(no subject)
Feb. 10th, 2008 09:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
coraaSo tonight ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jmpava and I were talking, and I realized that I hadn't told... most of you? any of you? the story of why I wound up going to the terrifying private school. Hint: it's not religious mania in my family. It had nothing to do with not liking public schools, or secular schools. It's that the local public school was, for me, much worse than even a scary private religious school.
This is also, in a very real way, the story of the way I learned that conflict is sometimes not as effective as walking away. It's also the story of how I first became a rabid feminist. It's also, maybe, a story of why many women worry about different things than many men. It's also a story of how maybe women who you don't think of might be a sexual harassment statistic.
A few notes to begin: I avoid naming names and places on purpose; please respect that. Also, it's not locked, because I am not ashamed of it, and because I think more people need to say things publicly about sexual harassment and the use of physical abuse to keep socially unacceptable girls down -- but it is an uncomfortable story, so be aware of that. Important, but uncomfortable. Also, I've had friends who had been raped -- not to mention that I follow the news, where I hear of more atrocities than I could shake a forest of sticks at -- so I know that my experience is not the be-all and end-all of trauma. Please don't feel the need to tell me that other people dealt with so much worse; it will just make me angry at you. I'm not trying to monger for sympathy; I'm telling something that's true about my life. This is my story; it is mine; it is important to me.
Like many people, I'd never been popular in elementary school -- but like many people, my unpopularity was more of a deal in junior high. I went from being vaguely-mocked and mostly-ignored to being the pariah, and all but two of my friends jumped ship and stopped talking to me after it became apparent that I was about as good for their reputations as bubonic plague. This would have been bearable -- irritating, sad, but quite deal-with-able -- except for the way that two of the boys in my English class chose to express their disdain for the social pariah.
They started groping me. In class. I don't think they were actually attracted to me (though I matured a little bit early, so I think breasts were an attractive novelty -- but it really didn't seem to be about sex). They had just been spending weeks finding ways to make me cry, and that was the most foolproof one. Taunts and insults I could ignore, nasty pranks I could overlook, but reach for my breasts and I would instantly turn red, hyperventilate, start to cry. It was easy, and they wanted to belittle me, to make me cry, and so they did it all the time. Two or three times a week.
Did I complain to the teacher? Of course I did -- after it became clear the problem wouldn't go away on its own, I summoned my courage and talked to the teacher. (Those of you who know how much I dislike conflict will know that that means it must've been upsetting me pretty badly.) He said that he couldn't do anything. Why? He hadn't seen it, of course. Ah. So it was mine to deal with. (The fact that he'd had two students regularly groping a third, and that third crying in class, without seeing it, spoke either to gross negligence -- which, given the way he ran the class in general, was possible -- or of not wanting to take a stand.)
What's more, about a month later, he rearranged seating. And put me right between them. I don't know if that was more gross negligence, or an attempt to show me what happened to people who rocked the boat.
I had been telling my parents about this the whole time. (To their credit, I never, never, never was afraid to tell them what was going on. My parents and I don't see eye to eye, but I have never doubted that they loved me or would back me up.) They went to speak to the administration when it became clear that my reporting it to the teacher would do nothing. The administration referred me to a counselor to 'resolve' the issue.
Meanwhile the problem continued, and since I now sat between them, it had increased to pretty near daily. I went to the counselor. I told him the whole sad story. He started to try to think of ways for me to stop them from doing it -- as though writing them letters saying that I didn't appreciate it would do a lot of good! -- but finally called the boys in question in to 'discuss' it. (I wasn't there.) Afterward I found out that both boys had denied it (of course) and backed each other up (of course), and so he said that he couldn't do anything. My word against theirs. His hands were tied.
"Okay," I said, "okay, I don't need them punished, that's fine, but can I be in a different class? A different period? A different seating arrangement? Something?"
"Why sure!" said the counselor. "Except we can't do anything about it now, so you'll have to wait for the end of the semester to change periods, because we never move students mid-semester. But then we'll move you."
