Reviving Ophelia - Mary Bray Pipher [34]
Recently the American Association of University Women released a study, “Hostile Hallways,” that documents what girls are experiencing. It reports that 70 percent of girls experience harassment and 50 percent experience unwanted sexual touching in their schools. One-third of all girls report sexual rumors being spread about them, and one-fourth report being cornered and molested. The study says that the classrooms and hallways of our schools are the most common sites for sexual harassment. Many girls are afraid to speak up for fear of worse harassment.
Often harassment extends beyond remarks to touching. It’s usually from students, although girls also report harassment from male teachers. Generally girls do not tell school authorities about these incidents. More and more I see girls who are school refusers. They tell me they simply cannot face what happens to them at school. Charlotte had trouble returning to school, where she was called a slut when she walked through the halls. Another client complained that boys slapped her behind and grabbed her breasts when she walked to her locker. Another wouldn’t ride the school bus because boys teased her about oral sex.
Girls are also harassed on the streets, in the parks and in swimming pools. In the summer of 1993 New York police reported making arrests at different pools and different times for “the whirlpool.” This was a phenomenon in which bands of young men locked arms and churned through the water, surrounded a girl and then harassed her.
What is sexual harassment in junior high can turn into sexual assaults later. In Lakewood, California, fourteen high school athletes, called the Spur Posse, were on trial for raping many girls, one of whom was ten years old. The gang used threats and persuasion to score points in a long-running game of conquest. Even more alarming than the assaults are the reactions of many of the adults and students in the community to the assaults.
The boys claimed they were innocent of wrongdoing. One said, “The schools pass out condoms and teach us about pregnancy, but they don’t teach us any rules.” Another said, “It’s not illegal to hook up with sluts.”
After their arrests the boys returned to their school for a heroes’ welcome, their status enhanced by all the media coverage of their assaults. Students wore black armbands to protest their arrests and called the girls “sluts” who got what they asked for. Some of the boys’ parents were bewildered, others boastful. One father said that his son was “all man” and added, “There wouldn’t be enough jails in America if boys were imprisoned for doing what he has done.” Another father said that his son had acted no differently from Wilt Chamberlain, who claimed to have had sex with 20,000 women.
This case and others all over the country speak to the craziness of the peer culture that teenage girls now enter. Especially with sexuality, things are tough. Adolescents are exposed, via music, television, movies and pornography, to models of sexuality that are brutal and callous. Girls are caught in the cross fire of our culture’s mixed sexual messages. Sex is considered both a sacred act between two people united by God and the best way to sell suntan lotion.
Girls who maintain their true selves resist peer pressure to be a certain way. Lori, for example, knew she wouldn’t drink or smoke just because other kids pressured her at a party. She also had her own position about sexuality and wouldn’t be pressured to be sexually active before she was ready. She wanted to be liked, but was unwilling to make the concessions necessary to be super popular. She could see clearly that to be accepted by everyone she would have to give up too much of herself.
Charlotte, on the other hand, tried very hard to win peer approval.