Gender Roles (Sean, Mallory)

[Jeff McIntosh]

Jeff was displeased to be here, to say the least. He didn't understand why he even had to take Home Ec in the first place, let alone why he ought to take it seriously as a subject. It wasn't as if he would ever need to know how to cook or sew, even living alone. 

After all, it was possible to pay other people to do those tasks now. 

He was well aware that Miss Reynolds thought he had a poor attitude, and felt he should pay attention in class. But of course she would value cooking and sewing, because she was a woman and women valued those sorts of skills. 

And that was fine. Women had their own distinct interests and skills, but he didn't see why they ought to force him into trying to learn them. It wasn't as if he was going to be any good at it even if he did try, because he was a boy. 

The fact that there were other boys in the same class as him who actually managed to do the work well was lost on him, because he was able to shove them into a box called anomalies. 

Then there was the fact that he had already been in detention with Doctor Neville recently already. He didn't really want to end up there again, but, well....

He didn't understand why he was forced into this position in the first place. 

And so he slouched his way into Doctor Neville's office, scowling and trying unsuccessfully to make himself so small as to be invisible. 

[Mallory Reynolds]

Mallory normally prided herself on being a good teacher. She tried to make lessons fun, and as much as she could tried to tailor some of the lessons to appeal to the boys in the class as well as the girls. Nine times out of ten she saw success, but that one... well, there was always one.

This semester, Jefferson McIntosh was that one. And he was... trying at the best of times. It wasn't often that she started to lose patience with her students, and when she did it was usually for goofing off to the point that the situation could become dangerous. But that wasn't the problem with Jeff. Truthfully, she'd never encountered this issue before.

He wouldn't do the work. Any of it. And after talking to him and getting nowhere, she'd been forced to take it one step further. After speaking with Sean herself, she had agreed to a mediation session, praying something would come out of it. If it didn't, she didn't know what to do next.

She had arrived at Sean's office earlier, a notebook and pen in hand so she could take notes if she needed to. When Jeff arrived she lifted her head and managed a smile for him. Even if he couldn't muster a good attitude for the meeting, she would try. "Good afternoon, Jeff."

Please, please let the meeting go well.

[Dr. Sean Neville]

Mallory had come to Sean in the past to complain about one of her students who refused to respect her authority as a teacher and who refused to do any of his assigned work, neither in class or as homework. The psychiatrist had listened attentively, before suggesting that they try a mediation meeting between the two of them. While he had no qualms dragging a student into his office to lecture them about the importance of schoolwork, given that the problem involved a lack of respect for Mallory’s position, he thought that a lecture without her presence might further undermine that.

He didn’t want to do that to her.

She had agreed to the joint meeting, which brought her to his office, along with...Jeff McIntosh.

Jeff reminded Sean of his brother-in-law, which was not the most flattering comparison one could make, although he kept the thought to himself. It wasn’t that Jeff was a bad person or that he acted with particular malice. It was that everything he said and thought was so out of touch - and often so patently offensive in the way that the nostalgia for the 1950s offended anyone outside of a slim demographic – that the psychiatrist had to resist to roll his eyes at everything that fell out of the boy’s mouth or bounced around his thoughts.

“Please sit down, Jeff,” Sean instructed the boy when he arrived, gesturing at the empty chair that he and Mallory had left for the student.

[Jeff McIntosh]

Jeff flung himself resentfully into the chair, mumbling a barely audible, "Good morning," at the two adults. He felt unfairly targeted by this meeting. After all, Dr. Neville and Ms. Reynolds had chosen to waste their time with an unnecessary meeting. He was an innocent bystander in this situation! Totally innocent! 

Granted, some part of him was well aware that his parents would have been displeased at this attitude. After all, you were supposed to be polite to your elders, especially to women. 

The specter of his mother loomed in his mind, and he mustered up a slightly louder, "Good morning, Ms. Reynolds." 

And then, realizing that there were two adults he added, "And Dr. Neville." 

There. He had been polite, albeit in an obviously begrudging manner that completely undermined his attempt. 

[Mallory Reynolds]

Oh, Jeff. Mallory tried not to wince as he threw himself into the empty chair. She had a bad feeling about this. If this was how he was going to behave at the start, she didn't have high hopes for the rest of the meeting.

Even if he did try. Sort of. The look on his face said that he didn't exactly mean it.

It had been a while since she had attended a mediation session, and for now she was fine with Sean leading the way. They needed to solve this somehow, and he was the best equipped to do it.

[Dr. Sean Neville]

Neither Jeff nor Mallory had reason to know, but the expression on Sean’s face closely approximated his expression whenever patiently sitting through a meal with his extended family, back when he had still received invitations to holidays or other family gatherings. The boy’s displeasure was duly noted, although ultimately irrelevant unless Jeff chose to dig himself in deep enough to earn detention rather than a conversation about applying himself to a mandatory close.

The psychiatrist turned towards Mallory briefly, offering her an apologetic smile, before he settled his full attention on Jeff again.

