This afternoon I attended church with a Mormon congregation that I was once a part of about three years ago. There I saw a young man that I knew when he was only fourteen. He’s seventeen now, and he is a very bright, strong person. But today I saw him break down into tears because of something that happened to him yesterday on a school bus.

He’s one of the stars on his high school’s track and field team, and yesterday he and a bunch of other students piled onto a school bus to go to a track meet. There, confined to that small space, he was trapped in an environment that led to an absolute breakdown. The other students around him erupted into conversations that he says were so disturbing, so grotesque, that they would have been confined to an X-rated film. He asked them to stop, but instead they only laughed at him. The adults on the bus would do nothing about it. He was trapped on that bus with no way out. He was degraded, humiliated, and sexually harassed by the language of his peers. And still, a day later, he couldn’t talk about it without tears soaking his face.

Parents like to say that school prepares you for the real world. I don’t believe it. If that had happened to anyone in the work place, those responsible could be held liable under the law. They could be prosecuted for sexual harassment and held responsible for their misconduct. It’s not acceptable behavior in the adult world. The law clearly says that it’s wrong, that it’s oppressive, and that’s it’s psychologically damaging. If that’s true for an adult in the business world, why is it acceptable that it’s happening to children in our schools?

When I was coming home from Europe a few weeks ago, I had to fly in a small commuter plane from Cincinnati to Washington. It was one of those planes where there’s a center aisle, and two cramped little seats on each side. There wasn’t even enough room to have overhead compartments. This one was tiny plane.


I had the window seat. One of the last men on the plane was assigned the aisle seat right next to mine. I was pleasant to him, I said hello, and I thought everything would be fine. But soon after we took off, he pulled out a magazine. I’m not even sure what magazine it was, but as soon as he opened it, I nearly vomited. I had already been through a lot that day, I was nervous about coming home, and I was tired of being in cramped spaces. But nothing prepared me for this.


The pages he was flicking through were full of demeaning photographs of women. The sickest part was this wasn’t even classified as pornography, it was just a men’s magazine that was readily available in any bookshop – I believe it was an issue of Maxim. But on every single page there was at least one picture of a woman portrayed in inappropriate, lurid ways, most of them with very violent undertones.


I felt trapped. I was cornered, and all I could do to avoid looking at those images was to curl up against the wall of that airplane, cover the sides of my face to block my peripheral vision, and stare out at the clouds for the remainder of the flight. As a woman, I felt hideous sitting next to that man, trapped for that hour and a half that we were in the air. I felt degraded, I felt ashamed because of the way those women were depicted. It’s a feeling that is impossible to describe to a man, I don’t believe they fully understand it. So it’s a photograph, of another woman. What’s the big deal? I can’t express to you how demeaning it is, as a woman, to be subjected to seeing that. I felt vulnerable, and I felt threatened. Psychologically speaking, if exposed to pornography for great periods of time, the majority of women – but most especially children – are left with feelings of worthlessness, their self-respect is dwindled down to nothing, and they adopt traits of children who have been sexually abused or molested. It is that powerful, it is that abusive, and it is that dangerous.

On those short commuter flights in and out of Washington, DC, the passengers are not allowed to move out of their seats during the flight. If you so much as stand up on certain flights, you’ll be arrested and detained for questioning as soon as the flight lands. But in most circumstances, not only will that happen, but they’ll ground the flight outside of the Washington area. There was absolutely nothing I could do to get away from this man. I was afraid to open my mouth, for fear of causing some sort of scene that would ground the plane. He didn’t look like that type of man you’d want to trifle with. But what was the saddest part? He couldn’t have been a day over twenty one years old.


So I curled up in my corner, I tried not to look at anything but the clouds. That hour and a half felt centuries longer than the 9 hour flight from London I had just gotten off of.

I know how that young man felt, breaking down in tears after being subjected to perverted behavior such as that. We talk about freedom of speech, we talk about freedom to do as we choose. Often this is used to protect someone’s right to discuss such grotesque things in schools, or to protect that other passenger’s right to participate in pornography. What about my freedom to choose not to subject myself to it? What about my freedom to fly in peace? What about that boy’s freedom to attend school without the fear of being accosted in such a manner?

The world is a bad enough place as it is. Every minute, someone on this planet is murdered, raped, abused, neglected, hurt in some way. Why do we go to such lengths to make it worse? Why do we sit idly by and watch as children in our schools are sexually harassed? Why do we think that’s okay? Why won’t anyone lift a finger to change it? That behavior oversteps the bounds of freedom of speech when it oppresses others, when it becomes abusive and harmful to anyone else.

Some people say, “Well, you just get used to it after a while.” That’s exactly what I think is wrong. Why should we get used to it? It’s harmful, it’s dangerous, and above all, it’s pointless. The minute we desensitive ourselves to such behavior is the minute we lose our humanity, our dignity, and our self-respect. I refuse to allow myself to become comfortable with the demeaning nature of being subjected to pornography in public places. I am a human being, I am a woman, and I deserve more respect than that. No one should expect me to be okay with violent and degrading behavior.

And that seventeen year old young man, no one should expect him to accept his peers’ behavior, and in so doing sacrifice his moral standards, his self-respect, his dignity, and his emotional and psychological well-being. If he chooses not to participate, if he feels threatened by the other students, I believe he should have the right to refuse to be in their presence. I believe the teachers should have stood up for his rights. And I believe that if behavior such as that displayed by the other children on that bus would be deemed a criminal offense if enacted in the workplace, it should be punishable by law at school. It should not be tolerated, or eventually those children will grow up and become an active part of the adult business world, and they will carry those demeaning and inappropriate habits with them. We run the risk of becoming a society such as that in Japan, where it is socially acceptable for men to harass and even grope women in the work place. And in that society, women have no recourse, they have no right to complain, and they have no support in the law.

I believe our schools are failing because our society is failing. Rules of gentry and civility have been thrown out the window. How did it happen, how did we lose it so quickly? And why isn’t anyone trying to get it back?

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Post Script, 3:37AM: I feel myself being pulled into another PotterWar-esque campaign. I haven’t been able to shake these thoughts all night, my heart’s been pounding, and my stomach’s dropping. Same things happened when I decided to tackle WB, and that turned out well, so I don’t think I should ignore this. I’ve been hounding google with questions, I started reading a few books, and I’ve just sent a rather lengthy email to a renowned psychologist and cultural anthropologist, so hopefully something good will come of this rant. Now I just need to come up with a website design… Wish me luck, I think I’ll need it. Let’s see if this feeling is still around tomorrow – if the root beer at Sweetwater doesn’t kick it out of me, I think we’ll be good to go.