【Author: Dr. Mai Di Nuo, President of Asian Transgender Health Professional Association】
Since the birth of my mother’s womb, the author has never thought about questioning the school’s rule that only boys are allowed to have short hair, because I never planned to think about the rationality of the school rules, so recently I saw a small group of boys in the news began to reflect on this issue. At the time, I really admire their courage to put forward.
There has been a lot of discussion about gender identity, so here’s a brief explanation of what gender stereotypes are. Gender stereotypes are socially established impressions of people of different genders. Once these boundaries are violated, people who do not conform to gender stereotypes will be considered “weird” or “abnormal”, or even discriminated against. For example, boys are not allowed to wear school skirts, long hair is not allowed, boys must be very good at reading, and girls must be particularly good at home economics. In fact, these phenomena are not inevitable, just because under the conventions, all stereotyped male and female roles have become natural.
However, most men or women in Hong Kong still hold many traditional gender concepts about themselves. Simple as clothes and hairstyles, complex as “a man doesn’t cry easily”. Society has always taught men to be strong and independent, and they are not allowed to be vulnerable, but men have the right to be unhappy! Girlfriends and wives have often lost their temper, and they are under pressure to go back to school, even depriving them of the right to be unhappy.
School regulations should keep pace with the times, and the school should think about the rationality behind it
Back to the topic of “Can boys have long hair?” Today, the focus will be extended from the form of society. First of all, I want everyone to think about a question, that is, what impact will having long hair have on the school? I believe other students will not suddenly want to study hard when they see boys with long hair?
However, there must be many schools claiming that it is because of the school ethos and that it is the “broken window effect”, that is, one “gap” can easily lead to other “gap”. Schools often have a wrong idea: they feel that the school rules have been opened up, and all the boys in the school have long hair. This is completely ignoring the autonomy of students, thinking that students will not have the ability to think independently. Take the author as an example, and there is no Ekin Cheng. I have a similar appearance, my brother Leslie Cheung is charming, and Liang Guoxiong with long hair is unruly, so even if the school rules allow me, I will never have long hair. Boys with long hair in the 21st century are no longer bad students, so there is no gap at all. Just like “tattoos are not necessarily bad people”.
Things around Hong Kong are changing so fast, but people’s thoughts remain the same.
Schools should open discussion spaces and respect students’ autonomy
Most importantly, schools should rethink the top-down system. Now the workplace is undergoing reform, and employees’ WellBeing is the company’s core competitiveness. What’s more, in schools, students’ Wellbeing is the most basic of students’ learning performance. Recently, I heard the sharing of a teacher in one school, and other schools can learn from it. The teacher told me that every time a new course is launched in the new school year, the teacher needs to “sell” the course designed by himself on the stage. Students will only enroll if the course is interesting and practical. I think this relationship is very good, and students can choose their own Favorite courses will greatly improve the motivation for learning, and teachers also need to “enroll students”, so they will pay more attention when designing courses, taking students as the starting point of course design.
The conclusion is that the key point of whether boys can have long hair is not “can or not”, but whether the school has understood the needs of students, and whether there is a discussion space open to discuss the possibility of “long hair” and “short hair”.