THE FAIRER SEX

Short Stories on Male Privilege

No. 3

Defective Girls

No country can ever truly flourish if it stifles the potential of its women

and deprives itself of the contributions of half of its citizens.

– Michelle Obama

All walls displayed the lives of celebrated women. Cleopatra. Joan of Arc. Florence Nightingale. Marie Curie. Jean-Paul Sartre's girlfriend. Posh Spice. Shelves overflowed with biographies of the same. A giant banner proclaimed: 'Women are one-half of the world's people, but they do two-thirds of the world's work, earn one-tenth of the world's income, and own one-hundredth of the world's property'.

'As for last week's homework', said Ms Maanheit, returning the assignments one-by-one with marginalia in red, 'as usual the girls and boys went about it quite differently. I asked you to write about a successful woman. That is, a woman who succeeded despite the patriarchy. Julia - Rosa Parks, good choice. Amanda - Rosalind Franklin, another good choice. For those of you who don't know, Rosalind Franklin discovered DNA but a couple of male scientists stole the credit. Francis Crick should've been called Francis Crook. As for the boys; why is it that, when I ask boys to write about a successful woman, they'll choose Margaret Thatcher. She doesn't count - she was an awful woman. We want more women in positions of power, but only women with the right politics. She also succeeded without women-only shortlists. As I've said many times, if we're to have a level playing field, then we must have women-only shortlists.'

No grades were awarded for assignments. Grades had been abolished, as low-grades damaged self-esteem. This echoed the policy in school sports, in which no scores were kept, and in which there were neither winners nor losers. Losing was far too serious a risk to a child's self-esteem.

Ms Maanheit returned to her desk.

'Now, as I said, we'll begin reading The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Attwood. This brilliantly conceived classic was written in 1987. It is about the Republic of Gilead, a patriarchal dystopia in which women are subjugated, even more so than today, until they have one function, and one function only - as baby machines. The novel is about their fight for independence. Julia, begin reading at Chapter 1.'

' "We slept in what had once been the gymnasium. The floor was of varnished wood . . . " '

The reading continued until Chapter 2, at which Ms Maanheit asked Timothy to take over.

'A - chair - a - ta - ble - a - lamp. Ab -ove - on - the - white - k . . . kye.'

'Ceiling.'

Some laughs.

'Cei-ling. A - re - lief - orn - a - ment - in - the - shape - of a - wuh . . . wuh-ruh.'

'Wreath.'

The girls laughed, and some of the boys.

'I think it's best if Andrea takes over.'

The reading continued for a few more minutes until it was time for a classroom discussion. Ms Maanheit asked for initial impressions.

'I see some boys have put up their hands already, said Ms Maanheit. 'I've said this a thousand times - when we have a classroom discussion, girls must be given opportunity to speak before boys - it levels the playing field. It also makes up for all those centuries in which women and girls were oppressed by men and boys. Julia?'

'I think it shows what could happen here, if women aren't careful - they must fight for equality with men.'

'Well, exactly. Good. This is a very important and profound novel about the subjugation of women - by a patriarchy. The Americans have just had a narrow escape, as Gilead is the kind of society Donald Trump was trying so hard to create. A useful term here is "female agency", meaning the capacity of women to act independently, to make their own choices, and to take responsibility for their own actions. Even today, women lack agency in many respects. Only, they're constrained in more subtle ways. Women are conditioned by the patriarchy into taking supposedly female-type jobs, for example, or into taking the wrong courses in further education. Many of them, quite inappropriately, want to work only part time, or to be wholly supported by a husband, so that they can raise children and keep the home - in other words, to be a man's nursemaid and skivvy. Chattel, basically. What do the boys have to say for themselves?'

The boys looked at each other. They seemed unsure of what to say.

'The boys aren't boysplaining for once', said one of the girls.

The girls laughed.

Ms. Maanheit smiled. There were only three academic terms in which to liberate her female minds from their psychological foot-binding. The term 'boysplaining' had evidently been discovered or even coined by the girls, as a result of her own pedagogy. The girls were thinking for themselves. A good sign.

'And for homework', said Ms Maanheit, ignoring the chorus of groans, 'I want you to write about . . . now let me see. Are there any suggestions?'

