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Every female student’s hand went up when I asked who had ever been catcalled, holla’d at, or been the focal point of unwanted verbal or physical sexual advance, harassment, pressure, or abuse.
Every hand.
Some students admitted they had been the receiver of this kind of blatant verbal abuse since ages as young as six years old.
Six. Years. Old.
Every hand. These students have told me stories—in front of male students who were willing to listen and learn (and many male students agree on seeing and hearing the same)—of the pressure they feel to be sexual objects or to physically please their boyfriends or girlfriends when they don’t want to, along with the strange dress code rules that seem to say to them, you’re the reason Johnny and Bobby are horny and misbehaving.
And the overwhelming reports, not just from my students, of the sexual abuse that takes place, it seems, to almost all girls and young women from men they trust or men they have no choice in trusting—the uncle, stepfather, the older brother’s friend.
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It’s the same story over and over, and men don’t see it. Boys don’t see it. I didn’t see it until I was out of high school, and because boys and men don’t experience it to the extent that females do, many of them can’t see it and therefore deny that it’s a reality, or that it’s a reality on par with physical abuse.
Or, like the sexual abuser, they assume that women like it and want it, and that their purpose is for sexual pleasure, even though they may be too young to know what’s really going on.
For a young woman to not only know what’s going on when she’s abused, leered at, catcalled, or advanced upon, but for her to have complete knowledge of what the abuser wants is psychological torture, trauma, and a demand that young women should never have to deal with.
Physical abuse doesn’t demand that you perform or make the abuser feel good—physical abuse demands you feel guilt or shame and get beaten, although there are variations of abusers and torment.
These experiences and surveys aren’t from just one class, however, but a recurring scene and conversation in my classroom over the years as we’ve discussed current events, Shakespeare and literature, rhetoric, debate topics, and the usual potpourri of themes that come up while working on ideas for critical writing.
As an English teacher, I always aim to foster a safe and friendly environment where my students can engage the text, conversation, and each other without threat of alienation or abuse; our class conversation often tends to focus on “Text to Self” and “Text to World” discussions, and whether we’re discussing Hester Prynne, Montana Wildhack, Lenita Crowne, or Penelope, Calypso, and Circe, the subjects of sexual assault, gender bias, and society’s expectation are not far.
My male students—much like I was in high school and college—are unaware of the abuse that women have to endure.
It’s a whole “Woman vs. Society” theme that our male-dominated authors didn’t give a ton of attention to over the past few thousand years of literature.
But every hand?
Every time?
It’s time we slowed our conversation, listened more intently than ever before, and talked about this so we can put a stop to sexism, abuse, torture, and trauma in our lifetime.
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The post What Men Can Learn from High School Kids About Sexism (the Answers are Beyond Shocking and All Too Real) appeared first on The Good Men Project.