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Wasting posted:If you are a man who has visited a strip club, look on these works and despair. I am, I wouldn't go now though. How did I ever get over myself?
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Jan 2, 2017 06:07
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Wasting posted:The disproportionate exploitation and abuse of women Sex work is primarily women working to provide a service to men, that's sort of axiomatically exploitative because that is the nature of profitable work and therefore also disproportionately exploitative of women. But further, most forms of sex crime involve the victimization of women disproportionately too, and as sex work is quasi-legal in most places and often has little oversight where it is legal, it is likely you're going to have some overlap between organized sex crime and sex work. I imagine TB probably has some good case studies somewhere if you like but I've always found that much reasoning sufficiently offputting anyway. Let us English posted:What technological items are considered necessary enough to justify supporting slave labor? What food items? What entertainment products? What services? I'm going to say "the line is somewhere between eating potatoes, which is acceptable, and spending $500 at a strip club, which is not acceptable."
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Jan 2, 2017 06:07
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Let us English posted:What technological items are considered necessary enough to justify supporting slave labor? What food items? What entertainment products? What services? If only that hot take had been addressed anywhere previously in the thread.
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Jan 2, 2017 06:08
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Tiny Brontosaurus posted:I would like to point out that you entered this conversation - your very first post on the subject - was to correct a "logical error." This is an illustration of toxic masculinity. Your socialized belief that you know best and your opinion is worth the most regardless of how ignorant you may be on a topic is actively preventing you from learning. Patriarchy is making you less than you could be. like, why is it so loving important to men to make sure their opinion gets equal weight and exposure, no matter how inconsequential or ignorant? I can point to direct societal forces and policing actions for the macho masculinity stuff but this is a more ambiguous or subtle reinforcement I think. What does that socialization look like? Maybe calling on men over women in class is part of it. Maybe men dominating every discussion is part of it. Maybe the conflation of men with science and logic and reason? the men who overcome their instinct to just flap their mouths in every situation and are able to just sit and listen and think definitely have an advantage.
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Jan 2, 2017 06:14
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Defenestration posted:this articulates something I've been trying to get my head around for a while now, thanks. I think perhaps it is less a socialization to speak, and more a complete absence of socialization to hold your tongue. As soon as a thought enters your head, you say it. That's what you do. There is little incentive not to.
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Jan 2, 2017 06:16
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Wasting posted:Honestly, everything you've said is an exaggeration and ridiculous, and I hope anyone else reading can see that. Wasting is willing to apologize when wrong, but oh man, that short-term memory is not firing on all cylinders. I may be going way out on a limb, but he is talking exactly like a very experienced, high functioning alcoholic who has just had a lot to drink. Wasting posted:Where did I accuse any of you of being on the latter [an attempt to control women]? Wasting posted:I, personally, believe that a lot of the ideas expressed in this thread are rooted in a more fundamental sexism masquerading as concern over the exploitation of women. That we need to protect them from themselves and their own sexuality. Wasting posted:That's fair. I can't say why any of you write the things you do, and maybe I shouldn't have written as such. But I'm always suspicious of an opinion when it aligns with a real issue. So the rest went: OwlFancier posted:Perhaps we can suggest that men should not patronize industries complicit with the exploitation of women? Wasting posted:You're demonizing sexuality, sex workers, and exotic dancers on the assumption that there are better, more puritan careers for them to engage in. It's ridiculous. Who What Now posted:I just want you to stop making poo poo up about anyone here "demonizing" people when that's clearly not something that's happening. Wasting posted:Okay. Who What Now posted:Can I see what? Strippers being demonized? No, I really can't. I simply don't know how your brain is making the leap from one to the other. Wasting posted:I agree with your first quotation 100%. Reread what I've posted. What first quotation? Did WhoWhatNow post a few quotations? Who is 'your'? I mean, exactly like he's drunk as hell with a vestigial command of grammar. Phyzzle fucked around with this message at 06:22 on Jan 2, 2017 |
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Jan 2, 2017 06:20
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Phyzzle posted:Wasting is willing to apologize when wrong, but oh man, that short-term memory is not firing on all cylinders. I may be going way out on a limb, but he is talking exactly like a very experienced, high functioning alcoholic who has just had a lot to drink. You got me. An irredeemable drunk. I'd love to see where this discussion goes without me, though, so I'll take my leave (and I am responding to PMs accusing me of being a deviant for having been to strip clubs).
