The Rape of an 11-Year-Old Girl Highlights an Important Wider Issue

Tags

Children, sexual assault, sexual harassment, sexual objectification, young people

The Rape of an 11-Year-Old Girl Highlights an Important Wider Issue

A man appeared in court last week charged with the rape of an 11-year-old girl on her way home from school. The news has caused widespread shock and consternation, but stories submitted to the Everyday Sexism Project website this year suggest that the sexual harassment of young girls in school uniform is far less rare a phenomenon than we might like to think.

The huge number of entries we have received detailing the sexual objectification and harassment of schoolgirls comes from parents, from bystanders and from victims themselves. One girl told us:

“I was 13 when I experienced sexual harassment for the first time… I was stopped by a group of men (at least 17 or more years old) in a black pick-up truck. They were telling me that they liked school girls and that I probably “have a tight pussy.” I didn’t understand what they were talking about. I was 13… I barely had started growing pubic hair when this happened.”

When the girl objected, she says one of the men shouted “you’re feisty, I like that” before speeding off. She continues:

“For years I have been keeping the secret of all the attacks fellow school mates an [sic] strange young men have shown towards me. I very much considered myself a child at the time of these events.”

Too often the reports we receive suggest that girls are too scared to speak up or shamed into feeling that what has happened was their own fault. Because this frequently silences victims, many people are unaware of how severe the problem is. A man wrote to us, shocked, after witnessing a similar event:

“The other day when I was sitting outside of my work two middle school girls walked out after getting ice cream on their way home from school… a jeep drove by and a man yelled “sluts” at them. It was a very upsetting thing to witness. I dont [sic] want to live in a world where men think its okay to treat any women, much less two girls who couldn’t have been more than 14, like that. Something is very wrong.”

Many of the stories we have received also suggest a worrying normalisation of sexual harassment within schools by students themselves, with one woman telling us:

“At my child’s primary school is a playground corner difficult to see by supervisors – kids call it The Rape Corner”.

Another woman described her own experiences of sexual assault in a school setting, and explained the normalisation that left her feeling unable to report them:

“Between the ages of about 12 and 14 I and many other girls were regularly pestered and groped by boys in the halls. I remember one boy in particular would run after a friend of mine and kind of tackle her grabbing her boobs. Thinking back it’s really odd none of us felt we should/could tell teachers about this… It happened a lot… It felt like it was just something that happened when you got older. But it shouldn’t be.”

Another told us:

“In the first year of high school I was walking home with a friend and a group of boys (three or four I think) from my year pushed me against a wall trying and managing to put their hands up my skirt. My friend just watched and laughed”.

One student even said:

“When I was 15 I was reading aloud in English. I asked what page to start from and was told Page 3, and the male laddish teacher added ‘you should be on Page 3’. I was a geeky kid and already ashamed of my body. All the class laughed I never forgot it.”

A theatre in education facilitator working on projects with young girls in schools told us about 13-year-old girls “telling me they get beeped at and catcalled on [the] way home from school” and a girl of the same age who was sent a text message from a boy at school “threatening to rape her”.

It is deeply saddening that young girls are receiving the message, both as they walk to and from school and from within their own peer groups, that their bodies are fair game for catcalls and groping, and that sexual assault is something to be laughed at, played down and made into a joke. At the same time their male peers are also affected, as they form their ideas about what constitutes ‘normal’ treatment of the opposite sex. Of course these reports vary in their severity, but it is important to sit up and take notice of what is happening all the time, not just when a serious crime has been committed.

To give some idea of the frequency with which events like this are reported, every one of the accounts mentioned in this article was received in the past week alone, without any special request for particular submissions on this theme.

Lesson one: We’re students, not slags

Tags

culture, sexual assault, sexual harassment, sexual objectification

Lesson one: We’re students, not slags

“Rappers and Slappers”, “Slag and Drag”, and “CEOs and Corporate Hoes”. They may sound like adult films, but these are the names of some of the university-affiliated freshers’ week parties that undergraduates have been invited to attend on campuses and nightclubs across Britain.

When I chronicled the highly-sexualised freshers’ week experiences that female students have reported to the Everyday Sexism Project in an article for Independent Voices last week, I expected a trickle of responses.

But I received a deluge of similar stories from hundreds of students – male and female – who are appalled by the macho culture that seems to set the tone of social life at UK universities.

Parties at which female students are pressured to dress in revealing or sexualised outfits appear increasingly common. To pick just one example, a woman described a freshers’ week initiation for male rugby players: “All the rugby freshers had their trousers around their ankles and were standing in their boxers. They were encouraged to pick one of us to “grind” with them (gyrate against them). One guy grabbed me and pulled me on to the dance floor and then told me I had to grind on him or else he’d have to do a forfeit. When I refused he told me I was frigid and grabbed a different fresher.”

Another reader, Sorrel Kinton said: “I attended one of these events and was turned away at the door for wearing normal clothing … I was told I could come in if I flashed.”

The idea that students must choose to participate or risk being labelled “uptight” is a recurring theme. Nesrin Samli, who graduated from Liverpool University this summer, told The Independent, “it’s very different for people who feel more shy or uncomfortable, because you don’t have a choice – there were strict initiations and you had to do what everyone else did or you were just missed out.”

Of course, students can choose to avoid such events altogether, and many universities offer a wider range of activities, from chill-out nights to afternoon teas. But there remains a strong sense of pressure to participate in the main events, as students experience the nerve-wracking process of finding their feet for the first time away from home. Samli says: “Even if you don’t want to dress like that, it’s a matter of whether you want to be part of the group and have friends.”

Emma Carragher, vice president of the Cardiff University Women’s Association, agrees: “There’s a danger that new students feel pressured into taking part because ‘everyone else is doing it’ – if they want to take a stand against objectification they’ll be seen as weird which is obviously not the first impression they want to make.

“More than that, these events … send the message to freshers that this is normal … The first year of university is where your political and ideological views are challenged and reformed, so universities should be striving to promote the idea that women are not objects rather than encouraging it.”

A 2010 National Union of Students study revealed that 1 in 7 of the female students surveyed had been the victim of sexual assault or violence.

Yet several of the reports we have received reference “rape-victim themed” fancy dress parties and “banter” about sexual assault. One woman said that when she was at university two years ago, 15 members of a male-only drinking society were suspended when a “hit list” they had compiled of female students as sexual targets became public. Another wrote: “I the only girl in politics tutorial on feminism. No real discussion. Just jokes on women and kitchen. Including from the tutor.” Another student showed us a copy of a poster she said was used to advertise unisex football trials at her university. The top half consisted entirely of a picture of a woman’s breasts in a bra. Beneath, the text began: “Now I have your attention lads…”

Many would dismiss some of these incidents as harmless, or claim that themed events like “Pimps and Hoes” have little real impact on student welfare. But these reports suggest a disturbing culture of female students facing sexual objectification and demeaning labels, and the use of such names for official university and student union events sends a powerful message by implying the institutions’ acceptance or approval of this culture.

The idea of complicity is of great importance here. From the number of reports we have recently seen emerging in the national press on the theme of sexual harassment in the workplace over the past 30 years – most notably the Jimmy Savile scandal – it has become clear how easily victims can feel oppressed by a culture of normalised acceptance within a large institution. Likewise, young students at a vulnerable life stage might be affected by the suggestion that certain attitudes towards women are condoned by their educational institutions. It should be the responsibility of all universities to behave proactively to eradicate any implication that they might support the sort of damaging, victim-blaming ideas associated with labels such as “slag”, “hoe” and “slapper”.

Also: Cambridge University Graduate Blogs On Horrifying Misogyny In Catalogue Of A Barmaid