There has been much recent press about how well girls do in school and how harmful schooling practices in the United States are to boys. I used to agree and say yes - little girls learn differently, we're harming little boys, we should change things ... But now you know what? I think it's Bullshit. It might be the same brand of whiney-Bullshit white men tend to espouse when they end up working at Taco Bell because they lived their life assuming that because of their privileged position as a white man they didn't have to be as good or work as hard or get a degree. Maybe it's the some psycho-babble Bullshit trying to account for the assumed supremacy of men. Maybe it's because we left little boys get away with anything - because they're cute little boys and discipline girls. I think that's it.
I also think it's interesting that by the time high school rolls around: girls are no longer statistically ahead of boys. So why does the same "the educational system is unfair to me" whining still get acknowledged?? Male privilege. That's it.
But it's not the educational system I'm really talking about here, test scores are merely an indication of the problem.
Here's another example:
When I am sitting in a classroom - I feel stupid. I cannot sit in the front of the class, because then I'm convinced the entire classroom is looking at me and just waiting for me to say something stupid or staring at my ass. I constantly wonder "is something unappealing showing, like roles of fat?" "I hope my hair looks okay." "what if you can see how nervous I am... Did I just fidget?! Ohmigod... Did I make a noise?" I want more than anything else to slip in quietly to the back, listen to the professor lecture, write a paper or two, get a good grade, and slip quietly back out that door.
No - that is NOT what I really want to do. Not at all. I want to be remembered. I'd like to make the rest of the student body respect me and recognize me for the intelligent if somewhat "different" individual I am.
But as soon as I am in a classroom the only thing I can hope to do is slip into a seat at the back of the room and pray I don't get called on unless I feel like I can REALLY answer the question: that is be absolutely, perfectly, beyond a doubt correct. And even then sometimes, I do not raise my hand. I am actually dumb and simply cannot find the courage to speak. Not even to my neighbor to make small talk or ask if I can retrieve my pen which has fallen under his (or her) chair.
I know I am not alone in this anxiety. I know a few female friends, fellow lurkers in the backrow of literature classrooms, who feel exactly the same way. Judging by the recent influx of third wave feminist texts in popular bookstores, it seems a number of women and girls in academia do.
This I fear is not a mistake, not some freak problem, but a systematic construction. Because I have no trouble finding when and where and why this started. In fact, I was a precocious child known for talking for hours on end. Asking a million and five questions and relating just about everything that I noticed - much to the chagrin of my grandmother who babysat me. To this day, my family will tell you I am not shy.
But somewhere along the line I lost any ability to speak - at times I cannot talk above a whisper; especially when ordering at restaurants. (I sincerely apologies to all waiters I've had over the years.) I realized this is because these were things that I was simply not allowed to do: I was not allowed to speak, to think, to be intelligent or, more importantly, opinionated. After years of being told to "shut up", that I didn't matter (because I was not the father or the mother), never to correct your elders, if you can't say something nice don't say anything at all, and that no one will ever love me if I get angry, say no, criticize, or ask them for things ... I am left with a pronounced inability to speak. Growing up all I heard (and still hear) is how this or that opinion is "unbecoming" of a lady or that I am the only one who feels that way ... What I observe is invalid because those were "different times" when people "had respect" and I should have respect (with the implication that if I don't, I am not lovable) or better yet that "that's just how things are" and you can't change them - so, I had best shut up before the world sees how "ugly" I am.
I know I am beautiful. In fact, I suspect I might actually be slightly superficially beautiful or I would not get away with half the shit I do. I know I am intelligent and probably right most of the time. And I know that at least one person loves me, even if a lot of the time I convince myself I should doubt this.
And yet, I find it impossible to stand up for myself or even speak.