Modern society, particularly in North America, is a place where sexual violence and abuse, homophobia, teenage pregnancy, rape, misogyny, and an overall misperception of gender roles run rampant. Thankfully, there are activists who are willing and eager to tackle these issues. The article I chose for this Newsflash is from the Toronto Star, authored by Catherine Porter and entitled, “New course fills high school studies gender gap” (March 30, 2010). Currently in Ontario, there are a handful of high schools that offer a course called Gender Studies; this course is similar to the Women’s Studies course offered at Colgate and other universities across North America. Students explore a variety of issues including abuse, homophobia, sex and sexuality, and the history of feminism. In September 2011, Gender Studies will become incorporated into the Ontario curriculum and offered province-wide. Gender Studies, and courses like it, are essential to high school students’ – men and women alike – intellectual and emotional development because the information they learn will better equip them to effectively deal with gender issues once they move on to college or enter the work force.
The Gender Studies course will become part of the Ontario Social Sciences and Humanities curriculum in 2011. The Ontario Ministry of Education is implementing this course in response to a report produced by the Ontario’s Safe Schools Action Team, entitled “Shaping a Culture of Respect in Our Schools.” This report examined “gender-based harassment in schools” and it was found that the Ontario “school system [was] throbbing with sexual abuse and violence.” Gender Studies is the brainchild of a group of university-aged women at the University of Western Ontario; approximately five years ago, they were all taking Women’s Studies courses, and began to wonder to themselves, “Why hadn’t they learned all that in high school”?
Additionally, a teacher at L’Amoreaux Collegiate in Toronto – one of the few schools to currently offer Gender Studies – Linda Kalafatides “developed her own course…It covers child brides, anorexia, the changing face of masculinity, the history of feminism.” In this course, she and her students “explore the pink frilly world of girlhood and blue hockeydom of boys.” Kalafatides was inspired by the women at Western, and also realized the necessity to educate kids at a younger age before they get to university of the work force. She claims that she wished she had courses like Gender Studies in high school, because “It would have saved a lot of years.” Kalafatides already sees huge strides being made in Gender Studies, as there are 7 boys in her class out of 27 students. In this way, Kalafatides and the trailblazers from Western are “empowering men and women so when they go out into the world, they are just a little bit better armed for coping and being more sensitive to all people.”
It is important for high school students to have the option to take courses like Gender Studies because they will be better prepared to confront the world in which they live. In learning about subjects like the kind of raunch culture that feminist writer, Ariel Levy talks about in her book, Female Chauvinist Pigs, they will better understand the culture that exists today in mainstream society. Levy describes how women display their body via performance (i.e. pornography, magazines, commercials) in a way that objectifies them in order to give men pleasure and often times, make money. Teenagers today are so programmed to think that to these kinds of sexually explicit images and situations are normal. I will admit that prior to taking Women’s Studies, I was fairly desensitized to the raunchy images I witnessed on a daily basis, but now that I am more informed, I am able to recognize that the pornification and objectification of the female body is not empowering. The first way to resist raunch culture and its byproducts is to at least recognize that women and men throughout society perpetuate it. If students are required to take this Gender Studies course, they will be able to recognize and resist buying in to the raunch culture upon which our society is built if they so choose. The knowledge they acquire in Gender Studies is a form of power in that it will at least give them the choice to resist. By educating high school aged kids through courses like Gender Studies and bestowing useful, practical knowledge upon them, it is possible to reshape the way younger generations see women, men and sex for the better.
Moreover, when high school students graduate and enter into the brave new world full of promise and opportunity, they are guaranteed to encounter individuals who are vastly different from them and anyone they have ever met before. Two issues that would inevitably come up in a Gender Studies class are homosexuality and intersexuality or transgendered individuals. It is likely that a lot of high schoolers do not know many, if any, outwardly gay, lesbian, intersex or transgendered individuals. However, it is even more likely that once these students graduate and move beyond the confines of their hometowns and high school hallways, they will encounter people that fall into these groups. With that said, Gender Studies can provide preemptive education – it will educate students that sexuality is more than just hetero, or male and female/man and woman. For instance, feminists and women’s rights activists, Paula Ettelbrick and Nancy Naples eloquently describe the challenges of living as a gay or lesbian couple in society in their articles entitled, “Since When Is Marriage a Path to Liberation?” and “Queer Parenting in the New Millennium”, respectively. These couples are seeking equality, but still want to maintain a unique identity distinct from heterosexual couples. In their articles, these authors describe the struggle for equality in terms of marriage and adoption rights, and how complex these issues really are – they are not black and white, but rather, involve interactions at the individual, legal and societal levels for acceptance. Additionally, feminist scholar and biologist, Anne Fausto-Sterling discusses in her book, Sexing the Body, how Western culture is obsessed with labeling people as either a man or a woman, with no room for the sexually ambiguous, because the definition of gender in today’s society is so rigid. Anyone that does not fall into these two categories is considered abnormal by our standards and must be “fixed.” In being required to take a Gender Studies course while still in high school, students can learn at an earlier age about the complexities of gender and sexuality, and understand that we live in a diverse society full of people of all sexual orientations and genetic make-ups; these students can learn the difference between gender and sexuality, and that one’s identity cannot simply be categorized by the terms, “male” and “female,” “gay” or “straight.” This information will prepare students if they happen to encounter people that are “different” from them in these ways; it will allow these students to recognize their differences, but at the same time allow for them to acknowledge their commonalities – ultimately they can realize that we’re all human beings, and strive to foster a more loving, inclusive, accepting and tolerant society.
Finally, Gender Studies is an important course for high school students because they can learn about the sexual violence, abuse and rape, which run rampant in modern society. We have seen the statistics: women are sexually attacked every few minutes or so in the US. Feminist contributors to the compilation, Listen Up, Whitney Walker (“Why I Fight Back”) and Emilie Morgan (“Don’t Call Me a Survivor”) describe in their memoirs how women often live in fear of men, like when they are walking the streets late at night, because men can use their inherent power and strength over them. Oftentimes, women are at the mercy of men – they are attacked or pressured to have sex – then are sometimes even blamed for the sexually violent acts committed against them. It is also important to recognize that men can also be victims of sexual abuse and rape – these violent acts are issues that pervade throughout society, and no one is exempt. Even women in the US armed forces are not immune to sexual violence! If high school students take Gender Studies, they can acknowledge the pervasiveness of sexual violence and can use this information to become involved at their high schools, and future college campuses and workplaces. If these younger students are aware of how frequent these violent acts occur, they will be more compelled to spread this information and educate their peers, and they will potentially have knowledge of what to do if they or one of their friends are ever in a similar situation.
Ultimately, courses like Gender Studies are important for high school aged students because these courses provides a wealth of information that these kids can utilize in their everyday lives, and in their future, whether at college or in the workplace. The information learned in this course teaches students to recognize the deficiencies of our culture, the diversity of individuals in our world and the prevalence of violence in modern society. Requiring students to take Gender Studies at the high school level teaches teenagers that everybody – male, female, gay, straight, intersex, transgender, and the list goes on – has a stake in the system, so everybody can attempt to reform the current system. Future generations can utilize this information and knowledge to change the world in which we live – it can breed activism and positive change about real life issues through education.
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