A few weeks ago I had a conversation about misogyny with my cousin. She had written an article about Eddie McGuire that had gone viral and we were both unpacking his words and their impact on society. Both of us have daughters and up until that time, to our knowledge, they had yet to be confronted by any sort of objectification because of their gender.
As a woman I was appalled by Eddie McGuire’s comments, but still I was a spectator looking in from the outside. However, two weeks later I found myself in the eye of the storm.
Some young men from the local boys school, Brighton Grammar, photographed my daughter in her school uniform and uploaded her photo to an Instagram account. The apparent purpose of the account was simple; to humiliate young girls as the followers of the account were encouraged to vote for “Young Slut of the Year”.
The photo was brought to our attention by a brave young girl who had become outraged that grade six students at her school had been targeted. My daughter didn’t even know what the word slut meant, let alone any of the other vulgarity that accompanied her photo. When confronted with what was posted about my daughter, my body automatically jolted into fight or flight mode, a biochemical response to an urgent need to protect her. I gained access to the site, took screen shots of the photos and those involved. I sent urgent emails to the school principals and wrote a Facebook post to my community alerting them without naming the school or those involved.
And then I waited.
Despite the hundreds of phone calls and messages that arrived as a result of my Facebook post, I knew this was a fight I would ultimately face alone and I needed to be prepared. I knew if I reported it to the police I'd be both celebrated and vilified for doing so. I knew my children’s lives would be impacted and I needed to make sure we were ready for the onslaught.
At 5pm the next day, with the support of my family and daughters, I made a statement to the police.
For the following few days I barely left the house, with the exception of driving my daughter to and from school. I was an emotional wreck as my mind started to dance around the “what ifs”. What if that photo hadn't been brought to my attention? What if there was a pedophile on the site that could now identify my daughters’ school and her year level?
I had spent her entire life protecting her, and now she had been made vulnerable as she innocently walked to meet me after school.
Something happens to a person when their life has been shattered; when their foundation has been ripped from beneath them forcing them to fall to the ground. We start to mend. We put each piece back, bit by bit, and while we are never the same again we are stronger, bigger and wiser. After three days of tears, anger and confusion I emerged with more determination and strength than I knew was possible. Through the cracks shone a light from inside me that was blinding to those who attempted to diminish the severity of this wrong or ridicule my response to it.
While in the minority, there have been those who have condemned me for taking the strong action I did to protect my daughter. I've heard comments such as “boys will be boys” or “they just made a silly mistake and she needs to let it go”.
Herein lies the greater problem: parents minimising the severity of what has been done.
Perhaps they find it confronting as they are forced to look at themselves in the mirror and at their own parenting style. Perhaps they have turned a blind eye to sexist remarks from their own sons, or maybe they have allowed themselves to be objectified for being a woman without understanding the gravity of such remarks. Whatever their rationale is, what they fail to acknowledge is that the systematic objectification of women dehumanises us. It creates a mindset that suggests that a woman’s agency is a tool for the sexual gratification for men
There was no consent given to the young men involved. They had no right to photograph my daughter or any girl without their permission. They had no right to then share that photo among their peers so they could be judged, ridiculed and humiliated.
Rather than be a victim, I have tried to use this platform to educate and empower girls everywhere, including my own daughters. My daughters fully understand that at no stage ever in their life is a person permitted to objectify, sexualise or harass them in any way.
So what is the lesson in all of this?
For my daughters, they will never question their self worth, nor will they ever tolerate anyone attempting to do so.
For those involved, I hope they grow to become responsible fathers and leaders in their communities, understanding that for a society to be in harmony there must be equality and respect for both men and women.
And for the wider community, this is no doubt a conversation that must remain at the forefront. We need our men to stand up and become part of the fight to abolish the binary between the sexes and we need our women to show them the way.
Top Comments
Melanie, I am so sorry for what you and your daughter have been through. I 100% agree with your comments and as a victim of an assault when I was 10 years old (I am now 40), I am quite passionate about this subject and the long-term impact it can have on one's life.
Our home is very big on equality, my husband and I both work in our own businesses and share the load of chores and parenting and are very hands-on parents. Like most, our kids are virtually our world and we have two sons, aged 10 and 13. We are diligent about checking social media and any private messages and both consider ourselves educated and well read in this area, plus we always check what the boys are watching on tv, they are not allowed any violent or shooting-style games, and we clamp down on any sexist comments the second the words are uttered. We have never minimised any kind of sexist behaviour or rationalised it in any way.
