Is this acceptable in a school?

W*hat frikonastick said

I have loads of male friends and some of them come out with stuff that is . DHs mates are all hard drinking rugby types as well and some of their, um, interests are dubious to say the least.

It doesn't mean they are horrible people - they aren't. They (and we) are a product of our society and our society is inherently sexist. Men who do throw-away sexist things that are accepted by our society are not evil, they are just doing what they have been taught to do.

It's a pick your battles thing, isn't it. And a slow struggle to try and change the mindset of society at large.

noblegiraffe, i think your friend is sexist. that he is also a nice guy and bought you the meale eunuch doesnt cancel that out.

i think this is where it all goes off the rails in terms of confronting men (ones you actually like). because we like them, arguing with them and confronting their sexist behaviour turns into something very uncomfortable.

you dont need to defend HIM to these posters, just his sexist behaviour. and you obviously agree that his behaviour was unacceptable, so there is no need to feel bad for how he has come across. HE did that, not you.

do you see how his actions are manipulating you into being the sterotypical defensive female of bad male behaviour?

god, i am reading this back and i think i may be sounding condescending or something and i really dont mean to be.

nah not convinced

he sounds like a tosser to me

This mn is a teacher. I ecpect higher standards from teachers than from ordinary mortals. Well, I expect higher stansdards from 9 to 3 anyway - what they do in their own time is their own business>

Ah ng you're a very loyal friend.

oh he came in throwing his weight around and mansplaining and point scoring and not genuinely engaging in debate. And using sexist terminology (shrill bleating FGS).

That's why people formed a negative impression of him.

Probably not ISNT, it's normal after all.

Don't we all judge on MN based on what people post?

That's what it's for

Your friend didn't come across terribly well, and I'm not sure what reaction this situation would get on other sections. It was me who said I didn't know, not that I thought that everyone would say it was fine. It would be interesting to know what other people would say.

I imagine maybe they would say, that what the teacher did was not terribly professional, but not the end of the world. I think there would be eyebrows raised TBH.

I wonder if any of the students will tell their mums...

I just think some people come to these threads with such preconceived ideas about what feminists think that they ignore what people have actually said and argue with straw man feminists instead. Like Imperator telling me he had news for me, looking at people of the opposite sex is normal, when in fact that is exactly what I had said at the start of my sentence

I think teenage boys have to learn that there are situations where it is not appropriate to focus on girls' physical appearance. Otherwise how will they get on in the workplace (or rather, what will it be like for the poor women who have to work with them? ) This would have been an ideal opportunity to teach that. Instead he was basically teaching them that any time is the right time to ogle women.

Yes clemmette there is a whiff of "getting down with the kids" about this.

He'll be saying the music at the school disco has a good beat next

I once walked in on a lesson where a male member of my department was illustrating a point with two slides of Katie Price - one where she was wearing a tracksuit, and the other where she was naked and clutching her crotch. This to a mixed group of sixteen year olds, mostly girls (including Muslim girls in hijabs).

In comparison the sitation in the OP is obviously very tame. Do I think it is the thin end of a wedge, probably not; do I think there are male teachers who think that being "laddish" is a way of gaining popularity and confusing this with being a good teacher - sadly yes.

Why do people always try and say "ooh you're saying people can't look at each other".

No.

I am saying that i do not want people looking at each other in a way that leaves the looked-at party feeling intimidated or creeped out or upset.

But the whole point of the thread is that this teacher rewound the telly so that the boys could have a better look at the women.

Is that OK or not? I say not.

What teenaged boys do when they're on their own with a telly is a completely different question, and frankly they will have other fish to fry than rewinding to look at a pretty fully clothed woman in teh middle of the football.

I think my basic problem with it, is the acceptance of the male gaze without further comment.

If the guy had used it as a learning opportunity - and no I have no idea how, but then I'm not a teacher so I don't feel obliged to - then I wouldn't object. What surprises me, is that he felt no need at all to challenge the objectification - while acknowledging that it's OK to find girls pretty and fancy them and want to look at them, at what stage does that become objectification/ offensive or intimidating to girls? Wouldn't you think that that was a perfect time to have a discussion with teenage boys around those issues? Having said that, I'm rather glad he didn't, because I suspect he would have just talked crap.

anastaisia - I completely take your point about the authority issue.

What if it had been a group of boys at home with no authority figure, and they rewound the tv then?

You say that looking at women is dehumanising them. I think that the pornographic/fake breasts/page 3 way of looking at women is dehumanising, certainly, because it's not natural.

I have trouble seeing the boys as dehumanising those women on tv because they were presumably fully clothed and 'normal' looking - ie not doing some stupid pose with their legs apart.

I look at men all the time and appreciate those who are to my personal taste, and so will my friends. I don't see that as dehumaninsing them. If I shouted out something to them then that would be inappropriate and getting towards dehumanising, but not just looking.

I also don't understand how the boys looking at a girl and thinking she's attractive is anything like them sitting round shouting abuse at the black players. Appreciating someone attractive of the opposite (or same) sex is a natural physical reaction which is necessary for humans to procreate. For the two things to be parallel they would have to be making very sexual comments about the women.

I don't know. I remember going into shops and they would have the calendars up with naked women on them, and the cardboard things in pubs with the pork scratchings on that as they were sold, a scantily clad woman would slowly be revealed.

I used to hate that stuff.

But so many people say that there's no harm in looking. I think it is wrong. When something is happening that makes you feel intimidated, then it is not right. The teacher realised that if there were a woman there and he did what he did, then she would feel intimidated. But what if a female teacher had walked in? What happens when the boys, buoyed by their teachers approval, try out their group leering on a real girl? Is it OK to do intimidating things if there is no-one there to be intimidated? It's not with certain things, you can go to prison for them. But this sort of stuff is fine?

Flibberty - you can pause the TV to look at DB some more, but if you did it with a bunch of teenagers in a classroom, it would be inappropriate, wouldn't it?

I don't buy the sauce for the goose argument - we don't live in a society where men are routinely objectified to their social, economic and psychological detriment, so the effects are not the same.

Why is the classroom example of dehumanising black people not the same as that of dehumanising women? Am genuinely interested to know why you think this (not just pointscoring like Imperator )

flippertigibbert

they weren't adults in a bar
they weren't at home watching telly

They were in a classroom, and he was their teacher.

If you were watching the football with your class, and the girls clamoured for you to replay beckham taking his top off, then clearly the answer is no. Not rewind, and slaivate with them. That's just

He never did say how old these girls were that they were all leering at. Much potential there too.

And really, when people buy a ticket to a match, do they have to do it on the understanding that they might be masturbated over by teenage boys? Surely that never crosses people's minds when they buy tickets to football matches