More Thoughts on Sexism and #yesallwomen? Splendid!

In light of the recent events in Isla Vista, California, the hashtag #yesallwomen has become a trending topic.  Most of people who use the hashtag are women, and they're sharing stories about the injustice they've faced as a female.  Some of the stories are heartbreaking 140-character tales of violence and sexual abuse.  Some are stories of discrimination and inequality.  All of them share the theme that being female in this country, and the world, comes with a special set of obstacles that we must overcome daily.  This is part of my story.

Back in March, I talked about the first time (and second, actually) that I remember experiencing sexism.  While both of those instances were important events in my childhood, they were not nearly as important as an incident that happened in high school.

All throughout high school I participated in Scholastic Bowl.  If you're unfamiliar with the concept, Scholastic Bowl is an official team activity governed by IHSA rules in Illinois.  Teams of up to 15 students, 5 at a time, compete against different schools to answer the most questions correctly in a match.  Matches consist of 10 toss-up questions in math, science, social studies, literature, fine arts, and miscellaneous (sports, technology, agriculture, consumer economics, etc.)  At the end of each round, a bonus question is presented that has multiple answer parts and is worth more points.  Basically it's high-anxiety bar trivia.  Because everything is high-anxiety when you're in high school.  If, for some reason, you're interested in reading official rules, you can check out the Handbook for Managers. Like with other IHSA activities, there are often JV and Varsity teams.  JV Teams typically receive slightly easier questions.  And while the varsity players were typically juniors and seniors, it wasn't unusual to have sophomores playing varsity - especially in my small school.

The misogyny started pretty much right away.  As a freshman, I mostly played on the JV team, but both JV and Varsity travelled together to all our matches, so I spent a lot of time hanging out with upperclassmen.  One senior boy in particular liked to tell "women jokes".  One of his favorites was to ask a girl why she was wearing a watch and respond to whatever answer she gave with, "But I don't know why you need to wear one.  There's a clock on the stove."  He was a real charmer.  As a freshman I laughed along because I wanted to fit in and not rock the boat.  But those kind of jokes got old really quickly, and it got harder for me to hold my tongue.  Luckily that particular gentleman graduated, and I didn't have to deal with him again.  Honestly, he should be happy he never had to deal with me again.  But that was the culture of our team, and it would only get worse the next year.

We had a new guidance counselor/coach my sophomore year as the chemistry teacher/former coach had retired after the previous school year.  I don't remember if the new coach and I consistently butted heads before this incident, but we certainly did following it.  It was near the end of our season, and we were heading to a tournament - probably the county tournament.  The coach was chronically disorganized and had made a mistake in what time the match was.  We ended up arriving at the host school super late and had to go straight into our first match, which immediately frustrated me and some of my teammates.   As we made our way to the room for our first match, our coach told us who the "starting lineup" would be.  He chose 5 boys.  All the girls on the team looked at each other, confused, because we knew that over the course of the season, many of us had higher percentages of correct answers than at least two of the guys who would be playing.  When we asked the coach if he would reconsider, he told us to "just let the boys handle it".  Utilizing the coach's male dream team, our team lost that match.  I was furious, as were other female members of my team.  As a naturally competitive person, it was excruciating to watch my team lose knowing that I could have contributed, and perhaps helped us win.

Furious at the blatantly sexist behavior and statement from my coach, I arrived at school the next day armed with my teen angst, a heaping dose of indignation, and song lyrics.  I printed the lyrics to No Doubt's song "Just a Girl" in a large font and papered the outside of my locker with them.  That morning I was called out of my second hour class to meet with the assistant principal (or Ass Prince as we so cleverly thought of him) in front of my locker.  When he asked me to explain my new locker decor, I recounted the previous day's events.  I was fired up, but I never raised my voice, nor did I use any foul language. The Ass Prince responded by calling me hysterical and telling me to remove the lyrics from my locker.  I refused based on the principle that other students were allowed to decorate their lockers based on athletic teams or other activities, and this was in relation to one of my extra-curricular activities.  Furthermore, those song lyrics are not obscene or in any way inappropriate.  It was then that my school administrator told me that he thought I had mental problems, and that maybe I should go talk to my guidance counselor.  You know, the person who condescended to me the evening before.  The one whose behavior was the reason I made this statement in the first place.  I politely told the assistant principal that I would not be seeking advice from that guidance counselor any time in the near future, and I excused myself to return to my world history class.  I don't know for sure that my conversation with the administration made any difference, but after that, at least one girl played in the season's remaining matches.  As for our coach, he was replaced the following year with a different guidance counselor who is a wonderful woman that nurtured us as a team rather than creating rifts between genders.  She also regularly told us how smart we all were, which certainly didn't hurt our self-esteem.

I consider myself lucky because my experiences with sexism and misogyny have been verbal or intellectual, unlike some of my friends who have experienced sexual assault and violence.  It is an incredibly sad thought to me, though, that I get to consider myself lucky because my experiences thus far haven't involved physical violation of my person.  Because of this I can confidently say that #yesallwomen experience sexism.  I can also say that as a feminist, I think it's time we do something about that.

Fighting Sexism? Splendid!

At the beginning of the month, the American History Teachers' Collaborative held a focus workshop on the history of feminism in America.  It was an amazing day, and we had phenomenal speakers.  Amy Richards and Jennifer Baumgardner gave a joint keynote address in the morning followed by historian Barbara Berg giving an afternoon keynote address.

Via my Instagram

I had the honor of going to dinner with Amy, Jennifer, and some teachers from the AHTC the night before the workshop, and they were just such lovely women.  Their presentation the next day was wonderful and inspiring.  They met while working for Gloria Steinem at Ms. Magazine.  At the end of the day, Amy hugged me.  This person who is amazing and important (and has undoubtedly hugged Gloria Steinem) hugged me!  That basically means I've practically hugged Gloria Steinem.

Via my Instagram

Barbara Berg's keynote posed a couple of really interesting questions that got me thinking about my own life in terms of sexism and feminism.  I have lived a relatively privileged life, but I've encountered sexism since I was a small child.

The first question that got me thinking was "When was the first time you encountered sexism or gender inequality?"

The first time I remember being on the receiving end of sexism was when I was probably 6 years old.  My parents signed me up for instructional league baseball.  In my hometown, there was no softball option for girls that young at the time, so those of us interested in playing either sport had to play baseball.  There were probably 6 or 8 teams in my league.  The league didn't have tryouts, but the coaches all got together to draft their teams.  They tried to split the girls evenly among all the teams, but my team was "stuck" with two girls.

One of the main differences between instructional league and regular little league is that the parent coaches pitch to the batters.  Otherwise, everyone would get walked, and games would take for-ev-er.  As I stepped into the batter's box at my first game, my parents immediately noticed something different about how the coaches behaved.  With my helmet on my head and my hands choked up probably too far on my 14oz aluminum bat, I waited for my first pitch.  My coach took the baseball in his hand, rocked back and lobbed me an underhand pitch.  After I made contact with the ball and ran to first base, one of my male teammates took his place at the plate.  This time the coach sent an overhand pitch toward the batter.  In fact, as we cycled through the next few batters in the lineup, they all hit overhand pitches.  Then Karla, the other girl on my team came to the plate.  Once again the coach lobbed an underhand pitch toward the plate.  It was obvious at that point that she and I were being treated differently from the rest of the team.

After the game, my parents approached the coaches to discuss what they had just witnessed.  The coaches tried to justify their behavior by saying that as girls we would eventually be playing softball and should get used to underhand pitching.  While it's true that both Karla and I would go on to play softball in summer leagues and high school, that wasn't the point.  We were being treated differently based solely on our sex.  At 6 years old, there's not much of a difference in the strength, speed, or agility between the sexes.  Hell, with our hair in ponytails and hidden under ball caps, you couldn't even tell that there were girls on the field!  There was no need to treat the girls on the team any differently than the boys on the team.  My parents assured the coaches that I was prepared to play the same game in the same way as my male teammates.  After that my coaches pitched overhand to both of us for the remainder of the season.

