Beyond Feminism

Here we go again.; another outrage denouncing that “boys are doing worse than girls at schoolz”. We already know how this works, don’t we sisters? The feminist reply to this pseudo-problem usually falls on one or more of the following:

* Funny how no one was complaining when girls were doing worse than boys at school on a regular basis for thousands of years (actually, girls have only had the privilige of doing worse than boys at school AFTER they were granted the privilige of going to school at all)
* Interesting how boys do better than girls in college and university.
* Boys will turn on men and they will still get to rule the world just as they do now, so, who cares?
* It’s not true; in posh-priviliged-pricy schools girls and boys do equally well, they both go to Oxbridge and become future world leaders and future world leader’s wives.

Shame that this feminist rethoric hardly ever makes it out of the Feminist Headquarters. And if we consider the truly, concentrated, feminist rethoric, that is, the RADICAL one, well, that hardly makes it out of the Twisty Bungalow. Or the Beyond Feminism Bubble.

What will this Radical Feminist Rethoric say about the boys doing worse than girls at school?
Well, to start, it will try to dig a bit deeper. What could be causing this imbalance and what would the solution look like? Radical Feminists are very smart; this further inquiring has a clear purpose: to uncover the real monster lurking under the guise of “concern for boyz”. They will tell us that the imbalance is caused by the “feminization of school”, and they specifically won’t tell us what they think we should do, that is, to turn schools to the way they were. That’s where the monster is exposed under the light of day for all to see: the solution is to masculinize schools, to turn the clocks back, which would result in boys outperforming girls; the one and only world order and they way things should have stayed. Sexism exposed. The radical feminist can now ravel in glory, beams of smugness streaming from her every pore.

Now that she has your attention, the radical feminist will expand on this idea: we will always, ALWAYS have the problems of one gender being better or worse than the other one as long as we have genders. Because gender is SUBJECTIVE. The only objective part of gender is that of the difference in genital configuration and we know how shaky that one is. But even then, one cannot build up one’s identity from that. The consequences of genders being subjective is that they can only be deined by differentiation from each other. Boys more than girl have to develop in between very clear and contrained limits: “no sissy stuff”. If girls do better than boys, the “doing better” will be associated with “girlyness” and boys will run from it as if from the plague. On the contrary, if the boys are the ones doing better, then either the girls will fall back to show they are not boys or the boys will work harder to show they are not girls.

It’s not that schools are “feminized” (whatever the heck that means). I’m pretty damn sure that whoever plans the overall shape of the education system does so making sure that each and every part is as gender neutral as possible. The differences between genders arise precisely because of the very definition of gender, ie: “different from the other one”.

I am not by far the first or the only one thinking like this. The world doesn’t like our ideas, that’s what happens. And what does this radical feminist say to that? FORK YOU! Oh, wait, no, not that. What I say is this: if you want gender differences you are gonna get gender differences. Accept it or change it, but don’t complain about it when the differences work against you.

You’ve probably seen this before. Some male talking head comes along and starts making strong points in support of ideas and concepts that women have known for centuries. Raising children is rewarding, emotions and feelings are important, caring for others is essential for the wellbeing of our society, the value of the community, etc, etc.
I have mixed feelings over this. On the one hand it is good that these ideas are getting coverage and credibility. On the other, it is, after all, a MAN doing the talking. Further still, it’s because of feminism that these ideas have been able to shake off their “feminine” and (therefore) “unimportant” tags which has allowed men to reconsider them.

Big Note: I don’t want anyone to misunderstand; I am not saying that these things are “female” by nature or anything like that. Rather, they were labeled “female” for some unfathomable reason the minute that patriarchy was created. And because everything “female” has to be, by definition, “second class”, these ideas have suffered the same fate. (I have to write a decent sized post about all this)

I don’t know why on Earth I read The F Word. I end up whipping myself up into a fit of rage at their nonsensery. Here’s the latest post that shoot my annoyance-meter well above the “let it be” level.

It starts with the following:

“The NSPCC(…) are saying that schools should teach more about relationships in sex education.”

Except, they aren’t saying that, at least not just that. Here’s what they actually said in the news article:

“Advice on emotions and relationships should be made a compulsory part of sex education in schools, the children’s charity NSPCC says.”

Oh, those pesky emotions! I would have let it be were it not because the news article that this post is concerned about is titled

“‘Emotions’ urged in sex education”

Oh, those pesky emotions again! Again, I am not picking on this for fun, I do have a point, which will be made clear further down.

Now, this suggestion by NSPCC is in turn a response to the recent data, from Childline, that claims 50 children a day ring them up saying they feel pressured to have sex.
Let’s pause for a minute on that. 50 children A DAY ring them up saying they feel pressured to have sex. The experienced feminist will notice 2 things upon being confronted with this news. One, the savvy, “one eyebrow reaised” reaction that can be summarized by “So?” or by “Next they’ll be telling us water is still wet”. The other will be the following educated guess: “I bet which gender most of those children are”. Indeed. This is the natural consecuence of a pornulated sick society. Children are force fed sex at every turn, and since this is a patriarchy that tells us sex is domination used by males over females, the ones doing the pressuring are most likely to be boys. And when we look at the actual news article we find precisely that: 5,985 girls and 503 boys in an 12 month period. This experienced feminist is good!

