Look, in spite of my own potty mouth, I'm not a fan of swearing and have even made (valiant, but failed) attempts at keeping my own expletives to a minimum. It can make people sound ignorant and uneducated. In some contexts though, a well-placed expletive can place emphasis on a phrase, really hit a point home. That's neither here nor there. Because it seems much more than a little fucked up to me that only the girls are being asked to take this pledge. Am I alone here?
The school denies a double standard is at play. Of course not. I mean, yeah, none of the boys had to take the pledge but they were asked kindly to not swear around the girls, so that's gotta count for something, right?
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What the fuck?
Tumblr user Afroboheme noted that it was telling that the pledge pin was a pair of lips with a red slash through them:
It really got me that they’re promising pins with a ‘red slash through pink lips’. Cause that’s what they actually want. Ladies should keep their fucking mouths shut, amiright? Try and tell me this isn’t what this is actually about? Getting women to shut the fuck up.Does that seem hyperbolic to you? Maybe, except that tone arguments and admonishments to be ladylike and not make waves have been used for years to suppress and derail women, who when expressing dissatisfaction and yes, even anger are told they are being hysterical.
So color me fucking unimpressed by this one-sided attempt to teach civility. If you run a school and you have rules of conduct, then enforce those standards across board. Don't hold the girls to a different standard than the boys and then claim that you are not upholding a plainly sexist double-standard. Otherwise, I say, fuck that double-standard bullshit.
*special thanks to Kate for bringing this to my dashboard
Sadly, I'm sure a lot of parents think it's a great idea and don't take the double standard into consideration.
ReplyDeleteWhoa. I can't even fathom how many adult hands this had to go through, how many people had to hear or read this pledge and say, "yeah, that sounds good." I can't wait for their "separate but equal" pact forcing certain races to only use certain bathrooms.
ReplyDeleteIn the sixties we had to wear giant sanitary napkins with belts that made the whole thing migrate to the rear where you didn't so much need it. Telling us we couldn't swear would have been simply cruel.
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