"I compliment you on your breasts. So...can I feel your compliments?"Many women hear comments like these at construction sites, in bars, on the
street. It may not sound like anything unusal to you. But what if I told you that this comment was made to me by a 12-year-old boy in a 7th-grade classroom, probably 10 feet from a teacher? What if I told you that I heard
comments like this every day from 7th grade all the way through high school? What if I told you that often these conversations were accompanied by other 12-year-old boys grabbing at my breasts or inviting others to guess my bra size,
or notes from 12-year-old girls calling me a "slut"? What if I told you none of the adults who witnessed these incidents ever stepped in to help? And what if you heard that one of those boys, who was never told that it was wrong
to degrade and humiliate me, raped a girl when he was 18?
If you think that school-age children are too young to hear about adult subjects like sexual harassment, if you think that "boys will be boys" is an excuse to ignore this kind of
behavior, if you think it is normal and won't have an impact on your children, or if you have been a victim of this behavior and blame yourself or think it is just something you have to live with, I am hoping that my story will help you see
how wrong you are. Sexual harassment in a school setting harms not only the victim, but also the perpetrators as well as all the children who witness it. This is the story of what motivated me to try to spread the word to
students, parents, and teachers that sexual harassment does exist in schools, it isn't a joke, and ignoring it leads to negative attitudes toward relationships in these kids when they grow up.
I was 12 when it started. I "developed"
early and to a greater extent than most girls. At first I was happy about the "change" and felt bad for other girls who were still in training bras. But it didn't last long. Soon boys started noticing and would make
comments as I passed on the bus or in class. At first they would just flirt with me. I liked getting the attention and feeling attractive, and I flirted back. But then their tone started changing. They would ask me
my bra size, or ask if they could feel me up. They would even try to grab at me or pull on my shirt. I still would laugh it off, thinking that must just be how boys show that they like a girl. Teachers often were present
when it happened, so when they didn't step in and say anything, or simply told the boys to return to their seats, it only reaffirmed the idea that this was simply a case of "boys will be boys." Though it wasn't the attention I wanted,
and I couldn't be sure whether they were flirting or making fun of me, I was glad to be noticed and continued to try to laugh it off.
One day while the boys were joking with me, the girls sitting at the table next to me in science class
passed over a note. "The boys don't like you," it said, "You're such a slut, what would make you think these guys have any interest in you?" They went on to insult me in every way possible, commenting on my clothes and
mentioning rumors about sexual acts I had performed. Nothing unusual for school-age girls; we all know kids can be cruel and the majority of people in this society have probably had other kids make fun of them. What is different
is the sexual nature of their words and name-calling, not to mention that the reaction of girls to what was happening made me feel degraded and humiliated more than the boys' actions themselves.
I joked about the girls with my friends,
noting that they had mentioned at least 10 times in the note, "If you think we're jealous we're not; we would never be jealous of a slut like you." They were obviously jealous right? I started to rethink my strategy in dealing
with the boys. I tried everything after that, but no matter how I handled it, whether I joked back with them, ignored them, or told them to get lost, the behavior continued, and ignoring it or telling them to stop actually made it
worse.
I hated school. I didn't care about my work. I constantly missed the bus, probably subconsciously trying to avoid the sea of hands that grabbed at me on the way to my seat. I was self-conscious and wore baggy
clothes as much as possible to try not to encourage anyone to notice my chest. I hated the way I looked, and hated having to listen to the boys degrade me every day. Teachers started noticing that I wasn't finishing all my work
and would ask if there was something wrong at home. I was unhappy but I had no idea why, I didn't think the harassment had anything to do with it because as far as I could tell, it was normal behavior for 12-year-old boys. And
because they weren't doing it to anyone else I felt that I must be special but at the same time I blamed myself.
Teachers not only didn't help me, some even made matters worse. I joined the dance club because when I was performing,
I felt like people noticed me for my talent, that I could be proud of something rather than trying to be invisible. But after one rehearsal, the female dance club advisor joked in front of all the other girls that I should get a
sports bra because the boys were staring at me, and that by the time I was 40, my "boobs would be hanging down to my knees." The other girls laughed and they all joked about it for a few minutes while my self-esteem plummetted.
After that I quit the dance club for a few years. The most an adult ever helped me was when a female teacher told me I had "nice curves." It may sound like an inappropriate comment but she actually was genuinely complimenting me
when I noted that I felt like my outfit looked bad, and it helped me feel like I was lucky to be so "blessed" again.
