Telegraph: Highgate School tells pupils "Modern feminism is ‘racist’ and only focuses on ‘straight, white, middle-class women’"

[ResisterRex]

It has emerged that Highgate School held a forum on anti-sexism, in which pupils were told:

• feminism only focuses on white, middle-class women
• to assess how privileged they are
• that others are worse off - especially trans victims
• that LGTBQ+ are more likely to be victims of child sexual abuse.

The forum was held to respond to the fact it was featured in Everyone's Invited. It seems that their response has been to ignore what was said about the school and what girls experienced, and tell them they’re not the real victims. Private school or not, parents decide where their kids go to school. Children don’t make those choices.

Anyone know where evidence is for the line about LGBTQ+ being more likely to be victims of CSA is from?

The school’s response was ill-informed, for example the “case by case” line which is wrong as per the EHRC guidance:

“We know that girls and women are disproportionately affected by sexual harassment and violence and LGBTQ+ people are more likely to experience child sexual abuse and less likely to report sexual abuse than their peers.
“If or where tensions exist or are perceived to exist between two or more protected characteristics under the Equality Act (2010), we will do everything that we can - on a case-by-case basis - to ensure that safeguarding every child in our care remains at the heart of what we do here.
“We continue to follow our safeguarding procedures, offer support to all of our pupils, and be led by the guidance of the DfE, local authorities and the police, where applicable. We remain committed to working in close and transparent partnership with our pupils, their parents and carers, staff, and alumni.”

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/04/18/modern-feminism-racist-focuses-straight-white-middle-class-women//_

This whole thing has echoes of this thread:

The word 'woman' is misogynistic, racist and transphobic, apparently.
http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4532660-The-word-woman-is-misogynistic-racist-and-transphobic-apparentlyy_

@Why2why

“If white staff at a mostly white school tell white teenage girls not to complain about the sexual abuse from their white male peers, because it's unfair to black women”

I am sure the school is not saying this and has not said this. But you know that, don’t you.

No, I genuinely don't know that the school has not said that. This is what it looks like to me, and I have said so.

@PurgatoryOfPotholes, politely, I have no question to answer and frankly you’ve reminded me why this feminist space is not for women like me. You do not care about women like me or the issues we face and instead use hyperbole and warped logic to demand that we stay silent or that our issues are kept hidden. For any focus on issues that affect women of colour is seen by you as endangering white women.

Please leave me alone and I’ll politely leave your space to you because I can tell we’re not going to get along or see eye to eye.

As you wish. I do not have an issue with black women and girls issues being addressed.

I have an issue with the very well paid staff of a very expensive school cynically using black women and girls as a figleaf to hide behind when they have to make noises about dealing with the culture of sexual assault they've allowed to flourish.

This is an attempt to silence women and to pit women against each other to weaken our collective voice. I stand with men and women against racism and with all women against abuse of women. I don't think I am alone in that stance. When I speak against the message that was given to these girls, I speak against misogyny. I do not question that black women feel excluded from spaces occupied by a majority of white women and I think we should work hard to ensure all women are included in our fight for equality for women. It makes me very sad that forces which seek to silence us are driving a wedge between groups when we should be standing together. In my experience, white women who fight for the rights of women, do so along side and on behalf of all women. I am white and I have privilege, but that does not automatically make me a racist.

[quote Why2why]@PurgatoryOfPotholes, politely, I have no question to answer and frankly you’ve reminded me why this feminist space is not for women like me. You do not care about women like me or the issues we face and instead use hyperbole and warped logic to demand that we stay silent or that our issues are kept hidden. For any focus on issues that affect women of colour is seen by you as endangering white women.

Please leave me alone and I’ll politely leave your space to you because I can tell we’re not going to get along or see eye to eye.[/quote]
This thread is about girls at a school being told their being sexually assaulted isn't all that serious because they are privileged compared to black women.

No one has said anything that indicates they don't care about racism or that black women's issues should stay hidden. They've said that the school using accusations of racism as a tool to avoid facing the fact that there are minors being sexually assaulted in their institution is pretty shit.

