I am female. I attend 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 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's always kept under close wraps, the details pronounced highly confidential so as to not 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 with 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 (skip to 4:10 to see what I'm talking about):
To go directly to the YouTube link, click here .
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 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, to a large extent, true. (Wealthy WASP males are now a minority at many schools.) Last year, my school celebrated its 25th year of coeducation (it is nearly 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 recent Senior School 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 that, but I for one (plus my friend, two) could not feel good about it at all.
"I don't think I've ever been in a room so testosterone-filled in my entire life," I said later to my friend.
"Yeah," she replied. "It was almost like being a girl at an all-boys' school."
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I can't imagine how that even passed by the school... Are they fairly lenient about things like that? In college that would be more likely, but high school?
That's not right. I would have left feeling disgusted..
Whenever my school put on things like this- sketch comedy or talent shows- they would sometimes watch the rehearsal, sometimes not. Let's be serious, how many teachers want to volunteer their afternoon to watch a couple idiots practice their dance number? Even if teachers did watch rehearsal, the kids would just put on a tamer version of the show, and do what they wanted the night of the performance.
Maybe it was just my school, but we had a censoring on nearly everything. In the school play there had to be two twin beds instead of a king for the husband and wife characters because a king bed would be considered "obscene".
we had that kind of oversight for school-run things, like musicals and plays, but if it was more of a student-run activity, there was way less teacher oversight and involvement.
A decent book with analysis of these kind of school performances is Dude, You're a Fag by C.J. Pascoe. It's an ethnography of masculinity in a California high school, and Pascoe addresses the disparities between what is allowed in sexualized performances done by boys versus girls and black students versus white students. As you could probably assume, boys get away with more than girls and white students get away with more than black students.
Yeah I probably would have walked out of that.
So... the boys get to enjoy some bullshit dance to a shitty movie, and the girls get the highest GPA for nearly two decades straight? I'd call this losing the battle but winning the war.
Hey. Madagascar was NOT shitty.
ok, but... can't we have both? Treated with respect in our school and home, and do well in school?
So it's okay to have to deal with a sexist, hyper-masculine simulation of multiple boys getting into a girl's vagina, because girls get better grades?
I don't know if I'd say the girls are "winning the war" just yet.
we also have the right to vote, so we should just forget about the "battle" of getting equal pay and not being sexualized objects, amirite??
I didn't like the simulated "cumming" part which occurred right after the boys pretending to be girls and cover their vaginas. The double penetration part was gross too. I am all for lude fun but this was not just lude it was also sexist. The over tones of "conquering the vagina" were disgusting. I can also see how being in the audience and being female would have made you very uncomfortable. I find it hard to believe that this was allowed at a high school. Are the administration so oblivious that this just flew right over their heads? You say it is "secret" but they must have know something, right? I would (along with your parents) notify the school about why you are unhappy about this performance and encourage others to do the same. (and just because girls have managed to get better GPAs doesn't mean they should have to put up with shit like this)
Ugh--just goes to show, lots of guys still think they rule the world and can do whatever they want when given a stage and a little power.
I graduated from an all-girls high school a few years ago, so I didn't really deal with frat boy types, though sexism wasn't completely absent.
Has there been any negative backlash--either from the students or the administration? Or are they letting "boys be boys" and playing along with "senioritis"?
I'm sure most of the female students are playing it off as funny and don't want to seem like "prudes" or--dare I say--"feminists" in a way that makes them seem "unattractive." At that age, I know girls are supposed to laugh off that kind of crap and be 100% comfortable with blatant sexism.
I wouldn't generalize like that. In high school, I, and some of my best friends, were certain of our feminist principles and anyone who knew us, knew that we were feminists. Sure, it was "cool," but it's who we were!
That being said, I agree with everyone who said you should write to the school administration, whether it's anonymous or not.
Oh god!!!! not FEMINISTS!!!! AHHHH!!!!
;-)
I think you should write a letter to the administration (signed or anonymous), or perhaps you can even just send them an email with a link to this thread.
Wow. The whole thing seemed bizarre and rather ridiculous to me. And the part that you mentioned was quite disturbing. I know I would have been uncomfortable watching it...perhaps it was meant to go along with the whole sex theme of the performance, though I can still see how it might be seen as sexist.
That was completely idiotic. And as much thought as I'm sure they felt they put into it, or how clever they felt... It was just a huge display of stupidity. It was inappropriate to say the very least.
Story time with Jjuliaava: A hundred years ago ('97) we had a similar thing at my public hs, however the tradition was "male pommies" where the popular student gov senior boys dressed as female cheerleaders did a much less racy dance (still offensive enough)... Lucky for me I was on the video news team and so I interviewed some of the jocks asking questions like "Does your mother know about your cross-dressing antics?" With a little subtle editing--voila! I should've earned an emmy for that shizz!!!
Aaah.. memories...*sigh*
I am quite curious as to what the official responses have been. Has there been anything in the local news? What are parents, teachers, administrators saying?
Yeah... this is progress.
/sarcasm
Maybe I am missing something (I don't know what dance crazes are 'in' in the USA). Never saw Madagascar either.
Who says the 'tunnel' thing is a vagina? If it isn't, there is nothing to be offended about. Is there?
Honestly, what else COULD it be? I don't know many things that look similar to giant sideways lips (that's what it looked like to me) besides a vagina when it comes to sexual stuff.
The fact that girls go to this school but weren't in the planning or the performance of this assembly is bad enough.
Right and I assume it is by default the boys fault the girls were not part in the planning and execution of that prank, amirite ?
Unless the boys noticed that there were no girls around, demanded to the administration that there be some girls in the production of this assembly, and were rebuffed by the administration, then the boys are at least partially to blame.
I teach high school, and I'm pretty sure that if our kids did something like that, the school board would shit a house and administration would be fired immediately.
A smidge of research yielded that the Lawrenceville School is an exceedingly wealthy private school near Princeton that has a tuition + board of over 40k a year.
Is it any real shock that really, really rich teenagers do stuff like this? Aside from male privilege the economic privilege involved to do this without fear of serious repercussions from the administration is evident as well. Kids that rich can lawyer up at the drop of a hat.
Meh,color me unsurprised. I've seen poorer guys and gals do performances akin to this at several high schools, and it's a combination of teenage idiocy and conjunctions of privilege and culture. Whatever, it's not exactly a surprise that economic privilege plus a hefty amount of male privilege at a boarding school results in this. To be honest it's better than some of the alternatives, like sexual assault or rape (not to say those don't happen at the Lawrenceville School as well, though).
I'm not certain why it was necessary to make the point that the school is expensive. Can rich students get away with a lot? Of course. But so can poorer students. I realize you're making a point about the correlation here between economic privilege and gender privilege, but it doesn't seem right to make the assumption that the boys believed that their parents would get them out of any trouble with the administration. It seems more likely to me, based on the original post, that this is an accepted part of the school year and didn't differ that much from previous years' events. In that case, it's a problem with the administration's attitude more than the boys' attitudes, because they haven't been sending a clear message to their students that women deserve respect.
When you bring up the cost of the school, you risk making this conversation about class rather than gender inequality. You brought it up to make a valid point that these young men may have more protection from repercussions than others, though, and I guess that's a reasonable point to make.
However, your point that it's better than rape is completely ridiculous. Of course it's better than rape! Just because it isn't as bad as it could be doesn't mean we shouldn't be calling people out on it. This sort of thing demeans women and gives young men the idea that they can treat women as objects without repercussions. That's the sort of attitude that can lead to rape.
Of course it was necessary to mention class in this discussion. Gendered privilege doesn't exist in a vacuum, and different types of privilege can complement each other, especially in self-segregating environments like a private boarding school.
Can poor people get away with stuff, too? Yes, but the worries of this group was likely much different than another, poorer group doing something like this in a public high school. I've seen kids not walk at graduation because of antics like this, but somehow I doubt that that would be the big worry for those kids up on stage.
That's economic privilege facilitating the exertion of male privilege.
Why can't tradition and privilege overlap here? A tradition of male privilege at the boarding school (this boarding school was apparently not co-ed until relatively recently in its life span) certainly is relevant, but being quick to dismiss economic privilege is a tactic of the relatively economically advantaged to reduce issues like this to pure male privilege, and it just isn't. The ability to be care-free like this is at least partially influenced by socio-economic status. The OP mentioned the guys doing this were the "creme de la creme" of the school, social royalty. That involves economics as much or more than it involves gender.
I don't see why this can't be about both class and gender inequality, to be honest. One doesn't reduce the other, and in many cases these things are inextricably linked. Is it so crazy to believe that an obscenely wealthy private boarding school (they have an endowment bigger than a lot of universities) that was once all boys could possibly involve both male AND economic privilege?
