Good Ole Days

Ahh, the good old days. How I wish I was living within them. Honestly, I think that I was born a few generations too late. Sucks for me, I guess.

I really like the ideals which used to exist in society; the ideals which are currently being eroded by my generation. Some of these ideals used to be very formidable, in my opinion. As bigot-y as it may sound, some of the "rules" which used to exist in society gave people a place. Let me be clear, I'm not saying that everything that used occur in society was correct. The diminishing (or at least the seeming of diminishment) of things like racism and sexism is a big plus of my generation. Why do I italicize "seeming"? Because of personal reasons. See, I was never a victim of bullying to my face, but does that mean I was never bullied? No, in fact, I was very bullied for a good deal of my time in elementary school. People from my generation are simply too frightened at the thought of openly telling someone what they think of them, they use something more painful - gossip. People (especially girls) used to gossip about me all the time in elementary and probably still do. 

Steering from anecdotes, let me get to the specifics of what I want to say. The parts of society (from the 50s all the way to the 80s) which I admire were the honesty, the up-frontness, the sensitivity level, and the decency. Yes, decency. A concept which has become meaningless to teens in the West (and of Westernized nations) and completely ignored by my generation. Decency was that thing that used to prevent girls from wearing underwear -oops, I mean "short-shorts"- to school. It was the thing that gave boys a sense of chivalry and honour. Generally, it helped society function "appropriately" and made women, women and men, men. It defined the genders. 

Obviously, it could be argued that this "decency" also forced women to stay in the home, and even so far as to say that this sense of "decency" prevented women's right to vote. Sure, I'll take it. But, I'd like to say that it wasn't so much "decency" that prevented women from voting, rather a lack of acceptance. Regardless, this is no longer a problem and can be disregarded. (Honestly, after second wave feminism, women had reached the majority of their goal, the rest of the feminism movement is more or less pointless and mean. It's beginning to treat men as second class citizens. Again, I stray from the topic at hand - decency.

I have a slight problem - ambiguity. There seems to be more and more ambiguity around genders. People behave more or less the same way, or at least, their body language does. 

Today, I was sitting in my English class. We had a substitute and she didn't allow talking in class, as our usual teacher does. Eventually, she had to let us talk because we were doing some group work. Naturally, my 5-person group didn't do too much work, and instead we chatted. During the course of this chat, one of the boys in the group, Nadje, kept making fun of the other girl in my group, Dujy. He was mockingly telling her that she was beautiful. I thought it was kind of funny (actually quite so) but being another girl, I tried to suppress my laughs and stand in solidarity with Dujy. Each time Dujy would show a picture of some girl on Facebook, and the other boy, Wrenad, would comment on the girl looking nice, Nadje would ask Wrenad how he could say such a thing when the beautiful Dujy was sitting right there.
Anyways, somewhere in the midst of this mocking, Nadje made an interesting statement. He said something along the lines of there only being one person more beautiful than Dujy. He named some other girl in our class. I laughed along with everyone, simply because we knew that he meant it as a joke. Nadje then went on to describe this other girl's beauty by telling us a little story about something she did to around him a little while back.
According to him (and his mocking voice), this girl sat down on a desk in front of him whilst wearing leggings. She then went on to spread her legs into a position similar to that of a straddle. Naturally, this resulted in Nadje having a covered vagina in close proximity to his face.
Don't get me wrong, I fully understand that the girl and Nadje had to sit close together and face each other - that constitutes productive group work - the problem I see is the position in which the girl sat. This is where my point of decency comes into play, as well as my seeing of a glimmer of hope for humanity. This girl did not have enough decency to spare Nadje from giving her an involuntary gynaecological check-up.
The girl is a self-proclaimed hipster, and we know that hipsters are famous (or notorious) for their sense of ambiguity about gender. Sometimes, it can be hard to distinguish a hipster female from a hispter male. Anyways, what I am trying to "get at" here is that this girl took gender ambiguity to a whole new level. It was, from the sound of it, disgusting. She spread her legs in front of a perfect stranger. Not only was that gross, it was also extremely disregarding of her being a woman.
Let me be honest. When I am sitting at home with my sister and talking about banal things, I sit in the most comfortable position. My little sister sees and doesn't mind, but would I ever sit that way in front of my parents friends? Would I ever sit like that at school? Most likely no. Why? Because my parents have successfully raised me in the aspect of modesty. They have explained to me the differences between things which I can do in the privacy of my own home and the things that I can do in public. Even as a small girl, they would remind me to cross my legs on the bus, so as to spare onlookers my underwear. I feel that this was, of all things that they attempted to ram through my thick skull, one of the more successful. Some may argue that there shouldn't be these kinds of barriers, but please, how else are we going to be able to tell whose stomach is going to carry around a baby for 9 months?
Men sit with their legs in the "child birth" position for a good portion of their lives, but that's just it - they're male. It looks nicer and simply politer to close your legs (at least partly) as a woman. This girl, who sits with her legs in straddle position, doesn't realize the repercussions. She thinks that she looks so cool, and that the rest of the people think so too. She doesn't realize that people talk behind her back about it and really don't find it too flattering. Boys, the group of people this girl would like to one day are themselves repulsed by the very things she is doing to show off.
The sad truth is that girls will never be guys, and guys will never be girls, so it's best to not act like it. Have some respect for the gender and sex, which you have been appointed. Try and act appropriately. In the case that this becomes far too difficult, there are things to help.