“Boys will be boys. And even that wouldn’t matter if only we could prevent girls from being girls.” - Anne Frank

Anne Frank was 16 years old when she died. At 16 years old she had more wisdom and understanding of the world than some adults I have met. Boys being boys wouldn’t matter so much, but “boys will be boys” became an excuse for boys to do whatever they please. If we could stop girls from being girls than the boys who decide to be unrestrained, despicable people because they can get away with it, wouldn’t be the conflict it is. We cannot stop girls from being girls but we can stop boys from being sexual harrassers and sexually abusive. 

Young men must be taught and educated on topics that will always be uncomfortable for teachers to talk about. The fact that sex education is an uncomfortable topic only goes to show how much schools are missing it and how important it is. It is this lack of knowledge and the gendered bias that comes in abundance at school that makes rape culture blossom. Rape culture permeates our school communities, continuing to perpetuate sexist policies for young women. 

But what is rape culture?

    By definition rape culture is when a society’s values, normalizes or downplays sexual assault and abuse. This can come in many forms. An example of rape culture is known as vicitim blaming. “What were you wearing?” or “How much did you have to drink?” are common questions that survivors are often asked. This may not seem like directly blaming the victim but those questions are a version of saying “It was your fault, you shouldn’t have gotten drunk and you shouldn’t have been wearing a short skirt at night”. People would rather blame a woman who has just been violated in the worst way, then admit to themselves that a man is to blame for her pain. 

    Rape culture encourages males to be sexually aggressive towards women. Katherine Clonan-Roy et al. explains that women are taught to restrict what they say and do, if she slips up it can ultimately mean that she will be blamed for her own sexual assault. Men who rape will be excused because that is simply their expression of their masculinity (5). Unfortunately, when women express themselves (like wearing the clothes she actually wants to wear), men take it as an invitation to harm these women. However, this is circumstantial because men don’t need women to be doing anything for them to hurt them, and society doesn’t need to hear what happened to defend what a man did without hesitation.

Another example of rape culture lies within all of the women who have been sexually harrassed or abused and don’t even know it because they were never taught that what happened was abnormal. To all the women out there who didn’t understand what was happening or what had happened to them because no one warned them about the reality we live in: I am sorry. No one should have to experience what you’ve gone through. There should be no confusion about what’s wrong... right? 

Why schools need to do better

Do you remember when we were young and our kindergarten teacher would tell us not to run with scissors? In hindsight it seems like common sense, but we were young and we didn’t think it was dangerous. There are some people who argue that some boys lack the common sense that tells them not to hurt their female peers. Journalist Jessie Tu quotes Chanel Contos, “The boys don’t know. They don’t know any better. How do we expect them to know better if we don’t teach them?” (par 15). It’s true that the education system fails these students and continues to fail with mediocre sex education programs, but it is up to society as well, to ensure that these boys grow up with a good understanding of wrong and right. Even without schools teaching young boys about consent, if society were a better place and punished  grown men for their disgusting crimes against women, it wouldn’t be so hard to grasp the simplicity of no means NO. Society is going to continue to be disappointing which means schools have to step up and start teaching about consent. 

I released a survey with 5 questions to a group of students in high school. When asked who informed these students about consent, only 2 out of 9 responded that their school explained what consent is. There were some students who said it was explained to them by parents and others who said no one ever explained what consent was at all. 78% of the students who answered this survey said that their school neglected to explain what consent was, which is harmful for both the boys who need to understand what’s unacceptable but also for the girls who need to understand that they don’t have to go along with everything. Girls are constantly told they need to be obedient. Society tells them to shut up and sometimes even family will tell them that their voice doesn’t matter. Their voice does matter. Our voices matter. These girls need to know that when they say no and when they show that they’re uncomfortable and want to leave, whatever they are experiencing  should stop. School doesn’t teach us about consent and they certainly don’t teach us about the power of our own voices either.

The sparce sex education programs in schools leaves no safe space for children to understand or talk about sexual assault. Not only do kids need to understand what sexual assault is so they do not hurt others, they need to understand what it is in case it is happening to them. Melinda Wenner Moyer mentions, in a national survey of underaged children in 2019, 56% of girls and 40% of boys reportedly experienced sexual harassment (par 2). If their schools do not discuss what is happening then these children won’t understand what’s happened to them or that it shouldn’t have happened. Ignoring that it happened and leaving the children clueless would only normalize the sexual harassment and reinforce rape culture further. Dr. Sophie King-Hill also offers strategies on how to reduce harmful sexual behavior, especially among children. She says not only to talk about the issues but to make sure to listen (par 2). It is a most unfortunate thing when a child feels like they cannot go to anyone after experiencing sexual abuse. One of the anonymous responders to my survey spoke about their own sexual assault and their experience reinforces that children need someone to talk to and someone to listen. They said that none of the sex education classes they took ever spoke about what to do and what to say after being assaulted. They also spoke about how much it still affects them and the mental toll it took on them along with the fact that they are sensitive to touch. This isn’t something that anyone, let alone a teenager, should ever have to experience and the lasting trauma after their sexual assault could’ve been lessened if they knew how to express it and seek the help they needed.  

