amyrose

[amyrose]

Hi! I'm introducing myself.

I think this forum is great to perhaps begin to educate people about these movements which are trying to take women back to a pre-feminist world and about how emotionally damaging some aspects of Christian fundamentalist theology can be.

I worked for six years in a "Christian" school that was a spiritually abusive environment for both the staff and students. I saw bits and pieces of the patriarchy movement there, including incidents in which high school boys were told by their parents that they were not obligated to show respect or be obedient to female teachers and administrators because we had no business being in authority over teenage males.

I am getting married in 6 1/2 weeks to a wonderful man who has neither the energy or inclination to be in charge of everything by himself! ;D

[jemand]

Congratulations amyrose! That's awesome

And welcome to the forum!

[linnea]

Welcome, amyrose, and congrats!

high school boys were told by their parents that they were not obligated to show respect or be obedient to female teachers and administrators because we had no business being in authority over teenage males.


Mind-boggling.

[coleslaw]

Since this was a Christian school it as a private school, right? It seems to me those parents should have been told that if they did not want their teen boys to show respect or be obedient to female teachers and administrators the parents would have to find another school for the boys, because in your school those in authority are considered worthy of respect and obedience from all students.

[amyrose]

I agree with you coleslaw. 100%. But the school board basically tied the hands of the admins for two reasons:

1. Keeping enrollment up kept tuition coming in which kept the place in business. So keeping families became much more important than anything else. This was even to the point of allowing parents to force a teacher out in the middle of the school year for no good reason and allowing a mother (an obsessed stage mother!) to basically control the music department so her kids could be the stars.

2. They insisted that it was not the school's right to infringe on any belief/theology that a family held to be "Biblical". So they as long as something was presented as theological and "bible-based", the board would let the parents win the dispute. This led to a lot of problems. One ongoing one was dress code for female staff members--several families were unhappy that we were not required to wear skirts/dresses at all times. And two families complained to the school board when I cut my hair from the middle of my back to chin length.

The place was hell on earth. Thankfully, it closed down six years ago.