genderberg.com

You have a right to a sexism free workplace. That your bosses at the Teen Center care so little about the females guests and employees that they allow hate to flourish is a fucking travesty. I'd consider legal proceedings if your requests have gotten repeatedly ignored. but that's just me.

Hugs to you, bluecoat28. You deserve better.

KatetheGreat wrote:That's horrible, Bluecoat. I would've walked right up there with you.

thanks kate
I'm not going to take legal action, but thanks for that suggestion, sam. My bosses agree with me that the band was offensive and terrible and they want me to be comfortable there. I guess I portrayed them as completely apathetic in the above post. The guy boss said that he wants me to feel comfortable there, and that's nice of him, but it's not enough. I'm gonna try to make my bosses (guy and two women) less desensitized to this stuff... My young woman boss didn't hear that specific song, so I think that's why she said "that's terrible" and that's it. I want them to step it up and actually get the guys who say those things in trouble. If my bosses still don't care to make this place healthier, then I will consider the legal action... yikes! Women who take legal action against rapists are very courageous.

new horrifying things to report:
last week: one of my 7th graders reports to me that an 8th grade boy is distributing his dad's porn dvds to friends on the bus ride home. kind of like a lending library.
today: i'm walking down the hall past kayla's locker and on the inside of her locker door is a sheet of paper with the sentence "kayla likes it up the bootay! so give it to her" plus a drawing of a penis approaching a butt. signed by her best friend, another girl. i confiscate it, bring it to the vice principal, who dispenses discipline. but discipline doesn't erase the fact that this is how 7th grade girls are talking in 2008, or that kayla was so pleased with this message that she hung it in her locker.

This is awful.

My brother plays X-Box Live a lot and ALL you hear him and the guys he plays with online say are "yo, you got ass-raped"/ "molested"/ "fu**ed up the ass", etc. You can also name the videos you play and some of the ones he named are "triple penetration", "no vaseline", and "maximum penetration", to name a few. He doesn't listen so there's no point in trying to talk to him about it.
He also told me there was a kid playing with his dad once and when his dad got killed in the game the kid said "my dad got f***ed up the ass." This was supposed to be funny, and believe me this is soooo normal with these guys who play online. How's that for video games?

Geez RadFemRF13...see that's when video games go mysteriously missing, end up water-logged in the toilet, dogs eat them, aliens abduct them...
The strangest things can happen you know!

i feel your pain, RadFemRF13. i won't allow another xbox or playstation in my house, the name-calling being one of the reasons. i was glad when my husband had to sell his xbox because we needed money. since then, we've talked about the brainwashing that goes on in videogame play, (a concept that he didn't accept UNTIL another MAN discussed it with him), and i've been so happy to not have that kind of violent misogynist bragging in my ears. it's AWFUL. and to know that this kind of crap is coming out of the mouths of little boys! it's NOT funny.

seriously, i agree with pisaquari......it is amazingly easy to *accidentally* step on a game disc. woops.

Haha I wish I could destroy his video games, but unfortunately that won't change his attitude. And now the newest game is Grand Theft Auto 4, which includes strip clubs and prostitutes. It just gets bettter and better! I'm glad you won't allow game systems in your house, axjxhx, that's the way to be:) I hate the feeling of knowing they won't listen to you no matter what you say to them.

Fortunately there's no other males in my house (apart from my Dad who I know doesn't watch porn and if he did my Mum wouldn't tolerate it). My sister sadly loves programmes like America's Next Top Model though - which I think are incredibly damaging within wider society - and I've brought up some feminist points about it at times but understandably noone likes it if they think they're being lectured to. But she is strongly anti-porn and so is my Mum so I've never really had big arguments within my family about things like that. My Grandparents do however hold some incredibly backward views and usually me and my Mum spend ages trying to get them to see how things really are - my Grandpa recently suggested that women who dress in a certain way are to blame for rape (claiming that "if you go into a forest full of hunters and dress as a turkey you're going to get shot" which made me really angry) and my Grandma thinks that men dominate top professions because they're "superior" rather than because of the fact that women have been prevented from entering certain jobs or advancing within them by the patriarchal system.

two days after the bootay poster came down, my colleague overheard an 8th grade boy tell an 8th grade girl: "Get on your knees, bitch, and suck my dick."

my colleague reported this to admin that day, and the boy got discipline, plus he had to apologize to the girl, and repeat his comments over the phone to his mother!

friday the admin types at my school (including me) had a meeting about this issue. my principal is being very pro-active and says we need to do something. i suggested a parent outreach meeting, and he said I can help him set it up.

any suggestions for speakers? looking for something less intense than the dines slideshow.

oneangrygirl wrote:any suggestions for speakers? looking for something less intense than the dines slideshow.

Did you ever end up finding a speaker? Maybe someone (you) could do one of those exercises with the class: What are bad names people call boys? Bad names people call girls? and write the answers on the board. Then that could get the children thinking. It's so tough to talk to children about porn culture, because we're not allowed to... but they have pretty much full access to it thanks to the internet! The first time I did an assignment on gender was in high school when the teacher had a list of topics we could focus on for our "shoebox" project: poverty, race, gender, were some categories we could choose. Gender stood out to me that day and I decided to make a "how to be a beautiful" shoe box for females. In the shoebox I put two bundled up socks symbolizing breast implants, a bottle of vitamins symbolizing diet pills, and magazine cut outs of models.