I grit my teeth. I bear it. It keeps happening. The teacher is deliberately not paying attention, I'm sure. If I scream, I'll get in trouble for disrupting class, and the boys will have removed their hands as soon as he looks -- why should I have faith the teacher will do anything to protect me, when he hasn't for months? If deck the boys, I'll get in trouble, and it'll give them a reason to hate me more. And I can't risk that.
I start crying every weeknight, and every Sunday night, because I have to go back, and there's nothing I can do to protect myself.
I start volunteering for the teachers I like and trust. I clean the science teacher's lab after hours. I help the history teacher file papers. I do this because I'm afraid to walk home after school, when they're walking home. If they'll put their hands on my breasts in the middle of class, in full light, with an authority figure there, what will they do if they get me alone?
I get called back to the counselor. There's a snag, he says; my schedule is such that I can't be moved. (Why? I don't ask. I'm eleven, and easily cowed, easily frightened, especially now. I don't know how to stand up for myself.) But they'll move the two boys. I don't want to be in the room with the teacher who won't protect me, but I agree: as long as my tormentors are gone, I'll manage okay.
Also, he wants to know: what could I have been doing to provoke them? I have no idea how to answer.
(I don't recognize the ridiculous misogyny of this question until I report it to my mother, and see fire in her eyes. I'm eleven. I'm pretty sheltered.)
I wait for the change of the semester. I count the days until the boys will no longer be sitting right next to me every day.
I show up after the Christmas break... and there they are, sitting on either side of me, when I'd been promised I would now be away from them, safe. I go home in tears.
My parents go in to talk to the counselor. He says that the secretaries changed the schedule back. Why? I don't know. He won't answer them. It can't be changed back. He won't explain.
(We could sue. Do we sue? No. We don't have any money; we have just barely enough for food, not for lawyers. My dad's in college; we're living on a teacher's aide's salary and a military retirement. We have no money for a lawsuit, and if we anger the school district, my mom can lose her job. She's an at-will employee, after all.)
I start getting threatening notes from the girlfriends of the boys who are harassing me. They hate me for the same reason the boys do: I'm a pariah, an easy scapegoat. They hate me for another reason: their boyfriends are touching my breasts. They want to beat me up. I make sure I don't leave school when they're around, either.
My parents and I talk, and talk, and talk. They talk to the administration. Short of suing, there's nothing to do, and my parents won't leave me somewhere like that. (A boy -- another outcast -- kills himself that year. My mom said, years later, that that was what decided her: I wasn't suicidal then, but with another year of that? two years? three? -- who can say? Maybe I would've gone to the junior high and hanged myself from a basketball backboard, too.) The only other option in town is the scary conservative Christian school. They switch me over. (This is a significant financial hardship, but they bear it without complaint, because they cannot bear to see me hurt like that and do nothing.)
The school district is sad to see my GPA go, but relieved to see the back of a 'problem' student.
The private school was scary, repressive, controlling. Was it the wrong decision to send me there?
...Well, I didn't kill myself, there. No one ever touched me there, against my will. No one ever made me fear for my safety. I don't know. I doubt it was worse, though it wasn't good. I don't know what two more years of abuse would've done to me. Lying about my political affiliation was much, much easier than the year I spent weeping as people touched my body and I could. not. make. it. stop.
I think you would be surprised how many women have stories like this, that it never occurs to them to tell. I forget, sometimes. It's easy. I don't think it traumatized me -- but it's important, and it's real, and it happened.
Please, please, do not try to explain to me what I or my parents should have done differently. There might've been a different way to solve the problem -- but I was eleven, and we were poor. And furthermore, it shouldn't be the place of the victim to solve the problem. I hate that I have to make this caveat, but....
jmpava and I were talking, and I realized that I hadn't told... most of you? any of you? the story of why I wound up going to the terrifying private school. Hint: it's not religious mania in my family. It had nothing to do with not liking public schools, or secular schools. It's that the local public school was, for me, much worse than even a scary private religious school.This is also, in a very real way, the story of the way I learned that conflict is sometimes not as effective as walking away. It's also the story of how I first became a rabid feminist. It's also, maybe, a story of why many women worry about different things than many men. It's also a story of how maybe women who you don't think of might be a sexual harassment statistic.