'Can we write about a successful man this time?' shouted Timothy.

'As I've said so many times, when I ask a question the girls must answer first. Why don't boys listen? Successful men have been written about throughout history - entire encyclopaedias are devoted to them. No, you cannot write about a successful man.'

Numerous hands went up.

'Julia?'

'How about if you were organising a dinner party?'

Ms Maanheit ignored the chorus of disgust with which half the class greeted this suggestion.'

'How about battleships?' came a shout from the back of the class.

'Tsk', said Ms Maanhait, 'I've told you so many times, Timothy, you must put up your hand.'

'I did put up my hand', Ms Maanheit.'

'How about the FA cup?' came another voice.

'There will be no football and no skateboarding. No rockets. No pirates. No decapitated heads. No monsters devouring cities. Yes, I think Julia's idea of a dinner party is excellent.' This remark was greeted by a still-louder chorus of disgust from half the class. 'You will all write about giving a dinner party. Selecting the guests; choosing the menu; cooking the food; sending out the invitations; laying out all your clothes and deciding what to wear. For the girls, it will be necessary to show how you'd get your husband to help. If you sent him to the supermarket, for example, you'd have to give him a shopping list; otherwise he'd just come back with beer and crisps. If you're a boy, you could help your wife to cook, instead of lazily sitting on the sofa and watching the football. You see how exciting it all is?'

The bell rang, the class was dismissed, and the children filed out while Ms Maanheit gathered her notes.

A girl approached her.

'Yes, Julia, how can I help? Have the boys been a nuisance again?'

'Well . . . not exactly, said the girl.

'They can be difficult. As you know, I like to look after my girls.'

'It's just - sometimes I worry about the boys. They kind of get ignored.'

'When you're a grown woman, Julia, you'll understand how everything in society centres on men and boys. I'm not biased against boys - I just try to control their reprehensible characteristics. It's not much to ask for a few little insignificant spaces in which girls and women are prioritised. You shouldn't feel sorry for the boys. When they're men, they'll have all the power anyway. We women just have to muddle along the best we can. I try to prepare you for the world you'll face. You'll have to fight male privilege and toxic masculinity all your life.'

The girl nodded slowly and walked away slowly, while holding her files close to her chest.

Ms Maanheit left the classroom, walked along the corridor and out into the courtyard. The school was in two halves, upper and lower. The staffroom, to which she was now headed, was in the upper.

Several classes of children were now making their way between upper and lower, in both directions.

'Knock 'im!', came a boy's shout.

Two boys were in a tussle, their hair awry as they held one another, pushing and shoving. A couple of women teachers were trying to pull them apart.

'You two!' shouted Mr Newton.

Mr Newton taught physics. (The other male teacher in the school taught music).

The two boys stopped and stood up straight.

'What's on earth's going on here?'

'We wuz just 'avin a larf, sir', said the smaller boy, speaking mostly with his tongue.

'And you?' said Mr Newton to the other boy.

'We didn't mean nuffink' ', said the other, also speaking with mostly his tongue.

'What's this about?'

'I only asked if I could lend your skateboard.'

'I already borrowed you my bicycle.'

'Now listen here, you two. Speaking without using your lips doesn't make you tough - you just sound stupid. Someday you'll be looking for a job, and that's no way to talk at a job interview. All Englishmen should respect the English language; it pains me beyond endurance to listen to the two of you mangling it almost beyond recognition. Now get along with you!'

The two boys re-joined the stream of children to the upper school.

'Hello Ms Maanheit', said Mr Newton.

''I wonder if you'll be in trouble for that', she said.

'How so?'

'Calling a child stupid is very damaging to self-esteem.'

'Oh, nonsense, he won't even remember it in a few minutes.'

'That fight is just more proof of boys' need for socialisation. They might've hurt themselves badly, fighting like that. It's laddism at its worst.'

'Grazed knees and elbows are all there is, and those are gone after a day or two.'

'They should be disciplined. Put on suspension. We simply cannot allow schoolyard aggression.'

'Oh, that wasn't aggression, not properly. With real aggression the boys are obviously unhappy and they part as enemies; there are even tears. Look at those two now. They're walking side by side, laughing. Rough-and-tumble play brings boys together, makes them happy; it's a critical part of their socialization.'

