daughter really upset about forthcoming school trip

[Dieu]

Hello everyone
My 14 year old daughter goes to a private girls' school, and is in short a really nice kid. She doesn't have a nasty bone, and does well to navigate some of the bitching that goes on at her school.
The school also has a separate boys' high, and occasionally the two come together for trips.
There is going to be a week long residential trip next year, and I have just broken the news to her that it's compulsory (and not optional, as she originally thought).
Her reaction was pretty bad, and she's really upset. She is terrified of being put together with the boys for that long. To be fair, as with any school (and gender!) some of them can be extremely nasty and their attitudes towards girls just awful. I think my daughter has seen a lot of it on social media, and it's the lack of escape on the trip that's worrying her.
Apparently the showers there are shared, and they wear their swimming costumes in them. SOME boys will think nothing of commenting on the girls' body shapes, etc. Of course my daughter is beautiful in my eyes, and in her own, but she knows herself that as someone who is tallest, ginger, not the skinniest etc, she could be a target for them.
She's normally a very reasonable, lovely girl but her reaction has worried me. Of course I tried to say all the right things, that the thought will be worse than the reality, that the boys probably won't care, that she shouldn't care etc. It sounded hollow though, and like I was trying to minimise her distress.
I'm normally a 'chin up and get on with it' parent and try not to pander to too much nonsense, but she's really scared and upset. She says she won't eat in front of the boys, so as not to attract nasty comments from them.
Gaaah. How would you prepare your teenage daughter for this trip?
Thanks.

You chose to educate your daughter in a single sex school which is not an accurate reflection of society then wonders why she's scared of boys when she has to mix with them? Really?

Yes, really, glamourous.

Plenty of women educated at single sex schools are not 'scared' of men as a result of their education. Plenty of girls are not scared of them either.

Plenty of girls educated at mixed schools are scared or intimated by some boys.

Plenty of 14 year old girls - full stop - are shy and unsure of themselves, and find some boys to be out of their comfort zone.

This should not be news to anyone.

Honestly this kind of harassment didn't exist much in the '70s when/where I was. If it did I just let them know I wasn't happy. What has gone wrong?

Yes, and Jimmy Savile was a national hero who did loads of wonderful work for charity.

It works brilliantly telling abusers that you're not happy. They just say 'Oh I'm so sorry. Can you lend me some good books about feminism.'

Marianne I wasn't abused or harassed in any way. I had a very happy childhood and adolescence. I was an assertive girl. I didn't say 'I'm not happy!' I had a good bullshit radar. Also I had a brother who looked out for me. He stood no nonsense. Sorry if that's incomprehensible to you.

Dieu, why is she so shy around boys and men?
Some posters have asked that you try to get to the bottom of this -- perhaps there has been some sort of incident. I think that is very good advice.

I am one of three sisters, and went to an all girls convent primary school, followed by a mixed equivalent of a comprehensive (in Ireland). I am very glad I had the experience of going to both schools. I feel if single sex schools are to exist, then they should exist at primary level only.

Also, I have four DDs, two of whom are redheads, and one DS. They have all gone to mixed sex schools from kindergarten on. In their schools there is a zero tolerance policy on sexually based harassment, whether directed at girls or boys, or aimed at shaming sexuality, sexual orientation, etc. There is also zero tolerance for body shaming of any kind. I think you should bring up the issue of any shaming, harassment and bullying that has come up, separately from the residential trip. You should march in to the Principal's office asap, armed with screen shots, etc, and demand to know what draconian solution is going to be put in place to stop this dead in its tracks. You should also march into the office of the Principal of the boys' school. It is completely unacceptable.

It goes without saying that none of this should be tolerated on the residential trip either, and you should be presented with written guidelines for behaviour along with sanctions that will be applied. But in case the schools are unaware of the ongoing undercurrents, they need to be informed, and students should be able to rest assured that all students are expected to behave in a civilised fashion at all times.

I am concerned that your DD has closed off discussion of going to another school. I understand that she is a nervous, anxious sort of girl. I wonder if anything has happened to make her as nervous about males as she seems to be but that is a different matter... But I think you need to get to the bottom of why she is refusing to contemplate going to another school, even though she has to negotiate a certain amount of bitching at her own school as well as the fact that the school is 'paired' with a boys' school that seems to foster a misogynistic culture. Overall, there seems to be toleration of a level of nastiness that is making her life miserable there.

It is problematic when someone is willing to cling to the trauma she knows rather than deal with, as she may see it, potential or unknown trauma. School is not meant to be one continuous episode of hazing. I would try to find out what she sees as the tradeoff for the unhappiness and why she values it.

