US: Female student expelled for kneeing boy in the groin while in girls' bathroom

[StopThePlanet]

• Boys attempt to invade girls bathroom as a protest against TM in their bathroom taking selfies

• Random girl not involved in protest or support of TM

• Girl feels trapped in girls' bathroom by boys and knees boy in groin

• Boys reprimanded, not suspended or expelled and get to attend prom

• Girl is expelled for violence and misses prom

• No adult witnesses to knee to groin

kutv.com/news/nation-world/student-expelled-for-bathroom-incident

Juxtaposed against:

• 10yr old girl is bullied by one 12yr old boy plus five other boys

• The six boys beat the crap out of the girl

• Teacher says "I can't believe it if I did not see it"

• Boys receive six days of suspension

• After returning from suspension one of the boys kicked a ball at the girl, striking her in the face

• School principal recommends girl change schools

www.google.com/amp/s/www.nwfdailynews.com/news/20190413/police-4th-grade-girl-beaten-by-6-boys-at-lakeland-school%3ftemplate=ampart

Juxtaposed against:

• 11yr old black boy refuses to say pledge of allegiance

• Substitute teacher reprimanded him (dumbass wasn't aware of Supreme Court ruling in 1943 that saluting the flag and saying the pledge aren't compulsory)

• Verbal argument ensues, no violence

• Kid is arrested for "becoming disruptive and refusing to follow repeated instructions by school staff and law enforcement."

www.local10.com/news/florida/florida-sixth-grader-arrested-after-dispute-over-pledge-of-allegiance

Well isn't this just precious? Uh huh keep telling me how females are treated as equals oh yeah and that all races are treated equally here in the US.

With liberty and justice for all... unless you are female or a racial minority. Move along, nothing to see here.

God, don't even get me started on the football players who are never held to account... it's a fucking universal. I now teach in a different country and it's still the same.

Although, I would just add, that none of the 4 schools I've taught in would have come close to expelling her. It would have been a show punishment to shut up the complaints. And her form tutor would have spoken to her to make sure she was alright and did she need more support, and reinforced that it's important that she keeps herself safe.

I should also have said that in the examples of bullied girls being punished for hitting bullies there was also a ton of pastoral work put in to place to stop the bullying and support the girls being bullied. I was just talking about the actual incidents earlier.

Not only do I think it is perfectly justified to knee someone who holds you prisoner, I think that girls should be taught precisely how to do it as a matter of course.

The question is, why don't the girls know it's wrong?

Conditioning to be “nice” and seek male approval. Most of us grow out of that, thank goodness !

Conditioning to be “nice” and seek male approval. Most of us grow out of that, thank goodness

I think it's that but also they have to live it. There's no opt out so it's best to see it as normal and not a series of sexual assaults by your actual friends.

Rufus

Thank you for your kindness. Sometimes the female socialization of my earlier years creeps in when posting on MN, funny that considering this is one of the few places I get a chance to fully express my thoughts without interruption. I really love you all - I know that sounds silly as I don't know any of you but the sense of camaraderie here is very comforting in this mixed up world.

When I finally make it to the UK I would love to get together with all of you that are able and buy you drinks to thank you in person for giving me a space and acceptance on your platform.

Interestingly, the TRAs on twitter are also aggressively defending this girl as a great hero. Something in common - probably that gut level response to male violence.

However, they are framing it as heroic because she was defending a trans boy.

I just wanted to comment regarding the "school system in America". The USA is enormous and must have hundreds of thousands of school systems. With 50 states and many states bigger than the entire UK, comparing the US to the UK is a false equivalency. You would be better comparing the European continent and all their school systems to the US.

My point is picking out a disparate set of stories from across the US is not comparing like with like. Some states are known for their very high educational standards such as Massachusetts, while some struggle to get a minimum of school funding for their districts and have some of the worst educational outcomes in the nation, such as New Mexico or Louisiana. Each state sets it's own standards and budgets for education and then within the state there can be massive economic and social disparities.

Not to say that of course we can't critique America and education, but just because we speak the same language doesn't mean their school systems will be like the UK. Our school systems are extremely different and it fact it might be helpful to look at their best practices rather than compare only tabloid worthy stories.

For example, the girl that kneed a male student in the groin may attend a school district that has a zero violence policy. All violence of this kind would be automatic expulsion and the head may have no discretionary flexibility. If it was a boy that kneed a girl in the groin would you want him still to go to prom ?

The trans boy shouldn't have been taking selfies in the boys' bath room/changing room - increasingly, I see notices everywhere about mobile phones not being allowed in change rooms/ public lavatories.

The boys' protest is interesting: it shows they don't see "trans boys are boys." They saw the trans boy as a girl, invading their space, and decided to wreak revenge by invading the girls' private space.

The school's response to the girl was completely over the top, and as the OP points out, disproportionate compared with punishments meted out to boys (unless they're black).

But - what a welcome to the world of being a woman - as we know, women are punished far more severely for stepping out of gender stereotyped behaviour. The young woman should have been "nice" and asked them to let her out, or scared, and dependent on the boys being magnanimous. Instead, she took physical direct action. How not very womanly, thus the extreme punishment.

