acting like a man

I know, I know, it's been slightly over two months since I blogged, but I have a bone to pick. I'm not quite sure who it's with, but it begins with this phrase:

"If a woman wants to act like a man, treat her like one."

It's been going around my school for a while...shockingly, it's only boys who say it. My issue here is mostly with what it's supposed to mean, in this day and age, to "act like a man". I mean, what is acting like a man anymore? Wearing pants? (No, girls do that...) Carrying and/or being able to use a gun? (Not by a long shot. Look at Sarah Palin, for god's sake!) Fighting? (Heck no. Cat fights, people, and it's not like you exactly think of tomboys getting into those.) Using heavy machinery, fixing things, putting them back together, mechanics and that kind of thing? (I think not. Look, there are female mechanics. There are females who drive road graters for a living.)

In fact, I don't really see how there's a way to act like a man, really. Not anymore.

So if there's no acting like a man, how do you go about treating a girl like a man, and why is it considered a punishment in the first place? Yes, I'm going to treat you like a man by giving you higher wages and better opportunities for executive jobs. I'm going to treat you like a man by NOT automatically underestimating your physical strength. I'm going to give you a default position of higher regard in the majority of Middle East countries. Dear god, who would want to be treated like a man?

I'm not saying that there aren't differences between men and women--of course, there are. But modern American culture has gone a long ways towards blurring the line of what women "can" and "can't" do, and that sort of saying should be null and void by now.

yes, I was homeschooled. what's your point?

I was homeschooled--unschooled, technically--for five and a half years from a fairly small age. I never had behavior problems--certainly not more than what most little kids go through, at least. So it was a teensy bit annoying to hear, during a discussion of a little boy's behavior problems in the VBS I'm helping with this week, "I've got one thing to say to you--homeschooled."

Homeschooled? I thought. Now there's a word that I never associated with bad behavior. Sure, there are bratty homeschoolers, just like there are bratty public schoolers. But to say that homeschooling actually CAUSES bad behavior seemed a bit over the line.

"They have no structure," the woman continued.

No structure? My surprise increased. A good amount of the homeschoolers I know are very nearly as structured as public school--they worry about due papers and homework just like public schoolers. They borrow textbooks from resource libraries, they go through lessons. In many cases, it's not all that different from "normal" school (note the quotation marks).

"They don't have to learn," she said.

Okay, stop right there. Seriously. I was unschooled, which is the least formal method of homeschooling out there, and even I learned things all the time. I didn't learn one new math concept a day, I didn't do English worksheets, but it wasn't like I sat around and played video games constantly.

I'm sorry for the rant, but this is something that seriously bothers me. Homeschooling a child does not suddenly turn them ugly.

Honestly.