Well this would certainly be a surprise. At several Belgian schools, Duval Guillaume pranked the girls into thinking they would be doing something special for the day while the boys headed to class. Well after thinking they’d be doing something fun, the girls were informed they’d be peeling potatoes, washing floors and cleaning toilets. Of course, they hated it.
When asked why they were being made to do these tasks, they were told, “Because you are girls.” And when the boys wondered where the girls were, they were told, “The girls do girl things and the boys do boy things.”
In the end, the girls are informed by (insert name of famous person we don’t know but are working towards identifying) that 75 million girls who don’t have access to education have to to this sort of work every day…just because they are girls.
The message comes from Plan Belgium, an organization that aims to eliminate exploitation of girls and to get them the education they need to insure they don’t end up cleaning toilets for the rest of their lives.
Which, of course, begs the question…who will clean the toilets? It’s not like toilets are going to suddenly become perpetually antiseptic on their own. Someone’s going to have to clean them. Admirable as this effort may be, isn’t it just a continuous shifting of duties from one class of people to another?
Yes, education is very important. But that doesn’t mean you’re going to skate through life without ever getting your hands dirty nor should you look down upon certain mandatory tasks that go along with living. Shit needs to be cleaned once in a while. And there should be no shame when it comes to cleaning a toilet or mopping a floor or peeling a potato.