Kate Smurthwaite isn’t all that happy with this idea of teaching about relationships AND emotions along with sex. Why? Well…

“The first thing that frightens me is that if the syllabus is expanded out to include relationships, what is the risk that the facts of biology will be lost? I think children have a right to understand how their bodies work in factual scientific terms.
(…) It’s also difficult to understand how children will react to hearing the facts of biology lined up next to what can be nothing more than advice about relationships. I think a clear line needs to be drawn between the facts of how the human body works and advice about how to deal with the stresses and strains of relationships.”

Yes, she continues to omit the “emotions” part. Again, it’s difficult to let it pass when Sue Minto, from Childline, said:

“(…) children needed information about peer pressure, relationships and love, as well as help developing skills to make the right decisions about sex.”

Love? Damn it with those pesky emotions!

By now you have probably guessed what my problem with this post is. In fact, Kate hit the spot right there when she said “a clear line needs to be drawn between the facts of how the human body works and advice on…”
Kate seems to have bough in to the patriarchally supported idea that the mind and the body are two separate entities. That emotions are not worth a damn because, well, because the menz have said so. And that individuals can be separated from each other because there’s no such thing as society. Note to Kate: there’s only one entity here, the human being, and I’m not even sure where it begins or ends. There is no “mind” on one side and “body” on the other. There’s a whole made up of everything. Body, soul, mind, heart, and yes, relationships. All relationships, not strictly romantical ones, are not something we can “choose” to have, they are an essencial part of our human nature. So when you refer to “how the human body works” you simply HAVE to include all those parts. They are not orbiting around our bodies; they are the stuff we are made of.

And if I may just pick on Kate’s post once more, because I just cannot ignore this bit:

“I think children should be taught that they have human rights, and that one of those is the right to make their own decisions about sex (or this could be covered under the women’s studies addition to the national curriculum that I’ve been talking about forever).”

Update: sex and relationships are only the interest of women studies. Because, you know, women=sex and relationships are something only women want.

See what I mean? There’s a very thin line between thinking about humans in binary terms, mind-body, sex-love, reason-emotion AND the final association of women with one term and men with another. Needless to say, women are associated with whatever term is regarded as inferior. And Kate has crossed that line.

Once more, people: emotions are not bad or “female”. They are a part of our humanity, no matter how much patriarchy wants to devaule them and dump them on women’s shoulders.

Note: I hope I didn’t sound too bitchy. I like Kate and her work and I have nothing against her.

Everyone in the blogosphere seems to be up and down nodding vigorously at some article in the Sunday Times about literary deal-breakers in relationships. When I say “everyone” I mean Hugo and references therein. And when I say “literary deal-breakers” I mean something along the lines of:

“Some years ago, I was awakened early one morning by a phone call from a friend. She had just broken up with a boyfriend she still loved and was desperate to justify her decision. “Can you believe it!” she shouted into the phone. “He hadn’t even heard of Pushkin!””

I’ll never understand how can people justify to themselves their snobism without calling upon it. They kinda defend themselves by claiming that judging on the basis of literary taste is no different from judging on the basis of any other hobby or interest. But guess what, it is. When you change “literature” for, let’s say, to keep the comparison valid, any other high school subject, it all breaks down. Can someone in the Biology field get away with saying something like “Can you believe it? He doesn’t know what the pancreas is for!”. Or someone in the Physics department coming up with “How can I have a future with someone who doesn’t know what Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle is? *snif*”. No, and no. Funny how it only seems to work with “literature”.

What would happen if we instead change “literature” for another hobby? Hugo has attempted to do it with music. I’ll try to apply it to one of my all time favourite interests: Disney movies. Oh, yes. I can see myself saying with a straight face “I cannot believe he doesn’t know who Mrs Potts and Sebastian are! *sob*”. I am sure that kind of judgement will be deemed very reasonable.

So it doesn’t work with “any” hobby or interest. Only those with a “posh” sounding ring will do.

Let’s be honest here. For a long, long time, the only people who had access to literature were the privileged aristocrats. The elites. The crème de la crème of society. The whole literature = “(high) class” equation got stuck and it haunts us til today.

So remember, folks. Judging people for their tastes on snob pastimes like “literature” is OK. You are not trying to get away with a valid justification for feeling superior to everyone else on this world a.k.a. “the masses”. Nope, not at all.

If amongst your list of “things that need improvement” in this world you had the state of the UK’s School Curriculum, then this will be of interest to you. School Curriculum to be Overhauled, reports MSN. What it means? A quarter of the curriculum is to be freed for schools to teach whatever they feel necessary.  So far, so good. I’m all up for being taught not just what one’s school thinks one needs to learn, but what one actually WANTS to learn. I see no point in keeping students locked in a room for hours, teaching them things they have almost no interest in.

So, what will schools teach with that brand new, spanky, shiny 25% of curriculum?. How to behave in relationships?. How to deal with emotions?. How to feel empathy for the masses of people suffering in this world?. No. “How to manage their money and save for a pension”, apparently under the popmpous name of “economic well-being”. It seems to have escaped them that 80% of our GRAND economy is based precisely on the premise of NOT letting us BE WELL, thereby consuming a zillion of what we actually need and making the economy oh-so-wonderful in the process.  Or maybe what they actually meant was the “well-being of the economy”, in which case all they have to do is to train students to wake up early in the morning, to go and sit on a desk and work for 6-7 solid hours, stopping only to have pseudo-meals for lunch. Oh, wait a minute, they already DO THAT. Then, as far as I can see, there’s no point in having an “economic well-being” subject.

Honestly, don’t they have anything better to teach?.