Believe it or not, some schools still impose sexist ideas onto young students and neglect to properly educate young male minds. Sex education isn’t an easy topic to teach, and I know it’s especially hard when you’re trying to teach in a room of young adults who are most likely not taking anything seriously. But how do educators expect us to listen when they dance around the important information and drown us in things that we’ll probably never need? Katherine Clonan-Roy et al. also says, sex education often places the responsibility for preventing sexual assault on girls. “Keep your legs closed” and “don’t lead him on” are used instead of telling boys not to be rapists. Moreover, the curriculum should steer away from telling girls how to avoid being sexually assaulted and focus on the things that make boys think sexual abuse is okay in the first place; pornography. Professors Stanley and Barter’s research found that boys who regularly watch porn online were more likely to harbor negative gender ideologies (par 1). This research was for boys between the ages of 14-17, young men who should be attending a sex education program, that debunks what they think they know about sex because they watch porn. The fact that sex education programs don’t explain consent and then let these male students out into the world with faulty knowledge is dangerous for all of humankind. The curriculum will tell these young women how to prevent sexual assault from happening while these boys will look at them like objects. We are not objects and they cannot do what they want with us. Then again, no one ever explains that to these boys.

Another important  idea that schools need to teach their male students is “token resistance.” This term is used to describe a woman saying no but really meaning yes. Olushola Aromona rightfully describes token resistance as problematic because it can send mixed signals and can lead to unwanted sexual aggression (163). Token resistance contributes to rape culture because it takes away the seriousness of no means no. For some women, in some cases, no means yes and that can be confusing which is why it’s important for schools to also teach their students about communication along with body language and healthy intimacy to ensure that everyone remains safe.

Why your favorite childhood fairytales make things worse

    I loved fairy tales when I was a little girl. I would watch the different princess movies on repeat. I would even read the child-friendly version of the Brothers Grimms stories all day long. I was 12 years old when I found out that the version of the story I loved when I was a kid was far off from the original. True love's kiss didn’t wake sleeping beauty from her death-like sleep, the birth of her twin children did. A king repeatedly raped her and got her pregnant, when she wakes up because she was giving birth to his children, she marries him and they live “happily ever after”. This is exactly what’s wrong. I read these fairytales so much that I knew them by heart and it took this to make me understand that these fairytales aren’t always cute or romantic. These girls were almost all underaged and some were kissed in their sleep which seemed okay when I was younger but is non-consensual. From the minute I learned how to read this idea that princes can do what they want but princesses cannot , was engraved in my mind. My mother always wanted me to be independent but she grew up on the same fairytales and she didn’t see how it was constantly reinforcing rape culture, from damsels in distress who needed to be saved by a stronge handsome prince who did as he pleased, to girls who got kissed in their sleep by strangers they never really met. 

Another aspect of fairy tales that contributes to rape culture are heteronormative power dynamics. Children are very impressionable so it’s important that we don’t teach them about healthy relationships and equal power dynamics between the partners even if the partners are male and female. Most fairytales exhibit heterosexual relationships and they almost always give males more power. Tracey Nicholls says it best when she writes, “Traditional and prescriptive, they condition those raised with them to accept as natural and unchangeable the idea that men ought to have power over women, and they give legitimacy to the kinds of social relations that characterise rape culture” (67). Fairytales feed toxic masculinity which gives credibility to power dynamics between men and women and reinforce rape culture. Men walk around thinking they have more power than women and they know they will be excused for their actions and crimes against women. Some men even go so far to rob women of their power by sexually assaulting them, and it takes time for women to earn that power back, if they ever do. This mentality that young kids learn from fairy tales stays with them and influences the way they view the world. If your school was like mine, fairy tales were discussed as part of a curriculum because educators still don’t see how harmful it can be to their young students. Furthermore, the way they view the world can be sexist if they are never taught the ideology that eliminates the bias these “harmless” stories can leave. 

