Apr 21, 2020 by | 1 comment
1 comment on “My article in Ms. Magazine”
Thanks for writing this Lauren. I really hope more people speaking up about these experiences will help us push back against it. Your description of the behaviour at your school was sadly familiar. Ours was even worse, because they specifically rigged the rules in favour of the boys. The boys would play a game they called "nipple cripple" where they grabbed a girl's breasts and twisted her nipples until she screamed. The teachers wrote this off in that same "boys will be boys" way that I think a lot of women remember from back then (this was 20 years ago, I hope it's not quite as bad now).
But when it was the opposite way around they totally changed the rules. There were some girls who were fed up with the abuse from the boys so they got a big group of about 10 girls together and chased down 2 of the boys who'd been groping them. They overpowered those boys and pinned them to the floor, before kicking them both really hard in the balls.
This was apparently "too far" though, and the girls involved had their parents hauled into school to have a word with the headmaster, and were threatened with suspension!