This week’s prompt is:
How did your early schooling influence the development of your masculinity?
Relevant passage from The Will to Change by bell hooks:
"Teachers of children see gender equality mostly in terms of ensuring that girls get to have the same privileges and rights as boys within the existing social structure; they do not see it in terms of granting boys the same rights as girls—for instance, the right to choose not to engage in aggressive or violent play, the right to play with dolls, to play dress up, to wear costumes of either gender, the right to choose.”
Pretty much all female teachers, constantly scolded and lectured boys, said they were aggressive and misbehaved (honestly the boys were really mild in kindergarten)
Fast forward to seventh grade, the boys turned out exactly the way the teacher said but worse.
All female teachers through the years of elementary, except for like 1
Do you think it’s a kind of learned helplessness that led to that or that the boys were going to be like that regardless? Or that’s because that’s the example they received from older boys?