Protection from repercussions is a MAJOR issue here. The ability to do something this provocative definitely stems from, in part at the very least, the economic privilege that entails knowing you can fight the administration and probably win. It affects who participates in the performance, and it affects how crazy a performance like this can get. I've seen stuff like this, but never so lewd or raunchy, and that's certainly a partial product of the economic environment of the school. It's a very relevant factor that in no way diminishes or derails the nature of male privilege in this argument.
Without male privilege the idea for this certainly doesn't happen, but without economic privilege this performance likely doesn't happen, or take the shape that it does in that telling YouTube video.
My rape comment was in regard to trends at colleges/private coeducational facilities and the potential effects of a combination of male and economic privilege that's far worse than what happened on stage. I never said this wasn't an issue, or that it shouldn't be criticized. What I did say, though, is that this behavior falls within the same realm, but not the same bounds, as potentially worse behavior that could be going on at that very school. Of course this attitude can lead to rape, and I implied that in the very part of my post that you're criticizing. I said, essentially, that it could be (and might be) worse than a skit like this.
A little food for thought on how economic privilege is a huge factor here:
100% of the performers on stage were male. That's been bandied about here, and it's quite obvious, but somehow a less obvious stat got glossed over in the entire discussion here:
100% of the performers are white. The "creme de la creme", as the OP called them, and all creme and no coffee, if you'll pardon the bad pun.
The Lawrenceville School has a student body that's, by their stats, 30% students of color, and 8% international students.
Yet somehow not one of the performers out there is anything other than caucasian.
This is certainly indicative of the economic privilege of the performers, as well as white and male privilege. The point of the intersectionality discussion is that we HAVE to take ALL THESE THINGS into account. They shouldn't be viewed as competing discussions, but rather a holistic discussion.
That so far we've all but ignored the economic/racial issues involved with this performance makes our discussion far less nuanced than it has to be. This isn't a purely gender issue. There are a lot of things going on with a performance like this, and to ignore them is to merely graze the surface of an issue like this.
These kids get to perform, and perform in this way, because they're male, but also because they're the social, racial, and economic elite of a rich private school. That stuff is exceedingly relevant to a nuanced discussion of this issue.
Rich teens acting stupid and reinforcing negative values like objectification is far more complex than just saying "male privilege" and moving on.
I watched the performance all the way through instead of skipping to 4:10. Everyone else should to. These were my impressions. (1) These boys spent quite a bit of time and effort choreographing this piece and they actually did remarkably well. The use of staging, in particular, to make simple movements look interesting was amazing. (2) They spent a lot of time practicing as most people on stage knew the choreography and it was quite synchronized. Just trying to get that many people in one room at the same time to practice is and of itself an accomplishment. (3) As this was the creative outlet of high school boys, they are expressing themselves. Which are sexual beings who have very little understanding of sexuality - definitely not a woman's and likely not even their own. They are expressing their sexual energy in irrational, impolite and and somewhat bizarre fashions, but considering how young they are what do you expect? Maturity, depth and subtlety? (4) The experience of expressing their sexuality publicly - and wearing so little clothes as well - is clearly liberating to these young men. They are having fun and seem quite proud of themselves. It is wonderful that your school lets these young men express themselves this way. If you don't like that this was an all male production, you should round up a group of girls and request that the school administration give you equal time. By law, they would have to. (5) Most importantly, no vaginas were harmed, impregnated or infected with a disease in the making of this show. Also, all that time the boys spent making this show means that they weren't drinking, doing drugs, or breaking any other laws. If all of the young men in this age bracket dedicated their testosterone influenced intellects to choreography, society would be far better off.
I think society would be better of if these young men became involved in promoting women's reproductive health instead of mocking us.
Ah yes, what a wonderful world we would live in if all the boarding school boys devoted their time to dreaming up creative new ways to insult women through the art of dance.
They are expressing their sexual energy in irrational, impolite and and somewhat bizarre fashions, but considering how young they are what do you expect? Maturity, depth and subtlety?
yes, i do.
your argument borders dangerously close to the old boys will be boys excuse for sexual inappropriateness. adolescent sexuality isn't inherently lewd, crude or degrading and there are many young men and women who make good and thoughtful decisions about their sexual expressions. SO MUCH of the media targeted towards the teenage boy demographic is overwrought with base images of objectified women/female anatomy that we have come to accept that that is the only understanding of sexuality teenage boys are able to compute: their desire to stick it somewhere, anywhere. in fact, we don't even bother to EXPECT anything more of them. while at the same time, we load teenage girls up with contradicting images of virgins and whores and give them WAY LESS room to express their own sexuality.
