Dirty Little Secrets - Kerry Cohen [73]
Mostly, we have to tell our stories, because in our stories lie salvation for other girls and women. It seems so cliché—stories save lives. But that’s true. It was a story that laid the foundation for my own healing. I was a senior in high school, seventeen years old, and I took an elective English class called Minority Voices. We read stories about teenage girls who felt lonely, exiled, confused about who they were, and my whole world broke open: I wasn’t alone. There were others out there who felt what I felt. There were others expressing what I couldn’t yet express. This changed everything for me. Not yet, not in a tangible way. I was still going to hurt myself again and again. I was still going to let every crush I had, every boy who looked my way, consume my brain. I was still going to choose boys over self-enhancement. But those stories were there, in the back of my mind. They lingered. They made me want to write. And eventually, I found a way to write my own story, hoping a girl would one day read it and see herself, would keep my story in the back of her mind, and would one day tell her story, too—all these stories in a round, all these stories breaking the silence.
PART THREE
RESOURCES
APPENDIX
FOR SCHOOL ADMINISTRATORS
Discussion Questions
What sorts of things do you think students learn about sex at school? In particular, what do girls learn?
How are sex-related issues currently addressed in your school? What needs to be addressed in a more effective way, and what needs addressing at all?
If abstinence is in your school’s sex education curriculum, is it aimed primarily at girls? What is the message connected to abstinence at your school?
Are cultural messages and cultural expectations exposed inside your school’s sex-education curriculum?
Are school counselors trained in how to deal with sex and relationship issues among the students?
SUGGESTED SEX-EDUCATION EXERCISES
Girls Will Be Girls
Students should find examples of expectations for girls in their culture. They will likely find them in commercials, ads, magazine articles, and other media.
Next, students write up sentences: According to [the ad, the article], I need to be ______________ to get/have ______________.
Have students work in groups to design their own ad campaign to support girls’ self-esteem. Point to some of the ad campaigns already in existence—one example is Nike, or the Dove Real Beauty Campaign.
Have students design hypothetical organizations that they feel girls could use, such as ones that encourage girls in sports or science.
Students then should start over but go through the exact same process for boys.
Ms. X
Students write questions for a teen sex-advice column. They can be real questions they have or questions they would expect to see in such a column. Put the questions into a hat and have them each choose one. Then, they work in twos to answer each question as though they were Ms. X. Finally, discuss their Ms. X answers as a class, encouraging them to pay attention to the question, What about girls’ desire?
SUGGESTED TRAINING CURRICULUM FOR SCHOOL COUNSELORS DEALING WITH SEX AND RELATIONSHIP ISSUES
Discuss what counselors see from girls versus boys regarding sex and relationships.
Explore examples of what girls versus boys are taught via the prevailing culture (use magazine ads, round-ups of television shows, and so on).
Discuss in small groups adults’ own assumptions about teenage girls’ sexual desires and desires about relationships. Open this up to the larger group to share discoveries.
Share worksheets for dealing with loose-girl feelings and handling loose-girl behavior.
Hand out two or three cases of loose-girl behavior from a student and have counselors role-play how they would respond to the student and