Rape culture in UK schools
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Follows some of the comments in the Sarah Everett thread. This is definitely a problem, and I would expect that 80-90%+ of women of my generation have similar stories to those on the website.
The website/ initial reports seem to be focused on the issues in private schools in particular. I've no idea if it's even worse in those environments but this is an issue the whole of the country needs to address.
The website/ initial reports seem to be focused on the issues in private schools in particular. I've no idea if it's even worse in those environments but this is an issue the whole of the country needs to address.
English schools confuse me. Public schools are the posh ones, right? What are private schools?
You know, someone explained it to me once.
It made so little sense that I forgot again. I just know that when talking about the UK, public schools are private schools, and private schools are presumably also private schools. And then state schools are public but not private. You know.
You can sum it up like this: state schools are for normals, and private and public are for the rich.
I remember it being explained to me too. I think the logic was that “public” schools were owned by members of the public i.e. not state owned
This doesn’t surprise me one bit, kids are allowed to get away with way too much shit at school. Can’t count the amount of times I has touched up by older girls or had the shit beaten out of my by bigger guys. But nothing gets done
'Public' schools are the private ones. State schools are where the oiks go.
Private schools also enjoy tax relief via their charitable status. Couldn't make it up, could you?
Private schools also enjoy tax relief via their charitable status. Couldn't make it up, could you?
Public and Private schools are pretty much the same thing, neither are owned by the state.
The big difference is that Public schools tend to have been founded a longer time ago, private schools are a little bit more modern. Thus, public schools have more fame and history and are therefore harder to get into.
State schools are what us normies go too, state owned, rough round the edges etc.
The big difference is that Public schools tend to have been founded a longer time ago, private schools are a little bit more modern. Thus, public schools have more fame and history and are therefore harder to get into.
State schools are what us normies go too, state owned, rough round the edges etc.
I looked at wikipedia and apparently the name 'public' comes from not being restricted to a certain locality, denomination, or paternal trade/profession. As in, you can go to Eton even if you're not from Berkshire and your father isn't a, I don't know, lawyer.
Oh yeah, on the thread: rape culture's bad, it exists in many segments of society so why not schools. Not surprising.
Not to make light this, but it wasn't until the 3rd Tweet that I realised this wasn't about rap culture in schools.
Where the whole school had to share 1 TV and 1 Projector.
I remember it being common for boys at my school to slap girls arses and I don't think it was ever really addressed.
I never actually did it because part of me knew it was wrong but also because I wasn't bold enough. I didn't quite grasp at the time how wrong it was but at least I can look back and feel relieved I didn't engage in that behaviour.
I never actually did it because part of me knew it was wrong but also because I wasn't bold enough. I didn't quite grasp at the time how wrong it was but at least I can look back and feel relieved I didn't engage in that behaviour.
In terms of ontopic talk. My parents used to work at a private school and I therefore knew a number of the kids that used to go to them. To say that it was a horribly toxic environment is an understatement, the boarding side in particular had some horrible 'traditions', not rape, but severe bullying/hazing. I won't go into details, but feck. I'm glad I went to a state school.
Reading through a couple of the stories and they've disgusted me.
Weirdly at my school it was mostly the girls leading this sort of thing (slapping arses etc). Or at least it was within the groups I knew. There was the usual bra twanging from the guys in response though, which obviously isn't great. What they're saying in this (passing round nude pictures and the like) sounds like a level above that, and could definitely see it being worse in private/boarding schools.
fecking hell
Man, schools everywhere around the world are crazy places. I was so innocent as a kid and young teenager, whereas there were others from around my age group that started drinking and smoking since being 11-12.
We had a guy who was year above when I was in 6-7th grade, he was selling nude pictures from different girls from our school, that was 14-15 years ago.
That was in my country Bulgaria, I also studied in a private boarding school in England and damn, kids there were savages and some stuff were happening that I still can't believe to this day.
We had a guy who was year above when I was in 6-7th grade, he was selling nude pictures from different girls from our school, that was 14-15 years ago.
