"There’s man all over for you,
blaming on his boots the fault of his feet"
Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett
Part 4: the eruption continues
Despite the explosion, our teenage years are filled with emotions that guide us later in life too. Yes, I would never return to this period and yes, I would do anything to cut school out of my memory. But this is also the time of belly laughs and friendship and power. Especially female power.
Your friend has your back.
Of course, she may stick a knife in it next year, next month, next week, next day or even the next moment but there are these times of real bonding. Where your bestie will fight the world with you. If I could say anything to our teenage daughters, our nieces, our girls left in our care it would be stick with your female friend. Ride or die with her.
She is your power.
Not that childhood or teenage sweetheart you have your eyes on.
Her. She is everything you need.
I would tell them to sit and talk to the girl they shame with names such as ‘slut’ or ‘tramp’… and ask her ‘what’s up?’.
Be her friend. No matter what she has done. Again – no matter what she has done – ask her ‘what’s up?’.
Because there is probably a lot up. Most of us have a good reason for the eruption. And everyone who is searching for validation through sex has a reason.
Reflections
Most of us do not mean to hurt another. Even if it is intentional. I know that is a paradox. But it is true. We intentionally hurt people by accident all the time. All of us deserve to be listened to, spoken to and not criticised and judged through whispered rumours.
The hurt I feel I caused most as a teenager was not talking to those girls. The “sluts”. For being part of a group that ridiculed teenage girls for having sex and for being part of a group that shamed, judged and isolated these girls.
Let us, please, take a moment and look back at this with our adult hat in place. What the absolute fuck were we thinking?
Excuse the profanity – but some things need the inclusion of ‘What the actual Fuck?’
Can you just imagine what must have been going on in the mind of the girls we ridiculed and shamed? What damage had been done and what continued to be done, repeatedly, with the exorcising, name calling?
It is no wonder they searched the dregs of humanity for validation and attention.
Maybe we do not meet monsters in our teenage years – maybe we are the monsters and maybe this is the exact time we create and or become them.
I look at these years with shame, of myself for not realising or seeing the bigger picture. Of us as a womanhood for not getting together and supporting one another in these treacherous years of transition.
What now?
I look at the teenagers I teach now, and, in many ways, I am in awe. We are studying a book called The Vegetarian, by Han Kang.
If you haven’t read it. Read it.
The book is horrifying. It is disturbing and grotesque. Uncomfortable to say the least. But it is raw, and it is true.
My male teenage students responded to the terrible treatment and diminishment of the female protagonist like this.
“I feel desperately sorry for her.”
And they didn’t mean it in a pathetic manner. They meant it as finally understanding the consequences of the patriarch and as seeing women as something – not to be pitied. But as a human, just like them, who was suffering. They didn’t feel sorry for her because she was a woman. But because of the ridiculous lump of a husband she was stuck with.
In that moment I considered them wiser and more mature than most men I have met in my life.
'Something is changing. But! and this is a huge but!'
For the first time I have male students embarrassed of the prerequisite of their gender – I have male students that crunch in shame at male oppressive behaviours and I have male students volunteering to select independent projects on feminism.
Something is changing. But! And this is a huge BUT. I don’t see it outside the classroom. Outside the classroom, girls now, young women, in our progressive new world are still slut shamed by male and females alike.
They are still ridiculed.
Even with this great fundamental change in education and understanding – women, young and old are being mistreated by humans – young and old. Male and female.
As Charlie Brooker, former writer for the Guardian states, to be a man online is one thing – to be a woman means receiving comments line "Go Home Bitch. Go Home".
As Charlie Brooker, former writer for the Guardian states, to be a man online is one thing – to be a woman means receiving comments line “Go Home Bitch. Go Home”.
Until we realise that we are all part of this mistreatment there can never be a change in the world. It is so easy to sink into deprecation and make even unknowingly derogatory and diminishing comments towards genders – male and female alike.
We do it all the time.
How many of us expect a man to treat us, take us out, pay our drink or dinner? Do we expect a woman not to enjoy sex, or masturbate or mention a need for freedom from her family? You might not like to look in the mirror. But I would bet my last belonging that somewhere within you, you too, have these thoughts.
We learned them in our teenage years.
So, before we continue in our search for monsters. Let us ask ourselves if there is a little monstrous part of ourselves, we need to kill first?
