Now this is something I can get behind.
There is, as usual, a new study making its rounds. However, unlike the past, say, four articles I’ve written, I’m totally down with this one for a couple of reasons.
The British Educational Research Association performed a study on elementary school students centered around gender dynamics between young girls and boys. They came to the conclusion that influential adults (like teachers) were perpetuating gender stereotypes and poor behavior amongst male students with what might seem to be harmless comments. What kinds of comments? Things we use every day — “boys will be boys,” “silly boys,” and “schoolboy pranks,” for example.
I took a politics course last year called Explaining Social Power in which we studied gender dynamics throughout history, starting with Machiavelli and ending with modern social theorist Larry May. I mention these two in particular because they support the findings of this study quite well. In Machiavelli’s The Prince, he insists that to rule a country, a man must be violent, unwavering, unemotional, and instill fear amongst his people. For Machiavelli, who published The Prince in 1532, men were not respected unless they were physically overpowering and unafraid of using unprecedented violence.
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