If a girl was holding a boy prisoner then yes, he should attend the prom.

Self defence is entirely different from initiating violence. If you hold someone prisoner you initiated the violence. No innocent person should be forced to endure confinement.

A school which punishes someone for defending their self is no better than the thug holding them prisoner in the first place.

BeansandRice I think both sexes are pretty severely punished for stepping outside gendered behavior. It's usually much easier for a young girl to take on make clothes and behaviour, we even call her a Tomboy but boys don't have an equivalent that isn't offensive. Young feminine boys are often bullied, even by their own male relatives. My friends gay son was bullied all the way through school, especially by black boys, as being gay is completely unacceptable in many black and African cultures. (He grew up in Croydon and his school was majority black or a large black minority with students whose families were from many nations Nigeria, Kenya, Ethiopia and also the Caribbean).

IdaBWells

I'm American, I went to a mix of US schools (public, Catholic private, traditional, magnet - I ran the gamut) my entire education from Montessori School all the way through college. I have lived in 31 of the 50 states.

Examples I chose aren't tabloid stories there are things that happen every day here in the US. So many more things happen that aren't publicized - that receive no attention, county School boards hold most cases close to their chests... especially those in inner-city or rural areas, disadvantaged children rarely are represented in the media here.

I know many teachers, some administrators, and all of my friends have children at varying levels of education spread across the United States. The protection of girls and children of color is devolving before our very eyes - that is a fact.

Yes school systems have different rules and regulations mandated by their School boards - I'm fully aware of that - but we have a Federal Department of Education (Betsy DeVos anyone?) that lays down universal guidance for all of our schools. Disciplinary action should be absorbed into those universal standards and disciplinary action should be governed as such.

IdaBWells

I want call your attention to this point...

Furthermore, the girl was expelled from school in North Pole, Alaska - they have a population of 2,101 and one high school with two campuses, so getting kicked out of school for kneeing a boy in the groin seems quite excessive (and possibly created a difficult path to high school completion for her).

If a girl was holding a boy prisoner then yes, he should attend the prom.

Self defence is entirely different from initiating violence. If you hold someone prisoner you initiated the violence. No innocent person should be forced to endure confinement.

A school which punishes someone for defending their self is no better than the thug holding them prisoner in the first place.

^THIS!!!!!

An example from today's news...

amp.detroitnews.com/amp/3503604002

According to the lawsuit filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court, the fourth-grader at Keystone Academy in Belleville reported in October that a fellow pupil had been targeting her, including touching the girl inappropriately and making crude remarks.

Days later, the boy’s conduct escalated — including following the girl ‘and graphically describ(ing) how he wanted to ‘rape’ her,” according to the document.

The girl complained to the interim principal's assistant, whotold the girl’s mother she would handle the matter but “continued to advocate a ‘wait and see’ approach,that they would ‘look into’ itor even that they ‘couldn’t do anything,’ ” the suit said.

The family’s lawyers wrote that the school “maintained their position of inaction even though by now administrators were now aware of at least two other girls who were getting similar harassing and assaulting conduct...”

FYI - The US as a whole has under 14,000 school districts as per the US National Center for Education Statistics. Not hundreds of thousands - we don't even have hundreds of thousands of schools between public and private institutions for K-12.

The aforementioned only considers K-12 or primary and secondary education as College/Uni statistics are gathered and compiled independent of K-12 in the US.

Ok my statistics were way off ! But my point still stands and I am in the USA.

And in the schools my kids attend if a boy (or girl) was sexually harassing another person to that extent they would almost certainly be expelled. When my dd was a 1st grader at a new school (about 2006/7) a boy exposed himself to her when they stepped outside the classroom to the water fountain and he was expelled. I think that was after a bunch of other incidents, as I actually thought that was quite harsh for such a young boy and my dd was not that bothered (too young at that time to find it sexual and he was also a 1st grader). However the school was mortified and very apologetic to dd, myself and DH.

'Fight, flight, freeze' are the usual responses to fear/stress.

There's also other routes, including appease; be nice, smile, laugh, agree ('please don't hurt me I'm nice and not a threat, etc etc) which is surely a female-socialisation issue. And can so often be (deliberately?) misread as flirting. Teasing.

But in this case, this girl's automatic reaction to feeling dis-empowered, frightened and trapped was to fight her way out.

I do hope that tendency hasn't been punished out of her - because it could one day save her life.

So. After MeToo, after watching those retchworthy Kavanagh hearings, after having it ground into the brain of the meanest intelligence what sort of a war zone women live in, this goddamn school decided the most important thing was to make sure women understood they are not to defend themselves.

Who IS this asshole principal?

Sometimes I despair.

The point isn't that it's important to be against violence.

OF COURSE violence is bad.

The important thing in this case is that the violence against women is Mt. Everest-sized. The girl's violence was pebble-sized. It's not important. If she'd whipped out a gun and shot him, then, yes, worry about her level of violence.

Knee to groin for invading a girl's toilet as revenge, is merely a proportionate response.