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?

Stayfrosty asked why I'm friends with Imperator. Clearly the opinion on here is that he is an odious sexist bastard.

I know all too well that he can be annoying to debate with, but how he has presented himself here in reaction to having his behaviour excoriated and his personality derided is not a good representation of what he is actually like. Also, the incident in the OP is, as has been mentioned by other posters, the sort of thing that wouldn't raise an eyebrow if posted on a different section, so to judge him as an awful person or a crap teacher based on that too, is a bit hysterical.

Anyway, he is actually a nice guy, a good teacher, he treats women well and when I told him a while back that I was getting interested in feminist arguments (as a result of this topic, in fact), he bought me a copy of The Female Eunuch for my birthday.

So I guess people (such as Greensleeves) shouldn't rush to make judgements based on a few posts.

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...

Probably not ISNT, it's normal after all.

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.

Proles, I started this thread because it didn't sit right with me when he said he wouldn't have done it if there had been girls present and I wanted a feminist view on it, to see if anyone could articulate the uneasy feeling it prompted. Obviously I already knew it was unprofessional to be ogling girls and watching the football when they should be doing other stuff - I suspect that any eyebrows raised in any other section would be at that particular aspect.

ISNT: yes, of course we judge based on what people post, but some of the attempts to describe him as a person were just so bollocks as to warrant special comment. I know how he came across here, but he is also my friend and I put him up for discussion on the internet so should defend him in that respect.

Ah ng you're a very loyal friend.

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>

nah not convinced

he sounds like a tosser to me

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.

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.

frik, I don't think that he is sexist, in that he doesn't see women as inferior to men. That doesn't mean that his behaviour in this instance wasn't sexist, however.

You said that I don't need to defend him, and that his actions are manipulating me into defending him. I disagree with you here. I was prompted to defend him by the query as to why I'm friends with him, comments that went away from from his behaviour on this thread to speculate that he is for example 'a vicious bastard who assuages his disappointment day after day by bullying people smaller than himself' and the fact that I posted this thread about him, thus putting him up for discussion in this way. None of these is to do with me being female and him being male.

I don't think it's okay for a teacher to try to be one of the boys. I think it sounds a bit desperate, TBH. It makes me want to ask, 'where are the adults".
I think if it was just a load of lads, fine.
A load of men, also fine (providing the girls weren't really young)
But a teacher is supposed to be setting an example and perhaps could do something to counteract the lechery in our culture(or at least he is someone who has the has the power to try; why squander that power by reinforcing lechery?)

Moondog, I think you're desensitized.

The boys laughed because they knew themselves it was risque.

But maybe I'm biased, because I never had any respect for teachers who didn't draw boundaries between themselves and the kids they were teaching.

What I am finding difficult about analysing this situation is that I can well imagine allowing the girls in my tutor group to borrow my computer at lunchtime to e.g. look up pictures of Zac Efron and them all commenting on how fit he is.

I wouldn't have given it a second thought, and I certainly wouldn't have been bothered if there were boys in the room while they did it.

Do I need to examine my behaviour here? Would this also be sexist? Encouraging the objectification of men in girls whose bedrooms are probably plastered with posters of Johnny Depp?

Well...I think male teachers do have to be aware of the effects of objectifying women in our culture, and how that can lead to all sorts of problems such as eating disorders, breast surgery or other types of surgery, depression etc. WOmen and girls are objectified more than men, and therefore have more shit to deal with. Teaching boys that girls are 3D just like them is a good perogative for a male teacher to have.
But this teacher basically okayed the presumption in our culture that 1) men play football and do things 2) girls are just for looking at.

I personally don't think that girls looking at Zac Efron is going to be terribly oppressive to men, no. I think that's ok.

But then you're going to have loads of people shouting But what about the mens.

So perhaps better to think twice before letting the girls look up whatever they like, but more on the basis that it'll rot their brain as opposed to anything else

noblegiraffe, I do not think it is appropriate for any teacher to lend their computer to girls to look at pictures of a man (or any other cominbination of ogler/ogle-ee).

I think that teachers should be teaching Maths, English, Science etc. What is it with teachers trying to be pals with the children in their classes? How widespread is this trend? Are all teachers trained/encouraged/forced to do this?

Teachers need to get the message across to children that teachers are at school to teach them the national curriculum, not to indulge the children's sexual fantasies. Just because teenagers exercise the age-old desire to be adults before they actually are adults, that doesn't mean that teachers should cave in to their demands. Adults are supposed to be adults, not the coolest kid on the block. Or am I unaware of national policy here?

