Choosing to Make the World Safer for Our Daughters
Posted By The Editors | April 17th, 2009 | Category: Hot Topics | 3 comments
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By Asha Bandele
As the drama between music superstars Chris Brown and Rihanna unfolds in the headlines, I remember the year 2006 and some boy-on-girl violence that hit uncomfortably close to home.
In 2006, there was a spate of horrific shootings. On September 13, a gunman targeting girls molested and wounded 19 female students on a college campus in Canada, killing one young woman. On September 28, a gunman killed himself and a female hostage in a Colorado high school. In October, one man, who was married and thre father of three young children, killed five girls ages 6 to 13 in an Amish schoolhouse in Pennsylvania. And in the first half of her kindergarten year, my daughter was attacked by a male classmate who bruised her upper thigh so badly that she couldn’t attend school for a week.
That was the year when it became clear to me that no girl can escape violence no matter how progressive, how feminist, how involved her mother. When my daughter entered first grade in the fall, the boy who had bruised her told her he was going to shoot her in the head. His twin brother echoed the threat a week later.
I pleaded with the school to take this matter seriously. I begged to meet with the boys’ parents. I told school officials how much this frightened me, because I knew the twins’ mother worked in law enforcement and likely had a weapon in their home.
I was told repeatedly that I was “making too much of things,” that they “would handle it.” They never did, even after my daughter’s original assailant made vulgar, scary sexual remarks to her and another punched her in the face and slapped her down.
Since then, I have home-schooled my daughter until we can find another place for her in the wicked, wide world that is the New York City educational system. But what if I weren’t able to home-school my child? What if, like most single mothers, I had to leave home before what the slaves used to call “can’t-see-in the morning,” returning after “can’t-see at night?”
Would my child continue to be double brutalized, not only by hostile boys, but by the adults who shrug off violence against girls? Nan D. Stein, a Senior Research Scientist at Wellesley College Center for Research on Women, and Co-Director of the National Violence Against Women Prevention Research Center, wrote in the article, “Gender Violence in Elementary and Secondary Schools,” that “Peer-to-peer sexual harassment is rampant in elementary and secondary schools across the country. Yet, when educators and policy makers consider interventions to curb youth violence, they usually overlook sexual and gender violence.”
I have access to therapists and other supportive adults to help my daughter after her ordeals. But most women I know who are trying as hard as I am to see their girls into a healthy maturity do not have this benefit. This is why we must infuse an anti-sexist, anti-violence ethic into every place our children are: schools, community centers, houses of worship, in our homes.
I had hoped that the Rihanna – Chris Brown case would have shed the scales from our eyes and catapulted us into action on the question of violence against girls. Sure, there is ongoing media coverage and many celebrities have aired their opinions. But what’s needed are activists and organizers on every front pushing the envelope.
Now.
We can’t wait until girls and boys are teenagers. Violence against girls happens early and happens harshly. Studies show that roughly 40 percent of rapes happen before a girl turns 18, and 22 percent of those before a girl turns 12! I remember being 9 years old and held down on the floor of my private school classroom by two boys. I’d returned early from lunch when two boys dry-humped and forced kisses on me. We know that incest generally begins before the victims reach puberty.
The incidents against my daughter-and other girls-represent more of the same. But what shocked me was that after all these years, the director and dean of my daughter’s school-a woman!-never took any of the violence or threats against my child seriously. They never followed through on resolution; didn’t ever inform the boys’ parents about the seriousness of their children’s actions.
I worry that their nonchalant attitude toward violence in their school is playing out in too many other venues across the nation. I worry that there will be far more beaten up-or worse-because we haven’t summoned the collective will to, as the late poet Audre Lorde once said, “transform silence into language and action.”
We are at a pivotal moment in the evolution of gender relations and violence, and the potential for positive change is within our grasp: We can demand that educational policies shift to include non-sexist / non-violent teachings into all areas of the curriculum. We can do that with the books we select for students to read; we can do it in social studies classes; we can do it in science by discussing the impact of violence, surviving it or witnessing it, on the body and the brain.
We can do these things it if we summon our will. Those of us who are stable can mentor young, vulnerable children who may be at risk, because of challenges in the home, of being violent or being acted upon violently. We can turn off the video games that celebrate killing. We can turn off the video shows and shutter the publications that redact women and girls to their body parts.
Rihanna and Chris Brown, whatever happens to them, present yet another opportunity to focus public attention on violence against girls and women. At this juncture, we can finally choose our girls, our children, not just in word but in every action we take, beginning with each of us looking in the mirror and answering truthfully what we have done on this day, on each day, to help ensure that there will not be another girl or young woman, head-locked, or otherwise attacked by a boy or man who is a classmate or one who claims to love her. Our daughters deserve nothing less.
Asha Bandele is an award-winning author and journalist whose books include The Prisoner’s Wife, The Subtle Art of Breathing, Daughter: A Novel, and Something Like Beautiful: One Single Mother’s Story.