 Let’s talk about victim-blaming… again

    Victim blaming is a huge part of rape culture and it’s constantly reinforced in schools. Besides the lack of sex education, school dress codes directed at female students to “ensure our safety”, female students being bullied for nude photos of them being circulted, and of course the disbelief when a young female finally reports her sexual assault. I am lucky to be attending a high school with dress codes that are fair but I’ve heard the stories far too many times not to mention this issue. Taking a girl out of class because her tank top is distracting her male teacher or the boys in her class, as if her education matters less, is not acceptable. The schools say that they enforce this policy because it keeps her safe - if her wardrobe choices jeopardizes her safety at school then they should be looking at the people who would harm her. It shouldn’t be her job to protect herself in what should be one of the safest places for her to be, because she shouldn’t be in any danger of being sexually abused at school. The school is essentially saying that if anything were to happen to her it would be because her tank top didn’t cover enough of her skin. Unfortunately, students have been fighting this cause for a while now and there isn’t much improvement in this form of victim blaming. Another form is based around girls whose nude photos have been circulated. Megan Specia says, these girls  have been bullied and shamed by their own classmates after their exposing pictures were sent around (par 2). Not only is having a nude picture of an underaged girl a federal crime, but there have been cases where girls have harmed themselves because their picture was all over school. Their classmates do not share any sympathy for these girls, no matter the situation they would laugh about the pictures and say something along the lines of “she shouldn’t have taken it if she didn’t want people to see'' rather than “Don’t pass that around - it’s not okay”.

    One of the biggest forms of not only victim blaming but rape culture itself lies with all of the girls who were raped at college parties while intoxicated, or in some cases sober, and never got the justice they deserved. The vast majority of these girls were accused of being too drunk to have a reliable account of what happened. The Independent, a news blog, highlights one case where the female survivor was unconscious for the duration of the assault but there were several witnesses. The jury found her rapist guilty and recommended he serve 6 years for his crimes in federal prison along with probation and the agreement that he had to be registered as a sex offender. Judge Persky said he showed so much promise because this was his first offense and he was “a person who had done well in life until that night”, and only sentenced Turner to 6 months in prison (Svrluga). He had no excuse for what he did, in fact he admitted that he did the crime because he told the judge he felt remorse, and he still only served a few months in prison. The judge cared more about Brock Turner’s life than he did about Chanel Miller and it’s sickening. Persky was so worried about ruining Turner’s life that he forgot that his job was to bring HER justice. This lack of justice, alongside people who stood by Turner because Chanel Miller was intoxicated, is the epitome of victim blaming. “She shouldn’t have been that drunk” is not valid. The fact that she and so many others never got the justice they deserved is the definition of rape culture because society has become so numb to the atrocity  that is sexual assault, it is like people don’t even care anymore, and that is the problem. 

    After all is said and done Anne Frank was right. Boys will be boys, but we can turn them into good men who know the difference between right and wrong. We can enforce a useful sex education program starting with teaching our educators what they need to know about consent, respect and communication, lessons that need to be taught to achieve healthy intimacy. With a better education our future generations can deconstruct rape culture until it’s eliminated completely. The girls who have already been assaulted and abused, the survivors, they are the strongest women out there and need you to do whatever you can to make a difference, to make the world better even if it’s only one school at a time. Every girl who has to take the New York subway by herself, or walk to school past prying eyes, needs this. Your mothers, sisters and daughters need this, because without it, women and girls will continue to be failed by society. We need to protect them. You need to protect us.

Works Cited

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Culture.” African Women and Their Networks of Support, edited by Cloete, 

Ndakalako-Bannikov, and Stember. Google Books, 29 October 2020, pp. 163-176, 

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Barter, Christine and Stanley, Nickey. “‘Rape Culture’ in Schools and the Role of Pornography.” 

The Guardian, 1 April 2021, theguardian.com/society/

Clonan-Roy, Katherine et al. “Preserving Absitnence and Preventing Rape: How Sex Education 

Textbooks Contribute to Rape Culture.” Archives of Sexual Behavior, 3 August 2020, 

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King-Hill, Sophie. “What Are the First Steps in Addressing Rape Culture in Schools?” Social 

Sciences Birmingham, 4 June 2021, blog.bham.ac.uk/socialsciencesbirmingham

Moyer, Melinda W. “To Stop Sexual Violence, We Need to Change How We Engage With Kids.” 

The Washington Post, 17 September 2019, washingtonpost.com/

Nicholls, Tracey. “Dismantling Rape Culture | The Peacebuilding Power of ‘Me Too’.” 

Routledge, 2021, pp. 67-103, library.oapen.org/

Specia, Megan. “Women Are Calling Out ‘Rape Culture’ in U.K. Schools.” The New York Times, 

3 June 2021, nytimes.com

Svrluga, Susan. “Stanford Rape Case Judge Explains Controversial Brock Turner Sentence.” The 

Independent, 15 June 2016, independent.co.uk/news

Tu, Jessie. “Rape Culture Prevails in Elite Private Boys’ Schools. So What’s The Answer?” 

Women’s Agenda, 22 February 2021, womensagenda.com