Australian Girls Are Getting Blamed for Boys Posting Their Sexts Online
I’ll never forget when my teacher halted my 11th grade AP History class just to pull me out of class and request that I go to the office and call my mother and ask her to bring me a new skirt to wear, as mine was too short. Sure, I didn’t actually call my mom and I just walked around the halls a couple times instead, but that’s not the point.
The point is that it’s a really twisted world we live in where it’s okay to pull a girl out of class and take away her learning time, but it’s not okay for a boy to get distracted and get behind on his studies. Like shit, little Tommy peeping Jessica’s shoulder in her tank top is def going to make him fail math class, and that’s Jessica’s fault? My little sister’s middle school banned yoga pants and leggings…like, seriously?
An Australian high school, Kambrya College, took the ridiculous dress code debacle one step further and had a mandatory meeting for all the girls (no dudes) to tell them to stop sending “sexy selfies,” stop wearing makeup, and recommend that they start wearing knee-length skirts to “protect their integrity,” according to Australian newspaper The Age.
What sparked the need for this urgent meeting? Guys at Australian high schools, including Kambrya, had been submitting nudes and secretly taken up-skirt photos from female classmates to porn sites. Sick.
You’d think that maybe, just maybe, the boys would be chided for being sick and twisted and potentially fucking up an innocent girl’s life forever by publishing her nude photos on the net without her consent. But no, instead, Kambrya followed suite in the victim-blaming pattern that so many others do in terms of sex-related crimes.
Understandably, sending nudes come with risks. And yes, the situation could have been potentially been averted if the girls in question never sent nudes in the first place. But the situation also could’ve been averted if the dudes didn’t beg for the nudes (like you know they did) and didn’t Snapchat text some BS line like “don’t worry, I won’t show anybody” seconds before they screen-shot it.
Ryan Lochte (who’s 32, mind you) was excused for the “boys will be boys” mentality when vandalizing a fucking gas station, but pre-teen girls can’t be expected to make mistakes when they’re exploring their sexuality? Moreover, their only real “mistake” is that they sent their sexy selfie to the wrong dude.
One of Kambrya’s 15-year-old students, Faith Sobotker, voiced her response in a Facebook video against slut-shaming that has since gained over 12,000 views before being taken down (we’re not sure why it has been taken down).
“You can’t tell me what ladylike is because we don’t live in the ’50s any more. I am looking for equality,” explained Sobotker. “I am 15 years old. You do not get to sexualize me like that, you do not get to tell me that my body is sacred, because it isn’t.”
Just because boys are stereotypically known as being the hornier and more reckless gender doesn’t mean that girls should have to live like nuns to balance it out. All victim-blaming does is make guys think they’re in the clear and that it’s okay for them to slut-shame the girls who they begged for nudes from in the first place. And it needs to stop.
