The heckler’s veto strikes again: A single Twitter user saw a picture of a quote painted on Texas elementary school wall, and she then posted her objections on the social media giant.
The quote, “The more you act like a lady, the more he’ll act like a gentleman,” had been at the Gregory-Lincoln Education Center for the Performing and Visual Arts in Houston for the last five years, according to PJ Media.
Lisa H. Beckman posted a picture of the saying with the accompanying comment: “It’s perpetuating horrible gender stereotypes, shaming women, and relinquishing boys of all responsibility. It’s sexist, mysogonistic [sic], and discriminatory!”
She added, “I’m horrified.”
The school removed the quote within ten hours of her tweet.
This is the wall at Gregory-Lincoln Middle School in Houston ISD.
It's perpetuating horrible gender stereotypes, shaming women, and relinquishing boys of all responsibility. It's sexist, mysogonistic, and discriminatory!I'm horrified. @shannonrwatts #MeToo #HISD pic.twitter.com/UqjaDlI0ys
— Lisa Beckman (@lbeckman) August 17, 2018
“It’s perpetuating horrible gender stereotypes, shaming women, and relinquishing boys of all responsibility,” Beckman said in an interview with a CNN affiliate. “Look at the climate in which we’re living in. We’re supposed to be teaching people to be responsible for their own actions. What is this teaching little girls?”
Beckman’s tweet has been liked over 24,000 times, and retweeted over 9,500 times. Many Twitter users agreed with Beckman. Frederika Jenner called the quote “unpleasantly retro.” Tanya Littman said the quote was “exactly why the #MeToo movement started,” adding, “A man should be able to have self control no matter what.” Cathy R said the quote was indicative of the South: “Fighting so hard to remain in the 1950s.”
But others disagreed. Fabrizio Gowdy said, “Chivalry is not sexism.” Gregory Thomas quipped, “How dare they tell boys and girls to act like ladies and gentlemen. Seriously, it sounds as if they are trying to teach good behavior to their students.” Tex said, “Best advice ever dished out at a Middle School.”
Beckman — and everyone who agrees with her —- clearly thinks this quote is saying that women are responsible for the bad behavior of men. But is that really what it’s trying to say? School officials seem to think so. They removed the quote and issued a statement which reads: “Please be advised that the quote on the wall of Gregory Lincoln PK-5 Education Center has been removed. Overnight, the wall decal letters were taken down, the wall was floated out, and [a] new slab of drywall was installed and painted.”
Interestingly, Beckman supporter Frederika Jenner noted above was once the head of the Delaware state teachers’ union. In her tweet she advocated disabling any hallway cameras at the school before spray-painting over the quote.
PJ Media’s Faith Moore concludes “the scariest part about all this is how quickly the school jumped to toe the party line. The quote had been on the wall for five years — it was not a relic of a bygone era — so presumably someone in leadership deemed it a sentiment worth promoting.”
MORE: Florida State bans ‘offensive language’ based on gender
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IMAGE: Giulio Fornasar/Shutterstock.com
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