I'm guessing you've read Jessica's new book, The Purity Myth? What you've said is exactly what she is arguing, and I completely agree with you!
no, i actually havent read it yet. its on my (very) long summer reading list. but maybe i'll have to bump it up a few notches now!
"Most importantly, no vaginas were harmed, impregnated or infected with a disease in the making of this show. Also, all that time the boys spent making this show means that they weren't drinking, doing drugs, or breaking any other laws."
Yes, that automatically makes this ridiculous performance not offensive or inappropriate! We should applaud these boys for not harming, impregnating, or infecting vaginas and for not drinking, doing drugs, or breaking laws during the time they were putting this show together. Job well done, boys.
Those things should be STANDARD, not exceptions worth noting.
the problem with you statement is that its chocking it back up to the "boys will be boys" crap that we have heard all of our lives, also think about this, These young men are seniors, they are going to be 18 very soon if the are not 18 already. That's right they are going to be legal. They need to be taught that they need to act in a more mature way, it is not unreasonable to expect 18 year olds to act with maturity.
If you don't like that this was an all male production, you should round up a group of girls and request that the school administration give you equal time.
Yeah, like two girls could hold their arms up and become the giant vagina. Teamwork, people! Teamwork!
So if it is homoerotic hiptrusting it is good fun, if it is heteroerotic you leave dazed and confused.
The boys organized the whole thing and put themselves in the spotlight, nobody is keeping you from finding willing girls to do the same.
While we should all have equal rights, girls and boys are not equal, thats why you are more likely to see girls giggle and squeal to the sillitudes of boys, than the other way around.
"Girls and boys are not equal?" Because girls laugh at silly boys?? This makes absolutely no sense and I hope you're joking.
Girls and boys are NOT equal. That is the whole point of feminism, getting equal opportunity and a fair treatment and assessment despite the gender differences.
More guys than girls flock to math, girls who do math or physics should get the same respect and attention guys get, even if they are a minority.
Having the right to vote, despite being different to men.
Or am I missing something ??
it looks more like they're being born than they are penetrating the vagina. the double-penetration was really just twins!
you should speak to them after class sometime and remind them about stage directions and perspective. if they wanted to appear as though they are entering the vagina from outside of it, they should have begun downstage and moved upstage. beginning upstage and moving towards the audience, they really just makes themselves look like a bunch of big babies.
not only are they lewd, but also horrible choreographers!
Wow. I wish I could say I was shocked.
I knew from the first sentence of your post that this happened at my fair boarding school, because I witnessed a very similar spectacle when I graduated in 2005. I'm sad to see that the punchlines to this performance, as always, are disrespect for women and the crude homophobia of finding two men dancing together hysterical.
I'm disappointed to see how little has changed.
to me, the part in question looked more like a representation of the boys being born rather than "conquering the vagina" or "getting into a girl's vagina". did you ask them what it meant?
And if it was conquering or getting into a girls vagina, what is so bad about that ?
Sometimes I get the impression American puritanism somehow survived in American feminism.
I mean you would not get appalled at suggestive behaviour on a gay pride parade either.
You use the term "conquering a girls vagina" and find nothing at all problematic about the implications of that phrase? Well here's the definition of conquer for ya: To defeat or subdue by force; to gain or secure control of. I'm sorry if you can't understand what's so bad about that type of language. This skit was not just suggestive, sexual behavior. They reduced women to nothing but a vagina and found it hilarious to force their way into it.
I'm far, far from puritanical (My boyfriend is sitting across the room laughing at that idea) but I can still understand the importance of respect.
i'm just quoting what was being said above. i'm no puritan. i personally think the whole outrage is somewhat ridiculous.
if only we were all so fortunate as to go to "an exceedingly wealthy private school near Princeton that has a tuition + board of over 40k a year". i often think that if such outrage were aimed at the blatant disparity between classes that exist in American society more people would get on board and enact real change, rather than just a few being shocked and dismayed by adolescent boys "violating" in manner that registers as a .005 on the "outrageous-scale". please.
where does someone get 40k a year to send their child to boarding school? i'd imagine it was on the backs of good women and men, some who make less than 40k in an entire year. that's outrageous. oh, and i wonder how many of these children are doctor's children? how about outrage over the disparity that exists in health care in this wonderful nation? now that's truly a feminist issue.
