Brighton Grammar ‘slut’ Instagram account: What are private schools teaching our boys?

IT’S no wonder some students feel single-sex schools are failing them in a mixed-gender world when ‘old boys’ think demeaning girls is ‘just a bit of fun’, writes Wendy Tuohy.

What are private schools teaching our boys?

I WAS at a barbecue with a family whose eldest had just come through a prestigious Melbourne boys’ school when I asked the friendly boy how he felt about finishing VCE.

I expected some light answer like ‘relieved’.

What I got was an unexpectedly fired-up rant about how the place felt like a prison and the main thing boys left with was “a degree in misogyny 101”.

It wasn’t just the angry damnation of the school his parents busted a gut to afford that took me aback, but that any 18 year-old boy would use a stuffy word like “misogyny”.

The strength of his insistence that the single-sex boys’ school model as he experienced it isn’t conducive to producing healthy attitudes to girls, was a surprise.

Today we learn about a revolting Instagram account allegedly set up by senior Brighton Grammar students to vote on the “young slut of the year” in their bayside social circle.

Students were reported to have set up the account to share photos of girls — “young sluts” — without their knowledge.

There were allegedly pictures on the site of girls as young as 11 and 12 in various stages of dress.

Some girls were easily identifiable by any creeps viewing it, because they were in school uniform.

Incredibly, the mother of one of the girls featured claims after she posted in disgust about this on Facebook she received a “threatening” phone call from an “old-boys club parent” on Sunday night.

Actually, given I’ve also heard from an inside source that another elite Melbourne boys’ school had its potential plan to go co-ed scuttled by old-boys who threatened to pull donations if it happened, maybe that’s not shocking.

Perhaps the instinct to protect the crest and keep the path from posh postcodes-to-Collins Street smooth for the sons is so strong that bullying a mother trying to protect her daughter is within the “old school” rules for some.

The mother says the man who called her described the creators of the Instagram page as a “group of boys having fun”.

Maybe putting the interests of those boys above those of girls being treated comtemptibly is perfectly natural in parts of the old guard.

That “old-boy” clearly has no idea about the potential damage his approval of such appalling behaviour is doing to the boys involved, as well as the obvious more immediate risks it poses the girls.

The girls being humiliated on that account are at risk of vilification, damage to their reputations, being bullied, trolled or isolated by peers and others in their community and having their pictures end up on extremely dodgy sites near the bottom of the net.

At worst, some creep may seek them at their school gate.

But knowing at least some of their elders laugh off this disgusting stuff as a bit of ‘boys-will-be-boys’ also seriously undermines the sons: as human beings, future partners and employees.

The guy who allegedly heavied the mother may wish for life to still be streamed by gender so the men (of standing) are in charge and the little women do what they’re told, but he needs to update his diary from 1953 if he’s going to make the world navigable for developing young men.

To help produce responsible citizens, this man needs to get informed about cyber safety at the very least and how sexual predators fish for targets.

The police are reportedly investigating the page. It’s not a laughing matter.

More importantly, he should look around and see that his son’s generation and that mother’s daughter’s generation are entering a world where, thankfully, both genders enter relationships, the work force, parenting — and sexual relationships — with the expectation of mutual respect and equal rights to retain their dignity and reach their potential.

That guy may feel nostalgic for the era when men of status could click their fingers and make problems go away (or get their slippers delivered with a brandy by a submissive woman), but he should keep that problem to himself.

What chance do boys of VCE age in 2016 have to move through life with healthy and fulfilling relationships with partners, and fruitful interactions with women they work with, and for, if this awful example of how to be decent guy is the best clue about manhood they have?