My child was sexually harassed on the school bus & the reality set in

Content warning: sexual harassment. Not ready for it today? No worries, head to safety!

“So Young”

Yesterday should have been a normal day. It started off that way. But instead it became a first for my eldest daughter. My daughter asked a boy to stop using profanities, and instead, he used them more and more, especially directed at her. And then he threatened her, repeatedly.

Because the bus only makes specific stops, and none of them are unscheduled, my daughter had to wait for her stop, enduring the language and threats that were thrown at her.

When the bus did stop, she ran as fast as she could and into my arms. Her whole body shook with fear and anger. The bus pulled away and we stood there as she tried to find the words. It came out in bits and pieces. “___ said he’d kick me,” as she gestured below her waist, in her private area. Finally, shaking she told me. “He said he’d kick me in the vagina.”

I almost said, “Honey it happens to everyone. Someone always says something stupid like that. You just have to ignore it.” Thankfully, something stopped me.

That was the day our daughter became the victim of sexually violent language. She is ten years old. The boy was twelve. She was riding the school bus home from fifth grade.

As I held her while she cried and I carefully plotted out what exactly I would say to the boy’s mother and the bus driver, I grieved for my daughter. I almost said, “Honey it happens to everyone. Someone always says something stupid like that. You just have to ignore it.” Thankfully, something stopped me.

I could list the times something had been said or done to me when I was in school. Boys snapped bra straps so much that girls started to walk back-to-back as if they were in battle. The boys kept score. Other nastier boys would whisper to any girl sitting near them to “Close your legs, you’re making it smell like fish in here.” Or there was the old stand by jeer, “What’s wrong? You on your rag or something?”

I was not taught that this was sexual harassment. I was taught to ignore it. It was just the mean kids being mean or boys being boys, or better yet, “He is only doing that because he likes you.” “Just ignore them” was the mantra my parents said; “Ignore them and they’ll go away.”

In church, I was taught to wear modest clothing, not because it was a way of showing respect for myself and God, but because we didn’t want to tempt the boys into having dirty thoughts. The teachers were well-meaning I expect, but the message of modesty and their implementation was ridiculously skewed.

In a college acting class, which is notoriously a hands-on class, a professor looked the girls up and down each time they entered. “You have a body to die for,” he would say. Another time he told a colleague of mine, “Well, we’re not on campus, I’m not your professor right now.” I took to wearing overalls and baggy shirts in his class, but I never thought to report him. He was just sleazy. How do you put into words that nothing had happened to you; he just looked at you the wrong way? Something about him just made your skin crawl.

The bronze statue, Fearless Girl, by Kristen Visbal that stands in Bowling Green Manhattan faces down the Charging Bull statue of Wall Street (and is now on the move). The girl is depicted as maybe ten years old, bold and proud. She isn’t looking for a fight, but she’s also not going to be scared off. She was to be a beacon of feminine empowerment. To see her staring down the Charging Bull is to see power in self, determination in the face of great odds.

Then on the evening of March 13, 2017, while onlookers had gathered to admire the statue, “some Wall Street finance broseph,” walking by with his friends, stopped to grind and hump the statue. Of course someone took a picture. Several people I imagine took pictures. Then those photos flew across Facebook and Twitter. Within a couple of days, it had been shared 1500 times on Facebook. What came next was the Twitter storm and the comments.

The mayor of New York Bill DeBlasio tweeted, “This is rape culture.”
— Bill de Blasio (@NYCMayor) March 11, 2017

Chirlane McClay New York City’s first lady said,
Simulating sexual assault — especially on a statue of a very young girl — is not funny.
— Chirlane McCray (@NYCFirstLady) March 11, 2017

To render a female powerless, the offenders attack the very essence of a girl/woman’s otherness, to make her more like him. He exerts authority, or ownership over her. Because honestly, he doesn’t understand her. He is frightened of her. Even in insults to each other, weaker men are called “bitches” or “pussies.” There is no respect. There is no tolerance. There is fear. There is a need to exert dominance. There is a need to destroy the “other.”

This is a rape culture. Grab them by the pussy. Kick her in the vagina. To simulate a sex act on statue of a little girl — and it starts young.

This is a rape culture. Grab them by the pussy. Kick her in the vagina. To simulate a sex act on statue of a little girl — and it starts young.

Why you may wonder? Because, let’s face it, women are strong. Girls are goddesses in training. If a girl has a strong mother, then the next generation will be as strong, if not more so. In Greg Mortenson’s Stones Into Schools: Promoting Peace With Books Not Bombs in Afghanistan and Pakistan, he says, “If you teach a boy, you educate an individual; but if you teach a girl, you educate a community.”

William Ross Wallace put it this way: “The Hand That Rocks the Cradle is the Hand That Rules the World.”

In India, the Gulabi Gang (also known as the Pink Sari Gang) acts as a kind of union for women in rural India. Membership is 500 rupees. In doing so, the group pools resources, some food and finances, making it possible for women needing to escape incestuous or abusive relationships to get out on their own. The loans from the group offer an alternative to the money lenders in the villages that charge an outrageous interest, which would almost certainly snare anyone into debt and plummet them further from self-sufficiency. Additionally, The Pink Brigade speaks out for abused women and has been pivotal in providing and pushing for prosecution of rapists and abusers. On the rare times when nothing is done, a group of angry women wearing pink saris and holding wooden batons in hand just may appear at the person’s door.

Mother Earth. Gaia who came before the Titans in Greek mythology. Hera. Athena.

Women are strong. Women are different. Women are magical.

That we are still dealing with stupid boys who snap bra straps and threaten to kick girls in the vagina is unconscionable. This is no rite of passage. It’s not part of being a girl or a woman. Boys being boys is not a permission slip for bad behavior. It’s a cop-out.

So what did I tell our daughter?

I told her that she was brave. I told her he was wrong and that it was incredibly not okay and that we would be talking to the mother and the bus driver to take care of things. I told her that she was and is powerful. I told her to hold other people accountable for what they do, that this is no rite of passage. I told her that under no circumstances should she ever let herself be silenced. Stand up for yourself, and others. And most of all, embrace her otherness.