However despite all of this, we had an incident a few months ago where our 13 year old son wrote something very disturbing to a girl from school in a private message. Her parents found the messages before we did (the girl was also writing disturbing content) and rightly contacted the school who jumped to immediately deal with the situation. It is a private WA Christian school and in my opinion they handled it incredibly well, with a huge emphasis on taking responsibility, providing moral education, and at the same time compassion for young kids who, while they know it's wrong, simply don't understand the repercussions of such behaviour. (I'm talking about the 10-14 age group here)
My husband and I were horrified at some of the content of the messages and immediately went into damage control with our son, cooperated 100% with the school, and had many many (it will continue as long as he is under our roof) long, in-depth talks with our son about the impact on the girl, her family, how to treat girls and how no means no, period. I also shared my personal story with him. He was incredibly upset and embarrassed, wanted to do anything he could to make it better, offered to write an apology letter to the girl and her family, which he did, and we removed his phone and all social media contact which will remain in place until we are convinced he categorically 'gets it'. We were determined to send a message to him about how serious the situation was. Luckily, the girl has a wonderful family who have reacted very similarly to us and at this point we are all trying to move forward albeit with some huge lessons learned.
We also visited a friend who is a child psychologist and specialises in this area whose advice was invaluable. Even though we thought we were on the ball (and doing much more monitoring of social media than most of our friends), we learned there was a lot more we could do to truly educate our sons. I also might add that one of the psychologist's main concerns is that schools are giving the kids access to all this technology (let's face it, most high school kids are walking around with a computer in their pocket with 24x7 access to anything they want) but are giving them 'surface' education - generally speaking the younger kids (10-14) know they shouldn't write or look at certain things, but have no idea of the long term consequences. Older kids (15+) absolutely should know better and are treated much more seriously but still we have these problems which are escalating rather than diminishing. It is like putting kids in a chocolate shop all day and night but telling them they can't have any. We as parents need to get much more serious about our education around these issues.
While the awareness is getting much better, we are bombarded by sexist imagery and even as recently as the other day I was driving behind a bus with my two sons in the car and there was a billboard-size image on the back of the bus of two 14 year old (?) girls advertising bikinis. Totally in our face. Combine this with the ongoing "innocent' remarks and sexist comments in the media and in general and we are in a tragic situation. It is not the individual types of comments or jokes made on a daily basis that SEEM innocent, it is the collective of these comments over several years all culminating in a big-picture sexist attitude against women.
Here is the thing though. My son absolutely knew what he wrote was very wrong. But having just turned 13, did he understand the long term impact and possible repercussions? No way. Despite the education schools and parents think they are giving their kids, they're merely skimming the surface in many instances. He is not vile (as mentioned in some of the comments), has never been in trouble at school, does well, has a fabulous group of friends, very diligent with his school work, well liked and so on. Of course he is not perfect.
Even though as a mum I have not liked it, he has always seemed to be popular with the girls. Two years ago when he was just 11 we had girls knocking on our door, ask him out on dates, we have had girls send pictures of themselves in bikinis to him, and a scroll through his instagram feed reveals many pics of groups of girls from school and our local area in skimpy tops and teeny shorts. I am not in any way justifying any behaviour here for the record, but some of the young teenagers simply don't get it, be it boys or girls. The boys have to learn that despite all of this in their faces, they have to make morally wise choices and will be put in similar situations time and time again as they grow up and even as an adult. But for our 12-14 year old boys, it is a smorgasbord of images thrown at them at a time when their hormones are going crazy.
As a mum, I was mortified and riddled with guilt questioning myself "what signs did I miss?", "am I too soft?", "I haven't been a good educator", "do I sometimes say no and then give in?", "has my husband's teasing of my shoe fettish or the fact that he still is the main breadwinner working longer hours caused a sexist attitude to develop?"... My husband has also done a lot of soul searching around himself as a father. As an avid reader, I went online to see what information I could find and while there are hundreds of articles on what to do if your child is the victim, there is minimal information about how to manage the situation when your child is considered the perpetrator. There is information and talk about educating the boys but I found a lot of it very surface. I'm determined not to let this be the case with my own son. He is incredibly lucky that we caught this now and can act and put the education process in place for him and his younger brother. He has taken on board to speak to his close friends and explain how wrong this is, how it can impact everyone and has vowed to speak up if he sees any of his mates being disrespectful to girls. I have put a big emphasis on empathy and used his friends who are girls as examples, "what if this happened to xxx?", "what would you say?", "how would you feel?"... At the same time I am not wanting to shame him or wrongly beat himself up but focus on the lessons to be learned.
