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dragonlady7via http://ift.tt/1Rb02iV:
The short answer is that it really, really really depends on the school.
Mine was an old-fashioned 60s-liberal kind of joint– I mean, it’s the oldest girls’ high school in the US, founded in 1814, back when girls weren’t given a high school education. It’s so old that its founder was once gifted a bouquet of pink roses by Lafayette when he visited. Yes, that Lafayette; we were on the route he came by on his American tour early on in the 19th century, I forget the exact date. Anyway. (The letter he wrote her is framed and on display in one of the salons in one of the dorms. We wore pale pink uniforms in honor of those roses for a while but then abolished uniforms in the 60s, around the same time we dropped our religious affiliations.)
I get the feeling it’s not like this many places. But by a combination of a very old-fashioned-liberal administration and various characteristics that were probably innate to me and coincidental in my environment, I just didn’t really grok the whole concept of sex discrimination very much.
(It’s probably also that I was a very late bloomer; I was really very asexual up until I was about 19. Like, had absolutely no concept of sexual desire as it related to my actual self relating to another human. So I was absolutely immune to sex-related peer pressure. I had no idea what people were talking about.)
But it boils down to the fact that I did not understand the ways in which girls distort themselves to appeal to others, by choice and habit and indoctrination. I didn’t get the reasoning behind makeup or provocative dress, or any of that stuff.
So when I say I didn’t learn how to talk like a woman– I mean, it was as an adult that I realized that if you speak with your full voice and end the sentence on a downward tone, people think you’re bossy or a bitch. I had problems with other women, but more problems with men, who would get hostile and upset with me and I wouldn’t understand why.
It was when I started working as a waitress that I finally learned how to modulate my voice, how to speak in a higher tone, how to end a sentence on an upward slant, so that I came across as non-confrontational and submissive. Older people liked it, and especially men, and they tipped better and hassled me less. I’ve hung onto this now, and it’s a thing I use like a weapon.
It’s not flirting. It’s openly just submitting, like a junior wolf. It’s tilting your posture and lowering your gaze. You smile to show your teeth so they know you’re not going to use them. You smile and make your eyes go blank and dead so they can dismiss you and feel better about themselves, and they take their empty victory and they leave you your money. It is how you win when you are in a service position.
It’s not just that I didn’t learn how to be feminine, I also wasn’t good at navigating the structures of power that govern our adult world. Can I really blame my largely un-gendered upbringing? Maybe not.
The short answer is that it really, really really depends on the school.
Mine was an old-fashioned 60s-liberal kind of joint– I mean, it’s the oldest girls’ high school in the US, founded in 1814, back when girls weren’t given a high school education. It’s so old that its founder was once gifted a bouquet of pink roses by Lafayette when he visited. Yes, that Lafayette; we were on the route he came by on his American tour early on in the 19th century, I forget the exact date. Anyway. (The letter he wrote her is framed and on display in one of the salons in one of the dorms. We wore pale pink uniforms in honor of those roses for a while but then abolished uniforms in the 60s, around the same time we dropped our religious affiliations.)
I get the feeling it’s not like this many places. But by a combination of a very old-fashioned-liberal administration and various characteristics that were probably innate to me and coincidental in my environment, I just didn’t really grok the whole concept of sex discrimination very much.
(It’s probably also that I was a very late bloomer; I was really very asexual up until I was about 19. Like, had absolutely no concept of sexual desire as it related to my actual self relating to another human. So I was absolutely immune to sex-related peer pressure. I had no idea what people were talking about.)
But it boils down to the fact that I did not understand the ways in which girls distort themselves to appeal to others, by choice and habit and indoctrination. I didn’t get the reasoning behind makeup or provocative dress, or any of that stuff.
So when I say I didn’t learn how to talk like a woman– I mean, it was as an adult that I realized that if you speak with your full voice and end the sentence on a downward tone, people think you’re bossy or a bitch. I had problems with other women, but more problems with men, who would get hostile and upset with me and I wouldn’t understand why.
It was when I started working as a waitress that I finally learned how to modulate my voice, how to speak in a higher tone, how to end a sentence on an upward slant, so that I came across as non-confrontational and submissive. Older people liked it, and especially men, and they tipped better and hassled me less. I’ve hung onto this now, and it’s a thing I use like a weapon.
It’s not flirting. It’s openly just submitting, like a junior wolf. It’s tilting your posture and lowering your gaze. You smile to show your teeth so they know you’re not going to use them. You smile and make your eyes go blank and dead so they can dismiss you and feel better about themselves, and they take their empty victory and they leave you your money. It is how you win when you are in a service position.
It’s not just that I didn’t learn how to be feminine, I also wasn’t good at navigating the structures of power that govern our adult world. Can I really blame my largely un-gendered upbringing? Maybe not.