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Jan 2, 2017 06:23
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How will we play ball now that wasting has taken his home.
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Jan 2, 2017 06:29
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Tiny Brontosaurus posted:How will we play ball now that wasting has taken his home. I'm still here but reading. I'd love to see what you guys have to say.
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Jan 2, 2017 06:31
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OwlFancier posted:I think perhaps it is less a socialization to speak, and more a complete absence of socialization to hold your tongue. I 100% was socialized to watch what I said and when I said it very carefully. The only times I ever got in trouble in school were for "talking back." At the time I didn't see it as a gendered difference
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Jan 2, 2017 06:35
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Defenestration posted:this is a much simpler explanation. Fits with the whole "our education system favors girls because boys are just naturally unable to sit still and are rambunctious and speak out of turn" Yeah you never hear a boy get called a "little chatterbox"
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Jan 2, 2017 06:37
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You do get told not to be disruptive but that really just teaches you to moderate your subjects, actually just speaking is rarely discouraged as long as it is judged relevant. Your teacher/parents will probably approve of you giving a good answer or saying something interesting. I have a hunch though that men of colour probably do not experience quite so unrestricted a childhood.
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Jan 2, 2017 06:37
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OwlFancier posted:You do get told not to be disruptive but that really just teaches you to moderate your subjects, actually just speaking is rarely discouraged as long as it is judged relevant. Your teacher/parents will probably approve of you giving a good answer or saying something interesting. There are plenty of times where I keep my mouth shut. Many times its around cops, other times its because you don't want to deal with a debate where the other side isn't going to listen to what you have to say regardless. Something I have caught on to as well. It's not just ok for people to have an opinion on their own space, but they have to have an opinion on all the spaces. Like some of the loudest men that have opinions on feminism have never picked up a feminist text in most of their life. Ill go at the base observation. Patriarchy hurts men because it demands that men couldn't be or shouldn't be feminists.
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Jan 2, 2017 06:47
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OwlFancier posted:You do get told not to be disruptive but that really just teaches you to moderate your subjects, actually just speaking is rarely discouraged as long as it is judged relevant. Your teacher/parents will probably approve of you giving a good answer or saying something interesting. "Let the boys answer" is definitely something I heard in classrooms where 2-3 girls were raising our hands for everything. messed up in retrospect. blackguy32 posted:some of the loudest men that have opinions on feminism have never picked up a feminist text in most of their life. blackguy32 posted:There are plenty of times where I keep my mouth shut. Many times its around cops, other times its because you don't want to deal with a debate where the other side isn't going to listen to what you have to say regardless.
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Jan 2, 2017 06:57
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Defenestration posted:I'd be interested to hear more about this duality of being told as a man your opinion is king but also being told as a black man your opinion is going to get you in trouble with authority. Tiny Brontosaurus probably has a better answer than me. Black women have it hard in life in that they take poo poo from white people and black men. A lot of black men I know will be treated as if their opinion doesn't matter in the world, and then turn around and treat their girlfriend/wife the same way. But as for the duality, dealing with cops is a perfect example. I have seen some people mouth off to cops and go on about rights and poo poo. I usually just say yes sir and no sir and hope for the best. Also, saying stuff about race will get you branded as a troublemaker, so you just keep that poo poo to yourself.
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Jan 2, 2017 07:07
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blackguy32 posted:Tiny Brontosaurus probably has a better answer than me. Black women have it hard in life in that they take poo poo from white people and black men. A lot of black men I know will be treated as if their opinion doesn't matter in the world, and then turn around and treat their girlfriend/wife the same way. I remember one time a white guy showed me the laminated bill of rights he kept in his wallet. I was floored. Can you loving imagine. You'd get Diallo'd so fast. And yeah black girls in school get told that they're mouthy, with a good bit of the "violent troublemaker" stereotypes that are usually reserved for boys. blackguy32 posted:Also, saying stuff about race will get you branded as a troublemaker Good thing the somethingawful dotcom forums are a respite from the harsh realities of the outside world
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Jan 2, 2017 07:18
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Tiny Brontosaurus posted:I remember one time a white guy showed me the laminated bill of rights he kept in his wallet. I'm told libertarians of color exist but I honestly don't understand how. You need like a massive amount of privilege and willful ignorance about how it works to remain a libertarian Tiny Brontosaurus posted:Good thing the somethingawful dotcom forums are a respite from the harsh realities of the outside world
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Jan 2, 2017 07:24
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I think the gap in k-12 education outcomes for boys vs. girls is really interesting and it's one of the main things I'd hoped this thread would discuss when FAU put it together. What was your education like, guys? Did you feel you were disciplined more than the girls? Were there any things you were told "boy's aren't good at" (as opposed to "this isn't for boys")? Girls get told they're not good at things like math and science, both individually and categorically, and it's been shown to depress testing ability. Did you feel any pressure to be anti-intellectual or to care more about sports than books? Was curiosity rewarded ("boys are so smart!") or punished ("curiosity's for fags!")? And do you actually do the towel-snapping thing in locker rooms. I never understood how that was supposed to work.
