Lynn Messina is horrified. She sent her four-year-old
son to preschool, and he came back wanting to be a gentleman.
Can you imagine? They are teaching Emmett how to respect
girls. They want him to be courteous and even chivalrous.
Emmett has been told that, at recess, boys should allow
girls to use the restroom first.
While most sensible parents will applaud this tendency, a
good feminist like Messina gets outraged.
In her words:
But I
don’t think it’s an overreaction to resent the fact that your son is being
given an extra set of rules to follow simply because he’s a boy. His behavior,
already constrained by a series of societal norms, now has additional
restrictions. Worse than that, he’s actively being taught to treat girls
differently, something I thought we all agreed to stop doing, like, three
decades ago. That the concept of selective privilege has been introduced in
preschool of all places — the inner sanctum of fair play, the high temple of
taking turns — is mind-boggling to me. How can you preach the ethos of sharing
at the dramatic play center and ignore it 20 feet away at the toilet?
Obviously, Messina is a fanatic. Only a true-believing cult
follower could go into such high dudgeon over a point of etiquette. If Messina
thinks that gender disparity in the workplace is being caused by the fact that
boys open doors for girls, then she is missing a few little gray cells.
Messina responds to the indignity by trying to teach her son in the idiotic
concept of the “gentlemanly girl.” But, she notices that this four-year-old boy is too smart to understand the concept of the “gentlemanly girl.”
I assume that Messina is auditioning for a role on the new game show: Are you smarter than
a preschooler?
But then, she espies an event that gives her hope for her boy.
She explains:
…when,
a few hours later in the park, I see him grab his soccer ball from a girl his
own age, I feel a ridiculous rush of relief at his ungentlemanly behavior.
There you have it, folks. In Feministland it is good for
boys to take things from girls without their consent. Young Emmett is going to
learn that his mother gets a “rush” when she sees him abusing a girl.
What if he were stealing a kiss? What if her were stealing
something more valuable than a kiss? Would his mother get a “rush of relief”
watching him act in a perfectly ungentlemanly way?
Messina plans to give her son yet another lecture on the
ethic of sharing, but her son will learn more about her attitude by watching
her get a thrill as he abuses a little girl.
When he grows up, he will be able to read all about it in
the New York Times archive.
...Umm, why do little girls deserve preferential treatment over little boys in going to the bathroom? Is there some other regular classroom activity where little boys are given preferential treatment over little girls? Are these little girls told to be thankful for this "entitlement?" Are they told not to abuse this "entitlement?"
ReplyDeletePersonally, I think these little boys are being set up for a raw deal.
Ugh! I don't see how the word abuse applies anywhere here except in mock confusion.
ReplyDeleteProbably she's making a mountain out of a molehill, but her point is to encourage debate on a divergent question of how to encourage.
It could be a stronger article if she could express her personal involvement of injustice that "privledge" creates.
Should boys believe its okay for girls to hit them, make fun of them, provoke then, and be expected to carry that behavior because its a girl? Is that not abuse, because girls know boys can't hit back and aren't as developed for verbal retorts?
There's surely a reason the rules of courtesy was invented, as testosterone rises into the teen years, but that doesn't mean girls (or women) deserve special rights to act out as their aggression pleases and hide behind gender privledge. I'd say that is what the mother is expressing.
And besides, I don't think most little girls are interested in being given special treatment, especially if that's in exchange for expectation of passivity and not testing their own limits and ability to negotiate conflict.
The boy was taking a soccer ball from a little girl without asking-- thus without her consent. I don't see why this is difficult to understand.
ReplyDeleteI didn't see in the article any question about girls who hit boys, make fun of them, etc.
The code of gentlemanly and ladylike behavior does not allow anyone to abuse anyone else.
I'm not sure where you got the idea that gentlemanly behavior makes boys into punching bags.
Soooo, is there only one bathroom for the class? No boys room and girls room?
ReplyDeleteAnon did not find hitting in the text, but that line of thought surely sounds like something I've read elsewhere.
It shouldn't be this complicated. Each individual, whether male or female, possesses individual dignity. Women are on average physiologically weaker than men. Women have a unique responsibility to care for human life from conception to birth. Men defer to women out of consideration for their dignity and maternity. However, as men possess equal dignity, the respect must be mutual. Men respect women. Women respect men. We respect each other.
ReplyDeleteAnother consideration is that in the real world, resources, both natural and artificial, are finitely accessible in space and time. This is the basis for describing individuals as competing interests. Men compete with men. Men compete with women. Women compete with women. We compete with each other. However, we are also moral creatures, which means the modes of competition are limited. For example: premeditated murder (aside from elective abortion) is generally considered immoral and therefore unacceptable. Other forms of involuntary exploitation, including rape, fraud, etc., are also considered immoral and therefore unacceptable.
Involuntary or fraudulent exploitation sabotages this mutual respect.
Denigration of individual dignity sabotages this mutual respect.
Class wars sabotage this mutual respect.
Normalizing elective abortion of a developing human life in the mother's womb sabotages this mutual respect.
