Gender and third party abuse in schools - an example.

This is a case sent by someone to an email list and reproduced anonymously with the author's permission, followed by comments by Tom Graves.

And as you provided an anecdote of boys in schools being bullies, let me provide another which shows the more subtle ways of trouble-making used by girls. My 7 year old son got into trouble for running into the girls toilet. The fact is a small group of girls, with whom he is friends, 'stole' his baseball cap (which he needs to be allowed to play outside) and took it into the girls toilet, basically daring him to break the rules. He took the dare, and demonstrated this aspect of male 'risk-taking'. Clearly, this is bad, bad, bad, and indicates the first signs of a budding rapist/sexual harasser/patriarchal pawn who will use his power to oppress women.

But why is it not 'bad' for the girls who intended an outcome of either begging for his hat, wussing to the teacher, or his racing into the toilets amid shrieks of delighted effrontery? This was inviting a breach of taboos, albeit in a playful manner. (The school cannot afford to be playful about the taboo, in case of irate parents of girls who mention the presence of a boy in the girls toilets).

So, suddenly, my son becomes "bad" and is punished by authorities. He (and the girls) note that the girls are not punished, nor even seen as being partly responsible for the crime of breaching a taboo - that is, girls really can do anything!! He is aware of the injustice of this, and resents his teachers assumptions that he must have been in the wrong (a reasonable assumption, after all, he is a boy!!). This bruising of respect for teachers will probably develop to a complete loss after a few more such incidents, from which he will learn one of the rules of gender - if something happens that grown-ups (authority) doesn't like, then it must be the fault of the male. These same assumptions and dynamics are acted out socially in a million ways every day - through sexual harassment being something only males do / rape accusations are always factual / and men are the only ones who commit domestic violence, for which there is never any provocation etc etc..

Comments by Tom Graves on the above (quotes in italics).

But why is it not 'bad' for the girls who intended an outcome of either begging for his hat, wussing to the teacher, or his racing into the toilets amid shrieks of delighted effrontery?

At this level, these 'intended outcomes' were all variations on a theme of emotional abuse, as defined by Duluth: the entire incident is a morass of manufactured double-binds ("you must, but you mustn't; you mustn't, but you must") targeted at the boy. Nice 'friends'... but then that's why such behaviour is called 'childish', isn't it?

This was inviting a breach of taboos, albeit in a playful manner.

It's interesting to question just what is 'playful' and what is not... especially since some feminist theorists assess (and demand punishment for) even pre-schooler boys' behaviour (but only boys' behaviour) according to their own often strange standards of 'moral' adult behaviour...

(The school cannot afford to be playful about the taboo, in case of irate parents of girls who mention the presence of a boy in the girls toilets). So, suddenly, my son becomes "bad" and is punished by authorities.

This is the point at which it becomes third-party abuse: he is punished by 'uninvolved others' on the basis of false or incomplete information (namely the absence of any reference to the actions of the girls).

He (and the girls) note that the girls are not punished, nor even seen as being partly responsible for the crime of breaching a taboo - that is, girls really can do anything!!

Perhaps most disturbing, here the girls are shown that third-party abuse pays triple-dividends: the boy is emotionally abused (by them, in setting up the double-binds), then abused by the teacher supposedly on the behalf of the 'offended' girls, at which point they are considered to be entitled to emotionally abuse him again for having been 'bad'. And they also learn that they can do all this at no risk whatsoever to themselves - in fact they may receive special 'consolation' attention for having done it, since their part in the interaction is assumed to have been exclusively that of 'victim'. If we're trying to reduce abuse in society, this is not exactly a wise move...

He is aware of the injustice of this, and resents his teachers assumptions that he must have been in the wrong (a reasonable assumption, after all, he is a boy!!). This bruising of respect for teachers will probably develop to a complete loss after a few more such incidents, from which he will learn one of the rules of gender - if something happens that grown-ups (authority) doesn't like, then it must be the fault of the male.

... and the long-term result is screwed-up boys with a vast amount of unresolved if understandable anger, and screwed-up girls who've effectively been taught that although minor abuse towards them is considered a serious crime, even serious abuse by them is considered perfectly okay, and that third-party abuse is their 'right', their socially-sanctioned method for hitting out at whomever they please, with complete impunity...

It's now screamingly obvious that the current gender-perspective on schools ("whatever it is, it must be the fault of a male") is empowering no-one, and is succeeding only in making things worse for everyone. But how do we get this across, given that we've now got to the situation where no-one - male or female - is being allowed to be heard if they don't show abject unquestioning allegiance to an increasingly insane party line?

Note also that:

1) There's a fourth payoff for the girls here, which is also a payoff for the other boys - and that's seeing the agents of the third-party abuse - the teacher and other authority-figures - make complete fools of themselves: they've punished the wrong person - and all the kids know it - in making a huge fuss about something which, to the kids, is utterly pointless (the social taboo about separate toilets). Mocking authority-figures who have apparent power-over is one of the biggest and most popular payoffs for all schoolkids (and many adults), and they often don't mind who gets hurt in the process - especially if it's someone other than themselves...

2) The girls (actually, all the kids) are also learning here that justice and fairness go completely out of the window when we hit up against a social taboo: so if they want to set up third-party abuse, it can be almost ridiculously easy if they can pretend that a taboo has been broken - because the emotional evasion around the issue is so strong that no-one checks to see if it really has been broken. Now start looking around at analogues in the adult world, and see how easily a breach of one of the most fundamental taboos (protection for women: "women and children first!" - and in that order, we note...) can be faked, and what the payoffs are for faking it...

3) Boys and girls do seem to start off with a roughly equal concept of 'fair': but it increases with boys (e.g. rule-based / merit-based behaviour) and decreases with girls (cf. Naomi Wolf on "girls' natural system of government would not be a democracy") with increasing age.

(Someone else here, I think, commented that "the world is not fair: and it's not fair that we do a better job of teaching that fact to boys than we do to girls"). The kind of chaos described in this case, with its gender-based blame, exacerbates that problem.

4) The girls may well be aware that what they've done has resulted in a (relatively) innocent person being punished for their behaviour, and that to do so is unfair. But along come those well-intentioned folks who proceed to tell all the boys that they are personally to blame, and responsible, for all violence and abuse - even between girls (the girls have "internalised the patriarchy", so it must be boys' fault...). This is supposed to reduce 'abuse and control' by the boys: but in effect it's taught the boys that they must control the girls' behaviour, or they will be punished for it; and it's taught the girls that they can abuse as they please (even other girls), and someone else (always a boy) will always get the blame; and also, whether it's fair or not, they ought to and should dob the boys in - set them up for third-party abuse - whenever they feel uncomfortable, for any reason... and will get praise ("that's good, Jane! that's assertiveness!") whenever they do so. And this, we're told, is supposed to reduce abuse in schools...

Edited by Stuart Birks

13 June, 1996