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Jan 2, 2017 07:29
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Defenestration posted:oh, a libertarian? That's nothing. There are African-American Sovereign Citizen groups out there. But maybe that is just a whole other level of crazy.
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Jan 2, 2017 07:43
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Tiny Brontosaurus posted:What was your education like, guys? I spent all 12 years with my hand down and avoiding eye contact with the teacher so they wouldn't know I was alive, so basically no to most of your questions. I did see my friends get disciplined a ton, and in my school all the known "troublemakers" were male. No one snaps towels in the locker room. All the boys made specific and determined efforts not to interact in any way while less than fully clothed around PE time.
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Jan 2, 2017 07:50
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bag em and tag em posted:I spent all 12 years with my hand down and avoiding eye contact with the teacher so they wouldn't know I was alive, so basically no to most of your questions. I did see my friends get disciplined a ton, and in my school all the known "troublemakers" were male. This was pretty much me. The one thing I would note is that there were a lot more girls in my art classes than boys, and artistic ability was something that my high school was pretty big on (I almost failed my health class because our teacher graded us on our notebooks, and a quarter of that grade depended on "artistic creativity" in said notebook). Not sure that really means anything, though.
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Jan 2, 2017 08:07
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Most of the stereotypes applied in any direction were absent or less pronounced at my HS (I can barely remember things before that other than generally disliking things). Smart girls and boys were generally promoted in their interests and I don't think any were directed away, at least within the school, from whatever college path they pursued. Sports were popular-ish but didn't have nearly the cache that is typically portrayed on TV - then again we weren't like ALL STATE CHAMPS so sports were mostly just a thing (and there's a massively difficult topic on masculinity in HS sports because from talking to people who played sports in various HS the experiences were extremely disparate to the point where I'd question any nationwide study as useless). I don't think girls were particularly told to be silenced in HS (or pre-HS) nor were boys told their "opinion was king" - "loudmouth" was used as the male "chatterbox" and deployed seemingly evenly, although I doubt anyone can know how frequently a targeted approach was used for another student. That said, I was typically in the more advanced classes so the expectations were different. Classes that didn't have that kind of focused approach tended to have more kids who were actually disruptive, but I may have had a charmed life in that I've had a lot of classes, both HS, college, and post-college, where there were actually-disruptive people that helped set handy and easily-met thresholds for acceptable behavior. I'd hazard from (distant) memory that gender norms were much more enforced the lower the "brainjuice" a class was. Fundamentally, and something I feel often is missed in these discussions, is that the attitudes and outcomes weren't always binary - reading wasn't nerdy or cool, it was NULL. Football was played by manly men (albeit nothing like typically portrayed) but boys in water polo or long-distance runners or whatever weren't fags, they were just... unjudged. I dated a soccer player and they weren't considered dykes, it was just "who cares". I played football, threw the shot (badly) and also was in the glee club, and aside from notable homophobia (early 90's CA version) directed at one specific person in glee club (who I suspect acted as sort of a canary for acceptable behavior) there was no masculine fury directed at me or the other guys in glee, at least not to our faces, including the other gay guys. No one seemed to give a poo poo, positive or negative. Gender roles did manifest in some of the electives (autoshop was basically all dudes and girls were considered oddities, home ec, before it vanished, was typically girls). Glee, drama, etc tilted female. Towel-snapping didn't happen AFAIK because we were warned about the terror of ripping testicles off. I think people thought you could get AIDS from that, too, as it was the early 90s and we were expecting AIDS to become airborne and sentient. But showering is a whole different thing that was talked about in another older thread and no one seemed to have an answer because, again, experiences seemed too varied. No one seemed to shower at my HS - it was considered weird to do so, but had been so for apparently so long that the (likely homophobic, although possibly also liability/sanitation ) origins of not showering had faded to time and it was simply weird because it was weird, and there was barely any time to do more than change anyway. In my adult life of various gyms of all sorts I've never seen snapping. Considering the cost of membership fees you'd have to be crazy to risk that. At my current gym most of the guys are so old that it'd probably rupture organs. If you meant "how do physics of towel work" then if a towel is damp (soaking adds too much weight) it has enough mass at the corners to work as a whip. If done just right it really really loving hurts. Zachack fucked around with this message at 08:21 on Jan 2, 2017 |
