Molly, 16, (at their request, only first names are used) was asleep in the home of a friend after a party a year ago when a boy snuck into the room.
The schoolgirl from regional NSW says she felt powerless. ”I felt threatened. I guess I knew he wasn’t going to take no for an answer, that all he wanted was sex.
”I do think he knew I didn’t want to do it, but he also knew he would be able to force me to anyway, and I do believe he had power over me.”
When others heard about it they called Molly – a virgin until then – an ”attention seeking slut” who was ”asking for it”.
”A friend had to pull him off me so I could get away. If she hadn’t been there I don’t know what might have happened. I am, petite, 5’6′, he was at least 6’4. He could have easily overpowered me.” She was shaken and distressed for days. Neither girl reported what happened.
This is the reality for so many girls in their sexual experiences. And the pressure isn’t just from strangers.
An idea floats around that girls are sexually freer than ever. That they are exercising ”agency” in their sexual decisions and having great sex lives. That’s not what I’m hearing as I talk to girls all over the country.
For so many girls it appears the boy calls the shots. It’s submission disguised as freedom. Many feel they are not allowed to say ”no”.
And the stories girls used to tell me at 16 and 17, they are now telling me at 13 and 14.
Somehow, despite the women’s movement, despite ”Girl Power” sloganeering, girls have become disempowered.
Shannon is bright, articulate and confident. I met her at a Tasmanian school recently. She is a leader among her peers. Yet she captured what so many girls are experiencing: a struggle to assert themselves in relationships with males.
”I felt this overwhelming feeling of being lower than my boyfriend,” she said. ”I felt as though he was the male therefore he was dominant over me and I was there purely to fulfil his physical needs.
”I feel my needs, both sexually and emotionally, come second to my partner’s.”
At a private girls’ school in Melbourne, girls shared their experiences. Jen, 16, said: ”When you are in love they are allowed to treat you however.”
”If you say you want to wait, you are asked ‘why?”’ said Marly, 16.
”Girls want love and they are willing to compromise themselves to get it,” said Marina, 16. ”They need that validation. Boys feel they have more worth. They often think when they are in love, even when he treats you badly, they think this is meant to happen, I deserve this, this is how relationships are meant to be.”
”We are stuck in mindset of them having power over us,” said 16-year-old Micaela. Samantha, 16, believes girls are taught by media and popular culture that having sex will give them a sense of worth. ”If you don’t have sex he will leave for someone else.”
A 15-year-old Tasmanian student, teased for being a virgin, was planning to ”get it over and done with” with a 19-year-old she had met twice. He was happy to oblige, telling her feelings didn’t have to come into it. She told me this with tears streaming down her face. It was clear she wasn’t ready.
Girls say that it’s hard to keep feelings out. ”Girls get affected more, they are more emotionally connected and think they are in love,” said Marly.
”For girls sex is more of a sacred thing with someone you love. With boys it is seen as more of a joke … they have a different mindset. Girls have different attitudes, guys don’t seem to care that much,” said Jen.
Girls describe being touched inappropriately, frequently pushing away unwanted hands.
”At parties boys come up and just touch you,” said Micaela. ”You are there as an object. If you don’t do what they want they call you frigid”.
But girls are growing tired of being reduced and degraded in these ways. They are increasingly demanding respect-based relationships in which their wishes and desires are treated equally, not last. ”I stand up for myself now,” Aurora told me.
The sexual landscape is grim, but let’s hope more girls are empowered to follow Aurora’s lead. Listening to girls’ experiences and supporting them to stand up for themselves – as well as calling boys out on their abusive and too often criminal behaviour – is more helpful to them than persisting with media fantasies about the wonderful and liberated sex lives of Australian girls in the 21st century.
7 Responses
Excellent article! And so spot on from one who has three daughters ranging from 15 to 20. Young woman must say ‘enough’. And the work you do is going a very long way in encouraging them to do so.
My teen daughter collapsed in a public place recently, on the way to school due to an ongoing illness. Several students helped her by placing her in the recovery position and calling an ambulance.
A few days later she went to thank the group who helped her. The response?
“Come on, ****** deserves a handjob at least for that.”
I’m sure they would say they were joking, but I am disgusted.
I have had two experiences slightly related to this in the past few months, the most recent was yesterday.
Both involved young men who thought they had a right to my attention despite both of them treating me with absolute contempt.
I didn’t know either of these men and was walking past one of them on my daily walking track.
He seemed to ask a question which wasn’t directed at anyone (from the tone, lack of manners and language), I thought he was talking to his mate.
When I didn’t respond and kept walking, he yelled after me, verbally abused me and called me an f-ing bitch.
Yesterday, I was in a car with a friend and we stopped to allow pedestrians to cross the road. One young guy casually waved his cigarette in a general direction towards the car (but could have waved at anyone) while holding a can of beer and again not getting a response called after us – lighten up you f-ING bitch.
I was completely gobsmacked.
Now I am in no way comparing my experience with bad mannered and inconsiderate louts with these poor girls above, but these guys were not young pre-pubescent teens. They were grown men.
What struck me was the ease in which they let forth abuse to a woman they didn’t know and who had done nothing at all towards them (not that either of those facts would justify how they behaved).
I think my initial reaction of shock was justified because I’m used to bring treated with respect.
