[MissMisa]

Originally Posted by Tsuwabuki

Ah. I was unsure of your intent, and I didn't want to assume it. I can't state I represent every American, but I know why I express apologies as I do, and why I expect them to be expressed to me the same way. If how I apologise is typical of how Americans apologise, than the logic I have explained might be typical as well.

Stating reasons of how the mistake was made is not the same as shifting blame. There is no logical progression in the argument that it is. Words matter. That "fancy language" shows not just the sincerity of the apology and an understanding of the mistake that was made, but also gives the person you're apologising to a plan of action for correcting that mistake.

Anyone can say "Sorry, I won't do it again" but it takes someone who has really considered the ramifications of their actions and has a commitment to preventing it in the future to share to decide on a course of prevention.

And I would feel that I had just been verbally spat on for a sincere apology.

Far from ending the event, as has been suggested, this would engender quite a lot of resentment. If done in public, in a classroom, as you suggest, it would be a clear case of "two wrongs don't make a right" and I would report the professor to the dean. It's fine to refuse an apology in private, but to humiliate a student in public with no clear evidence of intent of equivocation is going too far.

I care. And as stated, I would not consider the explanation either long winded or pointless. I would also expect it from others. I'm just going to ask anyway if you leave it off.

Well I just suppose our perception of these things are totally different, and that's that. If they didn't want to be humiliated, they shouldn't have a) been late, and b) made up excuses about being late. Our definition of excuses and shifting blame are different, and that's just how it is.

Well, schools in England and the United States are dealing with quite a few issues about it. I don't care if it's odd or not, I only care how seriously we take our supposedly egalitarian values. I find the idea that any article of clothing should be allowed for one sex and not the other based solely on what they have in their pants "backwards and old fashioned." I am certainly not interested in forcing girls to wear skirts. I am only against boys not having it as an option. You're English, but the Irish and the Scots might have a thing or two to say about the manliness of a good kilt. There is no rational reason why a dress code, especially in a publicly funded school, should deny clothing to one person over another based on anatomy.

Meh, I'll be honest, I really couldn't care less if a guy wore a skirt or not. I've never encountered a guy that wanted to wear a skirt, so frankly I haven't thought about it.

If you are on about transgendered people who consider themselves female, well, they are female in my eyes and are more than welcome to wear a skirt. And to be honest, if a male wore a skirt in the school I was at (I'm at University now, there is no uniform) just because 'he wanted to,' nobody would care, because the rules on stuff like that are lax anyway.

It's my belief, although there are far smarter people than me who have written on the topic, that your uncomfortableness around males while an adolescent stems from cultural baggage.

Completely untrue. These stem from personal issues I don't want to discuss on this forum. I wasn't 'uncomfortable around males,' as mentioned, all my of my closest friends were/are males.

As for school, we were put boy/girl at the start of the year if the teacher didn't know us. If they knew groups that chatted anyway, they'd break us up regardless of gender. But like I said, I thought the whole thing was pretty stupid. Another thing they did, without really saying so, was put high achievers next to ones who struggled. I sat next to some people who struggled and was able to help them out, but other times I was sat next to some really lazy people who COULD NOT be arsed and it was just dragging me down. SO ANNOYING.

Personally, I think the big deal with equality is things like the pay gap between women and men in England. I don't really think seperating people in PE because everyone is developing and hormonal is that big a deal. To be honest, I'd already gone through all of that WAY before high school.

I'm a big feminist, but we have to accept and embrace that the sexes are different, and each have positive things about them. Of course, in many many aspects, we are all the same. I don't see anything wrong in being different, as long as we aren't forced to make life decisions based solely on it.