A few notes to begin: I avoid naming names and places on purpose; please respect that. Also, it's not locked, because I am not ashamed of it, and because I think more people need to say things publicly about sexual harassment and the use of physical abuse to keep socially unacceptable girls down -- but it is an uncomfortable story, so be aware of that. Important, but uncomfortable. Also, I've had friends who had been raped -- not to mention that I follow the news, where I hear of more atrocities than I could shake a forest of sticks at -- so I know that my experience is not the be-all and end-all of trauma. Please don't feel the need to tell me that other people dealt with so much worse; it will just make me angry at you. I'm not trying to monger for sympathy; I'm telling something that's true about my life. This is my story; it is mine; it is important to me.
Like many people, I'd never been popular in elementary school -- but like many people, my unpopularity was more of a deal in junior high. I went from being vaguely-mocked and mostly-ignored to being the pariah, and all but two of my friends jumped ship and stopped talking to me after it became apparent that I was about as good for their reputations as bubonic plague. This would have been bearable -- irritating, sad, but quite deal-with-able -- except for the way that two of the boys in my English class chose to express their disdain for the social pariah.
They started groping me. In class. I don't think they were actually attracted to me (though I matured a little bit early, so I think breasts were an attractive novelty -- but it really didn't seem to be about sex). They had just been spending weeks finding ways to make me cry, and that was the most foolproof one. Taunts and insults I could ignore, nasty pranks I could overlook, but reach for my breasts and I would instantly turn red, hyperventilate, start to cry. It was easy, and they wanted to belittle me, to make me cry, and so they did it all the time. Two or three times a week.
Did I complain to the teacher? Of course I did -- after it became clear the problem wouldn't go away on its own, I summoned my courage and talked to the teacher. (Those of you who know how much I dislike conflict will know that that means it must've been upsetting me pretty badly.) He said that he couldn't do anything. Why? He hadn't seen it, of course. Ah. So it was mine to deal with. (The fact that he'd had two students regularly groping a third, and that third crying in class, without seeing it, spoke either to gross negligence -- which, given the way he ran the class in general, was possible -- or of not wanting to take a stand.)
What's more, about a month later, he rearranged seating. And put me right between them. I don't know if that was more gross negligence, or an attempt to show me what happened to people who rocked the boat.
I had been telling my parents about this the whole time. (To their credit, I never, never, never was afraid to tell them what was going on. My parents and I don't see eye to eye, but I have never doubted that they loved me or would back me up.) They went to speak to the administration when it became clear that my reporting it to the teacher would do nothing. The administration referred me to a counselor to 'resolve' the issue.
Meanwhile the problem continued, and since I now sat between them, it had increased to pretty near daily. I went to the counselor. I told him the whole sad story. He started to try to think of ways for me to stop them from doing it -- as though writing them letters saying that I didn't appreciate it would do a lot of good! -- but finally called the boys in question in to 'discuss' it. (I wasn't there.) Afterward I found out that both boys had denied it (of course) and backed each other up (of course), and so he said that he couldn't do anything. My word against theirs. His hands were tied.
"Okay," I said, "okay, I don't need them punished, that's fine, but can I be in a different class? A different period? A different seating arrangement? Something?"
"Why sure!" said the counselor. "Except we can't do anything about it now, so you'll have to wait for the end of the semester to change periods, because we never move students mid-semester. But then we'll move you."
I grit my teeth. I bear it. It keeps happening. The teacher is deliberately not paying attention, I'm sure. If I scream, I'll get in trouble for disrupting class, and the boys will have removed their hands as soon as he looks -- why should I have faith the teacher will do anything to protect me, when he hasn't for months? If deck the boys, I'll get in trouble, and it'll give them a reason to hate me more. And I can't risk that.
