Girl fight(s)

I walked out of class today feeling that feeling you get when you know you have just finished work for the next 11 days. 

That feeling faded as soon as I reached my bicycle and saw a circle of about 13 students and in the middle, two of my female students in a verbal argument. My quick escape into spring break completely disappeared when Esther, one of my 5eme students, threw the first slap.

This is not the first time that I’ve had to break up a fight involving Esther. What she lacks in height, she feels necessary to make up for in attitude. Taking everything personally, she is often the instigator in confrontations that quickly dissolve into screaming matches in my classroom. (I want to note that Esther is not a bad student. Minus the tendency toward conflict, she is one of my favorite students. She can be disarmingly sweet, but her inability to not let things hurt her feelings reminds me of myself 10 years ago.)

Most females in Benin have been raised to have a particular sassiness, and Esther seems to have particularly taken to this philosophy of defending herself and what she perceives as hers to the point of irrationality. (This particular fight was prompted by the other student dragging her feet through the square of the courtyard that Esther is responsible for sweeping each morning, thus smudging the pattern that the stick brooms leave in the dirt.) And unfortunately, these outbursts typically occur against other female students. And in an environment that is generally misogynistic, it seems counterproductive to be throwing slaps at your peers and allies.

I have been surprised at the amount of times this semester that I have felt like Tina Fey’s character near the end of Mean Girls, when all the female students are gathered in the school gym. 

This girl-on-girl hate has got to stop.