Would I have been any less of a ballplayer if the coaches had continued to pitch underhand to me?  Probably not.  At 6 years old, in a league where everyone bats every inning, and no one is ever considered "out", it's not like I was destined to become the next great baseball player.  The situation did illustrate that even at age 6, boys and girls are treated differently in athletics.

I'm grateful my parents saw the inequality and put an immediate stop to it.  I was never raised to believe I couldn't do anything based solely on my sex, and I think this incident illustrated that for me.  It made a mark on me at a very early age that my sex was not an excuse for anything.

Of course now that I've written about this event from when I was 6, I'm remembering that the real first time I remember encountering sexism was when I was 3 years old and in preschool.  While playing outside on a particularly hot day, I remember the boys in my preschool class were allowed to take off their shirts.  Since I was also hot and sweaty, I tried to take my shirt off as well.  I was admonished by the teachers and told that it was only okay if the boys took off their shirts and not the girls.

Now, I developed early, but I can promise that I certainly did not have boobs at age 3.  Had I taken my shirt off, there would have been no difference between my body and that of my male classmates.  The teacher really should have adopted an all-or-nothing approach to the subject.  Either everyone gets to remove their shirts or no one does.

So I guess that's really where it started for me.  The more I think about it, the more stories from my own history I remember.  I've got a great one from high school that involves Scholastic Bowl, the Assistant Principal, and No Doubt.  Stay tuned for that.

What about you?  Do you remember the first time you encountered sexism?

Banned Books Week? Splendid!

I've mentioned in previous posts that I love to read.  This love of reading started very young for me, 

Obligatory picture of Kiddo Kim "reading" around age 2.

and it has continued to this day.  In 2012, I read 50 books.  I'm that person that becomes thoroughly engrossed in a book and can't put it down.  I read while cooking, while getting ready for work in the morning and for bed at night (no wonder it takes so long some days!), while I should be cleaning, and definitely while I should be sleeping.

I remember reading Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix for the first time in college.  It was the summer between my sophomore and junior years.  I got so engrossed in the last few hundred pages that I couldn't possibly fall asleep.  So I spent the whole night reading and finished the book, crying over Sirius, on the porch while watching the sun rise.

In high school my job was to scan old payroll records into the computer, burn them to CDs, and shred the now useless paper.  At the time, scanning the dot matrix printer paper took about 90 seconds per sheet.  I would read while the computer scanned the page, mark my spot, save the payroll record, put the new sheet on the scanner, and resume my book.  I would walk to the library on my lunch break, usually multiple times a week.  I would spend the walk back to work reading one of my latest finds.  Then at night I would stay up far later than I should, always telling myself "just one more chapter".  It was almost never just one more.

I was lucky to grow up in an environment that encouraged reading.  My parents took us to the library on a nearly weekly basis while we were kids.  In first grade, my mom sent a note to my teacher and the librarian asking that they make sure to send home books that I could read to her instead of books she had to read to me.  They happily obliged, and I discovered my love of Amelia Bedelia and, a few years later, everyone's favorite Stoneybrook, CT teens, The Baby-Sitters Club.

This week is Banned Books Week.  According to the American Library Association's website the purpose of Banned Books Week is to "highlight the value of free and open access to information".  The BBW website is full of lists of books that have been challenged or banned over the years.  You can view lists broken down by decade (going back to 1990) or by year.  They have a list of classics that have been challenged or banned as well.

According to the the lists of 100 most challenged books of 1990-1999 and 2000-2009 (some of which overlap) as well as my somewhat failing memory, I read 27 of those books before graduating high school.  Some of them I read on my own, like the Alice series, while others we read in class.

