The Problem in a Nutshell
The problem in a nutshell
How did we get here?
Why are hundreds of students walking out of our nation’s K-12 schools each year in protest over the sexual violence being allowed to fester on their campuses?
Why is there SO little implementation of the law despite the passage of new CA Ed Code in 2017 strengthening its verbiage?
How are boys allowed to circulate child pornography without the knowledge of their victims online through their school affiliations (sports teams, social circles) without ANY consequences?
Why are girls being raped in school bathrooms during school hours without EVERYONE being outraged about it?
How did a culture of toxic masculinity, rape culture, and male privilege get such a strong hold on our K-12 campuses?
Plain and simple—gender equity work is missing from K-12 educational equity frameworks. In short, this is what we wind up with when even the social justice warriors advocating for equity based changes in K-12 don’t know or care about this issue. The reason these should-be/would-be advocates in K-12 education are apathetic, ignorant, or even hostile to gender equity work is complicated. We’ve heard many, contradictory reasons for this, and have experienced this hostility in spaces which were overwhelmingly social justice minded. We have heard everything from “feminism only helps white, upper-class women,” to “feminism is too much of a hot button issue and will make the work for others harder to implement.” These same educational leaders deny, minimize, and victim blame their student survivors, because they are profoundly ignorant of the issue.
The discussion here is very polarizing and difficult for sure. We are extremely open about the problematic past of feminism in America, but are resolute on this: There is NO excuse for school-based rape and sexual victimization. Not implementing 50 year old federal law in K-12 settings is criminal. The scholarly research on the prevalence of the problem is VERY clear—if you are school principal, it IS happening on your watch. We have learned that without an explicit focus on gender equity as a whole, Title IX implementation is an inorganic, heavy lift, which will always require herculean oversight.
The bottomline is that what little equity based work which is taking place in K-12 is highly exclusionary. As feminists we have HAD to confront our own privilege (and continue to do so as it is a never ending process)—ours is not a minority group, and hence we have the MOST intersectionality with which to contend. This positions us beautifully however to see clearly that dominant group privilege is present in all social justice movements—most notably, (in regards to this particular problem), the male privilege in K-12 educational equity frameworks. This is due in large part to the fact that although nearly 70 percent of all teachers in the US are female, only a quarter of them are district leaders—proving that even (and one might add particularly), in education, leadership is still coded male.
Why is a feminist, gender equity based approach needed in K-12?
The wording and entire focus of the Title IX law mandates which protect girls and students from sexual violence at school is based soley on an ability to see the issue through a gender equity lens. The entire approach that the authors took in its language was around a school’s obligation to not limit a girl’s access to their education based on their gender. School-based sexual harassment and violence was deemed from the start as being the most significant gender based barrier. The language of Title IX was inspired by the recently passed civil rights laws designed to protect minoritizied racial identites, but this language does not work, if school leaders do not connect sexual harassment and violence with gender based discrimination. It must be seen in this light, if the law will work as designed. If school leaders and teachers are not explicity taught to see sexual harassment through a lens of gender based discrimination, then they will continue to minimize, deny, and victim blame to get around the law. All of our efforts to mitigate and end sexual violence predation in K-12 will be fruitless without an explicit and intentional gender equity framework. It may seem odd to you that this disconnect exists at all. If you are not a K-12 feminist activist, then you will not know this—there is a profound ignorance to the issue, so we need to be explicit here. If you are still unclear as to why sexual harassment and sexual violence IS a gender equity issue, then we ask you to read some of the resources in our next blog.