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The 21st Century world is a very scary place, especially for women and girls. The statistics on violence against women and girls are rising at an alarming rate and no matter how much we talk about it, read about it, blog about it and google about it, the situation is not getting any better. Obama as our new leader has introduced legislation to combat domestic violence as well as co-sponsored and helped reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act. But the reality of the matter is the statistics will not go down until women and girls need to wake up and start protecting themselves. Mothers need to educate their daughters that being harassed by anyone at any age is NOT ACCEPTABLE. If she is continuously picked on and threatened even AFTER the school authority and parents of the harasser are informed, then mom or dad need to step it up and teach their daughter to defend herself and fight back if she has too. My daughter is also a victim of being physically and verbally abused by a boy in our neighborhood. My husband and I both went to the bully’s parents who basically blew it off as “boys will be boys” and that they will talk to him. Several days later, the kid tried to strangle her. That was it, I enrolled by daughter into self defense classes to arm her with the knowledge and self-esteem to protect herself from any form of physical attack. Recently, the bully tried to push my daughter off her scooter, and she turned around, blocked his arm and knocked him down with a foot sweep. Bully was the ground crying more over his embarrassment than being hurt, and it was the last time he ever harassed my girl again.
So many young girls walk around oblivious to their surroundings, their cell phones glued to their ears or both of their hands preoccupied with texting. Many of these girls are alone, perfect target for a sexual predator to grab them, throw them in their car and drive off never to be seen again. Mothers and fathers who have daughters need them to watch JUST YELL FIRE! Which is a free on-line video that teaches girls how to defend themselves in case they are attacked. The video is 30 minutes of self defense techniques that may one day save your daughter’s life.
Women also should consider carrying personal protection devices with them at all times. Non-lethal devices such as tasers, stun guns, pepper spray and mace are legal in most states and very portable. Two squirts of a 10% OC pepper spray in the eyes of an attacker will bring him to his knees in seconds and allowing a window of opportunity to escape. These self protection devices are available on the internet as well as other resources for women who are victims of violence to get help.
The point is that women and girls have to start taking control of their safety and not ALLOW anyone to threaten their personal space. There may never be a time when women will be completely safe against the brutality of the times, but at least we can put a good fight and show that we are not the weaker sex.
Thanks for sharing Asha…very compelling and inspiring to act upon. I had a somewhat similar experience at school with two boys holding me down giving me hickies all over my neck and cheeks even with me fighting and screaming…no one in authority did anything about it…but my boyfriend…he beat their asses like they stole something immediately…they didn’t so much as look in my direction ever again. I’m certainly not advocating any type of interpersonal violence, but dam…the system is continually failing girls and women when it comes to abuse. Jails are full of women who felt they had to fight back with violence…that’s so sad for me.
I constantly recall one of my best friends as a teenager, being beaten by her boyfriend, even while pregnant. I saw her once as she was close to due date, and she had a black eye. That image stays with me til this day. His mother was a street crackhead, and she had no one to turn to, plus they had both dropped out of our high school to be the drug dealer and most stylish girlfriend of the projects they lived in.
When I asked her if she called the cops, she said yes and they told him to take a walk…then he later came back “home” and beat her again saying that it was because she called the cops on him. This take a walk thing is common for some reason in domestic violence situations, especially when a woman is being injured. Kids on the street get arrested all the time for fighting, but a man abusing a woman is told to take a walk. She eventually left him, but not until he decided to leave her and move in with his “new” girlfriend/new baby’s mother in Colorado.
S**t is certainly crazy, but I think you’re definitely on to something so vital being cirriculum development…perhaps hopefully this new knowledge will spread to some of these children’s homes…although they should learn respect at home first. It’s sad because you have a mass amount of folks working 2 – 3 jobs, and not even have a moment to teach their children much of anything resembling how to appropriately interact with the world and people around them.
It’s all relative, and it’s all a set up. Another plot or way to ruin our homes and communites. We need counteractivity, and many of us are doing that work.
Keep your head up, stay focused…it’ll all work out.
Rockia
Thank you asha for opening up this discussion. It is like a wound that needs airing out. We keep it covered, so it just festers. My wound needs some air too.
Every summer without fail, someone asked me about the odd-shaped burn on the back of my calf. I usually smile and just say, I got burned when I was little. It eases the concerns of the inquirer. They assume some kind of household accident. Truth be told I was attacked in the 6th grade by a young man who’s gripe with me was “she thinks shes cute”. I didn’t know him at all. Never even knew his name until days later. He waited as I passed him going into the school one morning and threw battery acid on me. It ate through my skin with such a stinging that the pain shot from my head to my toe. I fell to the ground and only remember next is being in the principal’s office staring at the EMS.
After that, my whole demeanor change. I wasn’t the same person. I haven’t been since. I was so young then that only my mom really remembers how I was. I began to find myself again some years ago. That one incident took so much. And this incident was a small thing compared to much of the violence that gets waged on girls globally. People must understand that these acts of violence against girls impact them deeply and for the rest of their lives. To shrug off or be silent around verbal and physical abuse is equal to launching a second attack.
Again asha, thank you for sharing.