Walking with three other guys on the
infamous Bourbon Street in New Orleans we met four relatively attractive
college girls who were seniors on the swim team. Tipsy conversation lead to
drunken cocktails and the dance floor. And in an altered sense of naturally,
each girl partnered with each of us guys dancing in a way I was completely
unfamiliar with. They turned with their backs towards us and started to grind, leaning
forward, caressing their backsides in our crutches. I looked around and it was
everywhere. Every girl in the bar was grinding, some more seductively and
graciously than others. High fives were exchanged amongst the boys, usually
over the backs of the grinding girls.
I tried to turn the girl I was dancing with
around to dance face-to-face but she would instantly turn back around and
continue to grind, running her hands up and down my outer thighs. It was
extremely awkward for me but I wanted to be ‘one of the boys’ and aid any
potential for a hook up for the others. Within minutes I felt overwhelmingly
uncomfortable and disappointed in myself. I could no longer keep dancing and left
the dance floor.
In the end there was no hooking up. Three
of the girls had boyfriends(although one had a hallpass) and the other was a
lesbian. I was dancing with the lesbian. Go figure.
I don’t know where to begin with this. It occurred
whilst America has been gripped by discussion about an episode of Girls, Lena
Dunham’s thought provoking series, and the Steubenville rape case.
In a recent episode of Girls, two of the
characters engage in the early days of their sexual relationship. The contrast
between the two incidents of intercourse is not subtle with second blurring the
lines of alcohol, consent and sexual behaviour.
Whilst in Steubenville two high school boys, star footballers no less,
have been found guilty of raping an unconsciously drunk girl at a summer party.
The rape was witnessed by many and documented by various messages, videos,
instagrams and tweets that, as quickly as they were circulated, were partially covered
up. CNN’s reporting of the judge’s decision was focused on how the guilty
teenage boys were to become victims of the juvenile justice system and lamented
the lost of their promising football dreams. There was virtually no mention of
the real victim. The bystanders escaped scrutiny in exchange for their
testimony.
It is harder to be a teenager these days
and as such it is much harder to parent and teach. A significant but not isolated factor is
social media. I have an unashamed bad habit of checking my sister’s instagram,
each time drenched with worry. The images and vocabulary teenagers are using
today are a completely different language to what I was surrounded in when I
was a teenager and I am no dinosaur. The
pressure to look and behave a certain way is immense and social media acts as a
constant reminder stuck on replay. What is most concerning is that this is
being normalised and accepted.
So this is what I propose in addition to
the other far more eloquent articles I have read about parenting and education
in Steubenville’s aftermath. We need young youth workers and professionals to
get on the buses (the traditional place for Scopus sex education), trams and
trains that move hundreds of students to and from their schools each day and
talk. We need to be starting conversations. Honest, open and safe
conversations. Conversations about drugs, alcohol, sex, body image and
bullying. With questions. Lots of
questions.
Hopefully this will reclaim sex education from
the bedroom and pornography.
Hopefully the message expands from condoms and
STIs to the discussion of the emotionally exciting and daunting and confusing
aspects of sex.
Hopefully kids will learn about responsible
ways to test the waters and how to get help if they start sinking.
Hopefully it will broaden the concept of
consequences.
Hopefully it will arouse a sense of
empathy.
Hopefully it will provide alternate role
models.
And then hopefully we can start to create
an empowering culture where both girls dancing feel confident enough to turn
around and boys kind enough to want to turn the girls around and dance facing
them.
