I'm not ok with this

[fairyrune]

An Arizona Latin teacher is teaching his male students chivalry.

"I teach old-fashioned subjects," Ivanyi told AOL News, "so I don't think I'm doing anyone a disservice by promoting old-fashioned traditions."

Except he is. Even if it is "polite," he's teaching young men that they need to treat women differently.

Please, thank you, and general respectfulness is one thing, but I don't need any man to hold a door for me, pull out my chair, or stand up when I leave the room. They wouldn't do those things for another man, why should they do them for me?

What Mr. Ivanyi is doing is creating an environment where women are not considered equals. They are somehow different, and that is not ok.

I'm not feeling so hot this morning, so I'm probably not expressing my thoughts on this as well as I could be.

Comments

[heathyre.livejournal.com]

I think he ahould be teaching curtesy to men and women. Such as hilding the door open for whomever is behind you, holding an elevator, please and thankyous, getting off the damn phone when you're in the checkout line....etc. Or is that asking too much?

[blueyz72.livejournal.com]

THIS!!! I had mixed feelings when I read it but this covers it well.

Of course as a teacher the fact we HAVE to teach these skills at school because most aren't being taught at home is getting worse.

[paleshadow.livejournal.com]

We could stand to teach people to be more polite to everyone, yes. Civility classes for all!

I think I've been on both the giving and receiving ends of "chivalries" (being male on one hand and visibly disabled on the other) so my viewpoint is a bit confused - on one hand, it's easy to feel condescended to when someone does that sort of thing (especially when it's something you can easily do yourself and wouldn't even inconvenience you that much), but on the other hand, when I do hang back to hold doors or whatever, it's not from a "poor helpless person behind me" perspective as much as a "I'm not in a hurry, why not do a good turn" perspective. I don't keep tallies, but I wouldn't be surprised if I'm more likely to do that sort of thing for women than men - admittedly, this may be because I spend most of my time in a law school where most of the students are female.

For me, it's a matter of looking at the specific behaviour in question - not everything old-fashioned is good, or evil, and different traditions have different effects on the underlying attitudes between genders (or, again, other groups).

[mistress-kath.livejournal.com]

Weeeelllll...there's so many demonstrations of atrocious manners out there, I can't really fault someone for trying to teach good ones. And I've lost track of how many times my mom has complained about people letting the door swing shut in her face.

[fairyrune]

WORD. I mean, the parents *should* be the ones doing it, but if it must be taught in school, THAT is how they should do it.

[fairyrune]

Way I figure, he should be teaching all of his students to show respect and manners to everyone, regardless of gender, age, race, etc. He shouldn't be teaching the boys just to show deference to the girls. That leads to the attitude that women need to be treated differently simply because they're women. That sort of thing is the reason women make seventy four cents for every dollar men make for doing the same job in this country.

[fairyrune]

I just don't like the idea that women should be treated with extra "politeness" simply because they're women. It reinforces certain negative stereotypes that definitely should not be reinforced in an educational setting.

[craftyskwrl.livejournal.com]

Why does a woman being treated courteously by a man seem to be associated with the woman being treated as inferior? Just because this teacher is showing boys that pulling out a chair or opening a door for a girl is a form of etiquette that was commonly done in the past does not mean he is teaching them to treat girls as lesser humans. If anything, I would think it teaches the boys to respect the girls in their class more than they did up until that point.

I'd love it if everyone held a door open for me, as I almost always hold the door open for whomever is behind me. If this guy starts by teaching the guys to do this simple act of courtesy for girls first, what's the big deal? I don't think he's telling the boys to let the door go in the faces of other boys. If holding the door open for girls becomes a habit for these boys, then maybe it will lead to a habit of them holding a door open for anyone in general. That doesn't seem to be a bad thing.

Also, it is mentioned in the article that the girls are expected (at least by their own parents) to thank the boys for any acts of courtesy they perform towards them, which would mean the girls are expected to be courteous in return. It's not a completely one way street.

[fairyrune]

The problem I have with the situation is that he's essentially teaching the boys that they have to treat girls differently by virtue of the fact that they're female. That attitude is the basis of most of the inequality faced by women today.

What he should be doing is teaching all of his students respect and kindness for all people, regardless of gender. Like you said, you hold the door for others, why shouldn't they hold the door for you, no matter who you are or who they are?

[destinyrose10.livejournal.com]

I don't know if you have been in the schools lately, but this sounds like he's treating the girls much better than the boys are treating the girls now. When I was subbing watching the boys interact with the girls made me sick. They were completely disrespectful, treating them like objects and just like a pair of tits.