Children are free to indulge their fantasies outside school. I don't consider myself a prude or a killjoy and I've not advocated specific restrictions on what the children do with their own resouces, e.g. bedrooms with posters etc, but that is their bedroom not a school.

The more I read of this thread the less I think the underlying problem here is sexism, it seems more of a teacher/child boundary problem.

There is a difference between the girls ogling the boys, and the boys ogling the girls, which is related to the fact that men are in charge in our society and females are sexually harrassed on a daily basis and that is seen as an acceptable part of our culture. Women have to live with an understanding (again from our culture) that men can often = threat. Men do not generally have those concerns.

So there is a difference.

There is also somehow a difference between a group of lads shouting about some girls and getting "sir" to rewind the tape so they can all have a good leer, and a couple of girls looking quietly at zac efron.

If it was a horde of girls screaming for a tape to be rewound to reshow some men taking their tops off, then that would be very inappropriate too.

"No one was hurt, no one was intimidated or belittled. What was intrinsically wrong with what I did? If you can't make a case for that, you have no case. I think some of you need to get a grip. It was harmless fun, and no one has yet shown otherwise..... If people in the room had been offended, then I'd have not done it. That doesn't make what I did wrong, it just means I'm sensitive to feelings that could be hurt. Even if I think the hurt is unreasonable"

I am still aghast that neither NG or his friend 'get it'.

I am not stupid. I know that my colleagues at work appreciate attractive women, I know that I appreciate attractive men. And i am sure the guys down the pub have lewd conversations and the girls likewise when out having fun.

It is the inappropriateness of the circumstance that determines the morality of the situation.

When the Board where I work started a little banter about their wives at home whilst waiting for everyone to get their coffess and get started on the agenda, I was truly shocked and am very glad that those involved were named, shamed, very swiftly put in their place and chastised. Those bosses of mine have a moral obligation to stamp on sexism wherever they see it in the workplace, just as a teacher has a moral obligation to do likewise.

You only change a culture of behaviour when the majority learn to believe that the old behaviour is wrong, and that learning comes through example, experience and teaching. Which I thought was the kind of thing that teachers specialised in.

When I was taking legal action against a previous employer for sex discrimination I can assure you that the 'there were no women present' argument did not wash at all, and the documentation I had proving activities in the workplace not disimilar to Imperator's behaviour had occurred led directly to my receiving a very large sum in settlement. If the courts in this country can see the disgrace of this kind of activity I am horrified that teachers do not.

I have always thought that male teachers provided an invaluable service in helping challenge sexism purely by dint of their existence in an increasingly gender-divided profession. I hope to God this is an isolated fool and not indicative of a current of attitude across the profession.

SDG, in my example, I was talking about my tutor group at lunchtime. I am not there to teach them Maths and they are not there to learn. I allow them to use my room at lunchtime to hang out because there are very few places within the school where they can actually sit down and chat. I have packs of cards that they can borrow to play games, and sometimes, if I am not using it, they ask to borrow my computer and projector. They use it to play games, watch music videos on youtube...I've had a large group of girls in my classroom practising their Hannah Montana dance moves to the video. Would you really complain about that? That they are having fun in my classroom rather than kicking about bored elsewhere?

I don't see this as a boundary problem.

nobelgiraffe, Sorry, I misunderstood. I thought you were a teacher in a school. Thanks for the clarification.

ISNT "There is a difference between the girls ogling the boys, and the boys ogling the girls"

I understand that. But is one sexist and one not? Because people seem to be labelling the behaviour in the OP as sexism, but if the reverse isn't true, then how does that work?

"a couple of girls looking quietly at zac efron."

Why are you contrasting 'leering boys' with 'a couple of girls looking quietly'? What makes you think that the girls (why only a couple?) looking at Zac Efron wouldn't be equally vocal or indeed leery in their appreciation?

"to reshow some men taking their tops off"

You are contrasting men with their tops off with girls with their clothes on.

I know Imperator came across like a complete arse, but he was trying to point out that to do this isn't fair too.

SDG, I am a teacher. I teach maths. I'm also a tutor with a tutor group (a 'form'). Teachers have two roles in school, one educational, one pastoral. I don't see the two as conflicting.

I think what you let them do in your classroom when you're not in charge is very different from what you do in a lesson or what you join in with.
eg.
teacher comes back into classroom at end of break to find girls ogling Zac Ephron (whoever he is). Sitting down with them and joining in wouldn't be right. Nor would letting them do it in a lesson. But I wouldn't blame a teacher who merely gave them an indulgent smile and told them it was time to log off now rather than a full-on lecture on objectification and ban from future computer use.