But for girls who haven’t been shown that basic consideration – I would be worried that they might think they deserved it.
@Alice,
I am shocked yet not totally surprised by what happened to you, it is disgraceful.
In response to the article, how do we change this? Women need to stand up an men need to back off and parents need to raise strong daughters as Honorable sons, but how when you don’t know?
Those teen males are enacting what they have learned via malestream media and popular culture – namely it is all males’ right if they choose, to sexually prey on women and girls because women and girls aren’t human they are merely males’ disposable masturbatory objects.
All these teen boys are male sexual predators but their male sexually predatory behaviour continues to be condoned/justified/excused because holding males to account for perpetrating male sexual violence against women and girls is a huge no no. Why? Because we live in a rape culture which means our society continues to be male supremacist and despite the valiant efforts of Second Wave and First Wave Feminists, men collectively fought back and instigated their pseudo claim that since ‘women have gained sexual freedom this means males are no longer responsible for their sexual actions/behaviour.’
These teen male sexual predators do not suddenly decide ‘okay I am going to sexually prey on my female peers and use them as disposable masturbatory objects’ rather these males know their likelihood of being held to account and publicly shamed for their sexual crimes against women and girls will be zero. I have no doubt many of these male sexual predators are avid viewers of malestream pornography and mens’ pornography industry is the most powerful tool in teaching boys and young men they have the right of male sexual access to any female because she isn’t human but merely exists as males’ disposable sexual service stations.
Male Supremacist legal system has in place a number of so-called ‘rape laws’ but these laws were constructed from the male sexual predators’ viewpoint and this means it is always the female victim who is on trial not the male sexual predator(s).
The young woman who stated this: ‘I do think he knew I didn’t want to do it, but he also knew he would be able to force me to anyway, and I do believe he had power over me.’ Exactly – this male sexual predator knew he had the power to rape this young woman and no one would hold him to account – this is how our rape culture operates. It is useless telling women and girls to ‘say no to males’ who engage in male sexual aggression because focusing on the oppressed ensures the dominant ones remain invisible. Why should any male listen to a young woman or girl if she says no to his sexual demands? After all the male merely has to use just sufficient physical force to overcome her resistance and this is seen as ‘natural and normal male sexual aggression’ not male sexual violence against the woman/girl.
Sadly, it is girls and young women who are the ones suffering and being demonised by our male supremacist rape culture because any criticism of how males construct and enforce their male sexual expression is not allowed to be published in malestream press. Instead girls and young women are bombarded with male lies that a female’s sole value and worth lies in her being ‘sexually hot and available to males’ but if she does do anything sexually, she, not the male will be demonised as a ‘slut’ when in fact it is the actions of males which are ‘sluttish.’ So it continues to be a win win for males and lose lose for women and girls.
What can we do? Name the problem – hold men to account and challenge how men construct their male sexuality because mens’ centuries old belief that males have the right of sexual access to any female is at the core of male sexual violence against women.
Of course males view ‘sex’ differently because males construct male sexuality as one wherein the male is sexually dominant and he has right to sexually penetrate and/or subject a female to any sexual act he wishes. Not only does this give him sexual pleasure it also eroticises his feelings of male sexual domination and control as well as reinforcing his belief in the naturalness of male superiority and sexual dominance over those supposedly disposable dehumanised beings named female.
Males are not commonly sexually penetrated by females because this is not ‘real sex’ according to males and if it happens then the male has been ‘feminised.’ ‘Sex’ to males means sexual dominance and using the female body as a disposable masturbatory object. However, males need the female body because using an object to satisfy the male sexual ego does not accord the male feelings of male sexual power and be seen by his fellow male sexual predators as ‘enacting real manhood.’ Therefore a real female human being has to be used by the male sexual predator because only she can validate his feelings of male sexual entitlement and male sexual dominance.
But don’t expect this analysis to be accepted by men and their malestream media because critiquing how and why only males are accorded sexual autonomy and pseudo male sex right to female bodies is ‘sexist’ since holding men to account must not happen because women have supposedly gained ‘female sexual autonomy!’ However innumerable women and girls know this is a male created lie but challenging this lie is very, very hard given men work very, very hard to perpetuate their misogynistic lies concerning female sexuality and the lie that a woman only exists when she is perceived as ‘sexually hot to males!’
My 6 year old daughter was sexually assaulted at school in the UK by six of her male classmates in a 4 month campaign of violence. I am running a campaign on Avaaz to get schools to record and make public sexist attacks on females since I see this behaviour as having very little to do with sex as in an enjoyable act for both parties but more as a hate crime.
Join me if you can and sign or start your own, we need to name and shame the hate crimers, not the victims.
https://secure.avaaz.org/en/petition/Stop_1_in_3_schoolgirls_experiencing_sexist_violence_in_UK_schools
I cannot help but feel that over the last 40 years we as women have fed nothing into the male understanding of itself other than ‘you are violent’, ‘you are of no use to us’, ‘get out of our way’, ‘you are the cause of the world’s misery’,’ we need to be free of you’, ‘we do not need you anymore’…and now we wonder why what is coming forth these days is a pop culture that fantissies about sexual violence toward women ? Men need to connect with us and I can’t help feel this is a maladaption of of the need to connect and restore some balance of masculine worth.That it is a maladaption is obvious…but what else have we left them with?