I am a very independent woman but I still feel great when a man opens/holds a door for me. Lets me go through a door first etc. I don't feel inferior to him, I feel respected.

Kudos to this man for trying to instill some respect in the boys and girls. I agree with Squirrel, if he starts with teaching the boys to be more respectful to the girls than whats to say it won't overflow into their interactions with other people. Teachers, elders and even each other.

[fairyrune]

I still think he should be teaching respect for all regardless of gender. They're still treating the girls differently, just in the opposite direction.

I don't think I deserve any extra respect or kindness because I'm female. I think that people should show me respect and kindness because I'm another human being.

[krowface.livejournal.com]

sometimes we aren't chivalrous for the women-folk, sometimes we do it for ourselves.

i hold doors open because it's sweet, and it's classy. not because i don't think my date has the arm strength.

i think it looks good, and i look good doing it.

(psst. women ARE different from men. :P )

[fairyrune]

What you do for your date is between you and your date. I honestly do not have a problem with whatever you choose to do; it's none of my business.

My problem with the situation explained in the article above is that an authority figure is teaching young men that they need to treat women differently simply because they're female. Like it or not, that's the sort of thing that leads to the attitude that women really aren't as capable as men. It's what leads to random strangers in the Home Depot telling me that it's so nice to see a woman dressed like a woman when I happen to go in there wearing a skirt.

What he should be teaching all of his students is to treat everyone with respect. NOT that the girls need or deserve special treatment.

And yeah. Women and men are different. You have a Y chromosome, I have two X's, and we both have the various expressions thereof. None of those things justify the fact that women still make seventy five cents on the dollar for doing the exact same job as a man.

[krowface.livejournal.com]

don't get me wrong, i don't think women should be paid differently because they're female, but people need to understand that there are differences between the two sexes due to a billion years of evolution, and it's not stuff that can be shaken in only a few decades.

yeah, some women excel at men's natural abilities, and vica versa, but that's really the exception, not the norm.

you're right though, he should teach them how to respect people no matter sex, but if he wants to teach "chilvary" as an option, i say go for it.

now if he's FORCING them to be chivalrous, well... then it's not really chivalry, is it?

[fairyrune]

It's not evolution, it's society. From Pink Brain, Blue Brain: : How Small Differences Grow Into Troublesome Gaps -- And What We Can Do About It :
"In one of the eye-opening studies cited in Lise Eliot's masterful new book on gender and the brain, mothers brought their 11-month-olds to a lab so the babies could crawl down a carpeted slope. The moms pushed a button to change the slope's angle based on what they thought their children could handle. And then the babies were tested to see how steep a slope they could navigate.

The results?

Girls and boys proved equally adept at crawling and risk-taking: On their own, they tried and conquered the same slopes. But the mothers of the girls -- unlike the mothers of the boys -- underestimated their daughters' aptitude by a significant margin.

"Sex differences in the brain are sexy," Eliot writes. And so we tend to notice them everywhere. "But there's enormous danger," she says, in our exaggeration. It leads us to see gender, beginning at an early age, only in terms of what we expect to see, and to assume that sex differences are innate and immutable. We forget that the differences within each sex -- among girls and among boys -- are usually greater than the gaps between the two.

Our assumptions "crystallize into children's self-perceptions and self-fulfilling prophecies." Girls' slightly lesser interest in puzzles and building toys is reinforced instead of challenged, and it turns into a gap in spatial skills and map reading. Parents and teachers see a boy lagging in reading and verbal skills and shrug it off with, "But of course, he's a boy.""

Bottom line, if he's going to be teaching manners at all (I don't think it needs to be said that it really should be the parents' job to do that), he should be teaching them equally to both genders. What he's doing is, in the end, going to reinforce certain negative stereotypes which will be harmful in the long run.

[krowface.livejournal.com]

hun. when i'm talking evolution, i'm not talking about social standards. i'm talking about innate abilities and/or reflexes.

it's hard to get into right now cuz i'm at work, but the next time we're together, ask me to show you that thing i do where i club a chick in the head and drag her into a cave. ;D

[fairyrune]

Well, yeah. There are certain physical differences, of course. What that book is saying is that any evolutionary differences are negligible, and it's society that imposes the major differences between men and women.

Sure, you could try that. But expect to lose a body part or two in the process. ;)

[krowface.livejournal.com]

depends on who i club, yes?

XD