Girls marginalized, boys allowed to control limited resources

[Anonymous]

Maybe she didn’t want to be in camera. Perhaps she helped the boys with their jokes/writing. I would have hated this and have preferred to stay off camera. Is she normally very outgoing and enjoy performing?

[Anonymous]

I teach middle school and I will say to all the people saying "it's just a personality thing, not a gender thing".... you are very naive.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I teach middle school and I will say to all the people saying "it's just a personality thing, not a gender thing".... you are very naive.

Yup. It may well be a personality thing, but the personality is at least in part the result of societal expectations of behavior based on gender. You can't separate the two.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Girls need to learn how to advocate for themselves.

That’s the reality.

Helping all children learn how to self-advocate is part of an educator's job.

Umm, it is summer camp. Half the people working there are teenagers. This isn’t a year long issue in school, it is a summer camp activity.

You can tell by the response (which wasn't professional) that this is not really a group of educators.

[Anonymous]

I have twin boys. One is the type who is usually the center of attention and a ring-leader. He likely would have been one of the kids on camera in a more dominant role. The other one is much more shy and more likely to have to been in the situation your daughter was in. While I understand systemic issues, I don't think this is a good example of sexism especially not camp-wide. You have one group of four children and do not know how this was allowed to happen and you don't know whether there were similar issues in other groups that had girls involved. Like the response from the camp said, this sounds like a lack of sufficient adult supervision to guide the kids and to keep naturally strong personalities from overwhelming more reserved personalities. And it also sounds like they just didn't pay enough attention to the content both in design and in editing. In fact, I think the fact that they have additional footage of work your daughter did that they will send for you to review and keep, supports the concept that it wasn't a systemic exclusion. Your daughter was not prevented from participating, but her work did unfortunately end up on the cutting room floor. And in the future, they'll be more careful to make sure that the final product is more balanced for all kids.

I do like the camp's response. They acknowledged that the problem was caused by a lack of adult supervision which they intend to remedy. Likely they will institute some sort of training for the camp counselors (hopefully both for the adult staff and the young adult staff) for the next session to make them more aware of the issues and what to watch out for and to pay closer attention to all phases of the activity from design to editing to ensure everyone gets more fairly represented.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Girls need to learn how to advocate for themselves.

That’s the reality.

Helping all children learn how to self-advocate is part of an educator's job.

Umm, it is summer camp. Half the people working there are teenagers. This isn’t a year long issue in school, it is a summer camp activity.

You can tell by the response (which wasn't professional) that this is not really a group of educators.

Maybe not. But camps and short-term programs are often run by people who have the technical expertise rather than the education expertise. If the point of the camp was to work on multi-media presentations, then having people who work in the film and production of small media are often better choices than people with educational backgrounds.

[Anonymous]

Interesting. I had kids who went to drama camp. There are normally a lot more girls than boys.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Girls need to learn how to advocate for themselves.

That’s the reality.

Helping all children learn how to self-advocate is part of an educator's job.

Umm, it is summer camp. Half the people working there are teenagers. This isn’t a year long issue in school, it is a summer camp activity.

You can tell by the response (which wasn't professional) that this is not really a group of educators.

Yes, that’s my point. You can’t expect summer camp to handle a situation like this in the same way that a real classroom teacher would.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, I'm sorry for the innumerable instances that you experienced of being held back by sexism. They've certainly scarred you.

But your OP made me tired and your follow up is exhausting.

+1. This. You do a lot of talking and not much listening for a shy introvert. For example, I don’t see where you ever asked your kid open ended questions and then listened to her. You assumed a lot, then barged in and solved a problem you think she had based on your own traumas. Did you ever say— So was this a good camp? Would you want to go again? Tell me about the parts of the video that you did. Did you agree with them about the songs?

Maybe next time actually talk to your kid and see if there is a problem. And if there is talk to her about strategies for solving it. Nothing wrong with standing up for your kid. But nowhere in this saga was there any mention of using this as a way to help your kid learn to stick up for herself.

And no. In the DMV in 2019, boys don’t just rush in and grab the “resources” while the girls sit by and let them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. She was not complaining. I also do not think she had some sort of meaty role behind the camera. The knot in my stomach tells me that she has already accepted as normal that boys' ideas come first.

Where I am stuck is in how to address this with the camp. What is it that the adults could have done differently? The only thing I can come up with is that they should have paid more attention to equitably dividing time with the equipment among the kids. But you all surely have more and better ideas.

