Teenage boy called out for wearing high heels to school

[Bat-Mite]

First of all, from what I got from the article, the school wasn't the problem; other students were; and the school felt powerless to stop them; they probably felt they protecting HIM ( and the integrity of the class room). It may not be fair; but nobody said the world was fair.
And I think your using the wrong term; it's not sexism; it's transphobia and very possibly homophobia.

It may indeed be transphobic and homophobic also, but it's definitely sexist for the reasons that I gave in my post: a girl would NOT be hindered from wearing man's shoes to class. In the school district where I live, it's still in the books that a girl can wear earrings, but boys can't, even though it's been fairly common for males to wear earrings for decades now. It's sexism because it discriminates against males, but not females. It's still an attack on femininity however, because the whole attitude behind it is that it's shameful for a male student to express his feminine side, but there's no problem with a female student being a tomboy.

If a person is willing to do something that he knows will draw negative attention from others and goes ahead with it in spite of it, then the school's not helping things by trying to force him to stop. He's the one who ultimately has to face the consequences and if he decides that they're worth his self expression then it's his business and his battle to fight. The school, like almost every school in first world society, runs on the notion that it's their job to fight people's battles for them and control their behavior and activities for their own good. The public school system is the last safe haven in the United States for a fascist.

Exactly.

 

[KalMart]

He must've worn them with the wrong pants.

 

[The Question]

If the school had let this kid get in a fight with other students over his heels, and if he lost the fight, his parents/guardians would've no doubt blamed the school for failing to run interference before things got that far. That could mean negative press, jobs on the line, lawsuits, etc. Schools are not only expected to educate students, but also to babysit them. It's what many tax-paying parents want.

I understand they have reasons for doing it. I find those reasons to be weak and to be symptoms of a fundamentally broken system that's based on an unrealistic lack of trust in the capabilities of individuals.

Setting that point asside, there are plenty of other things the school could have done. They could have ran interference by actually intervening in whatever conflict was going on and trying to settle the matter without forcing one kid to conform.

 

[Lunar_Wolf]

Some parts of the world people don't have shoes or schools.

 

[The Question]

Some parts of the world people don't have shoes or schools.

This is very true. This still doesn't change the fact that the kid deserved to be treated better. "But we provide so much for you, you should be grateful" is an incredibly weak excuse that has been used by inherently broken organizations and social institutions since the dawn of civilization.

 

[Lunar_Wolf]

It's hard to feel sympathy for this kid. Should people be allowed to wear what they want in school? For most part, yes. But this guy can wear high heels all he wants outside school. I'm sure other shoes will do him just fine.

 

[The Question]

It's hard to feel sympathy for this kid. Should people be allowed to wear what they want in school? For most part, yes. But this guy can wear high heels all he wants outside school. I'm sure other shoes will do him just fine.

It's hard for me to see your reasoning? In what way is it necessary for the school to keep him from wearing what he wants in school?

In any event, the problem I see here isn't the shoes themselves. The shoes are a symptom of two very serious problems in America: The fact that the rights and needs of those who, for whetever reason, don't conform to the accepted norms of gender roles are often swept aside by those in power when conflict arises, and the fact that young people as a whole are given no respect and few personal freedoms in a system that is supposedly there to help them prepare for the world but instead believes that they have to be controlled and have their hands held at all times or else they might run wild, which hinders their development as opposed to helping it and is an incredibly cynical and erroneous view of human nature.

 

[CelticPredator]

^ How about this, he was disrupting the class, taking time away from learning. So they stopped it.

If you want to be weird, do it on your own time. Same goes for emo idiots, and goths. Just throw on some cloths, sit in a bunch of rooms for 6 hours, and get out. You're not there to make a statement.

 

[terry78]

I mean, I got picked on plenty in my day as well, but when you dress like a Hot Topic threw up all over you, you know what you're in for.

 

[The Question]

^ How about this, he was disrupting the class, taking time away from learning. So they stopped it.

If you want to be weird, do it on your own time. Same goes for emo idiots, and goths. Just throw on some cloths, sit in a bunch of rooms for 6 hours, and get out. You're not there to make a statement.

"Conform for the sake of the society we have designed for you. It is the American way." Yeah. No.