'We should be giving the boys classes on violence prevention, and how to be allies with women and girls. Boys are, after all, potential predators. The roots of gendered violence lie in what I've just seen. If they bash each other in school, they'll bash their wives as men.'

'That's quite an extrapolation. Boys by nature are more physically aggressive than girls, less risk-averse, and more prone to rule-breaking. That just means the boundaries have to be clearer and more explicit than with girls.'

The scene was nevertheless a great pain to Ms Maanheit. The boys never cooperated with efforts to rescue them from their masculinity. And Mr Newton was a man, so she expected nothing but excuses. If only boys were more like girls; and men more like women.

They approached the staffroom. This was the kind of situation which Ms Maanheit loathed: approaching a door, with a man just in front of her. Just as she'd feared, Mr Newton stood aside and held the door. This behaviour was chivalrous; a fancy term for sexism in disguise. Benevolent sexism, but sexism nonetheless. Women should not go through doorways before men, just because they are women: it was creating an unlevel playing field.

Conversations in the staffroom spanned a vast range of topics, all the way from A to B.

'Do you know', said Ms Maanheit, 'today one of my girls tried to tell me that I ignore the boys. Bless! That shows just how low my girls' self-esteem really is. Girls are conditioned to feel less worthy of attention; as if they're some kind of second-class citizens. They're taught to be silent, modest, passive and unassertive. That's the patriarchy's doing - the school's hidden curriculum. I do everything in my classes to redress this imbalance, and obviously the boys get resentful that - just for once - everything doesn't revolve around them.'

'If girls need female role models, then you have to accept that boys also need male role models', said Mr Newton.

'Other classes focus exclusively on important men, but the boys never complain about that! The Age of Discovery or the Rise of Science are entirely about men. Christopher Columbus, Vasco de Gama. Isaac Newton, Albert . . . well, that E=mc² man. If we're to get equality, then women must assume centre stage.'

'Physics classes are not about men, Ms Maanheit - they're about physics. You should also know that Rosalind Franklin did not discover the structure of DNA, as you keep telling your pupils; Francis Crick and Joseph Watson discovered it. You've been listening to Woman's Hour again, haven't you. With every year that passes, I see Rosalind Franklin's stock rise a little bit more. First she didn't get proper credit. Next she had her findings stolen. Now she made the discovery all by herself! And science, Ms Maanheit, is about evidence. I refer to that banner in your classroom, "Women are one-half of the world's people, but they do two-thirds of the world's work, etc." I would like to follow this up! Can you direct me to the evidence to support this statement? I have the strongest suspicion that it's been made up.'

'Science', Ms Maanheit said, 'is a patriarchal construct. If I may return to my point, I asked the class to write about giving a dinner party. None of the girls complained; but there was the usual cacophony of objections from the boys. One boy wanted to write about battleships. War - hardly an appropriate topic. Another wanted to write about football. But I can hardly ask my girls to write about that.'

'Why on earth not? Because girls aren't interested in football?'

'No, it's to help the boys. You see, football imprisons boys in straightjackets of masculinity. Don't forget, boys are also victims of toxic masculinity. Aberrant masculinity endangers all society. Our job as teachers, is to liberate the male psyche from its innate preoccupation with domination, hierarchy, power, privilege and control.'

'There's an obvious literacy gap', said Mr. Bronson the music teacher. 'The boys are definitely behind the girls in that respect. Consistently. In reading as well as writing. Boys would make faster progress if they were simply allowed to read and write about the things that interest them. Pirates. Rockets. Monsters devouring cities.'

'There's an alternative explanation - one thing you have to face is that girls might just be smarter than boys', said Ms Maanheit, smiling.

'There are hardly any women in physics. Is that because men are better at physics than women?'

'Well, hardly. The very idea is poppycock.'

'I bet 50mph in my car is a lot faster than the 50mph in your car', said Mr Newton.

'I've no idea what you mean by that. Some private in-joke, but without an audience of sniggering male scientists. As I was trying to say before you manterrupted, gender scholars know that the sexes are entirely the same, and that any talk of difference just encourages sexism and stereotypes. Research on sex differences should not be done - it keeps women down. It is harmful and dangerous. We already know that masculinity and femininity are wholly irrelevant distinctions.'