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Jan 2, 2017 08:12
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Tiny Brontosaurus posted:I think the gap in k-12 education outcomes for boys vs. girls is really interesting and it's one of the main things I'd hoped this thread would discuss when FAU put it together. What was your education like, guys? Did you feel you were disciplined more than the girls? Were there any things you were told "boy's aren't good at" (as opposed to "this isn't for boys")? Girls get told they're not good at things like math and science, both individually and categorically, and it's been shown to depress testing ability. Did you feel any pressure to be anti-intellectual or to care more about sports than books? Was curiosity rewarded ("boys are so smart!") or punished ("curiosity's for fags!")? It was my experience throughout k-12 that individual authority figures fairly consistently favored one gender or the other in giving out punishments, and this was typically their own gender. In k-8, there were almost no male teachers, so boys were definitely punished more frequently for the same transgressions. In high school, there were a lot more male teachers and male staff, so a whole lot of girls got bullshit selective punishments. I'm pretty sure there was at least one case where a couple was kissing and this was marked as a rule violation only on the girl's part. It wasn't even a traditionalist/religious school or anything.  Academically speaking, math was gendered as very male early on, and science was gendered as slightly male early on, but most subjects, including reading and writing, were gendered as female early on. There was this one girl who was proud to be illiterate because she thought women were supposed to be generally dumb to be appealing later in life, but everyone thought she was kind of weird. There were extensive handwriting exercises in k-3 which girls consistently did better on than boys, I suspect due to female-socialized values like neat perfectionism, the same type that gives women better sensitivity to dirt. In creative writing exercises, no standards were really applied, but girls tended to focus on character development and relationships while boys tended to imitate cool fights and awesome dudes from cartoons and action movies they watched, so it's pretty obvious the girls were making a better product. I went to an intensely academically focused high school, so my experience there was atypical, but a lot of academic gender disparity was also visible. Math and to a lesser extent science electives/honors were primarily dominated by autistic men who were all somewhat similar; the women there, on the other hand, had pretty diverse personalities. Literature, language, and history electives/honors were much more balanced gender-wise, though slightly female-dominated, and had the inverted gender dynamic - the women were all somewhat similar far-left activist types, while the men had pretty diverse personalities.
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Jan 2, 2017 08:31
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Zachack posted:If you meant "how do physics of towel work" then if a towel is damp (soaking adds too much weight) it has enough mass at the corners to work as a whip. If done just right it really really loving hurts. Thank you, I'll test this out and report back with my findings
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Jan 2, 2017 08:33
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bag em and tag em posted:No one snaps towels in the locker room. All the boys made specific and determined efforts not to interact in any way while less than fully clothed around PE time. This was not remotely my experiences with sports, though PE itself yes.
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Jan 2, 2017 08:55
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Tiny Brontosaurus posted:I think the gap in k-12 education outcomes for boys vs. girls is really interesting and it's one of the main things I'd hoped this thread would discuss when FAU put it together. What was your education like, guys? Did you feel you were disciplined more than the girls? Were there any things you were told "boy's aren't good at" (as opposed to "this isn't for boys")? Girls get told they're not good at things like math and science, both individually and categorically, and it's been shown to depress testing ability. Did you feel any pressure to be anti-intellectual or to care more about sports than books? Was curiosity rewarded ("boys are so smart!") or punished ("curiosity's for fags!")? At the high school I attended, one of the coaches called a school wide meeting of all the male students in order to attempt to shame them into signing up for the football team. This included open statements that men who played in band were gay and that if you didn't want to be gay it was necessary to sign up for football. Edit: This was explicitly because band was "for girls."
