Religion, Politics, and Sex. The three things you shouldn't talk about at work. (When you work in a place like an office or a business, or a school. In the theatre NO topics are off limits, lol.)
First day in MCAS prep with the two asshole MTAs and the fuckfaces covered all those bases. Opinions, idiotic comments, inflammatory statements, ignorant jokes, circular logic, broad generalizations, misinformation, glib dismissals, creeping racism, subtle misogyny, understated sexism, implied supremacy, You name it, I endured it yesterday, and more of it today.
I spent a large portion of yesterday LITERALLY biting my lips closed, literally, to keep myself from jumping into the ridiculous conversations and snapping at the morons.
For serious guys, for real? They started talking about Abortion and the Death Penalty. FOR REAL. Abortion. I am astonished that my eyeballs didn't pop right out of my skull. Do you even understand how difficult it was for me to keep my mouth shut? And I sent prayers up to the powers that be that people like these never have power over my life and control over my body. I thanked those who've come before me and paved the way for the freedoms I enjoy. Because if it were up to these fuckfaces? Yeah. I couldn't believe it.
And then later this great older teacher, on the verge of retirement, a guy whom I adore, was giving us presidential trivia for fun. I cleaned the clocks of the two certified history MTAs, and impressed the teacher a great deal. One of the MTAs decided to marginalize my trivia knowledge by declaring that knowledge of First Ladies was irrelevent to 'real' history. I tried to stay positive, but I challenged this notion lightly. He was adamant that women weren't important to american history until sufferage and the right to vote. I couldn't tell if he was joking or not. I assumed he was joking, but he kept reiterating that notion, kept trying to undermine my knowledge of history and whatnot. Finally I just had to know: "You're joking, right?" I asked him point blank. He was non committal. For real.
He called Abigail Adams 'that poor girl' when referencing the letter she wrote to jer husband reminding him to remember the ladies as they were building this new society where all men were created equal. He dismissed her prescient wisdom, her forward thinking, her chutzpah. Dismissed it like she was a silly little airhead or something. I wanted to wring his neck.
And it terrified me that this man will be responsible for teaching history to our youth. I mean, it really scared me. He refused to even entertain the notion that women were worthy of much notice or respect in the study of most history, "Why, why bother knowing that stuff?" He challenged, in that only-half-joking tone that really demanded an answer. "I'm not gunna teach any of it."
"What about your female students?" I asked, shocked and honestly flabberghasted.
He shrugged. True story. He fucking shrugged and said something that sounded suspiciously like 'bah'.
I really thought that the white male centric approach to teaching history was dying out, especially with this, with OUR generation. No. I guess not. And this MTA isn't even from the south or anything. He's from Mass! I feel such bleak despair over this.
I SO wish that the older Male teacher, the one giving us the trivia (and so obviously thought first lady trivia was at least interesting enough to know himself!), had said something to put this dick in his place. But the man is too congenial, I think. And he wasn't in there for the abortion discussion. Unfortunately that was just me, the two asshole MTAs I work with, and one of our dickwad supervisors. It was a total sausage fest in there, and they were all swinging their self-righteous dicks around, talking in that 'i know everything and I'm secure in the size of my ballsack' tone of voice~ you know the one ladies. The LEAST ATTRACTIVE tone of voice in the whole fucking world. The kind I imagine they think makes them sound authoritative and thoroughly impressive, but which really makes us want to knee them in the grapes and smile whilst they writhe around in humiliated agony on the floor. Grossssssss.
I only spoke up once really, when I was trying to keep my tongue still and my trap shut. At one point they're talking back and forth, spouting their opinions of standardized testing and No Child Left Behind (A natural topic to stumble onto, as we're prepping the test and answer booklets for the upcoming MCAS exam). And the sexist one declares that people are idiots who claim to love federal involvement in education in one breath but curse NCLB with the next. He asserts that you can't like federal involvement and hate NCLB, that to do so is contradictory. What kind of Jay Severen ass if-then bullshit logic is that? I couldn't tolerate letting him get away unchallenged.