I start crying every weeknight, and every Sunday night, because I have to go back, and there's nothing I can do to protect myself.
I start volunteering for the teachers I like and trust. I clean the science teacher's lab after hours. I help the history teacher file papers. I do this because I'm afraid to walk home after school, when they're walking home. If they'll put their hands on my breasts in the middle of class, in full light, with an authority figure there, what will they do if they get me alone?
I get called back to the counselor. There's a snag, he says; my schedule is such that I can't be moved. (Why? I don't ask. I'm eleven, and easily cowed, easily frightened, especially now. I don't know how to stand up for myself.) But they'll move the two boys. I don't want to be in the room with the teacher who won't protect me, but I agree: as long as my tormentors are gone, I'll manage okay.
Also, he wants to know: what could I have been doing to provoke them? I have no idea how to answer.
(I don't recognize the ridiculous misogyny of this question until I report it to my mother, and see fire in her eyes. I'm eleven. I'm pretty sheltered.)
I wait for the change of the semester. I count the days until the boys will no longer be sitting right next to me every day.
I show up after the Christmas break... and there they are, sitting on either side of me, when I'd been promised I would now be away from them, safe. I go home in tears.
My parents go in to talk to the counselor. He says that the secretaries changed the schedule back. Why? I don't know. He won't answer them. It can't be changed back. He won't explain.
(We could sue. Do we sue? No. We don't have any money; we have just barely enough for food, not for lawyers. My dad's in college; we're living on a teacher's aide's salary and a military retirement. We have no money for a lawsuit, and if we anger the school district, my mom can lose her job. She's an at-will employee, after all.)
I start getting threatening notes from the girlfriends of the boys who are harassing me. They hate me for the same reason the boys do: I'm a pariah, an easy scapegoat. They hate me for another reason: their boyfriends are touching my breasts. They want to beat me up. I make sure I don't leave school when they're around, either.
My parents and I talk, and talk, and talk. They talk to the administration. Short of suing, there's nothing to do, and my parents won't leave me somewhere like that. (A boy -- another outcast -- kills himself that year. My mom said, years later, that that was what decided her: I wasn't suicidal then, but with another year of that? two years? three? -- who can say? Maybe I would've gone to the junior high and hanged myself from a basketball backboard, too.) The only other option in town is the scary conservative Christian school. They switch me over. (This is a significant financial hardship, but they bear it without complaint, because they cannot bear to see me hurt like that and do nothing.)
The school district is sad to see my GPA go, but relieved to see the back of a 'problem' student.
The private school was scary, repressive, controlling. Was it the wrong decision to send me there?
...Well, I didn't kill myself, there. No one ever touched me there, against my will. No one ever made me fear for my safety. I don't know. I doubt it was worse, though it wasn't good. I don't know what two more years of abuse would've done to me. Lying about my political affiliation was much, much easier than the year I spent weeping as people touched my body and I could. not. make. it. stop.
I think you would be surprised how many women have stories like this, that it never occurs to them to tell. I forget, sometimes. It's easy. I don't think it traumatized me -- but it's important, and it's real, and it happened.
Please, please, do not try to explain to me what I or my parents should have done differently. There might've been a different way to solve the problem -- but I was eleven, and we were poor. And furthermore, it shouldn't be the place of the victim to solve the problem. I hate that I have to make this caveat, but....
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-02-11 06:52 am (UTC)I wasn't openly groped, but starting in about fourth grade up to eighth (after which point I went to a private boarding school, but by then it was wayy too late for me and school, and I dropped out after a quarter) I was The Outcast, altho the sexual harrassment stuff didn't start until about sixth grade (up until then it was "just" daily teasing, except "teasing" sounds really innocuous, and this wasn't). Altho the sexual stuff was more of the terrorizing we're-going-to-tell-you-what-we're-going-to-do-to-you-in-detail stuff by older boys; I do remember getting attacked (pinched with fingernails, poked with a sharp pin, &c &c) in class a bunch of times, but not anything major. I had learned really early on my parents, altho they sympathized mightily, couldn't do anything, and the teachers/administration/counselors wouldn't do anything, so I just never told anyone in authority anything after a while, even tho some other (older) girls urged me to. But 1) there was no point and 2) it would have just pissed off the people who were angry at me even more.