By the time I made it to high school the harassment wasn't as frequent. With so many more kids in school I didn't
see most of the boys as often. When I did have classes with them they usually ignored me, though one of them sat next to me in the library and grabbed my ass. He later would call me and ask me out but I told him I couldn't
forget about how he had treated me. He insisted things were different, but had a tendency to be a smart-ass so I assumed he was setting me up for some kind of joke.
During my senior year of high school, I was assigned to a research
paper for a debate and I am not sure how but wound up researching sexual harassment. I started reading an article about girls who had been harassed and I was shocked. This had happened to other girls? And it affected them
the way it had affected me? I was happy and sad at the same time. It was great to know I wasn't alone, and that what had happened wasn't my fault. At the same time it made me angry to realize that this was not something
that should have been ignored by adults. And it made me angry to know that this was a joke in our society, that most people thought only PC feminist psychos would claim sexual harassment to try to get money out of bosses they were
angry with for firing them.
I went to college hoping to start over. No one there would know me, no one would have seen what happened, or heard the rumors. But the first night there I went out to a local bar and ran into one of
the boys who had harassed me. He was all over me and wanted me to come home with him. I blew him off and it felt great but at the same time I couldn't believe I had traveled 300 miles to find it had followed me anyway. The
following semester he started calling me in the middle of the night, asking me to walk across campus alone to come to his dorm room. Of course I never did, but it bothered me that part of me wanted to. I wanted to let him think
I was interested and then tell him off, tell him that he had treated me like crap and now he could suffer like I had. But most of all, there was still a part of me that wanted him to think I was cool, to have him accept me, to go
along with it all. I realized that I had become so accustomed to being treated the way they had treated me, that I was attracted to it, that it seemed normal to me. When guys would ask me out and treat me with respect, it seemed
strange and made me uncomfortable, and when this jerk would call me at 3 AM and say "come to my dorm room" and call me a "loser" when I said I was going to bed, it seemed normal. Most girls would have hung up on him but I would talk
to him, joke with him, flirt with him. I had come to believe that when guys really like you they treat you like crap. It's taken a long time to convince myself otherwise.
I finally went to see him one day, I picked him up in
my car letting him think we were going back to my room. Then I drove around, refusing to take him to my room or go to his, so that I could tell him off. When he asked what my problem was, I explained that he and his friends had
treated me like crap for years. I wanted to see if he had changed, if maybe there was hope that those guys had all outgrown their immature phase and were out there respecting women now. I got my answer; not only did he act like
I was nuts but I later found out he raped a girl in his dorm that year.
I can't help but believe that the 30 or 40 kids that sat in that 7th grade classroom will forever have a warped view of sexuality and relationships because a few
adults were afraid to comment on "sexual" behavior. Sexual harassment among adults, sexual assaults, abusive relationships - where do you think these people learn such behavior? I contacted the school district, suggesting they
revise their methods of dealing with such situtations, and offering to help them implement an awareness program, but of course they were more concerned with the legalities than with trying to make any changes. They simply had their
lawyers send me the school's sexual harassment policy and said they would conduct an investigation if I wanted them to. But I felt that would be a waste of time at this point. I had lost the letters that the girls had sent me,
and if a bunch of school officials started asking 18-year-olds about what had happened in class 6 or 7 years ago, I would be the laughing stock of our town and feel like more of a joke than before. Why hadn't the adults who witnessed
the behavior asked me if I wanted to investigate 6 years earlier? Why did it only become their concern when they were afraid I might sue them?
I turned to the web as a way to find other girls who had similar experiences. When
I couldn't find any sites that offered helpful resources, I decided I had to take on the task myself. My first website, online from 1994-1998, opened my eyes to how serious a problem this is. I was contacted by tons of girls who
were going through the same thing, girls who had no idea that they could do anything about it or that it wasn't their fault. I was contacted by men wondering if asking a girl out is sexual harassment. And I was contacted by many
parents - some were concerned and wanted to know how to protect or help their kids, some were outraged that I would suggest discussing the topic with children.
Luckily, the web has grown since my search began. In 1994, a search on
"sexual harassment in schools" only returned about 10 sites. In 1998, that number was up to about 58. Today, such a search returns thousands of websites. I hope that this site will be
