Feminism, baby, feminism.

Especially the end bit about empirical reviews:

http://www.slate.com/id/2154331/

While I waited around to fill out a re-employment form, I read another article in the Globe and Mail about how Grade 7s enjoy single sex education. The boys like that the girls don't poke them, the girls like that the boys don't distract them. The teachers, apparently, are fine when the boys joke and chat and there are no girls to scold the disrespectful behaviour with recriminating looks--after all, the boys tend to be more nurturing of each other without the pestering of the opposite sex. And the girls enjoy working in diligent silence, though a few note that they "laugh less."

The piece is glowing. Everyone's grades go up! Genders learn differently! Inherently!

Articles like this bring my faith in cultural construction to a boiling point. Genders learn inherently differently (kill the adverbs! kill them!) my diligent, perfectly capable of visual spacial reasoning thank you little brain. Seventh graders have simply absorbed their proper societal parts: the girls are already the arbiters of morality, of" good" common sense, arbiters who keep the creative, independent boys--the boys who must impress-- in line. (Who wouldn't welcome a break?) Soon enough, she will have to get dinner on the table and make sure the kids get to school on time--and he'll be contributing too. He's so entertaining.

Does this smack of bitterness? Pucker of bitterness? Ah well. Call me a feminist kill joy. Some joys--like the partly felt laugh that dutifully props up another's ego--are not worth conserving.