Being sexually assaulted as a teen girl is crappy no matter what your race or ethnicity, and all girls that age need to be told that it's serious.

I reread, and reread, her posts, and I've realised her starting position is that the school brought in black women from an external agency to talk about issues, to give the girls a wider education on misogyny.

I, on the other hand, have no such trust. If I thought they had got some external feminists in (I already suggested where they could have gone) and paid them for the trouble, I wouldn't be so bothered- feminists of colour don't tend to tell children of any colour that they should be silent about sexual assault. But white academics and white diversity consultants burnishing their faux-gressive credentials have been known to do so. And that's if they even bothered to get anyone in from the outside.

As a society, we have a long history of guilt-tripping teenage girls out of reporting sexual assault, whether it's making them fear for his job, his career, his family's income, the reputation of the church, his chance to go to university, his chance to get on the sports team, his bright future...

No child or adult should ever feel guilty for reporting sexual assault.

Truly, if people think it is OK to address the problems of sexual abuse in a school as reported by girls, by telling those girls they're privileged and not the real victims, you need to hang your head in shame.

Doing so is dodging the issue, and silencing child victims of sexual abuse. It is not OK to distance yourself from this problem in a school where it's been reported. And it's not OK to use different sections of the population in order to make child victims feel guilty into shutting up.

Yes. These are children who have been assaulted. Children. Assaulted by boys. The school needs to address this and stop the boys assaulting the girls.

Giving the girls a book about 'white tears' and telling them to suck it up because some (older) people are racist is just appalling.

@MarshmallowSwede

So the women of colour who are feminists? What about them? How do they explain them?

Of which - in the U.K. - there are many high profile ones.

Is this an American version of bla bla everything?

From what I know Highgate school is prity invested in gender idology, and I was not sure why. till I saw a pic of the head in the paper.

He seemed to be wearing a grown up version of the school uniform, it was quite weird.

It made me uncomfortable iykwim.

I think is is a shame if women cannot come together on this.

@Why2why please for my understanding… I feel strongly about many issues and both sexual harassment and racism is unacceptable.

The reporting of sexual assaults and rape culture in schools, initiated by Everyone’s Invited (started in private schools and moved over to state schools) had a strong impact on me. I was sexually abused by a relative as a child. I was also subject to an occasion of sexual assault in school (as an 11 year old) which wasn’t rape but bad enough that the police would have taken it seriously. I never reported this to anyone. I was the shy, bullied girl and the boy was popular and rich. My mum died when I was a child, maybe this had something to do with it as well.

I am extremely supportive of girls feeling able to report sexual assaults, harassment and unwanted touch. Currently the the system seems to protect the perpetrators (boys) and girls feel ashamed that it happened to them. I know I did, and I was sitting on my own, at lunch break reading a book. I still wondered why I was targeted (bullied girl, unlikely to tell probably). Don’t get me started on slut shaming.

My issue is in no way that these girls shouldn’t be told about how privileged they are. Of course they should and they should have regular talks from girls/adults from ethnic minorities. Of course we need to be tolerant about LGBT etc.

My issue is that - according to my understanding- these girls were told that their experiences of sexual assault wasn’t that bad because they were white/straight/whatever. My understanding is that these talks was in response to the school being singled out for not protecting girls . I think sexual assaults on children always are wrong.

The fact that I care about protecting all girls doesn’t mean that I don’t care about racism. I do, deeply.

Are we really that far apart?

White Tears Brown Scars is currently 99p on kindle.

I've read it. It's not a book I'd recommend to school girls.

As a woman of colour, my feminism includes women and girls.

Mostly girls because I have vulnerable daughters who have already been harassed and sexually bullied by the boys in the class. One of the worst perpetrators of sexual harassment to my mixed race daughter was from an Indian boy who is my cousins son.

Regardless of their colour, girls need protecting and empowered to be able to deal with the horrific misogyny that is now permeating everything in their lives.

