Are schools really anti-boys?

 To be honest I hate being the one who cried 'sexism', but this really got to me. Today, I found this video on the Internet.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFpYj0E-yb4#t=308

My opinion of course won’t hold as much critical value compared to professors and researchers, but I noticed some key factors that disturbed me and made me believe this shouldn’t be taken as seriously as it wants to be.

 1. The whole research is based on stereotypes, right down to the pictures and coloring scheme. It’s all about ‘boys act this way, girls act that way’. They don’t directly say it, but it has an undertone of ALL the boys are disorganized, love sports, don’t like poetry… All of the stereotypical traits we were fighting so hard to combat all these years. The thing is, this is not biological or something that you’re born with. You are raised to be this way, either directly by your parents pushing you into sports or arts, or passively over social norms that are in their nature arbitrary.

2.   It mixes issues.

The extreme cases listed, like the example with the pirate drawing or the cookie gun, are not schools being against boys. It’s an issue with violence, or more clearly, gun control. America, as far as I know from the media, is extremely reluctant to enforce even the slightest bit of gun control. That’s why terrified schools, wanting to avoid mass shootings, enforce the ‘zero tolerance’ policies. The theory is that if they punish kids for bringing up gun-related images, they won’t develop the desire to do so. This theory has more holes than Swiss cheese, but that’s a topic for a whole other discussion. The point is that this then affects the boys more than it does the girls because guns were seen as traditionally boy toys, so it naturally there will be more incidences with boys than with girls. You’d get the exact same result if schools decided to ban extra skinny dolls from school in fear of spreading negative self-image. You’d expect more girls to be affected by this than boys.

3.  It never addresses what actually happens after they graduate.

Maybe this is a bit unfair as it is not directly relevant to the topic, but I really think it should be covered. They say that boys do much worse in school than girls, but it never says that regardless of that, they will still get higher pay and higher-ranking jobs as women. It never mentions that most departments are run by men.

4. General flaws masked as specifically male-targeting

What this video does raise are some good critics on the overall education system. Children are not given enough free time, enough moving space, there isn’t enough diversity or choice within the system, etc. however, they present them as specifically anti-male, even though they have largely remained unchanged for centuries. Teaching and focusing on fictional literature and poetry is not a new thing. People studied it for centuries and there was just no one to call it out on it. There was no one in the 19^th century going: “I don’t think poetry is suitable for men and thus we should write about swordfights!” I’m not saying we shouldn’t include more action-oriented literature in our school program, but it’s not a recent thing designed to make life harder for boys.

 

Lastly, I would like to offer my modest, unprofessional opinion on why the current school system is becoming ‘anti-boys’. You see, the motto of the school system is for the most part ‘obey’.  Even after all the reforms, it’s still designed for younger, less educated individuals to obey the authority-figure of the teacher. This is basically the environment for the old female archetype- obey the author of your husband, parents, social construct… While it was typical for men to be thought to BE the authority. Meaning there is a natural clash. In the past, the upbringing and education system was stricter, able to break the authoritarian needs. Now, the screws are loosened for the sake of a friendlier environment, but this allowing the children to also misbehave. What would also be an interesting study is to survey if children misbehave more if taught by a male or a female teacher, or if gender matters at all.

This, as I said, is completely a wild guess and probably just as based on old stereotypes as the before mentioned video, but it hopefully gives some food for thoughts and maybe opens a discussion. 

Game sexism

There are a lot of discussions going on about ‘female armor’ and I thought I’d say something about the issue. Lately it has been upheld as one of the most signature symbols of sexism in today’s gaming, particularly MMO RPG’s, with people defending it and bashing it for a variety of different reasons. Yet, I won’t discuss those points and just talk about how I feel about the issue. It is my blog and I can do what I want and I do not want to read a ton of online debates that probably consists about trolls screaming at one another.

So for starters, what is female armor?

This term is pretty obvious, a type of armor that females in gaming wear. However, what sets it aside from just regular armor is that it is usually incredibly impractical for battle, exposing and sexualized. The versions include features like bikini-style armor, high-heel boots, boob windows…. (references below)

And yes, there’s almost no way to argue that any of it is practically combat wear and one can easily see why this is just referred to objectifying women to market more games to men. I completely understand that, yet I don’t really think that ‘female armor’ is all that bad. I often find myself admiring the esthetic value of the female armor in Tera, even though it is extremely unpractical. I usually say that everyone likes to look at something nice, so I am not opposed to giving men something pretty to look at. After all, if you present a woman as beautiful there’s nothing wrong with that, as long as she’s not nothing BUT beautiful. (Though a bit of body type variation might be nice)

So, my problem is not with the female armor itself. You could say it comes down to the ratio of how much skin a female character shows off in proportion to the male one. Allow me to explain that on a more practical example.

Sometime ago I played a game called Maestia, a standard MMO RPG. It featured only one race, one could say elves, but really you could replace them with magic-welding humans and nothing changes. My female character started off in the token belly shirt and mini skirt while a male character started off with his finely tones abs and legs completely covered. The gap was only more and more noticeable as I leveled up as I started noticing that my clothes started getting smaller and smaller as my manly peers seemed to be getting my missing parts. So pretty soon I was running around with pretty much random pieces of cloth with my male peers became impenetrable mountains of metal. Meaning that I have lost all motivation to employ questionable camera angles on their characters while my panties were clear on display.

Later I have discovered Tera where the ratio was much more balanced. True, the pants of my Castanic female always seemed to be missing a sleeve, but there was also a fair share of fabric missing from the shirt of her male counterpart. Neither of the attires gained any battle advantages from these features, but we sure had a blast watching each other fight. Ironically, in this game the race with the most unbalanced ratio of exposed skin are the humans, which made me think that Tera actually provides secret social commentary.

So, to recapitulate, I am not bothered by a woman wearing sexy armor in a video game. I am more annoyed by the fact that men are never seemed to be portrayed as sexy, setting up a double standard that is unfair to both parties!