I think you really hit the nail on the head about what gets so awful about it after a while -- it's in broad daylight, the authority figures are RIGHT there, everyone _knows_ what's going on (how could they not), and it doesn't stop and there's nothing you can do to make it stop. I routinely missed something like over 1/3 of the school year because I'd get sick -- and that wasn't malingering, either, I'd be so freaked out and afraid I'd get shooting stomach pains and they thought I was developing ulcers and so on.
Anyway. Not to hijack your story. Just....man, do I know what that feels like. And the whole "it's not the victim's problem to solve" and "what did you do to make them mad/provoke them" and "you can't be moved" -- yeah. Just....yeah.
I think that's a LOT more common than most people (okay, men) realize, because women aren't encouraged to talk about it (if you do, you're whining or you "can't take a joke") and it's also just ingrained into the culture at this point. If you're teased or harrassed, it's assumed to be _your_ problem, you don't fit in somehow, and the Madding Crowd isn't doing anything wrong in ostracizing or scapegoating or whatever else they decide to do to you.
no subject
Date: 2008-02-11 07:21 am (UTC)Yes! Me too. I had stomachache with frightening regularity. (Though my mother always took me home without complaint -- she knew perfectly well what was causing the stomachaches -- the secretaries started to accuse me of trying to get out of class when I came in to call her. As though it were their business!)
But yeah. It was knowing that these things could happen to me in what was hypothetically safe space -- that it wasn't an if-you're-walking-in-a-back-alley-at-night fear, it was something that could happen in daylight in public with no one willing to step up. That was scary, because there's no way to avoid that kind of public life. I had to go to school (well, at least unless I was sick, which is why my body made itself sick so often, I think), and, upon going to school, there was no escaping it.
I think that's why, occasionally, when I tell the story I get 'you should have's. You should have sued! gone to the papers! learned karate! -- Because it's easier to say 'well, if you'd had a small tactical nuke in your purse, no one would have bothered you' than to admit that the culture is such that this can happen to someone who is doing nothing wrong. Who is doing exactly what is expected of her.
(And please please please don't worry about hijacking. More people should talk/hear about this kind of thing.)
The number of people (mostly men, but also women) who I've heard confidently express that "that sort of thing doesn't happen where I [grew up/went to school/live]" is part of what made me post this. I think a lot of people think it doesn't happen because they never, ever hear about it -- so if they are fortunate enough to have never been the subject of sexual harassment (most men, and some women) (which I certainly don't begrudge them!), it's invisible. And the only way to make people aware of it is to make them hear about, to talk about it, in public, out loud, and without shame. It's real. It happens. I got through it fine, it's not life-ending or even personality-destroying, but that doesn't mean it didn't happen, that doesn't mean it wasn't bad, that doesn't mean it isn't still a problem in the world. It's real. People should hear.
*end soapbox*
no subject
Date: 2008-02-11 07:41 am (UTC)the secretaries started to accuse me of trying to get out of class
With me it also got psychological, because often as not my dad wasn't there and when my mom would try to get me off to the bus (did you ever read the old YA novel Leap Before You Look? It starts with a really good account of bus-hazing) I would start to cry hysterically and freak out and she'd have to go to work, so it was easier to just have me hang out in the house by myself and read my books, which was all I ever wanted to do anyway (she was supporting us at that point).
That was scary, because there's no way to avoid that kind of public life. I had to go to school (well, at least unless I was sick, which is why my body made itself sick so often, I think), and, upon going to school, there was no escaping it.
