Why do female teachers love gender ideology?
Just wondering because it seems like a thing…
I tend to blame the rise of gender ideology on the male half of the population, but I have heard people say, “why are women promoting this”, or “why is it always liberal women who are the biggest cheerleaders of gender ideology”and so I looked around and realized they have a point, so I’ve attempted to figure out why, and here’s my theory… It’s the most socially conforming people who have big feelings about “special identities”.
I remember once an older woman saying to me that she didn’t envy young women today, because there were so many career options, when back in her day you either became a teacher or a nurse. (For context, this would have been sometime around the year 2000, I was in my early twenties working as a waitress at the time, and young women were not further burdened with the choice of whether they wanted to be women at all).
Obviously, options for women are a wonderful thing, but I understood her point. I was a young person who couldn’t decide what direction to take. I still have that problem, and might be better off financially if I’d been funneled into a pre-ordained profession that pays a decent salary. That was her point, so let’s not argue about it.
I have noticed, as a person who continues to struggle to find my place socially and professionally because I have atypical passions, that a lot of women do gravitate toward these two professions. A woman who picks up an electric guitar and becomes the next Jimi Hendrix will be considered an outlier for her sex. There are a lot of people who still literally CANNOT BELIEVE that women can do certain things, even when they see it with their own eyes, it will fail to register. We can argue about the reasons why that is, or we can just admit that it is that way, for whatever reasons, and get on to my main point.
Which is this: women who happen to fall into the category of what I will lazily refer to as “normal”, are the same group of people who will embrace and promote gender ideology, and believe children are born in wrong bodies, because they have spent little time doing things that are stupidly labeled “gender nonconforming” and so they do actually see it as an aberration when a young woman is interested in engineering or pipe fitting, welding, ship building, being a rock star, or what have you.
These are the type of women who go into education, who love rules, love euphemisms and acronyms, love making copies of forms to hand out in classrooms, and enforcing systems, forming groups of children into orderly lines, speaking in soft lilting tones to create a calming, hypnotic atmosphere.. You get the idea. They can be cruel and condescending but deliver it with a sing-song voice, tilted head and warm smile.
I have some really weird aversions to specific sounds, which is one of the many reasons I am a high school and college dropout, and one of those sounds that drives me into an uncomfortable fit of bodily anger is the sound of sensible ladies work shoes, what they used to call “pumps”, striking linoleum. I think it brings back some memory of being trapped in elementary school, waiting for the teacher to come back with another handout.
I have some really weird aversions to school and to groups of people, in general. Actually not weird, it’s because I was routinely bullied by these “normal” people for being a strange kid.
So it’s odd to see these “normal” people who can’t tolerate non-conformity acting like the new glittery cheerleaders for “gender non-conforming kids”. But it makes perfect sense when you realize they are advocating to hormonally and surgically alter these kids bodies to match their “identities”. They actually do think there is something very wrong with “gender nonconforming”.
Now that rolling yourself in dollar store glitter and feather boas is the popular thing to do, all the “normal” people are flocking to it, just like they flocked to whatever would get them the most social points before. For those of us who are used to not joining groups, its quite obvious.
*the drawing here is one I did for a PITT article a while ago, I hope nobody minds I’ve recycled it, I thought it deserved an additional go round. It is meant to depict Susie Green as a classroom teacher.
**feel free to tell me why I’m wrong in the comments. These are just my theories/observations/half baked ideas….
Great article. BTW I think you’re me, down to the aversion to certain noises (look into misophonia).
But anyway, my theory is a little kinder. I’ve always thought that women pushed these theories partly because we’re so damned nice and hate to think that we’d be exclusionary. We know what it feels like to not be physically able to do something; we’ve been in places that made us uncomfortable but we stayed anyway... Most of us (maybe especially if we’re mothers) never want to contribute to someone else having to feel left out.
But I do like your theory about teachers. Their self righteousness and (sometimes) false sense of intellectual acumen sort of place them perfectly for the role of fervent gender apostles.
You’ve made a lot of interesting points as have your commenters. There’s a lot to consider here. As I’ve written about some of these points, I’ve come to wonder if part of the motivation isn’t the same as that motivating women who push their young girls into beauty pageants. As a psychologist, I find the whole thing as fascinating as it is disturbing.