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Jan 2, 2017 09:09
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I think overall my school was pretty good for a lot of things but as far as how gender affected my learning? Thaks to the assumption boys are naturally inclined to math and my abysmal ability to understand it I ended up developing alot of shame and anxiety around even simple math which further hosed my math education. Apart from that both primary and high school were pretty good I think I got lucky with a lot of good teachers. I do remember trying woodshop one semester and being absolutely useless at everything because I'm a clumsy oaf with tools and the expectations that boys naturally know and understand tools and working with their hands was a big frustration for me.
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Jan 2, 2017 09:31
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the white hand posted:it's perfectly sensible to see strippers as women with agency who can take pride in their work, and their customers as greasy perverts. If a strong, confident, courageous, heroic, proud woman is using her personal agency to become a stripper, then it would be hatefully patriarchal and bigoted of me to participate in Puritanical immoral boycotts and marginalising economic warfare by declining to use her services. By visiting a stripper I am a loyal feminist ally supporting her independence.
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Jan 2, 2017 09:52
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When did the idea that boys are just naturally too rambunctious for the current way school is taught first start showing up? That school is currently too feminine for boys to do well. It's something I've heard a lot, but also something I can't square away with my knowledge of how incredibly strict schools used to be in the 19th and early 20th century especially. It seems like for a significant portion of people the idea of socialisation making a difference, for boys especially, doesn't occur to them. Like, men just aren't inclined to dress fancy, provided you ignore anything in western society from before the 1900s. There's an element of "it's like this now, so it has always been like this" that I think makes it really hard to critically look at things.
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Jan 2, 2017 14:00
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Tiny Brontosaurus posted:What was your education like, guys? Boys were definitely disciplined more. For the same offenses, girls would get a talking to by the teacher, but boys would be sent right to the principal and on into the formal discipline procedures. Which meant that by the time you got to detention and Saturday school, it was mostly boys. Girls might be chatterboxes, but boys talking were a classroom disruption, and that was breaking an actual rule. There were things that boys were told they weren't good at, and things boys were told they shouldn't be good at. Early on it was made very clear that boys were not as good as girls with reading and writing. And it wasn't so much that you would be discouraged from doing it, but more that if you were bad, no one expected you to get better. My brother got all the way to high school being functionally illiterate. The only science I recall being better for boys was the more hands on or math heavy physics. Building paper bridges and calculating how far a toy car would roll. Biology seemed pretty balanced, but at that level it was mostly just memorizing the parts of cells and classes of animals. I'm not sure if it was deliberate at my high school, but the top ranked boys sport (wrestling) got as much attention and praise as the top ranked girls sport (water polo). So both boys and girls sports were encouraged. Things that you shouldn't do, or were discouraged, we're the typical stuff like sewing, gymnastics, dance. Art was kind of a gray area, but art teachers were also all women. With so.many teachers being women, there weren't many male role models to encourage boys to do much of anything. I ended up doing machine shop for 3 years in a row. This was the mid 90's, and girls were very much encouraged to do well in anything that was traditionally dominated by men. "Boys are so smart" was not a thing, at least at my school. And neither was treating learning as bad. It was also the time when Ritalin became huge, and ADHD was a problem only boys seemed to have. In retrospect, it was an awkward time to be a boy. The teachers coming in weren't working as hard to uphold patriarchy (they were mostly liberal women), and a lot of adolescent male behavior was being criminalized and pathologized. In all honestly, there are a lot of perks to being a man. My experience in k-12 was not one of them. At almost 40 years old, the k-12 years were hands down the most miserable in my life so far. I also have a son in high school now, and it is interesting that he has many of he same struggles with the school system. Toxic masculinity is bad an all. But treating it with special ed, medication, and expulsion, isn't really filling the vacuum left behind.
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Jan 2, 2017 14:23
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Mormon Star Wars posted:At the high school I attended, one of the coaches called a school wide meeting of all the male students in order to attempt to shame them into signing up for the football team. This included open statements that men who played in band were gay and that if you didn't want to be gay it was necessary to sign up for football. You are a lot less likely to get a serious concussion at band club. So boys who aren't fools would be well advised to avoid football. There are plenty of sports that won't give you brain damage. as this becomes more widely known I can see the scene you describe becoming quite common as boys desperately try to avoid catching the eye of the football coach since brain damage is no fun.
