Extrait de ce billet de Jonathan Taylor:
Along with that has arisen a new culture that says girls are not just the intellectual equals of men; on the contrary, they are their superiors. Here is an image the Facebook page “Boys vs. Girls” has broadcast to the 88,000+ people who “like” their page:
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(...) There is another page specifically set up with the unambiguous title “Girls are Smarter than Boys.” Here are two gems from that page:
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That page has over 35,000 “likes.”
And who could forget the “Boys are Stupid, Throw Rocks at Them” controversy in which girls wore shirts to school bearing this logo:
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People magazine ran an article on the controversy:
Erika Kaminer is only 10, but she already knows how to make a provocative fashion statement: Her T-shirt reads, “Boys Are Smelly;” her watch says, “Boys Are Stupid, Throw Rocks at Them!” Says the Hewlett, N.Y., fourth grader of her garb: “I want to make boys feel bad because it’s fun.” Mission accomplished.
“This is something very harmful and disrespectful to our boys,” says Glenn Sacks, 41, a Los Angeles-based radio talk show host who last year led a campaign that convinced several large chains, accounting for more than 1,000 retail locations, to stop selling the Boys Are Stupid items. “I’ve heard from many boys and their families who feel this is very hurtful.” Carri Venable, 41, a Seattle mother of a 2-year-old boy, agrees. “If there was a ‘Girls Are Stupid, Throw Rocks at Them’ line,” she says, “imagine the outcry.”
Our culture, over the past several decades, has done much to throw stumbling blocks in the path of male students.
We have marginalized or banned the literature that most appeals to boys: adventure stories that involve an element of physical conflict, or stories with subversive humor (humor that is (“inappropriate,” though not obscene). We have eliminated recess, ignoring the fact that boys’ psychosocial development often best allows the formation of social bonds indirectly through participation or competition with others in a project, task, or game – what Dr. Michael Gurian calls “mediating objects.”
We have removed from their midst – whether through due-process-be-damned hysteria over sexual misconduct or the the rapacious family court system - male teachers and fathers who might otherwise act as role-models for lifelong learning and character-building. We have introduced a culture of misandry into academia. We have showered women with special programs and funding. Instead of launching investigations into the root causes of the boy crisis, we have constructed largely-artificial “disorders” that treat boyhood as a disease to be medicated.
We have broadened in-house definitions of sexual misconduct to the extreme, to the point that boys are suspended for commenting that a teacher is “cute” (among other things) while failing to punish false accusers. Instead of employing traditional methods of counseling and detention for problematic students, schools have moved to utilize suspension, expulsion, and law-enforcement intervention, increasing the physical and psychological distance between boys and the school community and limiting their means of re-integration. And lastly, in a few cases, our schools have employed barbaric forms of restraints and punishments– such as solitary confinement and even “electric shock” therapy – that many of us would not feel comfortable applying to animals.
When considered in its totality, played out across the lives of millions of boys and young men across the West, the sitauation is nothing short of appalling.
But despite the many areas where we might use this opportunity to display the better elements of our humanity – that of compassion and understanding – some use it as an opportunity for the rationalization of their misguided prejudices, and to kick boys when they are down.
As a former instructor and someone who cares for kids, I cringe whenever I hear some parents tell their kids they are stupid. These words are psychological daggers to kids, who internalize these labels and learn to doubt, degrade, and have low expectations of themselves. Too often these psychological afflictions follow them through life, becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.
How much more deserving of our concern are such messages when they are part of a broader culture, target people based upon their membership in a particular birth-group, and are motivated – at least in part – by an established political animus?
Along with that has arisen a new culture that says girls are not just the intellectual equals of men; on the contrary, they are their superiors. Here is an image the Facebook page “Boys vs. Girls” has broadcast to the 88,000+ people who “like” their page:
(...) There is another page specifically set up with the unambiguous title “Girls are Smarter than Boys.” Here are two gems from that page:
That page has over 35,000 “likes.”
And who could forget the “Boys are Stupid, Throw Rocks at Them” controversy in which girls wore shirts to school bearing this logo:
People magazine ran an article on the controversy:
Erika Kaminer is only 10, but she already knows how to make a provocative fashion statement: Her T-shirt reads, “Boys Are Smelly;” her watch says, “Boys Are Stupid, Throw Rocks at Them!” Says the Hewlett, N.Y., fourth grader of her garb: “I want to make boys feel bad because it’s fun.” Mission accomplished.
“This is something very harmful and disrespectful to our boys,” says Glenn Sacks, 41, a Los Angeles-based radio talk show host who last year led a campaign that convinced several large chains, accounting for more than 1,000 retail locations, to stop selling the Boys Are Stupid items. “I’ve heard from many boys and their families who feel this is very hurtful.” Carri Venable, 41, a Seattle mother of a 2-year-old boy, agrees. “If there was a ‘Girls Are Stupid, Throw Rocks at Them’ line,” she says, “imagine the outcry.”
Our culture, over the past several decades, has done much to throw stumbling blocks in the path of male students.
We have marginalized or banned the literature that most appeals to boys: adventure stories that involve an element of physical conflict, or stories with subversive humor (humor that is (“inappropriate,” though not obscene). We have eliminated recess, ignoring the fact that boys’ psychosocial development often best allows the formation of social bonds indirectly through participation or competition with others in a project, task, or game – what Dr. Michael Gurian calls “mediating objects.”
We have removed from their midst – whether through due-process-be-damned hysteria over sexual misconduct or the the rapacious family court system - male teachers and fathers who might otherwise act as role-models for lifelong learning and character-building. We have introduced a culture of misandry into academia. We have showered women with special programs and funding. Instead of launching investigations into the root causes of the boy crisis, we have constructed largely-artificial “disorders” that treat boyhood as a disease to be medicated.
We have broadened in-house definitions of sexual misconduct to the extreme, to the point that boys are suspended for commenting that a teacher is “cute” (among other things) while failing to punish false accusers. Instead of employing traditional methods of counseling and detention for problematic students, schools have moved to utilize suspension, expulsion, and law-enforcement intervention, increasing the physical and psychological distance between boys and the school community and limiting their means of re-integration. And lastly, in a few cases, our schools have employed barbaric forms of restraints and punishments– such as solitary confinement and even “electric shock” therapy – that many of us would not feel comfortable applying to animals.
When considered in its totality, played out across the lives of millions of boys and young men across the West, the sitauation is nothing short of appalling.
But despite the many areas where we might use this opportunity to display the better elements of our humanity – that of compassion and understanding – some use it as an opportunity for the rationalization of their misguided prejudices, and to kick boys when they are down.
As a former instructor and someone who cares for kids, I cringe whenever I hear some parents tell their kids they are stupid. These words are psychological daggers to kids, who internalize these labels and learn to doubt, degrade, and have low expectations of themselves. Too often these psychological afflictions follow them through life, becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.
How much more deserving of our concern are such messages when they are part of a broader culture, target people based upon their membership in a particular birth-group, and are motivated – at least in part – by an established political animus?