I spent this past semester in a public fourth grade classroom. The kids were sweet… sometimes. I’ve been saving up some stories for all y’all, with alphabetical pseudonyms to boot!

A couple of the popular (and petite) boys, Alex and Bobby, wore skinny jeans to school almost daily (along with Vans - Alex had to be ready to do the jerk at a moment’s notice). On the day that Carlos, a student with much lower social status, wore skinny jeans, Bobby yelled out, “He’s wearing girl pants!”

Students in this class misbehaved often, but this was the one time I turned off the lights and made the whole class sit silently with their heads on their desks (“I SAID NO TALKING”) and listen to me lecture them (“WE CANNOT TREAT EACH OTHER THIS WAY”). As it turns out, I have very little tolerance for cruelty, especially when that cruelty perpetuates the idea that certain identities (i.e. girl) should be devastating to be associated with.

Because that’s what Alex and Bobby were doing (and did, repeatedly) - they were publicly shaming the boy they thought was weird by saying he was like a girl. Never mind the fact that they wore the same pants every day - because they were cool, they were like boys. Because Carlos was not cool, he was like a girl. Girl = not cool. (Of course there is also some level of gay panic tied up in this… to be further addressed in a later post!)

Thank you patriarchy, for giving us misogyny in cute tiny packages (these kids really were cute).

If the kids learned nothing else all semester, they learned to save their offensive put-downs for when I was out of earshot. And hopefully how to find the perimeter of a rectangle.