D♀v | ♂de

It was a half-day at school that day because it was the eve of some public holiday, prolly National Day. When the lot of us girls got into our school bus, our bus driver told us we'd be making a little detour before going home because he had to pick up some boys from St. Gabriel Primary. This unexpected news caused a small, muffled furor among the older girls.

Those of us taking the school bus were either eight or ten. I was eight, and I didn't know what was going on, the blur kid that I was (still am, really). The only thing I remember I was aware of was Shalini (who was ten and the biggest girl on the bus) making plans.

Maybe she had past run-ins with the St. Gabriel boys or something - I never knew - she had decided that the older girls must 'protect' Huiling (who was a pretty, bespectacled, sweet and quiet girl) from the St. Gabriel boys. Shalini herself would sit next to Huiling and make sure nobody (read: boys) bothered her, and she positioned two other ten year-olds in the seats behind Huiling and herself to (I suppose) make sure nobody would even get near Huiling.

All this planning and shuffling of seats made me nervous. Boys. I didn't know many boys. In nursery school, I played mostly with the girls, and once in a while we would play doctor with the boys. In kindergarten, little David from upstairs once twisted my arm and made me cry, and one little boy whose name I don't remember scared the crap out of me one day when he pulled me aside at play-time and said, very gravely, "I like you. Do you like me?" (Quite a portent, my reaction then. If I had only known ...)

So - boys: no good. Seeing Shalini steel herself for what appeared to be a grim battle ahead: worse. Seeing the older girls protectively surround Huiling: worst. In my little mind, the St. Gabriel boys had grown to monstrous proportions.

It couldn't get more classic than this: (girls' school) girls versus (boys' school) boys - one of the oldest and most enduring battles of all time.

But nothing really happened. (Save that one boy teased me just as I was getting off the bus, and I'd cried - I was quite the rain cloud back then - and sworn I'd hate St. Gabriel boys forever; of course, seven years later, I would go out with one, and earn a bad reputation among them - goes to show, I just don't learn.)

The boys were boisterous, and us girls sat grimly in a taut silence. Maybe once or twice they made fun of us; maybe once or twice Shalini or one of the assertive ten year-olds snapped back. Mostly, we segregated ourselves along gender lines.

Things don't seem to have changed. At all.

A few days back, I realized I haven't checked in on the RedQuEEn mailing list for too many months and decided I should. Among the most recent posts was one from E asking the RedQuEEners who are also on the SiGNeL mailing list to speak up against the recent spat of misogynistic postings there. So I hopped over to the SiGNeL list, which I haven't visited for an even longer time, for a look-see.

It looked as if the Ultimate Battle of the Genders might break out anytime soon.

I wish Jen were here, so I could talk to her about all that's going on on the RQ and SiGNeL lists. I mean, I'd really appreciate her filters (as a Anthropology major) now. Fat lot of good it does me to be a Linguistic and E.Lang/E.Lit major; I mean, what can I do - analyze the grammar and syntax, and stylistics of the messages?

I'm conflicted. My head feels like it's about to explode from all the thoughts crammed in it - thoughts about misogyny, conflicts and confrontations, silence, and if there would ever be a day where everybody would make nice with one another and play together.

I think I don't know what to think anymore. Or maybe I have to do a complete and thorough re-thinking of ideologies. Had Doreen been right - do I have to have a fixed set of principles? Must I split my mostly gray world into one of black and white?

Maybe I must take a stance.



Why can't everybody just make nice and play together?