Challenging social rules

[pegkerr]

This was a comment I made at sartorias's journal at a discussion about social rules, and I thought I'd re-post it here.

I vividly remember two instances when I was growing up when on separate occasions two teachers told me something I knew was DEAD WRONG.

One was in kindergarten, when another child was drawing a (rather inept) picture of a turkey. She painstakingly drew a circle on the turkey's tummy, and told the teacher, "That's the turkey's belly button."

Now even I, at the tender age of five, knew that turkeys didn't have belly buttons. But I was genuinely startled by the teacher's response. "Linda," she sniffed, "it isn't nice to talk about belly buttons."

I knew, even then, that there was nothing wrong with any part of the body. Even belly buttons.

The other time happened in eighth grade. I was stopped by a teacher in the hall. "Margaret," he told me loftily (he could never grasp the fact that I went by Peg, not Margaret), "ladies don't whistle." (Edited to add: Oh yeah, and I just remembered: he actually quoted to me, "Whistling girls and crowing hens/Always come to some bad ends.")

Again, I was so startled by the immediate and sure knowledge that he was wrong that I didn't make the obvious answer until he had passed.

I was a lady.

And I damn well could whistle anytime I liked.

Tell me about a time a teacher or a parent or someone else in authority told you something that you knew immediately was wrong.

Comments

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

Here's my story of how I handled a similar incident.

[stinaleigh.livejournal.com]

My sort of similar story about 5th grade isn't really about gender discrimination but intelligence. When I was in 5th grade I, and about 3 others in my section, about 10 of us overall were pulled out once a week for advanced gifted/talented stuff. We did projects and puzzles, and advanced math, etc. Well in upper elementary it was the teacher's option whether to let the class have a morning recess. Our teacher would regularly give the class the bonus/reward of morning recess while we were at our supplemental instruction. She didn't see what we were doing as work and not play. And for us it wasn't recess, it was work a lot of the time, even if it was more enjoyable than the classroom. We brought it up to our parents and she change, or at least made sure not to do it all the time then, but I think that may be why she didn't like me all that much. Or it could have been that when I was in 5th grade I knew more than she did.