“Good morning, Jeff.”

The boy shouldn’t try to enter a manners battle with a Neville, because he was destined to lose.

He was destined to lose because, despite the fact that they had been born forty years apart and raised in two different parts of the country, he and Jeff had similar upbringings in some respects. Except that the boy had the benefit of the greater sociopolitical strides that had been made in the decades before his birth, while Sean had experienced them firsthand. Jeff had to do better, because he could do better.

“Since all three of us know why we’re here, and I’m the only one not directly involved, I will start us off.” He said that more for the boy’s benefit than for Mallory’s, since she knew what to expect. With that, he clasped his hands in front of him and told Jeff, “I’d like to hear you explain why you’ve chosen not to do your schoolwork, but you can’t use the words ‘woman,’ ‘man,’ ‘role,’ or ‘differences.’”

[Jeff McIntosh]

Jeff was horrified by Sean's conditions. How could he have a straightforward conversation without acknowledging the obvious innate differences between the sexes? 

"That's not fair!" He whined, slouching further into his seat. "Just because it isn't politically correct to talk about how people are different or whatever." 

Political correctness was a bogeyman he had heard about frequently at home. Not so much from his mother, but absolutely from his father, and from the parents of some of his friends. He heard much less about political correctness at Hammel, perhaps because the faculty seemed utterly determined to uphold these strange, delusional ideals. 

He didn't understand this in the least. 

Nor for that matter did it occur to him that his relatively quick acceptance of Joelle as Joelle had anything to do with the education he had received at Hammel. 

[Mallory Reynolds]

Oh boy. Just like that, Jeff had proved exactly why he was there in the first place. Mallory restrained herself from openly sighing, and instead ensured that a fairly neutral expression appeared on her face. Jeff had already told her before that he didn't want to do the work because it was for girls.

Hopefully, Sean could help adjust his attitude.

Giving the psychiatrist what she hoped was an encouraging smile, she crossed her legs and rested her notebook on her knee. She tried to retain a sense of patience with her students, but she also knew that Sean was the reigning champion of patience when it came to the student population. If anyone could bring Jeff around, hopefully, it was him.

[Dr. Sean Neville]

Only in the most parallel of universes could one describe Sean’s expression as amused. Instead, he kept his attention on Jeff, not reacting to the boy’s theatrics. To think that some of Sean’s teachers had found him frustrating owing entirely to his powers, when he had, quite literally, been a choir boy? They had no conception, and the thought was almost laughable.

Almost. Right now, there was nothing to laugh about.

“If you want to discuss political correctness, we can, since I’m sure your powers make you familiar with the vitriol people who are different cope with on a regular basis.” Jeff’s power was similar to Sean’s, insofar as they heard voices, and sometimes what Jeff overheard were private conversations, much the way that the psychiatrist’s power made him privy to people’s private thoughts.

However, they could focus on that another time.

For the moment, he chose to draw a distinction by using himself as an example.

“I’m a man.” That was indisputable. Sean was a cisgendered man who had never doubted his gender for even a fraction of a second. With the exception of facial hair, he hit all of the standard metrics of manliness, at least physically: he was tall, he was broad-shouldered, he had large hands and feet, he had short hair, he wore a suit and tie every day, and he spoke with a rich, deep baritone.

“I also cook, I bake, I do my own laundry, I clean my own house. I can sew, I can knit, and I know how to take care of young children.”

All of which came up as topics in Home Economics. Not to mention the economics portions, which included learning to keep a household budget.

[Jeff McIntosh]

Jeff scrunched up his face in distaste as Dr. Neville mentioned his power. He had certainly heard more of people's private conversations than he wished, which included gossip and rumors and mean-spirited remarks behind other people's backs. He didn't enjoy his power at all, and he resented that Dr. Neville seemed to think his power should make him some sort of feminist or something. 

He also resented the implication that just because Dr. Neville knew how to do women's work meant that he should want to do the same. He wished he could disappear rather than continue this humiliating attempt at meddling by his teacher and the school disciplinarian. 

"Yeah, sure, but don't you kind of have to? You're married to a guy." 

At least, Dr. Neville brought another man with him when chaperoning school events, ergo they must be married. And if he was married to another man, that meant there were no women to do those things for him, and so he would of course be forced to learn if he didn't want to hire someone else. 

He did not especially care that Dr. Neville was married to a man; he knew his trainer was, too, and he was in awe of Mr. Cunningham. But being married to a man meant occasionally having to do the work women were more naturally suited to.

[Mallory Reynolds]

Perhaps this had been a bad idea. Jeff's expression spelled that clearly enough for her. At least Sean was his usual unflappable self. That helped just a little, if nothing else.

She didn't think that it was such a terrible thing for boys to learn life skills like cooking, at the very least. As much as her brothers had whined and complained, they now had some real skills to survive without resorting to pestering their mother for food, or living on take out. Half the time they were even proud of what they came up with. ... When they weren't having lobster wars in the kitchen with each other. The perks of living on the coast, and her brothers working at fishing and catching lobsters.

