Parental Obsession with Gender Norms and Suffering Boys
If you ever thought England was a Kingdom filled with classy folk, tasteful diction, and nervously correct grammar then you've been mistaken. Fo shizzle. For one, I'm a two-time eye-witness, and two, some people there read the stain of my brain "news"paper The Daily Mail. Which should really be renamed The Daily Load of Crap. The entire right sidebar on their website is designated to "Femail" which is just stories about Posh Beckham and plastic surgery mishaps. There's one article titled, "My wife Debee McGee looks better than Madonna." nuff said.
Anyhow, they have one article by Jill Parkin titled, "Stop feminising our schools - our boys are suffering' which argues that boys are failing out of school and refusing to apply for college because of the "feminising" agenda of the British school system. She writes contemptuously:
"The problems start in the classroom. Instead of the make-or-break sprint to the exam deadline, boys have to endure stultifying coursework.
This system of continuous assessment means that anyone who can call up Google on a computer can cut and paste answers from the internet at home. Girls, with their more patient approach to learning, thrive under such a system."
I suppose she gathered her sources from wikipedia's entry on Eugenics or Mein Kampf for idiots or something. In this parallel universe, young women are more patient because they are getting ready for motherhood where they will have to focus patient attention on the baby and, as Sarah Haskins puts it, in order to wake up at 6 in the morning to put beef chunks in a slow cooker so that her husband can go "Wow" 13 hours later. In regards to school, women are "genetically" wired away from competition and toward coursework and their vaginas just gobble up books. Excuse the image but I just have to deconstruct this conception.
You know, the one about the gulf of difference between people with vaginas and people with penises. Parkin blames the school systems in GB for not acknowledging these difference. Don't you worry Parkin, the media makes up for any of the school systems discriminatory shortcomings.
The text reads:
"Healthy muscle function with Magnesium (for Him)
Healthy skin with Vitamins A and C, Copper, and Iron (For Her)"
Apparently all women need is healthy skin. skip the strong muscles and bones crap. Its not like our grandmothers are dying from osteoporosis or something. Better yet, women don't even have any muscles or bones. OMGZ! That's why women can't open doors themselves! It all ties in together so neatly!
According to Parkin, these differences between young men and young women were not concocted by marketing interns at One-a-Day and they really are bones deep.
"What boys are made of is this: tremendous data banks that can recall years of FA Cup ties in minute detail; lashings of testosterone that needs constant burning off on a sports field; and a hideous competitive streak almost as vital to them as lifeblood itself."
I'll just post my response in an image:
With that wonderful image of one tough ass woman, I will say that yes, there are differences between people with penises and people with vaginas, and yes the school systems in the western world are doing serious disservices to young men, but no, "feminising," which is a polite way of saying "sissy-a-fying," is not to blame. Parkin is using a tool which I call "misrepresentation of cause" in order to push her own agenda: a sexist agenda. Parkin is using the shortcommings of the British school system and misidentifying their cause with a push for gender fluidity. God, I hate her.
RSS Feed