Weekly Reflection October 18th

Welcome to my weekly recap! I will be creating one of these every week to just cover what I have learned each week, so sit back an relax and let me wrap up an old project and uncover a new one.

This week began with a lovely and much needed pro-d day. I was in Tofino, obviously respecting COVID guidelines, we barley ever went into town, and surfed the entire weekend, which made me feel much better after a stressful 5 weeks. Monday we headed home, realizing that missing one day of school was the equivalent of missing a day 2 week. So I was back and ready on Tuesday. On Tuesday I was in class and we just wrapped up our google map, and made sure that everyone had their information in. The google map was almost completely fined by the end of class, Jesse just had to finish putting the numbers on each stop, and we had to double check and make sure everyones info was in. Here is our final product, and here is the Wolves (class b’s) final product the pamphlet. On Thursday we officially hit 5 weeks and switched cohorts, english becoming an everyday class, and math becoming an every other day class, which also meant that we switched to Ms. Willemse as our teacher and switched projects. The new project we have begun Ms. Willemse has not released to us the driving questions but I have reason to believe that it has something to woman’s suffrage and The Taming Of The Shrew, a Shakespeare comedy, actually one of my favourite plays I have ever seen. So let me rehash this weeks learning.

“So they basically steal Dom’s wallet, and someone straps a bomb to themselves outside, but my bare legs are the big issue? Got it.” Joey a character on the Netflix show “Grand Army”,  a newly released and super interesting TV show based on “Slut: The Play,” says to her teacher, during a lockdown in the first 20 minutes of the show. Joey had just come from gym, and didn’t have time to change. Her friend attacking her with a rude comment on the way out of the gym, “you’ve had an abortion haven’t you?” Joey feels unfairly treated which is the basis of the work we’ve been doing in class this week. We’ve been covering an intro to the treatment of woman in the past and present, mostly relating to the word slut. To be called a slut is basically someone saying you sleep around, and regarding you as less then. Its a really detrimental term, and it sucks that ever since entering high school it has entered the lingo for many young woman, including Seycove students. In class we watched 4 clips where the word slut is thrown around, clips that were part of major on air tv shows. The first of them being the notorious, “Jane you ignorant slut.” Our class had a big discussion about this one, how all she had done was stand up for another woman, an all of a sudden her sexual life became what she was defined as, honestly this one sickens me. The way Jane immediately is quiet, and how she must shake his hand at the end, makes me green. I see reciprocal versions of this all the time, and I’m tired of girls feeling like they need to stomach the way they feel to make the man happy. Just the other day a girl (no exposing over here) was reading off of a card in a game. She was reading slowly and none of us had a problem with this, just reading, we were in no rush, until a boy at the table said “Just shut up and give me the card. Your stuttering and its taking to long. Nobody wants to hear you read this card.” My mouth fell open. I knew this boy, he was my friend, and I was so infuriated. I told him it was wrong, and that he had been incredibly rude, and so did another girl at the table, but the girl that he was rude too just looked like she had been stabbed. He answered with the line older then time itself, “it was a joke. I was only kidding, cant you take a joke.” If my mouth wasn’t already falling to the floor, then it had just hit the core of the earth. The other girl who had spoken up made him apologize, though he laughed through the whole thing, and said “I’m sorry”. I had expected the girl who was targeted to not say anything, or tell him how he had wronged her, and tell him how an apology doesn’t fix the fact she may be self conscious about reading out loud now.

But she said “its ok.”

“its ok.”

its ok. I almost can’t even type this because it aggravates me so much. She just stomached everything she was feeling, keep in mind she looked like she as going to cry, and made sure that the boy didn’t hurt. AGHHHHHH, its the same thing as, “Jane you ignorant slut.” Boys don’t think these things hurt, but they do hurt, and woman need to stop telling them don’t. I obviously realize that there is a lot of difference between what I saw and the notorious line, and how minimal this seems as well. I also realize that as a white woman I have it easy compared to many other people, but it hurt me to watch this, and I can’t stand the girl thinking that it was her bad for reacting. This sort of stuff has happened to me in the past before and I know how to react now. I know how to stand up for myself, which often makes men feel inferior, or attacked. I am sick of letting their opinion rule me. I am a loud, outspoken, and opinionated person for a reason. I am also sick of when girls come back and respond in an appropriate manner, boys almost always get threatened and attack physical looks, and personal attributes. But anyways I need to get back to my week, I could talk about this stuff for years.

The “Jane you ignorant slut,” quote also relates to a reading we had to do in english. The reading was about the role of a woman in marriage. Since I handed mine in I don’t have access to the actual reading, but I remember the just of it. Quotes from the reading read like “the woman has no-one other then her man,” even though earlier in the paragraph the reading had said that the man has friends and events and sports and an unlimited list of things to keep his company. It also mentioned how woman were the inferior species, and men were merely taking their god given right by being the more powerful person, and getting to make all decisions. (vomit). The sickening thing about that reading was that the author thought they were writing the truth. That that was sold or given to woman to religiously follow. Which boggles me. Anyway I need to get on with my day, and probably do some sort of exercise to get all this pent up anger out.

So I’ll see you guy next week.