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Jan 2, 2017 14:28
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Defenestration posted:this is a much simpler explanation. Fits with the whole "our education system favors girls because boys are just naturally unable to sit still and are rambunctious and speak out of turn" This is definitely close to the truth, I think. I was always pretty eager to please as a kid (white male here) and virtually everything I said in class was rewarded with praise and positive feedback. Nothing feels quite as good as saying something you think is smart and having someone say, 'hey, you're pretty smart'. It took me most of my adult life to realize that even if I were passably intelligent that feedback had very little to do with my intelligence. EDIT: It's also worth noting that until I started seriously thinking about it and talking to a professional I didn't realize how much I had come to rely on that kind of praise to build my self worth. Male identity is pretty wrapped up in constantly reinforcing your worth through assumed channels (things like being the loudest voice in the room, having great ideas, etc) and a lot of male rage and misogyny is born from men who feel like they are suddenly being 'ignored', when they are in fact just not getting a steady fix of praise. Mendrian fucked around with this message at 15:27 on Jan 2, 2017 |
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Jan 2, 2017 15:25
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kapparomeo posted:If a strong, confident, courageous, heroic, proud woman is using her personal agency to become a stripper, then it would be hatefully patriarchal and bigoted of me to participate in Puritanical immoral boycotts and marginalising economic warfare by declining to use her services. By visiting a stripper I am a loyal feminist ally supporting her independence. Totally what she's thinking I'm sure!
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Jan 2, 2017 15:30
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Tiny Brontosaurus posted:I think the gap in k-12 education outcomes for boys vs. girls is really interesting and it's one of the main things I'd hoped this thread would discuss when FAU put it together. What was your education like, guys? Did you feel you were disciplined more than the girls? Were there any things you were told "boy's aren't good at" (as opposed to "this isn't for boys")? Girls get told they're not good at things like math and science, both individually and categorically, and it's been shown to depress testing ability. Did you feel any pressure to be anti-intellectual or to care more about sports than books? Was curiosity rewarded ("boys are so smart!") or punished ("curiosity's for fags!")? quote:What was your education like, guys? In terms of school administration: Aside from the occasional fight, my interacts with them were largely limited to getting in trouble for being places I shouldn't be and rollerblading in the halls. I felt like the boys were disciplined a good deal more than the goals, but then, the boys seemed to be significantly more likely to break the rules, and even then I personally got away with far more than I ever should have. Boys were more likely to be talking in class, more likely to be doing things that weren't paying attention, more likely to talk back to teachers, more likely to... well, basically anything you weren't supposed to do in school I guess. As far as academic discipline, I only got pinged once, for something I didn't do, and the teacher responsible *definitely* favoured the girls in his class a ton (or at least it felt like that to me) but I have no idea if that was related. I think he was just kind of a lovely teacher. I did also get disciplined for reading books, but then I also had a habit of reading during class so that's... understandable. Socially: I was largely a social outcast I got lucky in high school and discovered that the weirdo clique was actually the largest and probably the most powerful clique in high school, and that even existing on the periphery of it (it was based around the theatre and music kids, which I wasn't) made things much nicer. I didn't date or anything because I straight up wasn't interested - the bulk of my social group and friends were girls, and dating just seemed like a miserable toxic mess of drama. I made a few half-hearted attempts just because it was expected of me, but that was about it. Having a social group that was mostly girls was... frustrating, at times. Even though I spent a lot of time with them, it felt like anytime I actually wanted to do something more active than simply walking around I had to get in contact with other guys in the group. One of them did try to join in occasionally, which is how I discovered that she had literally never learned to jump - straight up couldn't do it. Can you imagine someone going through life and never learning to jump? But hey, she came along with the guys once when we broke into the mental hospital so at least she tried (we're just lucky that we got in on the ground floor that time, I don't think she could have handled the jumping through the ceiling-door-thingy from the second time, and she was allergic to bees so she might have died if she hesitated to jump since it turned out the ceiling-door-thingy had a hive of bees in it). But still: Wanted to start a band? Wanted to go climb something? Wanted to have a sword fight? Wanted to go diving at the quarry? Want to play a two week long game of assassin? Play some dodgeball or shoot some hoops? It's basically "all the guys in the girl-dominated group + 1 girl at best". I don't think I ever figured out what it was they were actually doing instead of what i saw as the "fun stuff". I was also once almost expelled from the social circle for "hitting" a girl - I put it in