I don't think my dd is extraordinarily lucky. I do think some people are overly sensitive. If I get called love or darling I don't find it offensive. These men also use 'mate' to talk to men. I don't think they would be offended. It's just a way of speaking.

derxa I am delighted that you had a happy childhood. However, it does not follow from that, that your individual experience constitutes some kind of universal truth.

I have no doubt for example, that many people grew up in reasonably stable families during the 1940s. However, you cannot use their experience to assert that the Holocaust never actually happened.

To push the analogy further, It's not that the people who did not get sent to concentration camps didn't go because they were strong assertive individuals who didn't let themselves get pushed around. They escaped simply because they were lucky. Lucky not to be Jewish or communists or Roma or Jehovah's Witnesses or gay. Some people are fortunate enough to have personal circumstances which means they grow up relatively innocent of the discrimination others experience. It is however, very unfortunate, when these people use their own good fortune, to argue that if others suffer that is because they have brought suffering upon themselves.

OP, I have only read the first page and a bit but a school trip is not worth worrying about this much. Keep her off school that week, if she really does not want to go.

What has happened to this thread? Op has a reserved daughter . She sounds completely normal to me. No child wants to move schools unnecessarily. All girls' schools are bitchy to some degree(so are mixed schools.)Stop over analysing.

If I had daughters I would tell them to tell these men to fuck off. Honestly this kind of harassment didn't exist much in the '70s when/where I was. If it did I just let them know I wasn't happy. What has gone wrong?

When I was 11 in a mixed primary school a boy in the year above me repeatedly told me he was going to rape me. I told the teacher. He told me not to be a tattle tale.

Sorry, meant to add - that was in the early 70s.

green why can't thise men call a woman 'mate' then? Because they certainly aren't my darling and I certainly am not theirs. But if they have manners and aren't a sexist twat then I might well be their mate.

Lovely to think there was no sexual harassment in the 70s. Ah, happy times!

'Unnecessarily' is in the eye of the beholder.

This child is experiencing a school atmosphere where she has bitching girls to work around, genuinely believes that mixed showering with swimsuits on is a possibility on the residential trip, one that the school admin knows fills many children with dread but they seem to think challenging experiences will do everyone a world of good, and the abuse of girls by boys on social media is known about but apparently it hasn't occurred to the OP to try to put an end to it.

Why the sense of powerlessness?

Do the powers that be at the school send out a vibe that they are not receptive to input from parents about really important concerns or is the OP a reserved and timid sort of person who does not feel comfortable rocking the boat? If the school is aware of what goes on then why are they not stopping it? If they are not aware, why is that? Are the majority of parents either unaware of it or are they willing to put up with it?

It's not healthy no matter how you look at it. A situation arose in my Dsis's year in school in a particular are of the school where lockers were in a cul de sac corridor, and boys were making girls run a sort of gauntlet when they went to their lockers. Even back in the late 70s in Ireland this came to the attention of parents and the school cracked down in no uncertain fashion. There is no way in this day and age that a girl should feel she is as unprotected as the OP's DD seems to feel she is, and feeling the way she does, it must be asked why she is putting up with this, why the reluctance to move to another school.

...it must be asked why she is putting up with this, why the reluctance to move to another school.

Perhaps because her existing friendships, and the academic progress she is making outweight the negatives of her interactions with boys on social media (which, I'm fairly sure, is only a small part of her overall social media experience). It would be madness in many people's eyes, to throw the baby out with the bath-water in such a reactionary fashion.

That's not to say that what's happening over social media is acceptable, or that questions shouldn't be asked of the school.

I would have prepared my daughter by not sending her to a single-sex school that has given her, and you it seems a very sheltered vision of the opposite sex.

Seems like there are two problems here, one that your daughter isn't comfortable around boys as fellow teenage humans and the other being that the schools tolerate a level of misogyny and bitchiness in their culture.
Your daughter will at some point have to work with men as colleagues and hopefully friends. She may even choose to live with a man at some point. Does she envisage going to university? So to address the first problem, could you find her some mixed gender hobbies?, scouts? sport?

Does she see it as a problem that she is currently intimidated and out of her comfort zone around boys, but will at some point leave the all-female environment and have to cope? (does she realise that the boys are being loud and silly because they are terrified of having to talk to the strange scary girls?)

Secondly, could you talk to the school about what the reality of the trip is, and ask how they intend to avoid any kind of verbal, social media or sexual harassment taking place? You could also put your daughter in touch with some of the feminist social media campaigns to help her and her friends feel empowered to challenge any harassment, now or in the future.

