March 11, 2009 The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
The Good
Simon Thomson discussing openly the misogyny in the food world, and praising female chefs.
The Bad
Roosters player Anthony Cherrington assaulted his girlfriend, threatened to kill himself with a knife, told her he’d knock her out, then called her a slut and a whore in a later incident in which he destroyed a lot of her property…but now he’s ‘very very sorry’. Excuse me if I don’t give him a fucking cookie til he does better than ‘sorry’ after he’s caught, until he learns to change his mother fucking attitude about women.
The Ugly
My boss just doing his absolute NUT over the idea that a transgendered person could be ‘allowed’ to teach children. He saw this as the transgendered person ‘imposing their lifestyle’ on children and eventually asked me ‘Where is the line? Do we let paedophiles teach children? They’d say it’s an expression of their sexuality’.
The good thing about this workplace is when I then let him have it with both barrells and get right up in his face with my loud and angry counterarguments and he KNOWS I make more sense than him and he KNOWS I’m furious, I don’t get fired. And he tries to think it through. I’d still like to shout at him some more, but he’s off having a cigarette and pondering my points.
DARN TOOTIN you’ll ponder fuckwit!!
- 5 comments
- Posted under Uncategorized
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Meg Thornton
said
The really silly thing: primary-age children are a lot more adaptable than your boss seems to realise. They’re also capable of being much more accepting, if they get a satisfying explanation of why something is different. They certainly aren’t likely to think about what their teacher might have looked like as a child.
At high school age, yes, okay, some questions of sexual alignment come into the whole business. However, those same questions come into it when you’re talking about cis-sexual adults teaching teenagers anyway, and they don’t get answered with anything other than “self control” at the best of times (and of course, the number of scandals with both male and female teachers seducing/being seduced by pupils goes to show how foolproof *that* is). Instead of making the whole thing “don’t ask, don’t tell” for high schoolers, I figure the more sane alternative might be to discuss the whys and wherefores of it in a straightforward fashion – accept that yes, teenage kids do get curious about sex (all kids do, particularly since it’s treated as an “adults only” thing – they aren’t allowed to know, of *course* they’re curious. They’d probably be equally interested in voting, if it was raised with the same regularity in our popular culture) and give them accurate information to make decisions from. Yes, that might mean a trans-gendered teacher has to answer the same questions year in and year out about their change in gender, but then again, if they weren’t interested in answering the same questions year in and year out, they wouldn’t have chosen teaching as a profession.
Gods above, we allow unmarried men and women to teach. We allow married men and women to teach. What the hell is the problem with allowing non-cisgendered, non-heterosexual men and women to teach?
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anon
said
The Very Very Very Bad: Brett Stewart.
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Rachel
said
Actual conversation with my seven year old brother:
him: I can’t wear skirts.
me: Can’t you?
him: No. *pause* well, maybe. Eddie Izzard wears skirts, doesn’t he?
me: Yeah, when he feels like it.
Would your boss approve of ME teaching children?!
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KM
said
Re ‘The Good’ – Fairfax gets a lot of things wrong (helloooooo The Sams!) but they DO seem to get it right with their food writers. The lovely Matty Evans also wrote extensively in his recent book about some shocking examples of misogyny in the food and hospitality industry that he has witnessed during his career. I’ve worked in hospo for a long time, and part of our business also encompasses wholesale and supply to other businesses, and I’m telling you – I’ve seen/experienced the lot! Bullying, verbal aggression, shoving, an attitude that ‘chicks are too moody and not hard enough,’ a perception that women can’t be ‘real’ chefs or baristas, a continual trend of it being men behind the espresso machine or running the kitchen and women ‘serving,’ customers or other industry professionals who are happy to treat female hospitality workers like naughty children who need a telling off (and they would NEVER take such a tone with my male partner!), and female sales reps being pressured for sexual favours in order to win business. Yes, there are fantastic places to work with lovely and supportive bosses, and there are greater numbers of prominent and successful women in the restaurant trade these days… But it doesn’t change the fact THAT IT STILL GOES ON EVERYWHERE. Remember a few years ago, when that program ‘My Restaurant Rules’ was on? There was a huge public outcry when, on national TV, one of the chefs made a threat of sexual violence towards a waitress who made a minor error on the job? (I can reproduce the comment verbatim, but I’m a bit new to this ‘triggering’ thing with regards to public writing and don’t want to accidentally overstep the mark.) Nobody I spoke to who has worked in a commercial restaurant found that statement in the least surprising.
I think part of the problem is that SO MUCH of the hospitality industry is incredibly poorly regulated – so many of these issues could be assisted by regulating the restaurant kitchen/floor as a work environment. So it’s an industrial/workplace safety issue AS WELL as a women’s rights issue (funnily enough, I also have similar opinions with regards to workplace regulation of the sex and porn industry).
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Rebekka
said
I had a conversation with my six year old niece, my parental units and my partner in the car the weekend before last, during which my niece said that boys don’t wear pink. My PU#1 pointed out that my PU#2 had a pink shirt, and that people can wear whatever colours they like.
We then further explained that men also wear skirts.