YEAH, and for me, it was pretty much the same wherever I went, because I was, well, me, and Dewey education theory = round hole, Moi = dodecahedron peg or something. Public schools, private schools, public, private, public, private, public, boarding school -- no, no, no and more no. I can see now the adults around me were basically doing a "geographic," as the AAer's call it, hoping that putting me in diff schools would result in different outcomes. I _had_ to go to school (altho in NM at the time the law was that if yr kid completed jr high, you could home-school them, so after dropping out of boarding school and refusing to go to the juvvie equivalent of private school I stayed at home and read Tolstoy).
Because it's easier to say 'well, if you'd had a small tactical nuke in your purse, no one would have bothered you'
//CRACKS UP
the culture is such that this can happen to someone who is doing nothing wrong. Who is doing exactly what is expected of her.
Yeah, that was another thing that got me -- I was doing NOTHING. Of course, that's what made me a huge target in the first place, is that I was (still am) introverted and not that social and hate noise and love reading, and putting me in a large group of noisy people expecting me to riff on popular topics does not work well, to this day. (And of course, when I missed school, when my grades went down, when my attitude got really bad, that was My Problem. Altho I had a deep-seated philosophical objection to being forced to go to school _at all,_ which was what everyone focused on. What makes you so special? Everyone has to go through this, &c &c.)
If John Dewey were alive, I would kick his ass.
And the only way to make people aware of it is to make them hear about, to talk about it, in public, out loud, and without shame
Yeah, I....do not talk about it a whole lot, in part because I worked for years to get away from those memories (no, nothing healthy like talking about them in therapy or with peers or anything, just running) and I also still feel really stupid and ashamed about it. It got drilled into me it was my fault, I was doing something in some way that sent signals to nearly everyone "it's okay to treat this person like shit," and there's also sort of no vocabulary to talk about it with. "Teasing" really really doesn't cover it (I was shunned, ostentatiously and visibly, the _entire_ year of eighth grade, except for the guys who were harrassing me. Which was probably a big reason why I was shunned: other girls didn't want to piss off the guys and have it happen to them, I guess).
And shit, we have a guy on the Supreme Court who sexually harrassed his coworker, there were hearings about it, she jeopardized her job and reputation and the whole social stigma put on women who Speak Up, and....nothing happened. -- Hand to God, when Clinton got asked during this sound-bite style interview on I think fucking MTV, "Did you believe Clarence Thomas or Anita Hill?" and he said "I believe Anita Hill," I damn near fucking _bawled,_ watching it. Okay, he was a slimy slimebucket and knew how to say just the right thing to get people to like/vote for him and, you know what, I don't care. That was a powerful moment, for me anyway.
Anyhow, thank you for posting this....obviously it brings up a lot of stuff for me, and I'm just glad I'm not hijacking _your_ story by babbling on about myself.
no subject
Date: 2008-02-11 07:55 am (UTC)Heh. Yes. Me, too -- I didn't want to be popular, I didn't want attention, I just wanted to be left alone. (I did like doing well in school, but I didn't want to do well ostentatiously.) So that was exactly what I couldn't have, of course.
other girls didn't want to piss off the guys and have it happen to them, I guess
Yes, yes, that. That's something that sometimes surprises people -- that I was being shunned and threatened by the girls, too. But I think they simultaneously were courting the positive attention of the boys (since the positive attention of boys/having a boyfriend/being attractive to boys was very socially important) and were hoping to avoid getting the very negative attention that I was getting. Also, as long as there was a scapegoat, they were safe; if the boys didn't have me to torment, they might pick someone else....
no subject
Date: 2008-02-11 08:40 pm (UTC)I think one of the other issues is that a this happens to a lot of people, and not all of them manage to get out of it and recover as well as you have. Some of them become new monsters of their own, and now we're just extending the cycle. I have an unending amount of respect for you for how you've integrated this into your life without too much obvious craziness, but I know that not everyone can do that, and that scares me.