There is a short article on MSNBC about a girl who was gang-raped outside her Homecoming Dance. And despite the fact that multiple witnesses saw what was happening, no one stepped into help.
From the article:
"Police said the [15-year-old] girl left the dance and was walking to meet her father for a ride home when a classmate invited her to join a group drinking in the courtyard. The victim had drank a large amount of alcohol by the time the assault began, police said.
Officers received a tip about a possible assault on campus and found the girl semi-conscious near a picnic table."
""She was raped, beaten, robbed and dehumanized by several suspects who were obviously OK enough with it to behave that way in each other's presence," Lt. Mark Gagan said. "What makes it even more disturbing is the presence of others. People came by, saw what was happening and failed to report it.""
"Two suspects were in custody Monday, but police said as many as five other men attacked the girl over a two-hour period Friday night outside Richmond High School."
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Well, there is the bystander effect, though from the article it was not clear if this was a situation where that could have played a role or not.
I wrote about this story yesterday too, including some thoughts on male socialization
That was a great blog post, powerful.
As an educator, what I find most disturbing and sad is that this type of behavior from adolescent boys no longer surprises me.
Far too often in our society, boys are given reason to believe that this type of behavior - and the associated attitudes - toward women is acceptable, even if they recognize it as potentially "disrespectful". It is as infuriating as it is saddening when I hear a 15 yr old boy say matter-of-factly that "some girls want to be treated like sluts" or "girls always lie about rape when they know they want it".
So I find this part of your blog post particularly interesting:
"For example we can eliminate language like “pussy” “wuss” and “girl” when talking about male behavior that is not “macho” and not make fun of boys or men who show their sensitive side. We can encourage people we know to always stand up for what is right even if they think it will make them unpopular."
We not only need to eliminate the language, but we have to teach boys to question why they hold these assumptions, help them identify the contradictions (it is almost certain that not one of the perpetrators would allow this to happen to a family member) and help them understand why this type of behavior (and attitude toward women) is completely unacceptable and dehumanizing. It's not preaching at them, but helping them to develop a more sophisticated analysis of the problem and move to a place where they can stand up because THEY deem it unacceptable.
This is something we're working on in my class of boys through our discussions of race and gender identity development. However, I think we do far too little of this work as educators and as the ones with a large part chunk of responsibility for the development of our youth, we have to figure out how to address this problem in a systematically preventative rather consistently reactive fashion.
How horrible. I wrote about it too.
sorry for the double post. it didn't look like my first one had gone up
For those who might need it, the site "Resurrection After Rape" (resurrectionafterrape.org) offers a free "bonus download" guide called "A parent's guide to helping a daughter who has been raped" and one called "A man's guide to helping a woman who has been raped." This is NOT spam; I am not selling/promoting anything--this resource is completely FREE and is used by many rape crisis programs. I just hope it helps someone.