Can you help me make sense of why this conversation annoyed me?

[Mrstumbletap]

So I'm a teacher and I am lucky to teach sixth form students too, they are awesome and come back with real questions about rape, about same sex marriage, about wearing revealing clothing, equal pay etc and want to know more, they challenge me and I challenge them back and I can literally see their minds unfolding in front of me, it's fantastic.

Anyway I am currently training a teacher too and he often observes my lessons and contributes. On Friday the students were talking about job roles and the trainee teacher I will call him 'Gary' said "yeah but some roles are better for men, they are stronger, not all roles should be given to all people". He used army/infantry roles as an example. I challenged this but he stuck to his guns and said some things that involve strength are just better for men.

Then later the class were talking about the footage of a trump supporter being interviewed saying "women shouldn't rule a country they could start wars too easily" the reporter replies "but aren't all wars started by men?" Gary then chips in and says "No Helen of Troy started a war!"

I was then showing the students a link I found on social media called "women at the top" (don't know if you have seen it) and it shows images of The Houses of Parliament, the EU, White House meetings etc with loads of people and then another image with all the men removed using photoshop, showing there are only 1 or 2 women in these important meetings. The strap line is 'There is room for more women at the top'. Gary then says "I have no problem with the women being in these positions as long as they are qualified". But he isn't questioning the qualifications of the men in these positions?!

It has bugged me all weekend, am I over thinking this or is his challenging of these examples justified?

I would make it clear that his job is to be objective. As tempting as it is to belittle him, you would be doing his future students a massive favour to mentor him in cultivating a dispassionate, neutral stance and make him aware of his own bias by pointing these examples out as opinions.

He brought up a mythological figure to counter a point about a political/historical issue?

I think his stupidity is almost as offensive as his misogyny.

Pulling him up on that point, and how it could confuse pupils, might feel rather satisfying.

Actually, Thatcher is a bad example of a woman 'starting' a war. The war was started when Argentina invaded the Falklands on 2 April 1982. No invasion = no war.

Your teacher friend will have to choose again after citing a myth and an historical inaccuracy.

Wouldn't want him within a country mile of teaching any child.

Wow! That Gary doesn't sound like he's teacher material!

OP Can you just tell him to STFU during your lesson? It seems that he's just derailing everything.

"If he is 33 he was 6 when she resigned." So how old is Gary?

Jeez! Just reading the OP I was slapping my phone! Gary - you're a wazzock of the highest order!

"As Gary can't distinguish between history and mythology and Gary is quite clearly a galloping sexist, "

Sing it, sister!

Because he's a dickhead

If he taught at my school we'd tear him to pieces.

... and Argentina, if I remember rightly without even Googling, was led by General Galtieri who was, by all accounts, A Man. Unlike Gary, I was actually of voting age at the time. We may also point out that whatever Mrs T's warmongering tendencies may have been, she was Prime Minister, not dictator, and could not have dragged the country to war if a whole bunch of men hadn't voted in support.

Cheated, checked Google. Galtieri it was. Go me.