Worse--books about women.
It is difficult to talk about “masculinity
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Feminism
fascinating
Submitted by Lorraine on 18 January 2006 - 4:02pm.
The article you cite is amazing. I suppose there are all different kinds of ways to interpret what's being said here ranging from "girls are naturally smarter than boys and that's why boys have wanted to keep girls down" to "schools are skewed toward a feminine learning style that handicaps boys" to "boys are the victims in our society."
Given the rightwing meme of casting themselves as victims of everything, this article could be seen as propaganda in that vein. But it could also open up some major questions about how the school system as a whole is failing average kids.
I don't know what any of the answers are, but this is fascinating reading. Thanks.
Back atcha!
Submitted by JJ Ross on 18 January 2006 - 4:15pm.
Your piece had this same effect on me, Lorraine - amazing and unsettling, fascinating, inspiring new thoughts, all at the same time!
So thanks and I'm really glad to "meet" you (guess we should thank Liza too, huh, as our geek-goddess-of-the-learning-culture here?
Thanks Liza!)
Patriarchy = Fascism
Submitted by Morgaine Swann on 19 January 2006 - 12:30am.
Higher education, feminization, homosexuality are all signs of evolution that patriarchy is deliberately intended to stamp out. A good slave is brutish, loyal and dumb and that's all the power structure wants. They need workers to exploit and tax - thinking just slows down production. It wants to oppress women, gays, and intellectuals because women, gays and intellectuals all represent liberality. Freedom. Sensuality. Cooperation. All of these are anathema to a repressive hierarchy, which is necessary for the ruling class to maintain its wealth and power.
The "fear of penetration" is not natural. It's a product of the rape ethos of the patriarchy. It doesn't create homophobia, it comes from homophobia.
And I can go on for days about the primal feminine force that is the source of all life, and men's instinctive fear of it - but I'll spare you. You get the idea. If women were truly inferior, there would be no need to repress us. Our natural inadequacies would prevent our competing with men. When women are given even a little access to business or education, we quickly out do the men.
What did it take? 50 years of allowing women into Universities and we are the majority. That's just the natural order of things. We're 53% of the population, so we should be 50+% of the students. Guys are supposed to be so good with numbers, you'd think they'd recognize a statistical reality like that. The reaction we're hearing just shows how terrified of equality people really are.
Support the Women's Autonomy and Sexual Sovereignty Movements!
Either Way It's a Sex War
Submitted by JJ Ross on 27 January 2006 - 12:06pm.
This morning comes our reminder (hardly news!) that "competitive civil rights" can only cut so far until those cut against bleed too, and we're all covered in the stuff and muttering out damn'd spot! --
MILTON, Mass. --A senior boy at Milton High School has filed a federal civil rights complaint contending that his school discriminates against boys by making it easier for girls to succeed academically.
Doug Anglin, in his complaint filed last month with the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights, claimed girls faced fewer restrictions from teachers and boys are more likely to get punished.
"The system is designed to the disadvantage of males," Anglin, 17, told The Boston Globe. . .
Girls outnumber boys almost 2 to 1 on the Milton High honor roll, and almost 60 percent of the students in Advanced Placement classes are female, according to information provided by school officials.
Anglin, who plays soccer and baseball and plans on going to college, hopes the Education Department will react to his complaint by coming up with national guidelines on how to boost the academic achievement of boys.
Turns out the boy's complaint was written by his lawyer FATHER against the school superintendent, the WOMAN in charge, whose name is, let's see, Magdalene, while a male staffer for the F-eds will review the case.
Named no doubt for Mary Magdalene, she who wrote:
"Do not lay down any rules beyond what I appointed you, and do not give a law like the lawgiver lest you be constrained by it."
-- you gotta love it, really, how can people not read the news for cheap entertainment??
But I digress. So, what do the latest oppressed say school could do to be less girl-dominant?
Anglin wants Milton High to give credit for playing sports, as it does for art and drama; allow students to take classes on a pass/fail basis so more students will take advanced course without risking their grade point average; and do away with the school's community service requirement, which he says is resisted by many boys.
Here's the real rub then. We girls apparently have gotten cocky ourselves, so busy running things now that we neglect to run our own ranks with an iron hand, be ruthless (without Ruth? - so SHE's the problem!) and unilateral in our consolidation of Girl Power and control. Seems we've let some emotive sissies and - gulp - maybe even some justice-minded lawyer advocate types into our sex!
. . .some of Anglin's fellow students, including some girls, see his point of view.
Kelli Little, a senior and student body president, said there is just one boy in her 22-member honors Spanish class, and that while she rarely gets asked to produce a hall pass if she is not in class, boys walking close behind her are routinely questioned.
She said that one teacher at the school expects students to type class notes and decorate their notebooks.
"You can't expect a boy to buy pink paper and frills to decorate their notebook," she said.
Well, except in the role of Lady Macbeth one supposes. . . where the king and queen persist in imagining that physical actions can root out psychological demons, but the whole play is an exposition of how wrong they are (hat tip to Shakespeare author Michael Macrone who seems not to have suffered overmuch for his sex?)
Thank you
Submitted by Lorraine on 27 January 2006 - 3:00pm.
Unbelievable. I'm sputtering, and trying to think of a "rational" response to all of this. Suing because boys are falling behind? What next, suing because white people are not getting into universities at a rate that continues to cement their hold on the power structure? Oh wait. That already happened....
How about actual five-year-olds? :)
Think this frame maybe reaches down from the ivy towers into our standardized schooling meant to leave no child (boy or girl) behind?
Those of us who focus mostly on K-12 education got another ho-hum dose of "schools are for girls" this week, pretty tedious small-scale classroom stuff, not political or metaphorical as presented, but now you have me wondering . . . JJ