Setting aside for a moment the discussion of how much learning is actually done in high school classrooms, that's a ludicrous argument. Firstly because it implies that the entire class are a bunch of attentionless droogs who will stop paying attention to whatever anyone's saying at the first pretty color. That's just the same unrealistic idea of what people, teenagers in particular, are like that so many adults have. If a kid is paying more attention to a classmate in drag than his studies, it's probably because he was looking for an excuse to pay attention to something else anyway. Secondly, even if the shoes really are having a significant impact on learning, that still isn't a good excuse for forcing someone to conform. The class will eventually adapt and get used to it, and the idea of forcing someone to conform to a lifestyle previously determined by a third party to be acceptable is so the opposite of what the values we as a nation supposedly have about democracy and individual liberties and are supposed to be teaching to a children than doing so will ultimately do more harm than one unproductive day in class.

 

[CelticPredator]

Firstly because it implies that the entire class are a bunch of attentionless droogs who will stop paying attention to whatever anyone's saying at the first pretty color.

Welcome to High School.

 

[Harls]

Okay, umm, who the !)&@#& cares if he wears high heels or that other kid wore a dress? If it's not out of the school dress code, I don't see the problem with it. And, if the kids are bullied, the bullies should be called to the principal's office & have their behavior changed, not the other way around.

 

[The Question]

Welcome to High School.

What a wonderfully ensightful rebutle. So very in depth.

Teenagers are people, not the dog from Up. If they're distracted by shoes, it isn't because they're easily distracted. It means they're actively looking for something to distract them from what they find to be painfully uninteresting. And, honestly, most of them won't be distracted by shoes. Most of them will stop giving a **** after a while and just stare off into space.

 

[CelticPredator]

No one wants to sit in a room for an hour and listen to ******** they dont care about. You go to get the **** out.

And when someone comes in, with something BEYOND strange, weather it annoys them, disgusts them, makes them laugh, it will perk their intrest, and automaticly their day will become 10x more interesting.

 

[The Question]

No one wants to sit in a room for an hour and listen to ******** they dont care about. You go to get the **** out.

And when someone comes in, with something BEYOND strange, weather it annoys them, disgusts them, makes them laugh, it will perk their intrest, and automaticly their day will become 10x more interesting.

This is certainly true to an extent. But how many of them, really, are going to just turn around and stare at this one guy for an hour?

 

[Manic]

This is certainly true to an extent. But how many of them, really, are going to just turn around and stare at this one guy for an hour?

That sounds a smidge naive. I could honestly see a class stopping dead in its tracks for an hour so that everyone can talk about a dude in the third row wearing a pair of heels. I've seen classes completely derailed for less.

 

[CelticPredator]

Well, it's not every day some dude walks in with high heels on.

 

[The Question]

That sounds a smidge naive. I could honestly see a class stopping dead in its tracks for an hour so that everyone can talk about a dude in the third row wearing a pair of heels. I've seen classes completely derailed for less.

Oh.

Good for them, honestly. Better use of their time.

Still, what's the teacher doing during all of this?

 

[Timstuff]

The TEACHERS had to get involved? Good heavens, where were the bullies!?

 

[Manic]

Oh.

Good for them, honestly. Better use of their time.

Still, what's the teacher doing during all of this?

Sometimes teachers temporarily stop the disgression, only for it to start up again. Sometimes the teachers join in.

You seem to have an overall distaste for the modern educational system.

 

[Warhammer]

I can't help but to think this had less to do with self-expressionism and more with attention seeking. Any guy going to high school in this country, straight or gay, knows that if he decides to go to school that day wearing high heels, he is going to get everyone's attention so it's hard for me to consider him a tragic victim. However, he does have the right to wear high heels if he wants. I can't really argue against that.

 

[The Question]

Sometimes teachers temporarily stop the disgression, only for it to start up again. Sometimes the teachers join in.

I must be honest, I haven't been in a non-college classroom setting for about six years now, so my recollections of the dynamics can be fuzzy in places.

You seem to have an overall distaste for the modern educational system.

I do. Very much so.

 

[SuperFerret]

I remember a guy in my high school coming to school in a skirt. We laughed. It was funny.

 

[Mace Bloodstone]

Yay Florida!