quotations because it wasn't intentional, I hadn't even known she was there. One of the other girls had stolen something from me at a party and refused to give it back, was claiming I was harassing her by following her around but I just wanted my poo poo so I could leave and doubted I'd ever see it again if I left without it. Ended up trying to just grab and yanking it out of her hand... and when pulling back managed to solidly clock another girl (a very popular one in the group) that was walking in through the doorway behind me. poo poo. I was apologetic as all hell, but they wanted none of it. It didn't matter what else had happened - I was a guy that had hit a girl, and they wanted me gone, so I was basically solo for a few months after that (and the emotional turmoil that resulted from the situation was reflected pretty strongly in my grades for that semester) Bullying-wise: Had a kid break into my locked and hock loogies all over my stuff. Had food thrown at me. Suckerpunched once. Surrounded on the wooded path to school and threatened.Threatened with a gun. Had a knife pulled on me once after getting my head slammed into a wall. Believe it or not each one was what I was hoping for that last one and was a clear victory on my part, since I had intentionally provoked it knowing he had it on him and rationalizing that if it was my best chance to get them expelled and off my back. Depressing realization after middle school that I had passed a chunk of the bullying I had received on to someone even less advantaged than myself, which I had justified at the time as him somehow deserving it but in reality I was doing it to feel better at myself, something I tried to be more conscious about not doing in High School. A depressing realization after high school that the kids who had bullied me, or at least the ones that I managed to get kicked out of school, were themselves super hosed up - one of them literally had a hole in his heart, no other real friends, and had to go to regular surgeries and I think he died shortly after high school ended. Academically: I did well. Lots of lovely teachers, a few good ones. Most of them were men - in fact, I can't remember a single woman beyond elementary school aside from my physics teacher (she was pretty cool). I enjoyed competing academically with my peers, and the satisfaction that comes from beating someone consistently on tests even though they are an A student and you're a B or C student. Had a horrible work ethic. Hindered by a mother who felt that it was appropriate for her to do things for me because I wouldn't otherwise do them "right", until the point where she couldn't do them at all. Held back by low home incentives for success, too. The only particularly relevant thing I noticed here, and this is just anecdotal of course, but it seemed like all the top top students were guys, but all the worst students were guys as well. The girls were less willing to stick out, for better or worse, so while they tended to be a lot more common in the "better" classes than guys, the individuals that excelled in those classes were often male. It was kind of a weird dynamic, but I guess it sort of reflects society at larger where men are overrepresented at both the top and bottom. They seemed to be good passive learners, but less willing to push and really challenge themselves and test their limits, less willing to compete and less willing to risk looking stupid by working their way through a problem in front of others. The one noticeable exception here was in English related subjects - the speech&debate team had several girls on it who did well (though they stuck mostly to the solo events like story reading) and their creative writing exercises generally tried to push boundaries pretty effectively. I think the teacher I mentioned above who favoured girls was actually largely responsible for this - he headed the S&D team in addition to being the creative writing teacher, and he spent a lot of time trying to recruit and encourage the women to get more involved. On the other hand, he was lovely enough to me that he actively drove me towards focusing more on the math and science stuff. quote:Were there any things you were told "boy's aren't good at" (as opposed to "this isn't for boys")? I can't recall any. There was a bit of an assumption that boys were more likely to try and cheat, I think, but for all I know they were. Never any explicit downplaying of their abilities. quote:Did you feel any pressure to be anti-intellectual or to care more about sports than books? quote:Was curiosity rewarded ("boys are so smart!") or punished ("curiosity's for fags!")? quote:And do you actually do the towel-snapping thing in locker rooms. I never understood how that was supposed to work. It does make me feel bad for the girls though, who I suspect were largely socialized to believe that pain is inherently bad or some sort of weird stuff like that. GlyphGryph fucked around with this message at 15:48 on Jan 2, 2017 |
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Jan 2, 2017 15:46
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Solenna posted:When did the idea that boys are just naturally too rambunctious for the current way school is taught first start showing up? That school is currently too feminine for boys to do well. It's something I've heard a lot, but also something I can't square away with my knowledge of how incredibly strict schools used to be in the 19th and early 20th century especially. Schools were incredibly strict, but from what I understand there was a strong social expectation that as a boy you were supposed to breaking those rules anyway. Didn't they also tended to have fewer long term consequences? A spanking or a rap on the knuckles isn't going to harm your extracurriculars or piss off your parents the way detention and expulsion do.
