He became a high school teacher after years entering institutes to do sex education workshops with adolescents. Such baggage accredits Teo Pardo as one of the great references in coeducation in Catalonia. Few people know so much about how education with a gender perspective is taught (and received) on a day-to-day basis in the classroom.
Is macho denialism widespread among adolescents?
Anti-feminist discourses among boys are increasing; And this is not only seen by teachers in the classroom, all the surveys say so, and that is something that should worry us and make us think. However, I also believe that these discourses are not the majority; we can see it if we scratch a little and the surveys also say so.
There is hope, then.
Clear! But the fact that they are not the majority does not mean that they are not the ones who mark the group dynamics…
The problem is that the kids really want to release the macho argument that they have learned on YouTube, but very little to listen.
Is that the main problem?
Yes. When we think about masculinity, we must attend to group dynamics. The increase in anti-feminist discourses by boys when interventions are made -but also without them, when the subject comes up in the classroom or when they talk at school time- is multifactorial. I identify two big elements. One, that masculinity, by its very construction, has difficulties in thinking of itself.
What does it mean?
Socialization in masculinity is built as a very secure, individual, self-sufficient identity that fights to win, to be above… In this sense, it is somewhat complex to make children who are building their identity with these values -instilled from the adult world- think critically about them. I have seen many guys who pretend to be much more superficial than they really are for the sake of survival. That for one thing.
The boys feel discomfort related to racist or classist violence that is never taken into account and that makes them angry
And for the other?
Interventions on the prevention of sexist violence are often very specific. And sometimes the boys feel attacked because the issues are often raised in terms of struggle and we put a weight on them that doesn’t touch them. They feel that they are blamed for gender violence, when in reality they are children and adolescents and, in general, they are usually perpetrated by adults. We dare more to work with adolescents because they are more plastic and have the opportunity to change… but many times they feel that we hold them responsible for violence that they did not commit. In addition, this factor is added to the fact that they can also suffer violence that is not taken into account when this type of intervention is carried out; discomforts related to racist or classist violence that are never rescued. All of that together is what makes them angry.
So, can we talk about the rebound effect?
The explosion of the ‘manosfera’, of all those macho discourses that are very easy to assume and reproduce and that run on the Internet, makes an argument very easy to shoot within the reach of the boys. Despite this, I have been in the classroom to talk about the prevention of sexist violence since 2010, before the fourth wave, and then we already had a reaction. It is true that the polls say that this reaction is increasing, but it already existed. The myth of false complaints was already running. The problem is that they really want to make their argument, and very little to listen. Because they feel attacked, they have little desire to think about themselves, they feel that we are questioning an identity that they are just beginning to build… And they are teenagers, they need an identity to live, to belong, to feel respected… So they go out to defend themselves with everything they have. And all they have is also a very nasty way of arguing.
The only tool that as a society we give kids to interact with each other is macho complicity
This leads them to not want to enter into this exhausting dynamic and they choose to avoid the subject. What can we do?
I don’t think the origin of the reaction is in the interventions we make in the classroom, rather it is the response to the feminist movement. Although according to how we propose the interventions, it does not help; you have to keep doing them, and it would be ideal if they were integrated into the curriculum.
In theory they are.
In practice no. For coeducation to be integrated into the curriculum, you would have to have trained all the teachers and this training right now is very fair, very precarious. Co-education with a feminist look is absolutely absent.
There is no mandatory training for teachers in coeducation, as, for example, it is being done in digital skills.
No. And it is true that teachers have very high workloads and it is difficult to establish mandatory training, but for me a key factor is teacher training.
Already in college?
Exact. There is an opportunity that is not being taken advantage of. There is a Psychology subject that could be used.
If we want to transform the system, it is urgent to train teachers in affective-sexual and gender education
Bearing in mind that in practice these occasional talks are the gateway for coeducation to centers, should they be reconsidered?
There are many entities that are already doing it. We can work on gender issues without saying that we have come to do a workshop on masculinities. Before I was a teacher, I dedicated myself to giving workshops and there I learned that to work with children we need a way of entry, and this could be that the workshop facilitator has tattoos and they feel identified, or that it is a topic that interests them: the sex. In it we worked on violence, but the name was sexuality workshop.
When as a teacher, man, you put your vulnerability on the table, they start to put theirs
I understand that they didn’t read it as “another sheet”, but as a “let’s talk about fucking& rdquor;.
Yes. At first the boys related to me through macho complicity. And I thought, before that, what do I do? They resorted to that macho complicity because from the adult world the only tool we give kids to interact with uncles is that. And they wanted me to like them, and the way they understood to be cool was to talk about women as objects… And I wanted them to like me and we all did a theater there until I told myself that it couldn’t be. The tool I found was to explain my story to them.
As was?
Well, when we talked about vulvas and they said to me, ‘You’ve seen many, huh? That you are a ‘fucker’. And I told them, no, it’s not that I’ve seen many, it’s that I’m a trans man, I have one and I know exactly how it works.
And how did they react?
Silence, looks, nudges… But suddenly there was something that transformed the dynamic. I would tell them that I don’t have any problem with him, but sometimes the looks in a locker room, for example, make me feel insecure. And then hands started to go up. ‘Sorry, can you explain again about size doesn’t matter?’ When I put my vulnerability on the table they began to put theirs; and suddenly a link was generated, which in the end is what we need to transform. I did not come to talk about data, or machismo, or feminism, but about our stories. Educational transformations go through the link and it is very difficult to establish that link in two hours. There is another important issue here, which is the role of male teachers.
Continue please.
Uncle teachers have a lot of work to do. Within the socio-educational field, there is a question that is authority. And masculinity and authority are first cousins. There is a macho logic of understanding authority. When a man or a woman enters the class, listening is very different. And there are men who find it difficult to give up that way of relating because they are afraid of losing control, of losing authority.
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The question, then, more than what we do with the boys, is what we do with the teachers?
Completely. The professors have a significant workload and anger with every reason in the world, and the Department is pressing and pressing. And they prefer to press on by changing the calendar, which is a much more electoral measure, than by training teachers in coeducation, because they also say that this is it, that it has already been incorporated as a vector into the curriculum; but it is evident that it is not.