amand_r | It doesn't seem right to sandwich this in with Torchwood jokes and Memes

cereta is talking about rape and men over in a post, and I read a bunch of the stories about times in which posters could have been hurt by men and weren't, etc. More importantly, it deals with the whole "cookie" aspect of being surprised when men do things that they should do, like take care of a drunk girl without molesting her, and how we seem to treat that as some sort of special behavior when in fact that should be the lowest common denominator of behavior. Blah, she says it better. It's a good post, and this doesn't fit over there, but I wanted to mention it in my own LJ.

I was a high school teacher, and so I got to see a great deal of things that I found intrinsically disturbing that had nothing to do with teaching. Girls walking about with DANCER or JUICY written on their asses, for one. Also, boys with that huge underwear gap. No one wants to see that, peoples. But that is neither here nor there, because I want to tell you about the most disturbing thing I ever saw (and keep in mind that I saw plenty of fights, and heard about plenty of domestic abuse, though I never saw any of that. I also gave a student detention for complaining that he didn't like the movie 1984 because Julia "didn't trim the bush."): boys who grabbed girls in the crotch from behind.

Look people, we're talking fourteen/fifteen year old boys. I don't care about the fact that these kids are probably having sex. Go at it, have all the fun you want (with condoms! Please!) And I know that bra snapping has been going on for ages, and Jesus, does that alone piss me off, but THE CROTCH IS NEVER TO BE TOUCHED. They'd be sitting there in class, and a girl would walk down the aisle in her tight jeans (because fuck they're painted on), and he'd just lean out and grab in there while she passed him, and slide his hand along it. Sometimes he'd smack the ass.

And every time I saw this (aside from the freak out that I had? Loudly?), the girl's response was to jump, turn, and then either say something protesting that wasn't very protesting or smile in an embarrassed way. AN EMBARRASSED WAY. Or one of those smiles with a hand swat. You know, "quit it!"

I've had this happen to me once in my life, and it was not helpful or any better that it had been done to me by a gay male who was just trying to be funny (in some way it was, I guess, no wait, it wasn't. I was mortified.) I have also been smacked on the ass, and while that wasn't fun most of the time either, it wasn't like the sensation of someone's fingers ghosting over your nether regions through your pants.

I'm pissed enough that some fuckwad bastard thinks that it's permissible to grab another human being in the crotch, but when did we teach our girls that this was something that they should put up with? I'm not blaming the girls, here, so please don't think that I am.

People, if you have girls, tell them what I like to tell my kid: "Honey, if someone tries to kill you, you try to kill them right back." No wait, not that one. Oh yeah. "NO ONE HAS THE RIGHT TO TOUCH YOU ANYWHERE YOU DON'T WANT TO BE TOUCHED." And when someone does touch you, and you don't like it, YOU TELL THEM. You tell them a lot. LOUDLY if you have to. And if it doesn't stop, you find a way to make it stop, whether that's going to an adult, or the police or ~~taking a bat and rochambeauing them~~ or simply removing yourself from the situation. But you don't have to take it. YOU NEVER HAVE TO TAKE IT.

And if you have boys, you better talk to them about touching girls in school before the school calls you. Because believe me, they're learning that it's okay, even if you assume that they would be smarter than that. EVEN IF YOU SAY THAT THIS WOULD NEVER HAPPEN BECAUSE YOUR CHILD IS SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, TALK TO THEM ABOUT BODY RESPECT, because they ain't getting any positive reinforcement from anywhere else.

My god. If anyone ever grabbed my crotch without my express permission (or pre-set safe words!), they would taste my meaty mallet. Which, I have to add, is ironic, since throttling someone, no matter what they have done, is also a violation of another person's body. I know my own issues. And I'm not really a hitter. I just like to imagine it in my head. I'm more of a screamer. And then I pour milk in your car's ventilation system. ::shifty eyes::

I could probably have expressed that differently, and I think about it a lot (the violations that happened to girls in school), because I think it's one of those things where everyone has to be proactive. Girls have to stand up for themselves, and boys have to stop treating girls like their personal sex muppets. Teachers have to stop rolling their eyes and saying that this is what happens in schools. Even if it wasn't a sexual move, what it boils down to is that you have the right to exist in a public school unmolested and untouched. Whether that's sexual groping or hitting or even "teasing" of another nature, no one should lay a hand on a student without their permission. Anyway.

Current Location: THE HIDDEN BUNKER

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From:

luscious-words.livejournal.com

That they believe it's acceptable to touch someone this way or to have to accept being touched this way is such a shame. *sigh* I feel so old because that wasn't done when I was in school.

From:

amand-r.livejournal.com

Yeah, it wasn't done when I was in school, and that was less than 20 years ago. If it was done, then I never saw or experienced it.

It doesn't seem right to sandwich this in with Torchwood jokes and Memes

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