Putting a positive spin on it.

[amanuensis1]

I have decided that, if the film of GoF is uncanonically portraying Durmstrang and Beauxbatons as old-fashioned in their lack of co-educational status, this means that the homoerotica in both schools is rampant--and that Hogwarts is by comparison a hotbed of progressiveness and so there's even less homophobia there than we slashers pretend, in our giddy fandom brains.

So meh.

Comments

[nightbluesprite.livejournal.com]

Your school sounds awful.

Am I, as a girl who went to a co-ed series of schools, odd for thinking mainly of the interactions I would have missed by going to an all-girls school? I can certainly understand what you're saying about teenage boys, but frankly, not all of them are like that, and I enjoyed spending time with those who weren't.

[notrafficlights.livejournal.com]

Of course not. There are always those who aren't like the generalisations I'm making, and I probably missed out on some experiences not continuing my high school education with co-ed just as I missed out on a mass of experiences not starting my high school education with single-sex (I've had experience in both). I don't regret either experiences and can't imagine my life currently without them.

It's not odd, and quite understandable, but I'm talking more about generalised gender and educational reasons to keep the two apart, rather than minority personal experiences. At least in Australia, there is a mass of research that says exactly the same things I do - that boys are privileged constantly in co-education systems (at least, before tertiary education) and that because society is not about to have a gender revolution and change these problems anytime soon, it's better to have the genders seperate for a secondary education experience that's deemed "better" in terms of quantative education and qualitive socialising for both genders.

[notrafficlights.livejournal.com]

And it's not as awful as it sounds. Similar sorts of things happened at the co-ed school after I left (I still communicated with some friends there) but girls could still do thinks like manual-ed, even if they copped a lot of sexist flak from the boys for doing it. A gay boy was expelled after he got into a fight with a straight boy who baited him with homophobic insults (straight boy was allowed to stay, though). Girls still couldn't wear slacks, though I don't know if they tried the bra regulations (which never worked at the single-sex school I went to anyway. I still wore purple bras ;) ). There were as many/more sexist things happening at the co-ed school as there were at the single sex one, and in both it was perpetrated by the students and the staff. I just think those sorts of sexist examples that occur at most single-sex school are far less damaging than the kinds encountered at co-ed schools by most students, but that doesn't change the fact they are damaging (it can get pretty horrible at single-sex boys schools in my area).

[nightbluesprite.livejournal.com]

Looking back, I can see how my schools could have been so much worse. I never paid specific attention to how sexist my school was when I was in elementary or middle school, but I never felt as though girls were held back in any way whatsoever then, and it'd be hard for me to find fault with them now. What you've said makes me wonder about which of our educations was more of the norm in terms of descrimination.