blogger profile

Sara Conrad

Editor, skirt! Jacksonville

I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. I love thinking and talking about feminism and writing for skirt!. I went to the University of Iowa and I'll put up a good fight about spelling. ...

READ MORE

where are they now?

I’ve been seeing a lot in the news about this “no tolerance” for sexual harassment in schools affecting students--and as young as 5 years old, at that.

I totally see why the “no tolerance” policy is absolutely necessary; after all, if sexual harassment had not been tolerated from the beginning, we wouldn’t have so many people out there now all grown up and still sexually harassing each other in colleges, bars, clubs, pubs, restaurants, parks, grocery stores, airports...you get the idea.

In 2006 ,a 5 year-old boy in Maryland was suspended for sexual harassment (and isn’t suspension pretty much universally considered a paid vacation? How do people feel punished by that again?) for pinching a classmate’s butt.

Response? The boy’s father said: “He knows it as playing around.”

That sounds a lot to me like that “boys will boys” kind of crap. Is it such an outrageous concept to teach boys to take responsibility for their actions?

Yes, this will be on his record until middle school. Probably a good thing, considering that if it happens, oh, say, a few more times by the time he’s 13, maybe people should keep an eye on him. But the poor kid might be labelled as a pervert, parents of the boy might say. Well, if he’s still sexually harassing people when he’s 13 and he hasn’t learned his lesson, undoubtedly he has a problem with keeping his hands to himself.

I just have no sympathy. If you want to nip sexual harassment in the bud, I think it has to be taught at the elementary level. Chances are, it isn’t being taught in homes across America.

I can remember a few times before I turned eight when I felt more than a little uncomfy at school. Like the time on the playground when Steve pulled my cotton dress off of me and left me standing half naked in the playground; or every Friday of second grade, which was dubbed at my school “Friday Flip-Up Day” which meant that if you had the misfortune of forgetting it was Friday, or if Mom still dressed you and she chose a skirt, you would have it flipped up on the playground in front of all your laughing classmates. The scary part? Our teachers were well aware of all this, and apparently they thought it was normal or just, well, playing. Well, I bet it was fun for the boys.

And I wonder if because our teachers waved their hands and laughed at sexual harassment that those boys are now all grown up and flipping up skirts elsewhere on Fridays.