Is this acceptable in a school?

[noblegiraffe]

A friend of mine is a teacher in an all boys school. He was showing a group of pupils some of the football and was fast-forwarding to get to the action. The camera lingered on some pretty girls in the crowd (you know the ones they normally pick!) and the pupils demanded that he go back so they could get a proper look. He obliged, but commented that if there had been a single girl in the classroom, he wouldn't have.

Obviously this was a pretty minor incident, but do you think it was fine (and if so, would it have also been fine if there had been girls present?), or is it encouraging the sexual objectification of women? Or anything else?

What are your thoughts?

you had 6 women for dinner last night?

Fuck me. I had spag bol

Moondog he was asking questions which would be answered by virtually any book about feminism he pulled at random off a shelf. I had already tried to answer his question in good faith and he accused me/anyone who answered him of 'shrill bleating'. Under the circumstances I think 'Go and read some feminism' is an entirely justified response.

I don't want anyone to stop looking at anyone.

I want people to stop behaving in intimidating, pervy or creepy ways to each other.

A teacher encouraging teenaged boys to ogle girls, in the classroom, is just plain inappropriate.

Tell you what Moondog?

You're the one making the absurd assertion, why are you asking me to clarify it?

Ah, so there is no quality control eh?

As long as it is about 'feminism' it's good eh?

Who would you recommend he start with then?

Gloria?
Germaine?
Anthea?

I don't think that the classroom is an appropriate place for boys to induge their testosterone, egged on by a male role model, no.

Young men don't need any encouragement in that dept, frankly. They are perfectly capable of ogling without needing opportunities to do it in the classroom facilitated by their teachers.

I'm genuinely interested to know what some of the posters think about women objectifying men.

Last night I was in a bar with a group of male and female friends. A woman came up to one of my (very good looking) male friends, tapped him on the shoulder and dragged him off to dance with her. They hadn't spoken, so the decision was based purely on appearance. Was that acceptable behaviour on her part?

I've watched all of England's world cup matches this year and I enjoyed seeing David Beckham looking very attractive in his suit. What if I had paused the tv so I could look at him some more? Though now I think about David Beckham, is it ok for him to appear on the front of a magazine with his top off?

I understand that there is a huge problem in society with the objectification of women. Rows of shelves stacked with magazines showing airbrushed women with naked fake breasts is wrong IMO - it's not natural, but surely some objectification by people of both sexes is natural. The example in the OP seems fairly natural to me. The girls weren't aware of it or affected in any way by it. Is it any different from me walking down the road with female friends, seeing an attractive man and commenting on his appearance after he has walked past? If you go to a televised football match there is a chance you will appear on tv - my brother has been on tv many times - you are putting yourself in a public sphere so people will be looking at you. The girls would've known this when they bought their tickets.

Also, as a black woman I have to take issue with HerBeatitude's comment about the teacher encouraging the boys to laugh at black people. Not the same thing at all IMO.

Why do you care what he reads Moondog?

My suggestion would be Jeremy Clarkson, he might enjoy that.

Moondog do you really think it is a top idea for men in boys schools to be encouraging their charges to lech over girls?

Really, do you think that?

there are already several threads on good books to start with.
course there's quality control but if someone's problem is not understanding what the issue is with objectification they'll get an answer in Germaine or Andrea or Simone or any number of places really.
Sometimes you suggest people read things and they say 'ok, where should I start?' He, however, asserted he already knew more about feminism than us. So that's ok then.

flibbertigibbert

"Is it any different from me walking down the road with female friends, seeing an attractive man and commenting on his appearance after he has walked past?"

I think so - simply because he is in a position of authority; same way that it would be wrong for a newly qualified teacher of 22ish to sleep with an 18 year old sixth former in their class - but not as big a deal if two people of the same age difference met outside of school and started a relationship.

Someone in a teaching position has/should have different boundaries with their students than they do with their friends or collegues.

flibbertigibbert

"Is it any different from me walking down the road with female friends, seeing an attractive man and commenting on his appearance after he has walked past?"

I think so - simply because he is in a position of authority; same way that it would be wrong for a newly qualified teacher of 22ish to sleep with an 18 year old sixth former in their class - but not as big a deal if two people of the same age difference met outside of school and started a relationship.

Someone in a teaching position has/should have different boundaries with their students than they do with their friends or collegues.

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

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 )

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?

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.