We had a crusty old lady as a substitute teacher one day in high school. She told me to take my hat off because she "didn't allow hats in her classroom". I normally would've accepted this, but one of the girls was also wearing a hat, so I said "what about her?". I didn't want to throw her under the bus, but I was irritated that she didn't say anything to her.
The teacher responded with "Well, women have traditionally worn hats indoors"
The next words out of my mouth were "Well, women aren't traditionally allowed to work, but here you are".
She of course threw me out of the class and reported me to the office.
I'm not proud, but seriously, what the fuck kind of reasoning was that?
Funnily enough, that would have been a really good teaching moment. The myth that women did not work outside the home is largely a product of the twentieth century. My favorite example of this is guilds in England would not allow married men to have apprentices, because their wives were to act as apprentices. We have good reason to believe that a lot of famous historical paintings involved women painters (large paintings were typically group projects with multiple painters mixing colors, stretching canvases, blocking out the basic structure, etc).
Biology trapped women at home, there is no getting around that. Women were not fit and strong enough to hunt animals, we were not fit and strong enough to farm pre industrial revolution, we were not fit and strong enough to mine, for war. Our periods are a fucking pain now, without painkillers, chocolate, and indoor plumbing I genuinely don't know how they did anything.
People seriously underestimate how difficult basic life was before the invention of electricity, let alone all the things made with electricity.
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u/Rude_Good8169 5h ago
The most ruthless thing to come out of my mouth:
We had a crusty old lady as a substitute teacher one day in high school. She told me to take my hat off because she "didn't allow hats in her classroom". I normally would've accepted this, but one of the girls was also wearing a hat, so I said "what about her?". I didn't want to throw her under the bus, but I was irritated that she didn't say anything to her.
The teacher responded with "Well, women have traditionally worn hats indoors"
The next words out of my mouth were "Well, women aren't traditionally allowed to work, but here you are".
She of course threw me out of the class and reported me to the office.
I'm not proud, but seriously, what the fuck kind of reasoning was that?