I distinctly remember reading Bridge to Terabithia 5th grade.  The book had been challenged in our district at some point because of language and the fact that it dealt with death.  In order to continue teaching the book, our teacher had to go through each class copy of the novel and white-out any offensive language.  Each of us had to have signed permission slips to read the book in class.  Parents were encouraged to read the book as well so they could be prepared for questions we might have at home.  My mom checked the book out from the library and read it.  I don't remember having any specific questions for her at home, but I do remember using her uncensored copy to find out what swear words were used before reporting back to my classmates.  Most of them we could figure out from context clues, but we just wanted to be sure.

One of my high school literature teachers did a unit on banned books, though I don't remember if it was during Banned Books Week.  To this day, I still love that in my tiny, conservative town, I had teachers who understood that banning books is a ridiculous concept.  They not only allowed us to read controversial books, they assigned them!  I'm pretty sure that's when I read Slaughterhouse-Five.  We talked about why they had been banned or challenged, and I believe the assignment was far better for us as readers and critical thinkers than had those books been removed from the classroom.

Recently I've been consuming books both the traditional way and also through audiobooks.  I think Audible is a great resource for audiobooks.  I like to listen to them as I fall asleep.  I've made my love of John Green's book The Fault in our Stars abundantly known.  I've also read and loved all his other books, too.  In honor of Banned Books Week I am listening to the audiobook of the 7th Most Challenged Book of 2012, his debut novel, Looking for Alaska.

Source

I find the concept of banning or challenging books fascinating.  So many times books are deemed "inappropriate" for an age group, and that's why they're removed from a classroom or library.  I firmly believe that instead of restricting the access that children have to books, parents should encourage them to read whatever strikes their fancy and be prepared to answer questions about it.  I know that I didn't understand all of Slaughterhouse-Five when I read it.  I had to ask questions.  It may make for uncomfortable conversations, but I honestly think that's worth it.

Though the week's half over, if you want to participate in Banned Books Week, check out the ALA website suggestions.  I would love to know if/how you're choosing to participate, even if it's by reading a book that hasn't been challenged in a school!

Another Kiddo Kim Story? Splendid!

When I was a kid, my parents censored the types of media in our lives but only on a limited level.  We watched a LOT of movies at home because we didn't have cable or satellite until I was in high school.  That meant we were limited to the two channels we could pick up with the TV antenna.  We had a pretty big movie collection, but there was the section at the back of the faux woodgrain VHS tape drawers that held the movies we weren't allowed to watch. 

Yeah, remember these guys?

I even remember which movies they were: Animal House, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, and Stripes.  The nudity in these movies was apparently deemed too graphic for us.  (Mom, I know you read this.  Why wasn't Caddyshack included?  The nudity wasn't too graphic?)

They were even more lax when it came to music.  We regularly listened to the Meatloaf album Bat Out of Hell on the casette player in the car.  I'm pretty sure I knew all the words to "Paradise by the Dashboard Light" by the time I was eight.  I loved that song - still do - but it didn't have anything to do with the lyrical content.  It's loud, and epic, and it's a duet, and there's a whole baseball section in the middle!  It wasn't until I was much older that I really started to understand the lyrics anyway.

Anyway, my favorite movies as a kid were Grease and Dirty Dancing.  I won't even go into the lyrics for "Greased Lightning."  But to this day, I still think the final scene in Dirty Dancing is one of the most triumphant scenes in all of film.  Seriously.  Nobody puts Baby in a corner.

This is what success looks like.

And yes, I do realize how ridiculous this sounds, but I stand by it.  As a kid, all I knew was that this was a love story with a lot of amazing dancing.  I had absolutely no understanding of Penny's plot line.  I mean, I guess I probably knew that she was pregnant.  But I'm pretty sure I thought she was still pregnant at the end of the movie until I was 17.  It was definitely a lightbulb moment when I figured out why anyone had a "dirty knife and a folding table."

