I am female. I go to a private, 9-12, coed boarding school.
Last month, as I sat in the auditorium during our weekly All-School Meeting, a horde of senior boys suddenly leapt on stage, clad in only short-shorts and wacky accessories. Reel 2 Real's "I Like to Move it" (popularized by the movie "Madagascar") blasted over the sound system, and so we in the audience realized that this year's highly anticipated Senior School Meeting had officially begun.
Senior School Meeting is a time-honored tradition at my school. It always hits at the peak of Spring term, when the weather is nice and so-called senioritis is in full swing. It always is kept under wraps, the details pronounced highly confidential so as not to spoil the surprise. And it always involves scantily clad senior boys - the jocks, the hunks, the creme de la creme - engaged in some provocative, pelvis-thrusting dance.
Now, Senior School Meeting has never bothered me in the past. I understood that the pelvis thrusts, gyrations, and simulated sex acts were all done in good fun, if not good taste. I screamed and squealed just like all the other girls. And the guys seemed to delight even more in this sexually charged, blatantly homoerotic spectacle.
But the hype reached a new level this year when the dancers came into a new, strange formation. Two boys facing each other spread their arms vertically, their palms touching. Other boys would enter the narrow space created by the arms, barging through downstage toward the audience. Check it out here (skip to 4:10 to see what I'm talking about):
It didn't take the crowd long to figure out what was going on. The screaming grew louder and peaked when two boys, who were repeatedly colliding with the "vagina," finally crashed through.
I admit that, at the time, the implications of what I was seeing didn't fully register. It was only later, as I sat in my dorm room, that I began to feel uneasy. I brought up the subject with my friend, and we realized that we shared that same feeling. It was a feeling of confusion, awkwardness, and marginalization.
Boarding schools have rebranded themselves in the past few decades as diverse, inclusive, egalitarian institutions. And this is true to a large extent. (Wealthy WASP males are now a minority in many schools.) Last year, my school celebrated its 25th year of coeducation (it is 200 years old), touting the achievements of its female students, both past and present. Indeed, it is girls and not boys who dominate on campus. For example, the prize awarded to the dorm with the highest GPA has gone to a girls' dorm every year since 1991.
Yet female students have been largely failed by the institution that benefits so much from their personal success. Just look at our Senior Meeting. It was boys who directed it, boys who starred in it, and boys who left feeling good about it. I can't speak for every girl in the audience, but I for one (plus my friend, two) felt a little sick.
"I don't think I've ever been in a room so testosterone-concentrated in my entire life," I said later to my friend.
"Yeah," she responded. "It was like being a girl at an all-boys' school."
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I know exactly what you mean. I went to a private boarding school as you describe for a year, and I couldn't take the blatant sexism so I left.
There was a secret society similar to Yale's Skull and Bones that only males were invited to. Students would openly make derogatory comments and even say "I'm sexist" without anyone firing back. I think that was what shocked me the most--that no one really opposed it when at my old school these obnoxious brats would have, excuse my language, had their asses handed to them. There was a clear atmosphere (of testosterone;) ) of who was in charge. The girls, while they succeeded academically, held far fewer leadership positions than the boys (as far as I could tell).
Of course, there were genuinely nice boys there, but the overall atmosphere was extremely suffocating.
I'm sorry your school also has these problems. Do other people have advice about this sort of thing?
CLIP: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyYo5iyfp2I
I think in a large part, it depends very much on the individual community of each school. I went to a Quaker boarding school in the 90s and experienced vastly less sexism than was in my previous public school.
This is pretty weird, I agree, I'm surprised it was allowed and it is a sign of an extreme masculine culture. That's too bad. On the other hand, at my college females hold 70% of leadership positions and their average GPA is a full point higher. (This is pretty standard nationally, as well.) Does this mean I live in a community dominated by estrogen? No, I don't think so. Men just choose to not be as involved. It's a shame, but not sexist. Are females allowed to participate in this senior show? If so, I would suggest putting on your own act. Do the same thing, but have the vagina surge toward and attack the phallus!