That was in my country Bulgaria, I also studied in a private boarding school in England and damn, kids there were savages and some stuff were happening that I still can't believe to this day.
Disclaimer of being posh wanker - I went to a public school and looking back on it, it was horrific. Our year wasn't quite as bad as the years that came before us, but there were still some quite horrible stuff said. I mean an ex-best friend of mine raped one of mine and his best friends a few years after we all left school. He never quite lost the damaging perception of girls and as a group we're horrified that we never called him out in time. But basically you put a bunch of arrogant, overconfident, privileged arseholes in a school together and mix that with a society that oversexualises/dehumanises women and you just get about 700 boys the majority of whom all see women as 'conquests'. I remember being with him the night he did it and him calling me out for 'being too respectful of women' (I had said that I no longer enjoyed hitting on women in bars and clubs because I am likely just another in a long list of men who won't let them just enjoy their night) and how he 'just really wanted to feck' that night. It seemed like the innocuous statements of an overly horny boy, when in reality it was emblematic of a person who grew up in a system that looked at women in a certain way and he never managed to shed that perception. I think most men who read these stories, will be shocked but most will also remember that they looked at women differently when they were younger. However, a lot grew out of that. Although you look at the reaction to Sarah Everard and not enough men did grow out of that.
Girls joined our school for the last two years. A few years above us rated them with placards when they first walked in. I remember being brought over by a group of older boys all hanging out with who I assume was their friend and asked if I would shag her - I was 13 and embarrassed and felt the joke was on me. In reality the joke was on her. Girls were nicknamed based on their physical qualities. Some of the wierdest stuff though now I come to think of it, wasn't just the abhorrent rhetoric and actions of people in the victims' year groups, but how girls were sexualised by the three years below. Like the actions of their peers was probably the most damaging and dangerous. But being an 16-18 year old girl and having about 400 13-15 year old boys constantly staring and whispering and making facebook groups about them is horrible. Salacious rumours constantly being spread, comments being made under breath but just about audible. Teachers who did nothing to stop it. I speak to my friends (we're oddly one of the few year groups that remained friends with the girls from our year) about it now and they all say it was just a horrible place to be.
However, whilst I think there is probably a culture of male superiority fostered in these all boy, or predominantly all boy public schools that make it worse than most, I think the reporting of this right now is slightly damaging. It is making it seem like it is mostly a public school issue. I currently have many friends and friends of friends talking about and sharing their experiences on social media who didn't go to public/private school. Currently the news stories make it seem like its purely focused in fee paying schools, when in reality it is an issue endemic across the whole national school system. Which can pervade and exist long after men leave school.
Some of the testimonies are horrible but sadly unsurprising.
We have a long way to go still as a society.
We have a long way to go still as a society.
School is and will always be shit. Teenagers are cnuts.
I agree. Don't think the issue is particular for England or private/public schools.
I'd say not just teenagers, people in general are cnuts. I've turned into an apathetic cynical cnut, sadly.
I wouldn't say that any of the school's or universities I went to had a "rape" culture. On the other hand they were profoundly hedonic.
These are really sickeningly sad stories which really highlight how we need to be more determined and open in our attempts to stop this in our society.
One thing I did notice, however, was that a lot of the stories relate to experiences outside of school. Although by no means looking to dispel these experiences, when the headline focuses on "rape culture in UK schools" then includes stories from a variety of settings, does it kind of lose focus?
Schools should absolutely have support networks in place for these horrific experiences/create a space where people can discuss their experiences safely, as well as do more to draw attention to/prevent these incidents from occurring. But I'm not sure if I'd go as far as to say all these cases are examples of "rape culture in school", more sadly rape culture in wider society.
One thing I did notice, however, was that a lot of the stories relate to experiences outside of school. Although by no means looking to dispel these experiences, when the headline focuses on "rape culture in UK schools" then includes stories from a variety of settings, does it kind of lose focus?