After chatting with some close friends about this I can see their attitude is "my kids would never do that" and "they know better". Or "I trust my kids". This is not about trust or being "bad" kids but that they simply don't have the maturity to manage all of the feelings, emotions and consequences when they are still young teenagers. Check your kids social media. And please please check their private messages on Facebook and Instagram if they have them. In our house from now on Snapchat is a complete no. There is no way of checking the imagery that's automatically deleted (not that I'm aware of). Don't bury your head thinking it won't happen to you or your child, boy or girl. And also check that there are no hidden icons on your child's phone - it's easy for them to do this so you look and think they don't have snapchat, for example, when they actually do.
Melanie, I totally agree this is a conversation that needs to remain at the forefront and as parents we need to be diligent every day. I sincerely wish you all the best with your daughters moving forward and that you or they never have to experience anything like this again.
Thanks for sharing your story. You speak from a very personal and heartfelt perspective. Raising kids has many challenges and despite parents being positive role models and using their best efforts to teach their kids 'right from wrong', in so many areas of life, it doesn't always work out the way that they had hoped leading to much soul searching. Teenagers today are shaped by so many factors, genes, family life, school, peers, wider societal influences and social media to name a few. So glad that your boy's school showed compassion and implemented a process that included a suitable education program. Their response probably followed a 'Restorative Justice' approach that incorporates all stakeholders. Implemented properly Restorative Justice can lead to positive transformations in offenders, relationships and communities. Also, in your story, with 'all concerned' being able to 'move forward' with some huge lessons learned is a very beneficial outcome. There is even a powerful life lesson that can be learnt in the benefits of having the ability to show forgiveness and empathy, particularly in extremely challenging situations, rather than just blaming and shaming. In the case of what happened in Brighton, although more serious in many ways, I question the benefit of the media being contacted and naming the school in media articles that were distributed very widely. This in itself would have created anger and divisiveness from the local community and made it more difficult for effective dialogue to be held and for meaningful solutions and responses to be developed.
So true when you mention that we are bombarded with sexist imagery everywhere we look. Also, as you commented, parents should be supervising the types of images that their teenagers are posting onto Instagram, Snapchat and Facebook. A discussion needs to had in relation to the pros and cons of teenage girls posting photos of themselves in bikinis and other revealing clothing on social media. From my perspective doing this is not empowering and liberating for the girls but rather falls in the category of self-objectification. They are often showing themselves off in a sexualised way and are eager to get feedback and attention from their peers (ie their followers, many of whom they dont know personally!) who often respond with giving 'likes' and leaving messages like 'hot bod', 'mint', 'sexy', 'not fair!'. Doesn't seem a good idea to me that young girls are allowing themselves to be judged and rated on social media platforms based on their looks and how photogenic they are. Is this really a good idea in relation to them building their sense of self-esteem and self-worth and their ability to gain the respect of their peers for more important reasons than for what they look like?
Firstly, I do feel for you and your daughter. But this doesn't seem like a real situation. Because of moving several times, my kids have attended both private and public primary and public schools, AND a school overseas. Every single school had a social media policy (and the first was years ago), some several pages long with different clauses. These must be read by parent and child in the present of a teacher/member of staff and signed by all. The one thing they had in common was that students (even in primary school) could not take photographs of students or staff without their permission in or out of school time, NOR put them on the internet. They also could not use the internet to harass any student, parent or member of staff. (This includes FB messages at night, phone messages, instagram photos etc). Photos of kids in school uniforms and pages/hashtags like the slut pages are particularly frowned on. Punishment is immediate contact with parents and suspension, and in some cases being expelled from school depending on the situation. Police are always involved. Even if kids are too young for charges to be laid, they and their parents can be talked to and the seriousness of the situation explained. Counselling for the victim is usually arranged. Usually police will talk to the whole school or particular classes as is seen fit. The site/pages are instantly shut down. If schools like Brighton Grammar are not doing this, they are years behind the times. It is also up to the head teachers and staff to act immediately. The story doesn't actually explain what action was taken to those responsible. If nothing was done, please put them in touch with someone like me so I can advise them. If I was a parent at this school, I would be questioning where my fees are going ....