I shut him down right away. You can be in favor of federal education and disagree with various policies, absolutely, that's the way our government works. Just because someone has problems with one initiative (no matter how great or small) does not mean they therefor have a problem with the whole concept of federal involvement. God, what an ass. He wasnts it to be all state funded and run and overseen. I rolled my eyes so hard I think I sprained them, but I did not allow him to get away with his ridiculous declaration about fed funding. He backed down and actually apologized. I kept my mouth pretty firmly shut after that, despite the many provocative topics that rose to the top of the swill they were spewing.
When they were snarkily racist about the names of the students, I kept my mouth shut. When they made fun of the names for being so thoroughly 'other', when they even did one of those tongue clicks over one clearly african name, oh god I wish I could have murdered, but I said nothing. Their racism is one of the most insidious and hardest to point a finger at. The quiet, sneaking, slinky kind of racism that pervades their atitude but flies just under the radar of the hyper PC awareness of our current culture. They seem to realize just where the line is in an incredibly ethnically diverse urban public school, and they toe the lie, they tease it, they bend it as often as they can get away with, ut so far they haven't been outright or overtly racist-- not the kind that earns you censure or anything. Nah, they content themselves with being smugly superior, snarkily dismissive, arrogantly insensitive, and oh-so-terribly witty (not.).
These kinds of people turn my stomach.
Today they turned on eachother, which was a precious sight for me, over the Beatles. One of them asserted that John Lennon was the Charlie Sheen of the sixties, and cast aspersions about his motives for peace and love, and had all his facts wrong about Yoko, and it was just one of the wildest things I've ever listened to, honestly. Like, really? Like them or hate them, most people at least KNOW with some degree of accuracy who John Lennon was and how important he was and all that. THis guy, I don't know who he was mixing Lennon up with, but half the shit out of his mouth was total bull, really weird and convoluded. The other guy, McLovin, it turns out is a big beatles fan and this caused some tension. lol.
I kept my mouth shut and bubbled in the correct letters on the test booklets, being sure to make my marks dark and complete.
First day in MCAS prep with the two asshole MTAs and the fuckfaces covered all those bases. Opinions, idiotic comments, inflammatory statements, ignorant jokes, circular logic, broad generalizations, misinformation, glib dismissals, creeping racism, subtle misogyny, understated sexism, implied supremacy, You name it, I endured it yesterday, and more of it today.
I spent a large portion of yesterday LITERALLY biting my lips closed, literally, to keep myself from jumping into the ridiculous conversations and snapping at the morons.
For serious guys, for real? They started talking about Abortion and the Death Penalty. FOR REAL. Abortion. I am astonished that my eyeballs didn't pop right out of my skull. Do you even understand how difficult it was for me to keep my mouth shut? And I sent prayers up to the powers that be that people like these never have power over my life and control over my body. I thanked those who've come before me and paved the way for the freedoms I enjoy. Because if it were up to these fuckfaces? Yeah. I couldn't believe it.
And then later this great older teacher, on the verge of retirement, a guy whom I adore, was giving us presidential trivia for fun. I cleaned the clocks of the two certified history MTAs, and impressed the teacher a great deal. One of the MTAs decided to marginalize my trivia knowledge by declaring that knowledge of First Ladies was irrelevent to 'real' history. I tried to stay positive, but I challenged this notion lightly. He was adamant that women weren't important to american history until sufferage and the right to vote. I couldn't tell if he was joking or not. I assumed he was joking, but he kept reiterating that notion, kept trying to undermine my knowledge of history and whatnot. Finally I just had to know: "You're joking, right?" I asked him point blank. He was non committal. For real.
He called Abigail Adams 'that poor girl' when referencing the letter she wrote to jer husband reminding him to remember the ladies as they were building this new society where all men were created equal. He dismissed her prescient wisdom, her forward thinking, her chutzpah. Dismissed it like she was a silly little airhead or something. I wanted to wring his neck.
And it terrified me that this man will be responsible for teaching history to our youth. I mean, it really scared me. He refused to even entertain the notion that women were worthy of much notice or respect in the study of most history, "Why, why bother knowing that stuff?" He challenged, in that only-half-joking tone that really demanded an answer. "I'm not gunna teach any of it."
