One of the nicest girls I knew in college once told a professor to go to hell. He totally deserved it.
In the mid-90s, the social work department of our small “conservative” Christian college employed a professor notorious around campus for engaging students in sexual discussions. This was in the time just after Anita Hill and before Monica Lewinsky. People let stuff happen back then.
I took one class from him. His lectures were a mix of cliches about social justice and obfuscation meant to avoid openly contradicting his employer’s religious stances. Big pervert energy, this guy.
The girl I knew was a social work major for a while and, one day in class, Professor Pervert demanded every female student in the class stand and say which of her breasts was larger. This exercise was meant, ostensibly, to make students comfortable with discussing sexuality with clients. The real reason was pretty obvious.
When my friend’s turn came, she refused to participate and, when the professor pressured her, she told him to go to hell. Later as she was leaving, he grabbed her by the arm and tried to force her into his office “to talk.”
I thought of this story again when I read about the high school gym coach in Michigan who is demanding that the 15-year-old girls in his class submit notes telling him when their periods are likely to begin and predicting how long they will last. Some parents are outraged.
As they should be.
What these stories have in common is that in both, someone is attempting to substitute professional preference and supposed expertise for the natural modesty most teenage girls feel about publicly disclosing personal facts about their bodies’ intimate functions.
As egregious as the first case was, the second is worse. The first was the story of a single professor who, in those days, was considered sovereign in the classroom and who abused his power for his own lascivious gratification. The second is the story of an entire institution leaning its weight on young girls and demanding they expose part of themselves for its convenience.
Imagine the thinking behind this. The likely chain of thought went something like this. Some girls were getting out of gym class activities by claiming to be on their periods. The gym teacher didn’t like this and became incensed at the idea that some of them might be lying and unfairly sitting out the squat thrusts and basketball lessons, and so decided to do something about it. The result was an edict that every girl submit documentation of her monthly cycle.
The problem here is not just the violation of individual will and propriety. At a deeper level, it is the cultural assumption that individual feelings, especially when those feelings are considered regressive or immature, as the impulse to modesty so often is, can be trampled with impunity for the sake of the institution. Whether that institution is a public school or a tradition of being able to speak easily about sexuality, the individual is expected to break, to surrender her tender feelings and get with the program no matter how vulnerable doing so makes her. What matters is the convenience and pleasure of the institution in charge, not the bashful embarrassment of a single reluctant girl.
A stupid policy dreamed up by a lone gym teacher at a single Michigan school may seem insignificant. I assure you it is not. It is an instance illustrating a much larger principle upon which our contemporary culture functions: the individual’s feelings are unimportant when they conflict with the will of powerful institutions.
The same idea that justifies demanding menstrual documentation in Michigan in Georgia justifies the state seeking to seize and destroy all those people’s homes to power data centers no one wants. The sentimental attachments to homes and bodies cannot be allowed to stand in the way of efficiency, progress or the whims of the powerful.
This principle is so insidious, in part, because it is so hard to see. Most of us just do what we are told without arguing. We too have come to believe our objections are silly, sentimental and trivial compared to the big plans of the institutions that claim to serve us. Resisting requires waking up to agendas thrust on us by the powers that be. We have a right to be modest. We have a right to our homes. We have a right to say that our natural desires are not stupid or trivial no matter how much they inconvenience others.
I’m glad those girls’ families in Michigan are standing up. I hope every one of those girls shows up with a note that, when unfolded, just says “go to hell.”
It’s the only dignified response.