Schools should absolutely have support networks in place for these horrific experiences/create a space where people can discuss their experiences safely, as well as do more to draw attention to/prevent these incidents from occurring. But I'm not sure if I'd go as far as to say all these cases are examples of "rape culture in school", more sadly rape culture in wider society.
Agreed and I think one of the problems here is that kids don't often know the difference between right and wrong.
A lot of teenage years are by definition formative and it's only by looking back that we can see where we went wrong. From my experience, everything in the teenage years feels like an amorphous blob of learning, fecking up, and then trying not to feck up later in life in the same way.
I hate to say this too because I don't want to normalise any of this abhorrent culture but kids can be the cruellest, shittiest people.
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I've never understood why they're called public schools either. I just call them 'private' (paid-for) or 'state'. This website started with stories of abuse happening at private (posh) schools, mostly in London.
I went to a London state school and don't remember a huge deal of this, but by the time I was at university you could definitely see the influence of 'rape culture'. My girlfriend, and the majority of my and her female friends have stories of some level of abuse, with incredibly common examples of unwanted men pushing their heads into boobs or putting hands up their skirts, to stories of sexually aggressive comments or being followed on the street. It's endemic in British culture, and I remember it being a particular part of 'lad culture' 10-15 years ago. I've no idea how this compares to other countries (nor does it really matter), if it's a factor of the level of binge drinking or the rise of porn or something else, but hopefully attention like this can work against it to some degree.
Good point. I have a friend who was raped (or attempted?) at university but this took place outside of campus, at her privately rented house.
She then went to the university to complain about the student and found they wouldn't do anything. I never mentioned to her as it was a delicate issue but I did honestly wonder how the university was supposed to act as it was technically a private matter. If it were a business then I'd naturally expect the guy to be fired but that's a different environment. I'm still not sure if I'm being honest (and I hope it doesn't sound flippant to say this).
I think you're right though that a lack of support is big part of the problem. We ideally need more provisions for helping victims because this is a widespread issue and one I think a lot of people keep secret because they feel there's a lack of proper support available to them.
Does it indicate that schools actually probably do a better job at keeping kids in line than their parents? I've often wondered if teachers get unnecessary criticism and parents far too often don't get criticised enough. Only today for example I saw a a young mother smoking around her kid - it just made my blood boil. Parents need to take responsibility in making sure their kids have good morals and understand how to treat other people in the right way and far too often that doesn't happen.
I think they do know between right and wrong. They just don't care.
The real reason is a lack of discipline both by parents and the law, so they have no reason to care. I think people underestimate their intelligence, which, unfortunately, they use to attack people. They know they are pretty much untouchable with protection from the law. And they are very well aware that it gets dismissed as being 'young and stupid'. They know teachers can't do anything to them. I mean what does sending someone out of the classroom actually do? Nothing. They just behaved the same way afterwards.
Also, they are very well aware that if someone does discipline them they can just accuse them of abuse and be considered the victim. These kinds of threats were used openly by other students in the school I went to. The people in my school were incredibly sly, and I would think a teacher would have been in a very difficult position with them, to be fair. They would have been horrible to teach. I think people underestimate just how dangerous they can be. They are far more aware of what they are doing than people give them credit for.
The only story I heard was one girl getting attacked by other girls in the toilet, which could have been like this. But there was horrendous bullying in my school, which was mostly psychological. One girl had a horrible time and eventually left after a couple of years: boys and girls would hound her every single day, criticising her appearance whilst they gathered around her at lunch. I regret not standing up for her, but couldn't work the nerve up when hundreds in the school used to do it. One time I did try to talk to her, but I think she thought I was just someone else coming to bully her.
I would tend to agree with this. I think some people severely underestimate kids and teenagers ability to know the difference between right and wrong. It doesn't mean they can't change, but bullies in school absolutely know what they are doing and are very manipulative.
I agree. School is never a nice place, unless you conform and become a part of some more popular group of kids, which removes the chance of being singled out and bullied.
Yeah I think you're right.
