Teaching 'responsible' young people

Argh, we have a blog to run! I almost forgot it with everything going on these days. Oh and my time is running out, I have to go to sleep soon. This might be a quick, I have warned you know dear reader!

The thing I'd like to complain about is one of the other classes from my year group or whatever it's called. It's a sad fact that I still have PE, and it's even sadder that I have to 'work out' with another class which is filled with people I rather much dislike. I don't want to sound evil but they're simply not my kind of people. Anyway our teachers thought it'd be a could idea if everyone tried to teach each other (meaning the teachers don't have to do anything while the students teach). Because of this I had to sign up to be a teacher for a day and teach 20 people about the beautiful way of playing badminton. So I planned stuff. I taught my fellow-teachers how to play so we (four girls) could teach the rest of the team. Long story short it all started out okay. I taught them the basic ways of holding the racket and I taught them the rules. Everything was going as planned and after 40 minutes we had reached the last point of my to-do-list which was a game called Champion. It's a rather simple game really. You have to win a match (you play one ball) and if you win you move to the next court. If you win enough times you'll reach 'the top' where the Champion is standing. You have to beat him, get two points, and then you can call yourself the Champion. If you lose, you start from the beginning. Eitherway the other class decided that they wanted to start at all the courts, instead of starting at the first one because then they'd have to wait. Fine, I was angry with that decision but I lead them. Because they did say: "We're 18-19 years old, we know how to do that." And now dear reader, do you think they did? NO, they didn't. (They had no clue of what they're were doing, because they hadn't listen to my words). I was pissed so I had to call them together so that they could play it my way. I snapped at one of the annoying girls and they played it the way I wanted. Did it work? Yes, it did.

But what's my point with telling you all this? Well I'm disappointed. Oh and I was furious by the way. I yelled very loud the following (no translation, that'd just scare you of): "For helevede I ånssvage mennesker!" and then I kicked the wall of the gym. I realized my PE teacher was looking at me but she understood my fury so she promised she'd talk to them. But it still pisses me of (excuse my language) that people in the age of 18 or more doesn't respect each other. I had the teacher-role therefore they should at least try and listen. They know it's going to be their turn following week and I'm sure they'll go home as angry as me if they meet a group of students who doesn't give a flying cow about what you have to say.

So yes I'm disappointed. Very much. Disrespectful people. At least I can smile with the thought about that it wasn't my own classmates who acted this way. They actually listened to me - I'm forever thankful for that! Finally I think my anger has disappeared. What a relief. I might get some sleep now. That was all!

- Sille  

Feminism, a useless fight in today's society

Glob, it's been a while, almost a month, we took a kind of unplanned break from writing, but I believe it was deserved, seeing as we had gigantic assignments and Christmas preparations to take care of, and I travelled to the UK right after Christmas, and then there was the back to school stress... But, anywho, I declare us as back! And I'll kick things of with telling you a bit about feminism... (this is an assignment for my English class and I thought I'd share it here as well):

If a woman declares herself to be a feminist today she’ll get asked three questions: “Do you hate men?”, “So you don’t shave?” and “Are you a lesbian?”. I’ve personally been asked all of those questions, and it’s not just “the ignorant men” who ask, it’s everyone - because almost no-one in these times actually knows what it means to be a feminist.

Let me first tell you what feminism actually is and then we’ll look at what it means in today’s world. According to Oxford Dictionary feminism is the advocacy of women’s rights on the ground of the equality of the sexes. And personally I think this is a good definition - because what feminism is, is the belief that; that everyone is equal - not that women are better than anyone else. After having looked this more serious definition up I decided to see what Urban Dictionary had to say about the matter, and I found a lot of serious entries, obviously made by people who actually knew what they were talking about, but as I went through the pages it turned into “a bunch of women who are ugly and therefor hate men” or “ the belief that women are people and therefor it’s their right to criticize men for everything in history” - both of these images or of course completely wrong.

Of course it’s misguiding that it’s called “feminism” when it probably should be called “humanism”, because, first of all - everyone and anyone can be a feminist, to say that it’s only for women is to go against the equality feminism fights for.

Secondly, women can’t force men to make up for history, if we always had to consider what happened in the past, no-one could do anything anymore. Sure, through history “the white man” has created quite a mess, but we need to look at what we can do to better the future instead of focusing on what we could’ve done better in the past!

I do believe there’s a reason why the angry, hairy-legged feminist stereotype came to be. There are - as with all stereotypes - some people who are like that; there are the extreme-feminists who’ll tell you not to shave your legs, armpits or whatever or not to cook for “the man”. A thing that these women forget is, it’s our bodies, just like women shouldn’t let “the man” decide over their body and actions, no woman is to decide what other do with their bodies. I don’t wear make-up, because I don’t like doing so, but if I wanted to, I wouldn’t let some angry extreme-feminist tell me not to. And I cook dinner for my boyfriend, because I want to - and I know he’ll return the favour!

It’s funny really, that this group of angry “man-haters” are so busy telling others that they’re not “proper” women, when one of the things feminism fight for is that anyone who sees themselves as a woman is a “proper” woman, regardless of how they act or dress. The debate of gender versus sex is a completely different one, and it’s too complicated for me to go into at this moment.

Some might think there’s no need for feminism in our society, because we’re equal as it is. And here my inner feminist might shine through. It is true that women have the same rights as men in a lot of fields; women can vote and go to school just like men in most countries, in some fields women are actually taking over - just look at the more book-ish youth educations. But there are still a lot of fields where women aren’t equal, we still get paid less for the same jobs and there are more men in positions of power. Around the time of the local elections last year I was talking to a friend (who happened to be male) and we were discussing who we were voting for, and when I told him who I was planning on voting for he said “oh, because she’s a woman?” - and this shouldn’t be a question that needed asking, because I wasn’t voting for a candidate because of gender, I was voting for the one I considered best!

Just like it shouldn’t be the main focus what skin colour a politician has, their gender shouldn’t be important. Though it can be a bit hard to see how a group of old American men should be the ones deciding whether women should be able to have abortions.

You don’t have to be a woman to able to ask yourself questions like: “is it okay to rape?” or “is it okay to treat one group of society differently?” and as a normal human with the capability of logical thought you should be able to answer “no” as well.

We need feminism as long as it’s okay to over sexualize women. We need feminism as long as “she was asking for it” is still a reason to rape - this thought is both degrading to women, who should be allowed to dress however they want, and men who aren’t the kind of animals this way of thinking presents them as. Feminism is needed as long as I’m being told to sit down and be quiet, because women should not be loud and provoking the way I am.

Women like me might not have needed to fight their way out of the kitchen, but we have to fight every day with society’s expectations of our looks and behaviour.

Women are people and men are people, and if we stop nagging each other, we might just get along. Extreme feminists are just as sexist as the guys who tell women to get back in the kitchen.

Yeah, a long one, but oh well.

-Sidsel out