When we’re at school, we constantly hear the words ‘boys will be boys’ used to excuse all sorts of behaviour, from the innocent to the insidious.
After a group of girls at a high school in Marland, U.S, found out that the boys in their school had been passing a ‘hot or not’ list of 84 female students, they weren’t going to stand for the ideology.
The girls said they felt objectified and violated by the boys who gave them each a number between 5.5 and 9.4, all based on looks.
Students at Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School decided to tell a teacher who gave detention to one of the boys involved.
The girls felt that wasn’t good enough and didn’t address the inherent problem, so they decided to rally together.
They piled in to the headteacher’s office and read a letter to show their disappointment in the system, demanding further action.
So, a meeting was called with all the boys involved in the incident and beyond, headed by the girls to tell them about their experiences of everyday sexism and sexual harassment.
And thankfully, the boys seemed to listen.
When the female students were told that the school’s investigation into the notes ended with only one person being culpable, they knew it was time to say something.
They wanted the boys to know how they were complicit in upholding a sexist society.
‘It was the last straw, for us girls, of this ‘boys will be boys’ culture,’ one of the students told the Washington Post.
‘We’re the generation that is going to make a change.
‘We should be able to learn in an environment without the constant presence of objectification and misogyny.’
In an almost three-hour meeting, the teens told the group of boys about how they felt and their past experiences.
The boys then apologised and admitted that they needed to rethink their behaviour and thoughts regarding women.
One of the boys, who says he didn’t start the list but was an enabler, told the Post: ‘When you have a culture where it’s just normal to talk about that, I guess making a list about it doesn’t seem like such a terrible thing to do, because you’re just used to discussing it.
‘I recognise that I’m in a position in this world generally where I have privilege. I’m a white guy at a very rich high school. It’s easy for me to lose sight of the consequences of my actions and kind of feel like I’m above something.’
And the students didn’t just stop there, they decided to hold these meetings regularly in the future to discuss toxic parts of teen culture, and the issues that they respectively face.
Now, can we have these meetings in all environments?
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