Women as soft touches

I have said it before and I will say it again: the system of school discipline that is non-authoritarian (that is, unaided by bureaucratic enforcement processes) is a most pernicious anti-woman system in its practical effects.

If female teachers are compelled to get their authoritativeness from nothing other than female "nature" -- indeed, from the students' natures as organic entities -- then they can derive their authority only as a secondary effect, bought at a costly price of emulating motherhood.

For whom does the student NATURALLY respect (rather than from experience) if not their mother? The mother, though, has been through a process of childbirth, dark and dank, in order to produce said offspring. Pregnancy is a biologically enforced pacification process, which prevents running around, behaving vigorously and raucously. Socially, pregnancy is a process which makes one demure and passively subject to other people's control and good will.

Thus, "motherhood" is borne out of certain qualities, qualities which the child cannot fail to internalise. The mother is authoritative so long as she's nurturing. Her authority is, in effect, a nurturing authority, not a commanding authority like that of the child's father, who is more genuinely freed of the emotionally delicate role.

And this is problematic, for the anti-authoritarian approaches to teaching -- which invoke organic "nature" as their greatest ally -- prevent women from having any authority of their own that does not stem from an extremely nurturing predisposition.   This is despite the fact that there are a lot of women who do not wish to become mothers.