I’m Just A Girl

I’ve been meaning to write this post for about a week.  Tara R. over at If Mom Says OK gave me a little push.  I’m honored that she asked me to participate in BlogBlast for Education. It’s a great idea spearheaded by April at It’s All About Balance.  So check out the other bloggers writing about their experience in education whether they are parents, teachers, students, or all three.  Hey, wait!  Where are you going?  Read my post first!

Those of you who have been reading this blog for some time (Thank you! I love you! Kisses! Mwah! Mwah! Are those flowers for me?) know that I use horror literature in my classes to address issues of gender, class, race, and poor fashion choices.  The discussions can get pretty heated.  Early in the semester one of my students claimed that a character in the novel didn’t have the smarts to avoid disaster because she was “just” a housewife.  That student thought that eating bon-bons all day while watching Jerry Springer is more interesting than fighting monstrous sea creatures, unless the sea creature is drooling chocolate while filming porn for her boyfriend’s brother’s website.  They just can’t be motivated to save their own lives if it means missing Oprah.  That’s what menz is for!  Perhaps Mr. Clean and that Brawny guy can help out if they are not too busy saving the world from — oh, yeah, that’s right! — common household germs and dirty kitchens.

The student who shared this gem about housewives wasn’t trying to be snarky or demeaning.  It was her sincere and genuine opinion.  Yes, I said her.  This sentiment arose from a young woman who, as far as I could tell, wanted a college degree so that she could marry well before she started poppin’ out the rugrats.  Yes, she wants to be a housewife!  She was merely sharing her own vision of her bob-bon-flavored future life of leisure and daytime television.  And she ain’t killin’ no friggin’ monsters.

Only one student challenged this woman’s characterization of housewives.  The rest just kind of shrugged their shoulders.  WTF?!  Not in Mistress Dingo’s class! 

There’s education and then there’s ed-u-cation.  Time for a lesson.  I made them talk about their ideas about men and women and it turned out to be one of the best classes of the semester.  We talked about beauty, sexuality, stereotypes, torture porn, the wage gap, cloning (one student’s bright idea was to clone women so that one woman wouldn’t have to do all the housework), and bad fashion choices.  We would have gone on and on but we ran out of time.  I had to shove them out of the door at the end of class.  I mean, I love my students but I am married to Happy Hour. 

The rest of the semester, things looked bright.  We dissected gender roles in the texts that we read and my students seemed to get it.  They brought in magazine ads and talked about commercials they had found offensive and harmful to men or women, gay or straight.  In fact, I was going to have a movie made of this story starring Dingo as the bright, hopeful teacher who motivates her inner city students to look beyond their bleak ‘hood and to challenge themselves to be the best they can be.  That storyline hasn’t been done yet, has it?

I was proud.  Hell, I was smug.  My students were thinking for themselves and I had played a role in their transformations. I was changing the world one awkward freshman at a time.  As the semester ended and the students handed in their final papers, I really looked forward to reading them! 

I was not prepared for this:

Men should not treat women as property and sexual objects because women are also useful in certain areas men are not, for example; cleaning, sewing, cooking, and nursing a baby.

That student had obviously never tasted my cooking.  Or seen my apartment.  Or my boobs.

Then, there was this sage declaration:

As a Confucius saying goes ‘having a woman rule would be as unnatural as having a hen crow like a rooster at daybreak.’

Damn it!  I was ready to hit someone over the head with my Swiffer! I try, y’all.  Lord, I try.  I believe that education is more than just book learnin’ but it appears that in some areas we fail miserably.  Even vampires can’t change thousands of years of stereotypes and generalizations overnight, and they definitely can’t do it during daytime.  Still, I am astonished that in 2008, smart, hip, progressive, and often hysterically clumsy young adults possess such archaic biases.  Sometimes I become so frustrated that I just want to cook those kids or sew them together.  Like paper cutout dolls.  That would serve them right!  But then I would miss Oprah.

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