If only she had them closer. Maybe they could help turn her students attitudes around.

"Jeff," she said softly, hopefully reminding him that that wasn't exactly an appropriate thing to say. "That isn't the point of today." And certainly not why Sean was sharing those skills with him.

She really, really wished today would help.

[Dr. Sean Neville]

In this moment, Sean realized that sharing his opinions about marriage might be enough to short-circuit the teenager’s mind. Perhaps he would go that route later, not as punishment or schadenfreude, but because Jeff would benefit from learning that not everyone fit neatly into the stereotypical 1950s nuclear family. In one sense, this went hand-in-hand with the topic of today’s mediation.

At the same time, he didn’t want to digress too far from the underlying goal of Jeff completing his coursework and paying proper respect to Mallory as his teacher.

“My spouse’s gender has no bearing on my ability to take care of myself and run my household. I’d do the same if I had a wife.” The skills were at issue here, not gender. “I know all of this for the same reason I know how to drive, change a tire, mow the lawn, and reset the fuse box. These are all necessary adult skills.” They were also coded masculine according to Jeff’s worldview.

In fact, the psychiatrist no longer mowed the lawn, raked leaves, or plowed his driveway, although all of that came from age and associated health risks. He could pay the neighbor children a fair wage for them to tend to those tasks for him, and, as a result, he didn’t risk a heart attack in the middle of his lawn.

If he ever had to suffer a heart attack, it wouldn’t come from plowing the driveway after a snow storm.

He turned towards Mallory at her admonition, nodding in agreement, and silently communicating his appreciation for her input.

Then he returned his attention to Jeff. “Women aren’t here to keep house for men. And I’m going to give you a different perspective: the economy isn’t great right now, which will make it difficult to pay for housekeeping services. With that in mind, it’s in your best interest to learn how to do that yourself.”

[Jeff McIntosh]

"But whyyyyyyyyyyyy?" Jeff whined, slouching so far down in his seat that he nearly fell off the edge. This was completely unfair! What had he done to deserve being forced to learn boring, useless skills like cooking and sewing buttons back onto jackets? "I'm not gonna be able to do it anyway." 

This insistence despite the fact that he had just acknowledged that Sean knew how to do all of these tasks. Consistency was perhaps not his greatest virtue. 

"I can just order pizza or whatever." 

Even if the economy was bad for some people, which he knew in an abstract sense was true. But it hadn't impacted his family at all, and thus he hadn't quite realized the extent to which the economy was bad and his job prospects were hosed. That he might not be qualified for any job outside of athletics had definitely crossed his mind, but that even with qualifications and a degree he might be unable to find employment? That hadn't occurred to him for a moment. 

[Mallory Reynolds]

Oh, Sean. How Mallory admired his patience and ability to keep cool no matter how problematic the student was in front of him. Mallory tried hard to be patient, but hers seemed to reach a limit every so often. Especially when students were being cruel to one another in the halls, or being dangerous with the stoves. But she didn't think she'd ever even seen Sean raise his voice with a student.

How he described exactly what women's roles were not, she had to hide a small smile. Her brothers had had the same attitude when they were younger, but they had quickly learned that it wasn't going to be an option. Even when living at home they had been expected to do things like laundry as they'd gotten older, and learning to help with dinners. Eventually both of them had fallen in with fact that it was what was expected of them. They'd also had their father to watch, who had often pitched in with cooking and housework.

But Jeff... she had no idea how to get through to him. Which was why they were here.

"You can't live on pizza, Jeff, no matter how much you might want to. If you're willing to learn, I can teach you so much more than that." Often boys were willing to learn on the premise it would help them out in the dating department. But Jeff, she didn't see that with.

[Dr. Sean Neville]

In Sean’s worst moments as a teenager, when he had been convinced – truly convinced – that he would never learn to control his powers or to construct mental shields sufficient to allow him to cope with life outside of Hammel such that he could never graduate, he still hadn’t whined as much as Jeff had done in this mediation meeting so far. In a mediation meeting about why he had to do his coursework and listen to his teacher, just because she happened to be a woman teaching Home Economics.

The psychiatrist new that if the long retired Head Mistress, and his former English teacher, Eliza Harding had been here, she would have made a remark about smacking the boy. Sean didn’t believe in any form of corporal punishment, but many people had less patience than he did.

“What did I just say about how I can cook, sew, and knit?” The psychiatrist’s voice remained patient and even during his question, in sharp contrast to the boy’s whininess and how so many people would allow sarcasm to creep into their tone.

He then nodded in agreement with Mallory’s point. “Miss Reynolds is right. You can’t live on pizza. You don’t know where you’ll live when you graduate or what will be available to you, and, as I said, the economy isn’t going well. You don’t know what resources you’ll have at your disposal. If you take this seriously, at least you’ll have necessary life skills.”

Skills trumped takeout, and he said that as a man who liked to order takeout.