Feminism for Dipshits

You may think there are stupid people in your class. They probably make inane comments all the time, manage to offend someone every time they talk and just generally annoy everyone so much that it's a wonder they haven't been choked with a live salmon or drowned in their own coffee mug yet. You think that you can rightly assume that this person is one of the more challenged people in the world. Everyone thinks this, everyone assumes that the kid everyone throws mental daggers at in their class is one of the worst out there.

You're wrong. You are all wrong.

The stupidest people in the the world are not in your classes, no matter what class you are in. I know this because I have come to the conclusion that people that possess serious, mind numbing, make you want to chew off your own arm and throw a tonic-clonic seizure just so that they'll stop talking stupidity, are not allowed to enter random programs willy-nilly. They are systematically searched out, rounded up and convinced that they want to be nurses. And then sent to Kamloops to become major players in my own personal version of hell.

Today we had a class in feminism. For nursing this is an important concept. It goes way beyond being the reason that we no longer wear short skirts and little starched caps on our perfectly combed-back hair. Feminism is why we no longer have to stand when doctors enter the room and give up our chairs to them. It's why we actually learn about physiology and pharmacology in school rather than JUST the best way to dust door frames and the fastest way to turn hospital corners when making a bed. Feminist nurses were the driving force behind the shift from thinking of hospitals as places where good behaviour was forced on patients to places where people made their own choices and got well.

It's pretty darn major and, I thought, pretty basic. I knew all of this before I got into nursing. I consider myself a feminist in an understated kind of way, I think that in an ideal world everyone would be equal and that helping women and men reach equality is a good place to start. Sometimes I'm pretty naive but I sort of thought that in nursing, a career dominated by women, feminism would be a pretty well universally accepted concept.

Not so my friends, not so at all.

You've all been introduced to my class in earlier posts. My favorite friend ever was super duper active in discussion today. Here are a few of the gems of knowledge that jumped from her peanut sized brain to the wide world:

"If everyone was a feminist then everyone would hate men and be gay, and then where would we get kids?"

"I think we need to embrace people with traditional beliefs. So my dad thinks women belong in the kitchen, I do too and I don't see anything wrong with that. Why are we punishing people for acting the way they should"

"I think it makes sense that men have more power in the world, they're more logical and women are so emotional we need people to lead us."

Last week I said she took me back to the 50's and I could hear the martini shaker in her voice as she mentally prepared the perfect dinner while awaiting the coming of her strong manly man. I take it back. Did I say 50's? Try 1910. She might as well be wearing bloomers and carrying around a bottle of smelling salts for when her corsets get too tight and she faints.

I'm surprised that our teacher, a wonderful, opinionated feminist theory professor didn't kick her out. I guess she has a level of tolerance I'll never have.

The worst part of this day wasn't the really, really stupid girl though. She's so over the top that it just makes me laugh and wonder how on earth she ever wrote an essay with enough 2 syllable words in it to get into the nursing program. The worst part was that, with the exception of me, one guy and two or three other girls, everyone else in the class seemed to agree with the basic ideas that she was expounding. This university is letting out a class full of people that think all feminists are gay, all homosexuals are slightly less than human and a woman's place really is to follow the big strong man she pledged allegiance to the day she got hitched.

I want out.