Tuesday, December 10, 2013

News: Boy Punished For Sexual Harassment!

I suppose because this incident made it to the news we are supposed to be outraged or something about PC Feminism Gone Awry?

In this very brief news item, we learn that a school suspended a 6-year-old boy for kissing another student, a girl, on the cheek. We also learn that "school officials" purportedly want some sort of sexual harassment charge placed on the school record.

Good.

For, we also learn that the boy was suspended a previous time for kissing the girl. So, he apparently didn't learn his lesson. We also learn that the boy's mother claims that the girl "did not object to being kissed."

Regardless of whether a girl expressly "objects to being kissed" or not, I'm having difficulty contriving situations in which it would be appropriate for one student to kiss another student in the classroom.

By sheer virtue of this boy's punishment being a "news item" at all, the default working assumptions going on seem to be that (a) a girl consents to being kissed by other students in school unless she explicitly states otherwise, and (b) a boy is entitled to kiss girls in school multiple times without being punished for it.

These are the lessons people seem to learn at a young age, especially when society largely frames it as "cute" and "innocent" when little kids violate each other's boundaries.

When I was in grade school, I remember a boy used to regularly harass me during class movies. Whenever the lights would dim, he would sit next to me, stick his hands in his shorts, pull out his penis, and start jerking off.  I didn't know then how to tell him to stop, because I was like 7 and because I felt like it was me who was a bad person for having that happen to me. I ended up telling my sister and, together, we told on him and he did end up getting in trouble, although from what I remember he only got a stern talking to, rather than a suspension.

He, like the boy in the above news piece, learned his behavior from someone, sadly.  And, the way that adults respond to these situations can further entitle the behavior or stop it.  That includes the asinine pro-rape-culture commenters who Strongly Disagree with boys getting suspended for sexual harassment.

No comments: