men really are the worst, we need to find a way to stop them
You
are a man, Arte.
But this is a
very important issue:
Sexist harassment, also called gendered bullying by some researchers (defined as sexual harassment for this book), is often directed to girls as a group or individually and can include subtle physical intimidation such as blocking the way or invading personal space. It is sex-based - directed to girls because they are girls. It may begin as fun and joking, and turn into harassment. When a girl doesn't like it and tells the boys to stop, she often hears: "Oh we were just joking" or "Can't you take a joke?" Sex-based harassment is still a form of power "over" another student.
When teaching students about sexual harassment, boys often said they felt pressured by their male classmates to harass girls because, if they did not, they were ostracized and/or became vulnerable to male classmates sexually harassing them by, for example, using homophobic taunts. They were called names like "queer" and "fag," and were the brunt of jokes implying they weren't heterosexual. The harassment of girls by boys was an expected rite of passage, used to assure their sexual masculine identity and to generate acceptable by their male classmates within the male hierarchical power relationships (not just in terms of gender, but race and class as well). The sexual harassment of their female classmates represents hegemonic masculinity or patriarchy (see chapter 9 on causes and contributing factors for further discussion). [Hetero]sexual sexual harassment is a way to demonstrate dominance towards females, not just for the sake of the behavior itself, but to ensure acceptance in the male group. When boys are harassed, it is often because they don't portray themselves as the "right" kind of boy, not being male enough, thereby building hierarchy and enforcing heterosexual masculinity. Sexual harassment can act as a way to police and maintain gender boundaries and hierarchy. It is also a way to put a girl in her place when boys are angry and want to reinforce their own power. Girls are used to enhance a boy's rank in masculinity.
and:
"When teachers intervene in connection with boys' sexual harassment of girls and the boys responded with "It's only a joke," teachers often did not challenge the boys' retort, thereby disregarding the girls' complaints and both supporting and reinforcing the boys' sense of entitlement and control."
and:
"When girls hear sexist and derogatory comments aimed at a boy with female characteristics, it both strengthens masculinity and devalues femininity. The comments challenge a boy's masculinity by explicitly or implicitly attacking a feminine characteristic of the targeted boy. The comments devalue girls when the female characteristic is used to devalue boys. Girls at school are within a social culture of violence towards girls - just because they are girls. Therefore, attending school in an evnironment in which abusive behavior flourishes and goes unabated reinforces girls' vulnerable position in society, as well as in their school environment."
and:
"Schools implicitly support patriarchy. They do so by allowing male entitlement, bullying, and sexual harassment, enforcing traditional masculinity regarding GLBT students. When sexism and sexist systems are not challenged, as in the school environment, then day-to-day practices are invisible and accepted, thereby reproducing inequality and patriarchy."
I think an important point to make is that these behaviors are performances of gender - of masculinity - that are done for the the consumption of one's peers. In
her ethnographic study of one California high school, sociologist C.J. Pascoe was struck by the disparity between the way boys talked about girls in private with her or how girls said their boyfriends talked to them when they were alone, and the abusive, sexist, and hurtful ways that the boys treated girls while in group settings.
Thus far this chapter has focused on boys who treated girls as resources to be mobilized for their own masculinity projects, but not all boys engaged in practices of compulsive heterosexuality at all times. Most boys engaged in these sorts of practices only when in groups, and some boys avoided them in general.
When not in groups - when in one-on-one interactions with boys or girls- boys were much less likely to engage in gendered and sexed dominance practices. In this sense boys became masculine in groups (Connell 1996; Woody 2002). With the exception of Chad, none of the boys spoke to me the way they spoke with other boys about girls, girls' bodies, and their own sexual adventures. In one-on-one situations with me (and possibly with each other) they often spoke touchingly about their feelings and insecurities with girls. While the boys I interviewed, for the most part, asserted the centrality of sexual competence to a masculine self, several of them rejected this definition or at least talked differently about girls and sexuality in their interviews.
In order to address what the sort of behaviors this girl is experiencing, we have to talk about boys and more positive forms of masculinity that aren't predicated on the mistreatment or marginalization of women or sexual minorities.
