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.
Posted on Friday, June 20, 2008 at 01:14 PM.
Tags: Little Red Schoolhouse, Oh the Horror!
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Comments & Trackbacks
Oprah and your daily dose of bonbons. Sheesh - that’s really depressing.
Great post, though.
I’m always on the lookout for new ways to express my desire to physically harm adolescent-humanoids, so I was THRILLED to find “...hit someone over the head with my Swiffer!” and “...I just want to cook those kids”.
But my ABSOLUTE, all-time, favorite is “...sew them together. Like paper cutout dolls. “ (Are you freakin’ kidding me?!?! That’s HIGH-larious!!)
The mental image of me sitting at my sewing machine, trying to shove CaptainCrankyPants’ and PissyToneGirl’s little hands under the feeder-foot just about made me snarf my diet coke outta my nose!!! Awesome!
First of all… this is my first time to your site and I have to say, I LOVE the way you write. What a fabulous post on multiple levels.
I guess all I can really say is that you tried. It’s sad, though, that you thought you were getting through to them and when it came to old test time, back to the basics.
Hahaha!! Great post. Poignat and funny.
Jen — It’s depressing enough when men think this way but young women!? Oh, come on! When we discussed the historical significance of the bid for the Democratic nomination so many of them did not think a woman would make a good leader. I talked about great women (historical and contemporary) that led their nations. Many remained unconvinced. Sigh.
Ms. H — I cannot sew to save my life so I’m afraid that the experience would be so much more painful for me than it would be for them.
CableGirl — I am glad you like the entry and my writing *blush*. It’s difficult to shake people out of their comfort zones but I’m going to keep rattling the cages.
Lunanik — Thanks!
Honestly. THIS is why most of my English classes turn in to critical thinking classes. No one seems to challenge these kids’ notions of how the world works, and I love getting in there and messing with their paradigms…
This actually doesn’t surprise me as much as it should; regardless of the fact that I am a single mother of four kids who also works full time outside the home in a professional capacity, my 14 year old son had the balls to say, “Why do I need to know how to do laundry? My wife will just do it!” Talk about wanting to cut him up and...you know. Told him that he better learn quick because with an attitude like that, he won’t ever GET a wife! I loved this post, and I love your site; this is the first time I have been here but I will be back. 
I’m not sure whether to be excited that your student quoted Confusius or sad that he picked this quote for his paper. What do you think he typed in the Google search engine to get that quote?? URGH! This and the story of the 17 girls who made pregnancy pact are why I don’t want to have kids.
Mrs Chili — We do a great disservice to these kids if we don’t teach them how to think critically. I’d love to come to one of your classes.
Kori — Happy to meet you! Aaaah, out of the mouth of smart asses babes. I think he needs to be on laundry duty for many, many weeks. Tell him that women just looooove men who do laundry. Actually, now that I think about it, we really do!
Jenn — Of all the things Confusius said, he picked that. I was speechless about the pregnancy pact. From what I’ve read it’s because they felt that they had little else to live for. Talk about devaluing themselves as women and motherhood in general. They are in for a rude awakening if they thought having a child was the easy route through life. I think the best birth control is to tell children to think, “What if I had a kid who turned out just. like. me?” I’m sure birth rates would plummet.
i can’t believe this is how college students think. very sad, especially for women to feel this way about themselves. then again the media just glamorizes all these hollywood pregnancies (spears sisters, etc) and all you see on tv are “baby bumps”. we should clone the men and set them to work around the house instead.
I love that as a topic for discussion in a class. I’m sure that we all see examples in the media that distort our views of the sexes, but probably overlook actually noticing them.
I think it’s weird that the student thought that housewives just sit around and eat bon-bons and watch oprah. That sounds like an awesome lifetime to me, LOL. I hope that she gets married and pops a few out and then realizes how hard parenting actually is.
blakspring — I was going to make a snarky comment that played into the male as helpless around the house stereotype. I was going to say something like, “having a man help around the house creates more work than ever gets done,” but I decided to be a good example and not say it. Only I just did. Mr. Dingo, if in between playing with Dingo Girl taking a nap doing the dishes and folding the laundry you read this comment, I was only joking.
Maxie — Thanks for stopping by, Maxie. What’s odd is that like Kori a few comments above yours, many of these kids see how hard their mom’s work yet still buy into the stereotype of Desperate Housewives and The Real Housewives of OC.
I am, apparently, useless. Whoo-hoo! Bons-bons, here I come!
I was constantly amazed while getting my degree in Anthropology how many students had closed minds and ridiculous ideas about not only gender roles but also race issues. Towards the end of last semester, a professor mentioned Indians in class, and a guy that I had been friends with raised his hand and ACTUALLY SAID OUT LOUD - “Dot Indians or Feather Indians?” I guess he thought he was being funny, but HELLO. The prof reminded him that he was in an ANTHROPOLOGY course, and spoke with him privately later.
Um, okay, that doesn’t really have much to do with your post, but you get my point. I hope.
Wow. Okay, first off, SO glad you found the BlogBlast ‘cuz you’re awesome! Secondly, might I suggest a mid-term paper so that you can properly beat the sexism out of them in one semester
Thank you for participating!
Obviously this child must, one day, attend the brawny academy (http://geekhiker.wordpress.com/2008/04/25/friday-sillyness-3/). That’ll set ‘em straight…
JR — Bon-bons AND Oprah. It must be the two of them together. Do you also wear the heels with the pom-poms and the sheer robe with the boa? You do? Awesome.
April — BlogBlast was great. I learned so much from everyone. Thanks for getting it going. As for your suggestion, I think it’s perfect. I’ll gather all the mid-terms into a gigantic roll and then bludgeon them over the head.
GeekHiker — Oh my word. I’m almost tempted to sign Mr. Dingo up for it just so I can have some blogging material. The Lake of Tenderness? Really? Is that just up the hill from the great big Steaming Pile of Crap?
Le sigh. I think some stereotypes will just never go away, no matter how hard the vampires try to combat them.
Miss Dingo, how I wish I could have had a teacher like you in school. You bring up REAL life situations and just just the boring ole’ stuff. Good on you for that- your kids are really going to remember you.
Wickedly Scarlett — Hi! I’m working on it. One impressionable young mind at a time.
brookem — I figure if it’s boring to me, it’s going to be boring to them so I aim to make the class about things I’d want to talk about. I also learn a lot from them and about them from the things that they bring up to discuss. Nothing is off limits. It makes for interesting classes.
I had the opposite experience in an American lit class last year. There was a woman in my class who could read misogyny into absolutely everything - even in texts that weren’t dealing with gender roles.
I was once in a literature class that was taught by an UBER feminist professor when some dumb bitch decided to spout off some of the most anti-feminist sentiment I’ve ever heard in my life.
I thought our professor’s head was going to blow right off her body as then she proceeded to “school” this student in the ways of feminism.
It was great.
You have to seize those teachable moments or it’s just not really education at all.
What? Someone cited Confucius? Now I’ve seen everything.
Marjolein — I had one of those in my class as well. It was fun to pit her against the woman from the Dark Ages.
Crissy — There are certain things I do not tolerate in my class and sexism is one of them. My head has come close to exploding but as it is a horror literature class, I find that it would be a great visual aid.
justrun — Apparently there aren’t enough sexist quotes from the twenty-first century to choose from.
I wish you would teach a class online so I could take it…