In short, devaluing individual human lives sabotages this mutual respect.
The outcome is predictable: evolutionary dysfunction. An evolutionary process can complete over a single generation, with effects realized in the absence or corruption of the subsequent generation. It is not necessarily a long-term phenomenon and in fact is not in human society.
The question of "abusive behavior" seems more than a little subjective to me. I was curious what opinions were out there for or against labeling children's behavior as abuse or bullying, and found this author and article.
ReplyDeleteSocialization is about learning rules of cooperative behavior, but how should parents or teachers or anyone interfere? Are aggressive actions always destructive and need suppression, or do they moderate into self-assertion through trial and error?
Anyway, taking a ball, apparently the boys own ball seems a pretty small crime to be labeled as abuse.
http://www.heleneguldberg.co.uk/index.php/site/article/109/
ESSAY: Of course extreme cases of bullying should be tackled, but let’s not pathologise normal childhood relationships.
...The anti-bullying industry continually warns us that bullying is widespread and has a devastating effect. Those who don’t take its messages seriously risk being branded ignorant and complacent. The conclusion is always that much more needs to be done to combat bullying. Few people are prepared to challenge these assumptions. I would argue that the messages emanating from the anti-bullying industry are not only unhelpful and depressing, but damaging.
Firstly, they present a very negative view of children: portraying them either as nasty little brutes or as helpless victims. Children’s relationships with other children are assumed to be damaging, and children are tacitly encouraged to look upon their peers with trepidation and suspicion. Consequently there is a raft of behavioural codes that now regulate playground behaviour, and an increasingly interventionist role for adults in children’s disputes.
And as more and more forms of behaviour are labelled as ‘bullying’, more and more children become labelled as ‘bullies’ or ‘victims’. On its website, the ABA describes bullying as the ‘repetitive, intentional hurting of one person by another, where the relationship involves an imbalance of power’. ‘Means of bullying’ may involve ‘pushing, hitting, punching, kicking’, or ‘yelling abuse at another, name-calling, insulting someone, using verbal threats’, as well as ‘spreading rumours, social exclusion, [or] disclosing another’s secrets to a third party’. Is it any wonder that the ABA finds that the prevalence of bullying is so high?
The question of "abusive behavior" seems more than a little subjective to me. I was curious what opinions were out there for or against labeling children's behavior as abuse or bullying, and found this author and article.
ReplyDeleteSocialization is about learning rules of cooperative behavior, but how should parents or teachers or anyone interfere? Are aggressive actions always destructive and need suppression, or do they moderate into self-assertion through trial and error?
Anyway, taking a ball, apparently the boys own ball seems a pretty small crime to be labeled as abuse.
http://www.heleneguldberg.co.uk/index.php/site/article/109/
ESSAY: Of course extreme cases of bullying should be tackled, but let’s not pathologise normal childhood relationships.
...The anti-bullying industry continually warns us that bullying is widespread and has a devastating effect. Those who don’t take its messages seriously risk being branded ignorant and complacent. The conclusion is always that much more needs to be done to combat bullying. Few people are prepared to challenge these assumptions. I would argue that the messages emanating from the anti-bullying industry are not only unhelpful and depressing, but damaging.
Firstly, they present a very negative view of children: portraying them either as nasty little brutes or as helpless victims. Children’s relationships with other children are assumed to be damaging, and children are tacitly encouraged to look upon their peers with trepidation and suspicion. Consequently there is a raft of behavioural codes that now regulate playground behaviour, and an increasingly interventionist role for adults in children’s disputes.
And as more and more forms of behaviour are labelled as ‘bullying’, more and more children become labelled as ‘bullies’ or ‘victims’. On its website, the ABA describes bullying as the ‘repetitive, intentional hurting of one person by another, where the relationship involves an imbalance of power’. ‘Means of bullying’ may involve ‘pushing, hitting, punching, kicking’, or ‘yelling abuse at another, name-calling, insulting someone, using verbal threats’, as well as ‘spreading rumours, social exclusion, [or] disclosing another’s secrets to a third party’. Is it any wonder that the ABA finds that the prevalence of bullying is so high?
True enough, Anon, taking a ball away from a little girl without asking is not extremely abusive. But, we are talking about 4 year olds and are looking, as the author of the article does, on how certain values are taught to children.
ReplyDeleteAnd I was limiting my point to the way men treat women. Apparently, men do not treat women very well these days and I have long been wondering why this should be so.
Politicians always want to pass new laws, as though that is going to make a significant difference. I have suggested for some time that the code of chivalrous behavior would move us in the right direction.
Chivalry institutes forms of cooperative behavior between men and women, and is based, as n.n. notes, on the fact that women are weaker than men, and also that women are more valuable.
In a culture where women are supposed to be as strong as men and where they are supposed to be in competition, then they are going to have the ball taken away from them... and it won't matter whose ball it is. While the boys are doing it their feminist mothers are cheering.
Finally, don't you find it interesting that this feminist mother is thrilled to see her son take something from a girl without asking? Does she applaud his show of toughness, his sign of brutality. Is she afraid that he will turn out to be a wimp?