'Oh, is that why we need more women in male-dominated occupations? Why are you so afraid of the possibility that men and women might differ psychologically? Feminists must demonstrate - not just assert - that women are not free; why their lifestyle choices are coerced; why they are unfulfilled because they choose the wrong jobs. There's so much research by neuroscientists, endocrinologists, geneticists, anthropologists and psychologists, showing a strong biological basis for numerous gender differences; and that these differences express themselves not just in choice of occupation, but also in the classroom. Many differences between boys and girls are natural, healthy, best left alone - and accommodated in education. Girls, as a rule, comport themselves far better and are more amenable to classroom routines than boys. Grade differentials between boys and girls can be traced to noncognitive development such as self-control, attentiveness, organization and simply the ability to sit still for long periods of time. We have the adjective "boisterous" for example. You should also face the fact that boys are far more incentivised by competition than girls. Boys will learn better by one method; girls by another. The studies I mention may not be the final word I agree, but you can't just dismiss or ignore them. Science is driven by robust empirical evidence, not ideological beliefs or dogma. Genuine science, that is.'

'You're mansplaining', said Ms. Maanheit.

'Oh - are you womanagging?'

'Woman what?'

'Womanagging.'

'I'm not sure I understand you, but if you adopt a misogynistic attitude to me then I shall make a formal complaint.'

'You believe in gender equality, don't you?'

'Of course.'

'Well it seems to me that if we have mansplaining, then we can also have womanagging. We should at least have gender parity in the shaming lexicon.'

'You would've fitted right into my grandfather's generation', said Ms. Maanheit. 'When men were men, and women made the sandwiches.'

'Oh, I think schools were doing quite nicely until the gender police goose-stepped their way in.'

'The struggle starts here: we need to free all children from their oppressive gender roles. If we shape young minds properly here, in this school, then we'll correct things in that awful place over the road - the vocational programs they offer correspond to outmoded gender stereotypes.'

She pointed to the four-storey building visible through the window, Thames Valley Tech, which the Association for Girls in Education had denounced as a 'hotbed of sex segregation'. This Tech, this den of iniquity, this fountainhead of male privilege, offered vocational courses on heating systems, air-conditioning, metal work, welding, carpentry and car repair, on which there were barely any female students. (Curiously, the Association for Girls in Education was not incensed by courses in cosmetics, manicure, nursing and child care, on which a male student was seldom to be seen.). Thames Valley Tech, faced with legal threats, had 're-imagined' their course introduction programs. Female students enquiring about hair dressing, early-childhood education, social work, nursing etc., were re-directed to machine-shop or mechanic apprenticeships, and incentivised with higher grants. Posters for a 'success for girls' campaign, showing girls in overalls and using spanners, were everywhere. There were equity workshops, specially designed training manuals, and girl-enhancing curricula. When girls signed up for these courses, but then went home in tears, saying that they did not want those careers, that they did not want the rough and calloused hands that such careers entailed, they were given counselling, and encouraged to continue the battle against all-pervasive sexist stereotypes. It was necessary to hammer round pegs into square holes, and not stop pounding until men and women were truly equal.

Mr Newton began eating his apple with a knife.

'What should we do?' he said. 'Prod women into carpentry with a bayonet?'

He made a jabbing gesture with his knife.

'Children, children', said the geography teacher. 'Can you please talk about something else? What will be your next production, Mr. Newton?'

Mr Newton was in the amateur dramatics.

'This year we're putting on My Fair Lady', he said, grinning.

'Those lyrics are deeply misogynistic', she said. ' "Why can't a woman be more like a man?" Truly awful.'

'I thought you said men and women are the same already.' Mr Newton began singing. ' "Let a woman in your life, and you invite eternal strife! She'll redecorate your home from the cellar to the dome, then go on to the enthralling thought of overhauling you!" Have you got a large Wagnerian mother, Ms Maanhait?'

Like Professor Higgins, Mr Newton was a bachelor and unrepentant at being so.

Endnotes

The author would particularly like to acknowledge The war against boys - how misguided policies are harming our young men, by Christina Hoff Sommers.

(c) Cufwulf

Cufwulf@aol.com