I experienced some of this in school and I saw a lot of girls treated this way. I was treated this way by both boys and girls, over and over again. I have dozens of examples of sexual harassment by students in school. I'll share just a little bit of it with you.
There were boys who claimed to have slept with me, there were girls who retaliated by calling me a slut. There were groups of guys who yelled crude things all the time. And I didn't even get the worst of it. Boys either acted creepy alone and much too close or in groups from afar. The largest group of girls to target me was only 4 of them, although they did a number on me. Now because of the internet, there are reports of kids being bullied by groups as large as 50! I know a lot of girls who had it a lot worse than me because they were attacked by larger groups of girls. At the schools I attended, almost all girls got a little of that kind of treatment, but the worst victims were treated truly terribly. I know it affected them, because it affected me.
When I was 12, I saw how the girl who lived across the street from me was treated. She was gorgeous, one of those girls who looks much older than she was. She began growing breasts at 9, and by the time she was 14, they were enormous. She was thin and tall, blonde, beautiful. She emulated her mother and dressed very provocatively, and unlike me, she actually was extremely promiscuous. I saw how she was treated by the other children. It's no surprise to me that she ended up dropping out of school.
One boy called me "missile tits" the year I was 13. I grew breasts just a little earlier than a lot of other girls. He said it every single time he saw me, and he made up songs and sayings and rhymes based on the theme of how he thought my breasts looked like the tops of two missiles. He made it clear that I was just a pair of tits to him. They were new and I was flat chested the year before, but he made me wish I was flat chested again. It was an unreasonable amount of sexual harassment and there was no way that the teacher of that class didn't notice his behavior. Nothing was done about it. That kind of thing was typical at school. Lots of girls got it, and lots of girls got a lot more of it from boys than me. I wasn't an exception. It wasn't addressed at any of the schools I attended.
When I was 14, a boy called me "lips" every single day because he wanted to know what my "pussy lips" were like. That teacher made us sit in alphabetical order by last name, so I couldn't change seats, and every day he would lean forward and whisper disgusting things in my ear, telling me he saw me walking down the street and what he thought about that, or what he thought my lips were like. Sometimes he would just hiss, "Lips" in my ear. I was totally terrorized by him. It wasn't just sexual, his behavior was threatening and he was a big guy, much taller than me, at least 6'2" tall. I never told anyone, but why would I? Sexual harassment was ignored at school. Boys and girls were allowed to do things like that. I ran into him in a bar when I was 21 by accident. I walked into one of my regular hangouts and I saw a few friends sitting at a very large table with lots of other people, I went over and they scooted over on the bench to make room for me. The boy was there, celebrating his release from prison! I was shocked when I saw him, my tormentor, but I was grown up and no longer afraid of him. He saw me and asked me if I remembered him, and right in front of everyone, I confronted him. I told him that yes, I did remember him, he was the guy who bullied me every single day and said disgusting things to me. He was silent for a moment, embarrassed, and then he said, "Maybe I just had a crush on you." My jaw dropped open. He thought terrorizing me was the right way to show me that he thought I was cute? He couldn't tell that I didn't like it, that he made me scared? I still don't know whether to believe him, because either scenario is disturbing to me. I was sure that he knew exactly how he made me feel and he liked it, and that's deeply disturbing. The idea that a boy would say things like that because he was interested in a girl just goes to show how some boys might think that sexual harassment is somehow normal, or expected behavior from men towards women, and that's disturbing.
When I was 15, I was unexpectedly pinned in about 3 seconds by an older guy who was on the wrestling team. He just took me by surprise. He just tackled me when I wasn't looking at him. After I struggled and it was clear that I literally could not move at all, which made him smirk, he then lifted my shirt and bra and slowly licked my nipple, like he thought he might turn me on, telling me how "impressed" he was by my breasts. After saying a few raunchy things to me, he let me go, but I was sure that he was going to rape me and if I screamed, no one would hear me. But that didn't happen on school grounds, it was just an example how I was treated by a fellow student who seemed to think I was there for his personal pleasure.
I dated the only openly bisexual guy in one of my high schools (none of the other gay or bi guys were out of the closet there). There were ridiculous rumours that we regularly had orgies with all of our friends, but I attributed that hate (and curiosity) to the fact that my bf was bisexual, which made him a stronger target than me. Nothing was ever done about that at school. The guy who pinned me kept asking me about anal sex, like he was obsessed with the idea. He obviously thought I would be willing to have it with him. I'm positive that he believed that because of the rumours and the fact that he knew my boyfriend was bisexual.
When I was 15, I was targeted by another girl who was jealous over my relationship with the bisexual guy. She tried her best to attack me, egging my locker and my house, and doing other things like that. By that time, I had enough friends to insulate and warn me at that school, and they protected me and made it difficult for her to attack me, but the motivation again for her slut bashing behavior and immature practical jokes was the same as always, a boy. She actually apologized to me when I was 20 years old for the things she did to me in high school, after we unexpectedly ran into each other at a mutual friend's house (who didn't know we knew each other). That was shocking.
I was beaten up by girls in middle school. One brought a gun to shoot me. She told people she was planning on killing me. I don't know if she meant it or if she just wanted to scare me, but it scared me. I've experienced that kind of girl-on-girl hate my entire life, because of jealousy (I'm guessing, I don't really know), and it altered the way I interact with women I don't know well. Violence was common at that school. Tasha's stories remind me of it, and the number one reason for girl on girl violence was slut bashing behavior. There were lots of girls who had their earrings ripped out or scarred in other ways or beaten up over jealousy and rumours of sexual promiscuity or rumours of having slept with a particular boy. Actually, I think it was the only reason for girl-on-girl violence at school. Girls who get violent at school rarely get violent over anything else. I ran into one of the girls who beat me up every day three years later, and she showed no shame. In fact, she boasted to the other girls with her about how much she enjoyed beating me up, how fun it was for her. I know she was arrested for the things she did to me, and that she went to a juvenile detention center for it. I guess they failed to reform her.
I've also been attacked as an adult by other adults, in slightly more grown-up ways, but they're the same games. When I was 21, I was falsely accused of having an affair with an innocent man by a sexual rival, another woman that a man I was dating was also dating at the same time. The man I was accused of sleeping with was engaged to a very wealthy woman. Supposedly we had sex in a public restroom once, an absurd accusation if you knew me! How gross! Some of the facts were correct, except I was in the bathroom crying and he came in to talk to me, not have sex with me. Neither of us hid the fact that we were both in the bathroom, because it was just so innocent, and lots of people saw us leaving it together. But that rumour was so titillating and juicy that it spread like wildfire, and gained traction. She also spread rumours that I was sleeping with many other men, obviously in an attempt to end my relationship with the man she wanted to be with, but those other men's lives weren't adversely affected by those rumours, just one of them. Those rumours were very damaging to me, the fallout over such serious accusations. It was exactly like it was in junior high, except this time it ruined a grown man's life and resulted in ending his engagement with a woman he had been with for almost a decade and it made my life hell. It was a mess that took a very long time to clean up. It's not childish stuff, those kinds of accusations, that kind of jealous behavior. It's not child's play.
The adults who have attacked me, literally physically cornering me or copping a feel or worse, and the ones who have attacked through words and gossip or rumours, I wonder how many of them wouldn't have done it if it if that kind of behavior was nipped in the bud when they were younger and they could have been taught that it is wrong to behave like that. Both sexes have their share of dangerous people, base people, cruel people, and bigoted people. It's not behavior that's isolated to one sex or another, but it's all behavior that we should seek to stop, regardless of the sex of the perpetrator.
