Beyond Selidor

There are certain things that I simply do not post on Facebook, even though posting them on Dreamwidth/LJ is essentially preaching to the choir. It's because I know that even though the majority of my Facebook friends will either react positively or benignly ignore anything I say about rape culture, there'll always be someone who attempts to take me to task, makes stupid victim-blaming 'you wouldn't walk around with money dangling out of your pockets or leave your house door unlocked' analogies or accuses me of thinking badly of all men. I just don't have the energy to engage with that sort of stuff, but I always have a lot of feelings about this particular issue and need to talk about them somewhere. So, lucky you. You get to read them.


When I was in preschool, it was 1989. Although I have a lot of positive memories, two things that were less great also stand out. The first is that although my favourite thing in the world to do at that age was climb things, especially trees, tree-houses and elaborate playground equipment, I was barred from doing so in the rather magnificent three-storey tree-house at my preschool. You see, it was a 'boys only' zone, and was fiercely guarded by my male classmates. They would never let a single girl inside. The teachers knew about this, but had rather old-fashioned attitudes towards gender, never pressed the issue, and, for all I know, probably would've just said, 'Oh well, boys will be boys' if confronted. They certainly never told the boys to let us in the tree-house. I can remember visiting my preschool on the weekend (it was down the road from my house and we would sometimes walk there) and climbing over the empty tree-house to my heart's content.

The other thing I loved doing at that age was dressing up. As I was barred from the tree-house, I spent most of my time dressing up in elaborate costumes, and pretending to feed a toy cat while hanging out in the preschool's playhouse with a friend. (I was even featured doing so on a TV news piece about childcare.) And even this activity wasn't safe - I have memories of some of the boys in my preschool hanging around the playhouse and disrupting our games.

When I was in primary school, one of the boys who lived two doors down took to physically bullying me on the playground. Whenever I complained, I was told (by both my parents and teachers) not to react, 'because he's only doing it to make you upset'. As far as I can tell, no one told this boy to stop bullying me. (He also used to wander into our garden with his dog - which I was afraid of, and which he knew - and just sort of menace me with it. This usually resulted in me being trapped up a tree or on our trampoline, because I was too afraid to be on the ground with the dog. As soon as my mother would come outside, he would go away.)

When I was in primary school, the uniform for girls consisted of either a short tunic, or a short netball skirt. A lot of us loved climbing on the playground equipment, which had platforms with little holes in them. Some of the boys had a tendency to stand under the equipment and look up our skirts. Pretty early on, we all took to wearing bike shorts in order to prevent them seeing our underwear. As far as I know, no one said anything to them about this. Although I'm not sure if any girl ever complained, I'm sure that at least someone must have done so.

When I was in primary school, there were a couple of boys in my year who were extremely rowdy and disruptive in class. I now know that they had really awful home lives and feel a lot of sympathy for them. But the fact remains that my teachers didn't know how to deal with them, and every so often would rearrange the seating plan of our classes, putting those boys next to the quiet, well-behaved girls (myself included) in order to try to make them less disruptive. I was afraid of them.

When I was in primary school, one of the boys in my year used to chase the girls around and try to kiss us. We didn't like this, and complained to our teacher. Her advice? 'If you don't run, he won't be able to chase you.'

And yes, I was bullied by girls too, in horrible physical and psychological ways, and I had lovely friends who were boys who were awesome, kind people. But I remember these other events too, and, more importantly, I remember how those in authority reacted and responded to them.

All this serves as a preamble to Soraya Chemaly's rather excellent article, 'The Problem with "Boys Will Be Boys"'. Read it.

Bullying is not exclusive to one gender, and in my experience, whether it's a girl or a boy bullying a girl or a boy, the powers that be are pretty useless in combating it (I did gymnastics for ten years. The mind games and politics that went on in that group of girls would make your hair stand on end, and it's a miracle that most of us are still friends to this day). But I really do feel there is something specific in the bullying of girls by boys when they are young children that serves as a building block for some truly ugly stuff that goes on in adolescence and adulthood. And I truly believe that the responses of those in authority to boys who bully girls can have serious implications for how those boys go on to treat women and girls when they're older.

It may be an extreme leap, but consider this old post by Fugitivus (very strong warning for discussion of rape and rape culture). I first read that post about four years ago, and certain things I'd been struggling to understand clicked into place.

I'd like to think that things have changed since the late '80s and early '90s, that teachers and coaches and parents and other authority figures confront instances of bullying, but I don't hold much hope. I've seen and experienced sexual harassment and gender-based bullying at all levels of education, in many workplaces, in nightclubs and bars, in the street, on public transport and online. I write this not to try and change people's minds (because if they can't see it, they won't), but because this situation makes me sick in the soul, because I have younger sisters and cousins and nieces, and because all the words that were taken away from me as a child, a teenager and an adult are finally coming back.