"What about your female students?" I asked, shocked and honestly flabberghasted.
He shrugged. True story. He fucking shrugged and said something that sounded suspiciously like 'bah'.
I really thought that the white male centric approach to teaching history was dying out, especially with this, with OUR generation. No. I guess not. And this MTA isn't even from the south or anything. He's from Mass! I feel such bleak despair over this.
I SO wish that the older Male teacher, the one giving us the trivia (and so obviously thought first lady trivia was at least interesting enough to know himself!), had said something to put this dick in his place. But the man is too congenial, I think. And he wasn't in there for the abortion discussion. Unfortunately that was just me, the two asshole MTAs I work with, and one of our dickwad supervisors. It was a total sausage fest in there, and they were all swinging their self-righteous dicks around, talking in that 'i know everything and I'm secure in the size of my ballsack' tone of voice~ you know the one ladies. The LEAST ATTRACTIVE tone of voice in the whole fucking world. The kind I imagine they think makes them sound authoritative and thoroughly impressive, but which really makes us want to knee them in the grapes and smile whilst they writhe around in humiliated agony on the floor. Grossssssss.
I only spoke up once really, when I was trying to keep my tongue still and my trap shut. At one point they're talking back and forth, spouting their opinions of standardized testing and No Child Left Behind (A natural topic to stumble onto, as we're prepping the test and answer booklets for the upcoming MCAS exam). And the sexist one declares that people are idiots who claim to love federal involvement in education in one breath but curse NCLB with the next. He asserts that you can't like federal involvement and hate NCLB, that to do so is contradictory. What kind of Jay Severen ass if-then bullshit logic is that? I couldn't tolerate letting him get away unchallenged.
I shut him down right away. You can be in favor of federal education and disagree with various policies, absolutely, that's the way our government works. Just because someone has problems with one initiative (no matter how great or small) does not mean they therefor have a problem with the whole concept of federal involvement. God, what an ass. He wasnts it to be all state funded and run and overseen. I rolled my eyes so hard I think I sprained them, but I did not allow him to get away with his ridiculous declaration about fed funding. He backed down and actually apologized. I kept my mouth pretty firmly shut after that, despite the many provocative topics that rose to the top of the swill they were spewing.
When they were snarkily racist about the names of the students, I kept my mouth shut. When they made fun of the names for being so thoroughly 'other', when they even did one of those tongue clicks over one clearly african name, oh god I wish I could have murdered, but I said nothing. Their racism is one of the most insidious and hardest to point a finger at. The quiet, sneaking, slinky kind of racism that pervades their atitude but flies just under the radar of the hyper PC awareness of our current culture. They seem to realize just where the line is in an incredibly ethnically diverse urban public school, and they toe the lie, they tease it, they bend it as often as they can get away with, ut so far they haven't been outright or overtly racist-- not the kind that earns you censure or anything. Nah, they content themselves with being smugly superior, snarkily dismissive, arrogantly insensitive, and oh-so-terribly witty (not.).
These kinds of people turn my stomach.
Today they turned on eachother, which was a precious sight for me, over the Beatles. One of them asserted that John Lennon was the Charlie Sheen of the sixties, and cast aspersions about his motives for peace and love, and had all his facts wrong about Yoko, and it was just one of the wildest things I've ever listened to, honestly. Like, really? Like them or hate them, most people at least KNOW with some degree of accuracy who John Lennon was and how important he was and all that. THis guy, I don't know who he was mixing Lennon up with, but half the shit out of his mouth was total bull, really weird and convoluded. The other guy, McLovin, it turns out is a big beatles fan and this caused some tension. lol.
I kept my mouth shut and bubbled in the correct letters on the test booklets, being sure to make my marks dark and complete.
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1 comment:
It is a VERY good thing that I wasn't there for the John Lennon discussion. Oh no...that shit wouldn't have gone down for a second. BTW, you could get them in some serious trouble with the administration if you wanted to. Fucking jackasses!
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