When I said 'didn't know' I was mainly thinking of some instances I was involved in. I'm not going to paint myself in a good light here but there was one time I kept saying to this guy that mate fancied him, who was homosexual. I actually didn't really think of how it would affect the other kid; I was mainly doing it to piss off my mate (in a jokey stupid idiotic way of course).
We got pulled up on it because the kid had apparently been being bullied by other kids. Got dragged in for a chat and warned any more of this behaviour and our parents would be involved.
Penny dropped then that I was being a dick and I still think of it because I wasn't looking at it from the bullied kids perspective. It wasn't my intention to bully him but I guess we were.
Obviously rape culture is a whole different kettle of fish.
I think if people realised how hard it is to have kids expelled from schools now they’d have a fit.
In my friends kids school - a kid entered the classroom / started battering a girl including kids to the head / didn’t get expelled as it was her final year and they didn’t want to lessen her exam scores.
It’s crazy that schools can’t expel easily for incidents like that.
In my friends kids school - a kid entered the classroom / started battering a girl including kids to the head / didn’t get expelled as it was her final year and they didn’t want to lessen her exam scores.
It’s crazy that schools can’t expel easily for incidents like that.
I don't mean to excuse them, but I think the main problem is that young people and kids especially are very self-centred in their thinking. They're still trying to understand themselves (especially when all the hormonal shit really starts) and a lot of the time they're simply not even thinking about how their words and actions are effecting others. Or when they do think about it, they lack the broader understanding how much severe the consequences of their actions can actually be.
Then of course there are a few who are just unmitigated cnuts and always will be. But I think those are 'relatively' rare. Maybe one or two at most in my own school year that I can remember.
Well yeah, but I guess it also depends on the age and severity of offense. If we are talking rape i'm not really sure I'd be able to excuse it with hormones and stuff although I know that wasn't what you were saying, but it's a topic of the thread.
The issue with expelling kids (and personally I hate that this is the case) is that for every occasion a kid is expelled from one school there has to be another school willing to take them in. Many LEAs are frankly full and can't accept movement from one school to another.
I my time working at a secondary school the number of cases where a kid should blatantly have been expelled but wasn't was staggering. I remember a case where a kid accused a teacher of hitting her, except she said it happened in a classroom where we always have CCTV so was proven to be a lie, barely even punished for it as it was the end of a term and decided it was best to 'have a fresh start in the new term'
Public schools are for the posh as you say and are usually what are called boarding schools, private schools are schools where parents pay fees for their children to go there, but they don't usually board (the sort of school rich footballers will send their kids to). State schools are for the rest of us.
As a former teacher, do you think a move back to something like a modern version of approved schools would help for the out of control kids?
Private/Independent = middle class
Public = posh
State/Compehensive = plebs
Private schools are funded by the families of the pupils (ie. they're privately owned).
Public schools are a subset of private schools (ie. they're also privately owned), but the families are generally mega-rich and the fees mega-high (ie. they're historic institutions which were theoretically accessible to the 'public' before the advent of state education).
So the word 'private' relates to ownership, whereas the word 'public' relates to access. Each term was coined at a different point in the UK's history and therefore refers to different definitional aspects of society at the time (ie. capitalism versus class).
I don’t know what the answer is but what I do know is that the surety system doesn’t work:
- Detentions which kids just don’t attend, either just by lack of compliance or parents call complaining about shit.
- Internal exclusions lead kids to isolation rooms which are nothing of the sort. Work is supposed to be done in these rooms but mostly aren't and one poor member of staff is often left with 5, 10, 15 or more kids (depending on how fun the day has been) who all have no interest in compliance.
- External exclusion which essentially gives the kids a day or two off
More and more we see calls for lessons in morality, social issue such as equality and gender rights etc when these should be taught at home by the same parents who would complain that such lessons are just ‘woke-ifying’ our kids. Parents who believe that schools are the place to teach their kids everything and that they have barely any responsibility in the raising of kids anymore and then destroy any teacher who so much as gives their little bundle of joy a negative mark.
For me it needs a complete reset!