So I am on shaving strike.

I teach in a pretty sexist, misogynistic district.  I shouldn't be offending anyone here.  The machismo is worn proudly.  So I have several male students spread out over the five periods I teach who have the scruff going on.  A majority of them keep it rough, unkempt, ragged, uncombed, ungroomed.  It is pretty much the same with their hair.  To be honest, I could not care any less.  I know my personal style is nowhere near anyone else's idea of cool or in.  However, I am always hearing the conversations that express what these boys think of how their female peers look and groom themselves.  And there is most certainly a double standard going on here.

Asked to clarify their personal style and what is going on, one is met with a defiant "This is how I am", "take it or leave it", "it's my right" attitude.  And they are right.  No one should be told how to look.  No one should be told how to dress.  No one should be told to change one's style.

However, dig a little and you find a hypocrisy just under the surface.  When I asked what they thought of a female who does not shave, I was met with an interesting answer.   The girls should shave.  Why?  "Because they are girls."

Oh.  Really.

Instant mental flashback to:

• the son of an employee who was beating his girlfriend during his cocaine rages; the girl refused to admit anything was going on, graduated and nothing could be proven or done
• the boy who told a female classmate to "Come here, baby" and she blindly complied until I intervened with a speech about why she should not be spoken to or ordered around that way
• the student who was raped while drunk at a party and refused to admit it was rape because she was drunk, never mind that she was unconscious when raped and bloody as a result
• the male colleague who reminisced with me about "the gold old days" when the male teachers could stand at their doors in between classes and ogle all the girls in mini skirts; I was unable to formulate a response, I was so dumbfounded
• the fact that the boys think that if they ask a girl to the prom, she should know that the favor must be returned later that night; if she doesn't want to sleep with him, she shouldn't accept the prom invite (I tried so hard to address this one, but the kids shut me out)

And on, and on.  And so my strike might seem trite, but it is part of a much bigger picture here.  I am sick of the misogynistic attitudes of the men in this district.  I know it is not all the men here, but it is the majority.  And our efforts to reframe the male student's thinking is damn near impossible considering the fact that they have grown up for 13-14 years learning from the men they look up to before they get to us.  Those men might treat their kids poorly, the kids' mothers poorly, and any other females they come across in the day-to-day business of just living.  But put the machismo and testosterone on display and your son will look up to you and worship you as an example of toughness.  Because that's the way a real man has to be, right?  Try to use a kinder, more humane male peer as an example to these students, and you are disregarded.  Someone told me yesterday that we have come so far from the oppression women dealt with like in the 1950s.  Yes, but today's oppression is more hidden, more subtle, but still very present.  And that is not ok.