The problem is not whether the OP's DD is uncomfortable around boys. The problem is why. And that has been explained and is down to the behaviour of the boys. Offering advice on how her DD can be more assertive and how she can change her behaviour around boys is not going to solve the problem. The boys will still be misogynistic. It is they who should be modifying their behaviour, not the OP's DD.

"the schools tolerate a level of misogyny and bitchiness in their culture." There is no evidence on this thread that the schools tolerate a level of bitchiness.

Choli so sorry, how awful.

The reference to bitchiness that the DD deals with is in the OP's first few lines. 'She doesn't have a nasty bone, and does well to navigate some of the bitching that goes on at her school.'

The references to bad behaviour by students at the boys' school are numerous, and include online bullying of girls and a clique of Alpha boys who seem to get away with really poor behaviour:

I should add that there are some very popular boys at the school who DO get by, at least for now, on their good looks and nasty sense of 'humour'. Every school has them, in male and female form, even back in our school days. It's these boys she's intimidated by, and not so much boys in general.

^And I blame social media to some extent too. She has shown me pics of the some of the girls in her year, and several of the outfits are a bit inappropriate and revealing. Boys comment online, behind their computer screen, and then think that they can do it in RL too.
My daughter is under confident, but at least she's not doing this, in order to gain validation and approval from the opposite sex. Thank God.^
This is as screwed up as it comes.

Social media does not cause poor behaviour. It is just a tool. Poor behaviour is always the choice of the individuals who engage in it, and in a school it is also the fault of the administrators who stand idly by. If it happens and nothing is done about it then they stand idly by. It is their business to know about it.

How anyone could justify paying for the privilege of exposure to this sort of neanderthal behaviour I do not know, when you could experience the same in any state school that was badly enough run.
[*I am not saying here that all schools are badly run].

'...private schools can honestly be a law unto themselves !'

It's a problem that you seem to believe this, OP. No school can be remiss to the extent that your DD's and the boys' school seem to be when it comes to harassment and the fostering of an environment that is hostile to a class of students or individual students.

As you've already indicated, your DD is afraid of the out of the ordinary and in her world, boys are out of the ordinary. She probably has encountered way more mean girls than mean boys but because she has more social contact with girls in general, those mean girls proportionally represent a smaller group within her female world.

Your daughter will be fine but I totally get your concerns. We want to encourage our chicks to fly (be confident, assertive etc) but on the other hand, we fear that their wings arent sufficiently developed enough to support the weight of their bodies (expectations, anxieties etc) and they might plummet rather than soar.

Get as much facts about the trip as you can, so that you can dispel some of the stories that are feeding her angst. Maybe this trip, could be a catalyst for you both to start challenging her lack of confidence.

There is also no evidence on this thread that the schools tolerate a level of misogyny. The only exposure the dd appears to have had to date with any of the boys from the other school is via social media. Unless complaints have been made to the school about those comments then they may be completely unaware of them. Most schools will teach their pupils about ethics and behaviour, but they don't monitor all their interactions outside of school.

As for those who have essentially said that those of us with daughters must be hiding their daily experiences of sexual harassment, and those of us with sons must be pretty much ignoring their misogyny. Is it really that difficult to believe that for some girls sexual harassment really is an occasional thing, and that our daughters really do talk to us about it when it happens - mainly because it's a big deal? That we might not observe our sons at school but if we observe them sticking up for the girls they interact with (sisters, friends, online gamers etc) and objecting to sexism then we are in a fairly good position to think that actually they aren't harassing girls the moments our backs are turned?

No woman or girl should ever be sexually harassed whether that is unwanted touching, bullying, cat calling or online nastiness, but it's a bit sad to assume that of course in any situation where teenage boys are present they will be behaving in a sexually intimidating way to all the girls around them and that a girl about to go on a residential trip is therefore right to be terrified.

Good god, people are being very harsh on the op's dd! Not wanting to shower with boys who make mean comments on social media about girls' appearances does not mean she's 'scared of men'! The op has stated that she likes some of the boys from the brother school. Some of these comments are like something out of the 1950s. And btw single sex education does give better educational outcomes for girls.

Dds go to a residential sports thing every summer with boys. The boys are their friends! Absolutely no sexual harassment whatsoever. I don't think they've ever had a problem with it. It seems to exist but only very rarely and on social media. That's my experience as the mother of 4 girls.

Lovely to think there was no sexual harassment in the 70s. Ah, happy times! I was giving my own experience of life and you know it. Of course people experienced terrible abuse in the 1970's and it was hidden. The subject of this thread is overt abuse online and in the streets and at school. There was no 'online' in the '70s and there wasn't the easy access to porn or constant body shaming of women in the media. I'm saying I had good relationships with most of the men/boys I met and I didn't experience any of the harassment described above.