Post A8A2Mv2HLSfxer4Wrw by GalacticTurtle@spinster.xyz
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(DIR) Post #A8A2Mv2HLSfxer4Wrw by GalacticTurtle@spinster.xyz
2021-01-15T16:55:27.617909Z
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When I think about women's spaces I often think about the school I went to and the dynamic that existed there. The layout was an all girls K-12 school on one side of the street and an all boys K-12 school on the other side of the street. Technically, once you got to high school, you could freely enter the other school as you wished since various high school classes and activities were either combined or taught by teachers at the other school. The boys school had this pretty massive entry area, super fancy with lots of couches, a big fireplace, portraits of old headmasters, and photos of every graduating class from the past 200 years. They also had a much nicer library and cafeteria probably because their school used to be an old hotel and our school has been knocked down and remodeled many times from a finishing school that was the size of the average wealthy person's house to a private school that needed to fit 600 people inside... and I tend to dislike modern architecture. Each time I passed through the typical hangout areas in the boys school, there were absolutely no girls. Even if you were amongst the girls who jumped headfirst into the world of dating, you would go to the boys school for your class then come right back. However the girls school was a different situation. Right inside the door to the high school portion of our building was the lounge unofficially called the co-ed lounge. This was routinely overrun by boys and directly below the single sex lounges on the second floor. The second floor in general was a place where boys weren't allowed to loiter. It was a daily occurrence using a certain staircase to bypass the co-ed lounge and sometimes for other girls I'd be asked to go down there and report back on which boys were there so they could decide if they wanted to interact with them or not. Since I graduated, a lot of bullshit has happened (much to the anger of all living alumni) and the high school is entirely co-ed. They've also knocked down a bunch of stuff and remodeled heavily on the girls side getting rid of the very cohesive lower, middle, and high schools all connected by a main hallway, chopping it up into two separate new buildings: One for lower school with boys classrooms on one side and girls on the other and one for middle school with girls upstairs and boys downstairs. The high school, now co-ed, is what used to be the boys school.Last year my dad was roped back into the school's politics (he was one of the first black students at the boys school back in the 70's) because current students and recent graduates had been going online and highlighting two problems about the place: Racist and sexist heckling, essentially. The core of this was stemming from a newly formed Young Republicans club (made up of only white boys from a specific neighborhood), verbally harassing (with the help of their parents) the black girls in the corner they'd found for themselves to hang out in. But as conversations continued, it opened up a whole host of other problems, the core of which all could be boiled down to boys taking up all the space, attention, and resources and the teachers not knowing how to recognize or handle it... the result of tossing together two schools that had developed their own distinct culture for over a century. COVID has derailed problem-solving on this front so... TO BE CONTINUED.Anyway. Support women's spaces.
(DIR) Post #A8A2MvYtOClPI0KZhg by Justwanttobreathe@spinster.xyz
2021-01-15T17:37:23.939629Z
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@GalacticTurtle I went to coed most of the time. The worst thing was 12 yo boys who strutted around like they own the place and every girl and woman in it. With the start of puberty a boy's life begins and a girl's life ends, and single sex schools I think greatly negate this effect by not allowing boys to leech the life from girls let alone attract all attention to themselves in the classroom. Coed girls don't know how much shit they're forced to put up with.
(DIR) Post #A8A2MwNEN31to7smAK by GalacticTurtle@spinster.xyz
2021-01-15T17:46:53.291663Z
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@Justwanttobreathe Yikes! Meanwhile when I got to college I encountered more than a few women who after talking to them for a bit, admitted that they usually hated hanging around other women (with me being the first or one of few exceptions) because growing up those relationships always went sour and "boys are just so much more easygoing and don't judge you." I did ask one if growing up constantly around boys might've impacted how her relationships with other girls formed and she was so offended by the question I never asked again. Then routinely people hear about my school environment and they all assume it must've been hell because everyone hates teenage girls as a rule. :blobawkward:
(DIR) Post #A8A2MwyS8entfZIVBQ by Justwanttobreathe@spinster.xyz
2021-01-15T18:13:17.311081Z
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@GalacticTurtle at the time I got to experience an almost all-girl school I already was quite a pick me but I couldn't help but notice that I'm having the most peaceful school year of my life and it was the only year I had friends at school too. Mostly I just hated everyone, girls because I was forced to compete with them and boys because they had a psychological lag of 10 years and would still get all the attention. I think it really cripples and stunts you internally, spending your childhood in constant competition and anxiety, being a secondary character in your own life.