Ah okay, I certainly did not mean to say that rape is okay. In some circles, seducing a girl is considered a conquest, even if sex happened with her consent.
I'm aware of that, but I'm trying to bring up the point that viewing sex as a conquest, something to be claimed and taken, is an inherently degrading way to think about it. The image of these boys forcing their way through a vagina enforces the view that sex is not about sharing pleasure with another human being, but rather about taking pleasure from a vagina.
if this were not the internet, i'd give you a high five.
@happilymarriedinohio & proudfeminist:
The portion of the video that we seem to focus on is the simulated sex act. That's exactly what this video is - a simulated sex act - accompanied by a build up of hypermasculinity and phallus symbolism tinged with, yes, homoeroticism. This is not a birthing scenario.
A couple of points about the video:
1- the boys are scantily clad. This in itself isn't bad. The expectation of men in Western culture is that they are usually fully dressed. They wear suits that cover all but the face and hands in power scenarios. So being scantily clad upturns this traditional ideal of what males are and turns them into the sex objects for once (note that is common for women to be scantily clad and still be considered well-dressed). It's like women going to a Chippendale show - it subverts the norm for women, thus making it humorous. Here, the humor is that it's a safe place for men to be dancing practically naked with each other because it isn't the social norm for this to be happening. Just to make it extra safe, they add humor by wearing silly hats (what are that hats, anyway? I can't tell from the video) and dance around play-acting as animals and playing up the masculinity and just to make sure everybody knows they're "real men".
2- Much of the opening I think is a msculinity ritual - body slapping, high-fiving, pissing-contest type activity. The hip thrusting may have a tinge of homoeroticism, but they're portraying hypermasculinity. There's even one part at about 3:45 where two boys "kill" all the other (less masculine?) boys with their phalluses via hip thrusts and, I can only assume, lethal sperm shots/ejaculation. And it's all a lead up to the "conquering the vagina" display.
3- The vagina. Note that it's only ONE vagina - the boys don't alternate, so it must be one vagina. Two boys become the "vagina" while all the other boys become "phalluses." One "phallus" decides not to "enter" - is that because that particular one is gay and doesn't want to, or is it because that particular one "enters" after all the others and decides that particular vagina is too slutty, skanky, whathaveyou? Another "phallus" is "pushed in" seemingly against its control by the others - has that "phallus" been pressured in a mob-mentality scenario? And then there are two "phalluses" that try to "enter" at once - menage a tois? date rape?
All this happens while the audience hoots and giggles.
One "vagina", multiple "phalluses" "entering" in quick succession. Hm... gang bang, anyone?
It's interesting to think how the girls in the audience could've participated to make this particular skit. How would that look? They could be the "vagina" and be complicit in the mocking of themselves.
What if it was two boys holding their arms in a circle to represent an anus, then showing "phalluses" "entering" the "anus"? What if two girls held their arms in a circle to represent an anus?
What if this was a skit some men did at a company party?
Would we be so cavalier as to say it's "puritanism," "it's ok because the girls are giggling," or "it's synchronized choreography and a creative outlet"?
happilymarriedinohio & proudfeminist: I could have warned you about the replies your comments would draw!
You are right in your comments, and no doubt the replies will have comforted you in your opinions. Which is the strange part: the arguers end up not converting you but reinforcing your own opinions!
I have realised that there is no limit to how much people can be outraged. And that symbolism is everywhere! Is it a vagina? Are the boys dressed or not? It does not matter - a suit and tie would have "reinforced male dominance" and a bathing suit turns them into a sex object.
I won't go on. I have to take cover from the flak that will fly.
Cheers.
Maybe in replying to a comment, you should address the person you are replying to, instead of making vague passive-aggressive remarks. That, at least, would facilitate the type of intelligent discussion in which Littleblue is engaging.
I'm surprised no one has made the observation yet that if a bunch of 17-year-old GIRLS were to put on a show like this--scantily clad, simulating sex--they would most likely be immediately censored and/or punished. It would be "wildly inappropriate."
...um...they would be cheerleaders.
lol. that's exactly what i thought when i read this post!
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/YaoiFangirl ?