"Mother of girl involved in 'kissing' discipline speaks out"

[KitSileya]

224. yes, it would be.

Their gender doesn't matter, the unwanted touching and kissing, the repeated unwanted touching and kissing, despite verbal warnings and an in-school suspension, is what matters. It matters that his mother doesn't think he did anything wrong with the kissing - she's ok with him being punished for the roughhousing he is also in trouble for doing, but apparently the girl "wanted it" and she's his "girlfriend", according to his mother. According to HER mother, the girl has had to be taught how to deal with unwanted touching, and her classmates reported the boy's behavior to their teacher because they felt it was wrong. Considering that he was also stopping the girl from playing with her classmates because he wants her all to himself, that isn't surprising.

If it had been a girl doing this to a boy, I would want the school to react in the exact same way. The only difference on DU, I'd bet, is that those that are decrying the innocence of his actions would be lauding the boy being harassed for getting a girlfriend and contemplating how lucky they would have felt in the same situation. It's what they say about 11-year old rape victims when they are male, after all.

It seems to surprise people on DU that feminists think that women can be sexual harassers too. The big difference is that we do not think that sexual harassment by women can turn our entire society into a hostile place for men until a profound power shift happens that changes the power differential between the sexes. For women, who are victims of rape and sexual harassment at far greater rates than men, this view of boys just being boys when they violate girls' bodily autonomy is just the first small stepping stone that teaches this boy and his ilk that they have the right to women's attention, time, regard, bodies - without any consideration of the women in question. Women who are harassed on the street, when they go out, at bars and work and sports arenas know that this case wasn't remarkable just because the boy's behavior was punished, it was remarkable because the girl's autonomy was supported by the school. Her feelings counted. And I hope to goodness that they would do the same to any boy that experiences the same from anyone. But as the mother of the boy shows - it is very ingrained in our culture that one kid forcing another kid to kiss or touch is cute rather than behavior to be curbed.