I loved this movie so much that when Johnny and Baby would perfect the lift at the end, I would beg my dad to do the same with me.  Obviously this got progressively more difficult as I got older.  (Sidenote: I think that's one of the saddest moments of growing up - when you realize you're finally too big to just be tossed up into the air.  Especially when you're the oldest, and the other kids still have years of child throwing ahead of them.)  Then there was also the fact that my dad didn't love Dirty Dancing as much as I did, so he often found reasons to avoid watching it with me.  That's when I developed my solo Dirty Dancing lift technique.

We had a a really sturdy footstool that was the cornerstone of playtime in our living room.  It was used as a tunnel when we were really small, as a house or garage for dolls and cars, a sturdy wall for fort building, you name it.  Most importantly for me, it was also the Johnny to my Baby.  It was my lift partner.  If Dad wasn't around to do the lift with me, I would come running from one end of our house and gracefully flop onto the footstool arms outstretched, legs straight out behind me.  I had no shame in this either.  I didn't care who was around.  When my parents were out for the night, and our babysitter Laura let me stay up late to finish watching the movie, the only thing that changed was that I would try to run quieter so as not to wake up my little brother.

I don't think this spectacle was ever captured on film or video, so I made a helpful visual aid.  Other than the fact that I used a picture of me at twenty-seven instead of seven, I feel that this is pretty accurate.  Please feel free to compliment my photo shopping skills.  

This is full of win.  Trust me.

I really don't blame my parents at all for exposing me to those things as a kid.  Until a child is old enough to understand what any of it means, it doesn't really matter.  And once we were old enough to understand, my parents would have honestly answered any questions we had.  To this day, I still don't think much about Penny's plot or the lyrics to "Greased Lightning," so it's no big deal.  Understanding the lyrics to "Paradise by the Dashboard Light" however...  Yeah that was an adjustment.

Kiddo Kim Story? Splendid!

I've always been a bit... um... precocious.  There are some delightful stories in my family of my antics as a child.  Some of these stories are relayed to me from my parents and other family members, while other stories are actually memories I have.  For example, I remember getting in trouble on two particular occasions for name calling.  Once I quoted Back to the Future to my brother, asking him "What are you looking at, butthead?"  I was also reprimanded whilst watching the Today Show with my parents once for calling Bryant Gumbel a "pompous windbag," a phrase I picked up watching Disney's Cinderella.

I couldn't have been more than 5 here. Look at that sass.

The desk I used as a child (well, really, until last month) was the desk my mom grew up using.  Sharing a room with my younger brother throughout our early years meant that we shared a lot of things, but we didn't really share that desk.  That desk was my little corner of that room.  I loved reading, writing, and coloring as a kid, so I spent quite a bit of time at that desk.  Long before I was writing essays in school, I remember wanting to write "S.A."s (I was sounding it out) at home.  Because that's what big kids did.  And I desperately wanted to be a big kid - a 16 year old to be specific.  For some reason I thought that when I was 16, my life would be awesome, and I would magically be treated as an adult.  I blame Disney's The Little Mermaid for this one.  I practiced writing all kinds of words... even the bad ones.

This little project was discovered years later.  Don't ask me why my parents were looking underneath my desk drawers, but they were.  And under the center drawer, they found my dirty little secrets scrawled in brown crayon.  They also found a note on the inside of the drawer that said "This was Kim Lareau desk." I couldn't fit the apostrophe and S on my name, because I was trying to write this in the upper right corner of the desk.  This particular note was written in a nice teal color.  This little tag was done because I had it in my head that someone would discover that note decades later, and it would make a great story for them.  Seriously, that's what was going through my head more than 20 years ago.  I'm sure I was reprimanded and flogged accordingly for defacing the family heirloom.

If there's any moral to this anecdote, I'm certain I don't know what it is.  It probably has something to do with explaining to your kids that if they want to be remembered, the best way is probably not through obscene words scrawled in a desk with a crayon - even if it is impressive that a 3 year old is dropping F-bombs in writing and mastering that tricky "tch" spelling.

"Hell" looks like hell, but the others look pretty good.