Andrew Smith, The Why Chromosome{2}, and Dangers to "Female Parts"

Andrew Smith wrote a post that cuts straight to one of my core Revolution beliefs. Please go read it now.
I copied and pasted my comment from his blog. Maybe this is cheating in the blogosphere, but, as I say in my brand of French, Je ne care pas. Because we need the Revolution.
I remember being one of three girls on the Cross Country team in high school. We got the leftover uniforms, and we had to augment them with t-shirts because there were no women's uniforms.
Cross Country was too tough for girls, one coach told me.
Girls aren't meant to run, another said. It would hurt my "female parts."
Yeah, well, I was on the team for four years. When I graduated there were upwards of fifteen girls and the varsity went to championships.
To the best of my knowledge, everyone's "female parts" work just fine.
Women joined the "girls aren't tough" mindset as well. One teacher told me to "stay feminine."
I did not know what to say.
Men and women do and say stupid, damaging things. These stupid, damaging things get Institutionalized.
Nobody wins, except those who stand to make money from the Institutionalization.
I continue to fight for the girls, who have come a long way and play sports without being told their "female parts" are at risk but still fight to make their way in science, math and technology.
As a woman who teaches technology, I have been on the receiving end of some staggeringly ignorant comments.
And for over twenty years I have fought for my boys, who can and do read.
At least they can do sports without being told their "male parts" are in danger.
But what people need to hear is that stereotyping minds and hearts maims souls.
Books help heal these souls.
More boys need access to these books.
Revolution.
Adults of both genders must make this happen.
I don't know where I read this, but I think it is true.
"Everybody counts or nobody counts."
And that's how I run my classroom.

Making Boys Visible. Revolution.

     I know two boys who grew up invisible.
     Their invisibility sprang from the fact that their hardwiring was a little different, or something.  Neither can spell. I also think that being invisible worked for them after awhile. Because when the System did see them, the System saw them as Boneheads.
      One of them had an English class where he filled out worksheets on how to answer a phone. I heard that a teacher phoned his parents because she was concerned that he read H.P. Lovecraft books. He didn't do well on worksheets.
     The other one was Trouble and  voted Most Likely to Overthrow the Government by his senior class. People could see Trouble, but not much else, like the fact that he spoke three languages fluently before he graduated from high school.
     I know they had some great teachers who made a difference, but I cannot say that their interests were served by the System.
    One of them now is a successful writer.
    The other speaks seven languages fluently, and can spell perfectly in all of them except English.
    Both of them are remarkable human beings.
    It breaks my heart that they were invisible for a long time to people who, for the most part, had the best possible intentions. I think Martin Luther King made an important point about the dangers of sincere ignorance.
    It is a source of profound grief that I have worked to change the System for so long and have had so little effect on The Big Picture. The System can make lots of  noise about Leaving No Child Behind et cetera et cetera but I know what I see. There's so much noise that it drowns out the voices we could hear if we just listened better.
   Hear me: Our boys need us to see them for exactly who they are, and write books that speak to and for them, and reflect back to them that their boy-ness is a good and powerful thing. We need them to grow to be good human beings who are good men.
  We need them to see hope, and a future.
  We expect no less for our girls. We want them to grow into good human beings who are good women. We have done a better job with the girls in the last thirty years, and we have farther to go. I celebrate the advances we have made for women, but we are by no means at the Promised Land.
     The System is not keyed to getting anyone to the Promised Land. And it should be.
   I fear that we have allowed boys to fall into soft-focus, and that we have let stereotypes govern the experiences the System provides for them.
   I work on/against the System one day at a time, one kid at a time.
   It's time for a Revolution.