Olivia Jenkins: Danger in dismissing schoolboys’ sexist chatter

Revelations groups of Melbourne boys rated female classmates’ appearance in a vile group chat shows pack-mentality misogyny runs deep in our classrooms. Schools must step up.

Brave female students from Nossal High have come forward with a litany of stories.

The incessant harassment and sexual degradation of schoolgirls by their male peers shows it’s time for schools to step up and proactively put an end to sexist behaviour.

Revelations that groups of Melbourne boys rated and grossly dissected their female classmates’ sexual appearance – while detailing violent sexual urges in a vile social media group chat – are too familiar.

Miss Universe Australia’s recent ordeal with former and current male students from Nossal High, a government selective school, in which she was accidentally added to their group chat highlights how pack mentality misogyny runs deep in our classrooms.

One boy wrote about how he wanted to “choke (a female student) to death”, while another called a fellow female pupil a “fat mole”.

The brave female students from Nossal High who came forward with a litany of stories – detailing sexually abusive messages about girls’ social media and private pictures shared among schoolboys and forced stripteases – remind us of the dangers of writing off misogyny as young boys’ innocuous missteps.

Revelations that groups of Melbourne boys rated their female classmates’ appearance are too familiar.

The dichotomy between Nossal being signed up to the state government’s Safe Schools Initiative and the sexist group chat this week coming to light tells us reactive damage control doesn’t work. It shows a collective validation of misogynistic behaviours that portray women and girls as less than equal and strip us of our complexities and sexual agency as people.

The Herald Sun revealed in April less than a quarter of Australian children were taught about consent and respectful relationships in schools.

When the most recent government data shows 93 per cent of Victorian students rely on school-based programs for sex and sexual health education, it paints a picture of an outdated curriculum that allows sexist attitudes to manifest without intervention.

This tells us we need preventive and explicit discussion in our classrooms about respect and consent from both male and female teachers, who have a duty to model what it looks like to treat a woman with the respect she deserves.

To do that, the curriculum needs to go beyond the bare bones of pregnancy, STIs and periods by incorporating dialogue not just about the risks we take with sex, but the considerations we need to make for our consenting partners.

We cannot allow our young men to grow up thinking it is acceptable to sexually dehumanise the female peers they claim to respect.

Olivia Jenkins is a Herald Sun reporter

Originally published as Olivia Jenkins: Danger in dismissing schoolboys’ sexist chatter