I do appreciate the suggestions that she has to learn to advocate for herself. She's 11, and it's a work in progress. But equally I don't want to file all of this under "she needs to do better" when I know there is a sexism component that is out of her control, but within the power of the adults to, if not completely change, at least influence in a more positive direction.

Jeez - just find out if she participated in other group projects where there were three girls and one boy. The group dynamics would have been rather different.

Everyone knows that girls generally do better than boys now in high school and college. You are making a BFD out of one incident at a middle school summer camp?

This is 98% about OP’s own domineering husband or boss or whatever and 2% about a summer camp.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP look at your own family and dynamic. Do you have sons? I don’t mean this as criticism but I think your solution will lie more there than in camp.

My DD would have never accepted this arrangement and would have interjected her own part on the show. I’m probably too vocal and stubborn (bossy), but it’s the dynamic of our household. I’m sure some would call my DH a Beta, I just call him a science nerd toiling in the lab, but I think seeing a family dynamic with equal partners is key.

This. Girls learn to be door mats at home.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. She was not complaining. I also do not think she had some sort of meaty role behind the camera. The knot in my stomach tells me that she has already accepted as normal that boys' ideas come first.

Where I am stuck is in how to address this with the camp. What is it that the adults could have done differently? The only thing I can come up with is that they should have paid more attention to equitably dividing time with the equipment among the kids. But you all surely have more and better ideas.

I do appreciate the suggestions that she has to learn to advocate for herself. She's 11, and it's a work in progress. But equally I don't want to file all of this under "she needs to do better" when I know there is a sexism component that is out of her control, but within the power of the adults to, if not completely change, at least influence in a more positive direction.

Jeez - just find out if she participated in other group projects where there were three girls and one boy. The group dynamics would have been rather different.

Everyone knows that girls generally do better than boys now in high school and college. You are making a BFD out of one incident at a middle school summer camp?

This is what I find baffling. I have one boy and one girl. And in demanding DMV schools, the edge the girls have in executive functioning mean they are the ones calling the shots. Lots of group work. And in a group of two boys and one girl doing group lab work, there is an 80% chance the one girl has sighed, picked up the assignment. Said: Evan, you’re the Math whiz. You do the calculations and charts. Alex, you’re the strongest writer, you write the explanation. And I’ll do the graphs and put the report together. You must have them to me by 8 tomorrow night. Then she will email them two reminders. Any complicated project with three boys ends up getting a C, not because they can’t do the work, but because they can’t get themselves organized.

This is the reality of later pre-frontal cortex development in boys and weaker EF skills. We throw more academic demands at kids at a younger age, and boys brains literally can’t keep up.

[Anonymous]

OP, I am 50+ and a feminist from the old days. I can tell you are young, because one of the problems of the younger generation of feminists is demanding that the world meet your needs when you have never articulated what thy are. I was outraged by the Aziz Ansari article in Babe. It’s author places women in an infantile position where they bear no responsibility to articulate their desires. Instead, men are supposed to mindread and figure it out for them.

In your shoes, faced with the same situation, I would have wondered how my daughter learned to accept the leadership of boys or sit through someone calling music bad because the musicians “are a bunch of girls.”

What have you taught your daughter about assertiveness and standing up to sexism? What hav you taught her about “handling” situations like this? You claim your daughter should not be expected to handle situations like this on her own, but my 9-year old DD would have politely eviscerated any boys who said things like that to her.

It seems to me that if you care about making sure your daughter is not a victim of sexism, it was and is your job to help her learn assertiveness and self-advocacy. Look first to yourself.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This could have happened with “bossy” girls too. I’d keep the boy vs girl out of the conversation and say can you help my daughter insert herself better into the process.

+1 this has little to do with gender and much to do with personality. My son's teachers always said he got lost when seated with a table full of alpha girls or alpha boys.

Really, calling music inferior b/c they are a bunch of little girls . . . seems exactly linked to gender. That should not have been allowed by the camp.

Word! OP, I think your instinct in this situation is likely spot on.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This could have happened with “bossy” girls too. I’d keep the boy vs girl out of the conversation and say can you help my daughter insert herself better into the process.

Ugh. Dp. I hate,hate hate when girls are called bossy and boys are leaders. Why ignore the elephant in the room. It is a boy thing. Would you the say the same thing if ot was a race thing. Ie white kids keeping a poc from the project?

Because it's not a boy thing or a race thing. It's a personality thing.

. As a middle school math teacher with 18 years of experience, it's a boy thing. I go to great lengths teaching boys, especially east Indian boys what it means to be a member of a group product. I watch and listen for growth in participating and accepting other's ideas. They get plenty of scaffolding before I start deducting points.

Taking over is a boy thing.