Source refinery29
Having to write a letter to your child's school usually indicates that there's a serious issue to address — and in Stephen Callaghan's case, the incident in question was that his daughter seemed to have stepped out of a time machine when she came home from school one day.
On Wednesday, Callaghan posted a photo of a letter he sent to his daughter's school on Twitter, in which he brings up a pretty serious issue: "When Ruby left for school yesterday it was 2017 but when she returned home in the afternoon she was from 1968."
"I know this to be the case as Ruby informed me that the 'girls' in Year 6 would be attending the school library to get their hair and make-up done on Monday afternoon while the 'boys' are going to Bunnings," the letter continued.
(Bunnings, by the way, is a hardware store company in Australia, where Callaghan is based.)
Callaghan is right to be concerned — after all, only a rip in the space-time continuum, as he puts it, would cause a school in 2017 to promote strict gender stereotypes and sexism.
"I look forward to this being rectified and my daughter and other girls at the school being returned to this millennium where school activities are not divided sharply along gender lines," Callaghan concluded his letter.
After the letter began making the rounds on Twitter, Callaghan responded to the praise people sent, writing, "Ruby and I would like to thank you for the great comments of support. At 12 years of age my daughter is starting to notice there are plenty of people prepared to tell her what she can & can't do based solely on the fact she is female. She would like this to change. So would I."
Calling out sexism where you can see is the bare minimum of what we all should be doing, but this dad deserves a lot of props for the seriously creative way he went about doing so.
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