Without seeing the full training/speech that was given the main issue that I see was that instead of being given space to discuss male sexual aggression towards young women of all races - they were instead given a history lesson in how some kinds of feminism have excluded black women.

How many children are in the school. How many are white, how many are black, how many are Asian or from other ethnic minorities who also experience racism? What was the goal of the talk, was it to talk about racism or was it to talk about male sexual violence towards young girls?

What was the actual need of the girls in that group listening?

LittleWhinging, I completely agree that girls of all races should be protected from male sexual aggression. Sometimes it (based on my experience) feels shameful to even admit to being a victim. This is why I was so happy about Everyone Invited where girls could report this.

The way the newspaper seems to have framed it is that the speech was in response to these allegations. That is what made me upset.

I think that there should be separate conversations on race, sexual violence and class. I don’t think any of those should be used to explain away /justify horrific behaviour under another.

Or excuse. Sorry if I am unclear here.

Nobody should be subject to racism, sexual abuse or classism. We should come down like a ton of bricks on all of them. No excuses.

@Doubletoilandtrouble

LittleWhinging, I completely agree that girls of all races should be protected from male sexual aggression. Sometimes it (based on my experience) feels shameful to even admit to being a victim. This is why I was so happy about Everyone Invited where girls could report this.

The way the newspaper seems to have framed it is that the speech was in response to these allegations. That is what made me upset.

I think that there should be separate conversations on race, sexual violence and class. I don’t think any of those should be used to explain away /justify horrific behaviour under another.

There's absolutely a place to discuss feminism and racism and how they connect. I'd also look at extending that conversation out to include other races who experience racism or it just becomes another conversation that excludes all the other people who also experience horrific racism.

From my experience as a survivor of multiple sexual assault, male sexual offenders are an equal opportunities group of men, they come from a diverse range of backgrounds and are happy to sexually abuse women of all races.

To hijack a conversation that is meant to be focusing on sexual harassment of young girls by simplistically demonising one type of feminism (because they won't be talking about all the different movements within feminism will they?) doesn't make a lot of sense.

Unless the goal is to silence young girls. But there's a way they can feel heard! They can identify into the most oppressed class of all, the T part of the rainbow!!! Magic days!

But there's a way they can feel heard! They can identify into the most oppressed class of all, the T part of the rainbow!!! Magic days!

Close but not quite - if a girl identifies as trans that makes them a transman and TMAM so they will gain male privilege. It is not like poor oppressed transwomen that not only are now oppressed as 'women' but worse than that they are trans whereas females have their disgusting cis-privilege....

Did anyone talk to the white males about racism, misogny and abuse of women.

Racism isn't as big a problem as the assault on women's rights that is happening every day now

@goldernpie

Racism isn't as big a problem as the assault on women's rights that is happening every day now

Havers.

Both need attention and those who are vulnerable to both/either need support.

I would definitely be onboard with discussions around how racism interconnects with sexual harassment LittleWhinging. My key concern is that they both are heard and taken seriously and that neither is used to excuse the other.

goldernpie, I respectfully completely disagree with your statement that racism is less important. It is a hugely important topic and from what I understand from the (black) dad of one of my son’s football team mates, it has a devastating impact.

I think both racism and sexual harassment needs to be fought, harshly. But on this specific thread I am worried about sexually abused girls. They also deserve to be heard, regardless of skin colour.

Divide and conquer. It's all part of the plan isn't it?

@goldernpie

Racism isn't as big a problem as the assault on women's rights that is happening every day now

You can't be serious.

It doesn’t has to divide us if we don’t let it. We women can be stronger than this. The only people who wins if we let us be divided are the racists and the abusers.

Pretty ridiculous. Feminism is for all women as women. I am from a minority ethnic group and while there are some issues that particularly are relevant to women of that group, most feminist issues I have in common with all women.

In the UK feminism might well be mainly focused on the white women's issues but that’s to be expected as that reflects the majority of women in the uk.

There is nothing wrong with being a white middle aged woman and wanting to have equal rights. Women as a class easily are those facing the most discrimination and disadvantage.