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Jan 2, 2017 15:57
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GlyphGryph posted:It does make me feel bad for the girls though, who I suspect were largely socialized to believe that pain is inherently bad or some sort of weird stuff like that. Sack tapping and punch for punch, anyone? Christ.
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Jan 2, 2017 16:01
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Tiny Brontosaurus posted:I think the gap in k-12 education outcomes for boys vs. girls is really interesting and it's one of the main things I'd hoped this thread would discuss when FAU put it together. What was your education like, guys? Did you feel you were disciplined more than the girls? Were there any things you were told "boy's aren't good at" (as opposed to "this isn't for boys")? Girls get told they're not good at things like math and science, both individually and categorically, and it's been shown to depress testing ability. Did you feel any pressure to be anti-intellectual or to care more about sports than books? Was curiosity rewarded ("boys are so smart!") or punished ("curiosity's for fags!")? I got told boys didn't belong in cooking class and was encouraged not to sign up for art class. Too bad for them I still cook and art. There was also a school store and a journalism class and those were totally of limits if you were a boy. I didn't really care though. For math I did get special treatment, the math teacher in high school tutored me and one other girl on her own time. All the boys called each other fag and jew 24/7 though. I was mostly on the 'you loving jew' end of it though. I wish we had towel-snapping. Mostly just ecstasy, k and sometimes harder stuff getting sold in the locker rooms. We weren't even allowed stall doors on any toilet in the whole school.
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Jan 2, 2017 16:11
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Nerses IV posted:Sack tapping and punch for punch, anyone? Christ. We played quarters in high school, you spin a quarter and each person takes their turn flicking it to keep it spinning. Whoever failed was the loser and put their knuckles flat down on the table while the winner launched said quarter forward on the table with his two thumbs. Good players would split your skin on the first shot, and of course people starting bringing in foreign currency that was heavier than American. That said, raising 3 girls and seeing how they treat each other and friends I don't think it was so bad.
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Jan 2, 2017 16:29
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Mendrian posted:This is definitely close to the truth, I think. GlyphGryph posted:
over in EPORW land there are two major schools of responses on bullies. These are responses to a macro that says "'Like' if you would you stand up for a child being bullied" (the child being laughed at is of course a cute little white girl but that's another thread) Half the commenters lamented that kids would never learn to stand up for themselves if we didn't let them be bullied  The other half were self-aggrandizing tough guy stories about how they made bullies eat dirt and saved the day  Basically waxing nostalgic about bum fights between kids. Note that in both of these violence is the answer. There is no room for empathy or problem solving or conflict resolution. Not fighting back means you're not "standing up for yourself" and it's heavily implied that the child being bullied thus gets what he not only deserves, but NEEDS, to give him impetus to join the cult of violent masculinity. That must really suck if you're less physically intimidating, or if you just don't want to participate in socially sanctioned violence. By saying "these are the skills you need to make it in the adult world" (not empathy or conflict resolution) we're setting men up to be lovely to each other, and violent in their home life. quote:It does make me feel bad for the girls though, who I suspect were largely socialized to believe that pain is inherently bad or some sort of weird stuff like that. Causing pain to others is bad, yes...
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Jan 2, 2017 16:43
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Tiny Brontosaurus posted:I think the gap in k-12 education outcomes for boys vs. girls is really interesting and it's one of the main things I'd hoped this thread would discuss when FAU put it together. What was your education like, guys? Did you feel you were disciplined more than the girls? Were there any things you were told "boy's aren't good at" (as opposed to "this isn't for boys")? Girls get told they're not good at things like math and science, both individually and categorically, and it's been shown to depress testing ability. Did you feel any pressure to be anti-intellectual or to care more about sports than books? Was curiosity rewarded ("boys are so smart!") or punished ("curiosity's for fags!")? Hard to tell as I was a big nerd. There was a big push towards the sciences but all my science teachers were women and a lot of our top sets classes were girls as well. It seemed fairly integrated actually which might be a UK/US difference.
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Jan 2, 2017 17:07
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