Monday, October 8, 2018

The culture of silence

This summer, my child got to participate in a vaulting class, which she loved. Vaulting is basically gymnastics on horses. We decided to enroll her in classes at the one she went to over the summer, but first, we took a trial class. At this trial class, the instructor, who is a male made an inappropriate comment, such that we now will not be enrolling her in the class.

What is really disappointing is that this vaulting class was an introduction via her regular horse instructor, who is female. Yesterday, I took this observation to this teacher. I prefaced it with, how well do you know these people? Her response was, "Well, I take the kids to this class once a summer during our camps and beyond that, I don't really correspond with them at all."
I shared our encounter and the comment that was made by the male and sadly her response was, "I don't want to be flip about this, but I will say that that comment is sort of his sense of humor...he's made questionable comments in the past around other parents and we all just sort of brush it, laugh it off (in an embarrassing sort of way) - not to this extent, but that is sort of his humor." She continued, "I think he could've first assessed his audience before making that comment...."
By now y'all are probably wondering What did he say??
Please find the content of my letter below:

Dear Rick and Virginia,

I hope this letter finds you well. Enclosed please find a check in the amount of $50 to pay for the lesson that we received last Thursday. She really enjoyed it.

Regretfully, we will not be enrolling in your weekly classes due to a comment that Rick made during last week’s lesson that I found incredibly inappropriate. While Rick was providing direction for the vaulting, one of the moves was to straddle the horse. After X performed the move, Rick turned to us, Virginia and me and said, “Oh, she’s a naughty girl. She’s straddling.”
Virginia said, “What?” Because she didn’t hear and Rick then repeated himself, “She’s naughty.”

While I understand that Rick may have intended this to be a joke, it was in complete poor taste and incredibly inappropriate given that it was directed to me, her mother and in reference to my 9 year old girl AND right in front of her.


I am hugely disappointed by your choice of humor.

And here is the reason for my post. I don't think slight comments/bawdy jokes like this in front of a 9-year old is okay. I don't think a lot of things are okay that people, in general will just acquiesce to. I think our culture of not wanting to speak up or take matters into our own hands is unacceptable. We should all be standing up for what is right, what is noble, what is fair. And definitely, advocate for your own child! I have posted before about how one horse camp that I sat in on handed out candy as a snack for 4-5 year olds at 10am! In my mind, that is unacceptable and I said something and brought healthier options the following day. While another mom commented, "Oh yea, I was here last year and they handed my son a lollipop in the morning and I kind of just said, 'uh, okaaaay.' and let him have it." WHY? Why would you let someone hand your child candy when you yourself wouldn't do that? Advocate, advocate people - for yourselves and for your children. Especially if you are a woman or other marginalized person.

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