The XX Factor: What women really think.

Domestic Violence: Are Girls Just Asking for It?

Domestic violence being an atrocity, I have tried to ignore the rather disgusting “Crihanna” tit for tat that’s competing for shelf space beside Michelle Obama on newsstands across the country. But this new study out from Boston University spun my head:  

Nearly half of the 200 Boston teenagers interviewed for an informal poll said pop star Rihanna was responsible for the beating she allegedly took at the hands of her boyfriend, fellow music star Chris Brown, in February.

Of those questioned, ages 12 to 19, 71 percent said that arguing was a normal part of a relationship; 44 percent said fighting was a routine occurrence.

The results of the survey, conducted by the Boston Public Health Commission across the city and equally among boys and girls, are startling for local health workers who see a generation of youths who seem to have grown accustomed, even insensitive, to domestic violence.

"I think you'd have to be pretty jaded if you weren't startled by it," said Casey Corcoran, director of the health commission's new Start Strong program.

 Maybe. But I have to say I’m not that surprised: In college, I participated in a program called “Community Health Educators” (the founders have scaled up their model via a national nonprofit called “Peer Health Educators” that I strongly endorse). The idea is that, because many local school districts don’t have a budget for health education,  kids not too much older than high school students would travel to local schools—in my case, an urban setting with a mix of white, black and latino students—bearing lectures and props and index cards for awkward questions. And that this would fill the gap. I taught different individual subjects for two years, and in my senior year I had the chance to participate in a pilot program where I’d see the same kids every week, teaching the entire curriculum over the course of ten weeks.

 This preamble is by way of saying that I saw the way 17-19 year olds (in a “second chance” high school, where some of the kids had dropped out or been through the juvenile justice system) absorbed the range of topics we discussed, from contraception (the wooden penis was a hit), nutrition (“sugar is not a food group”) to drug and alcohol abuse (one kid asked us, in the throes of senior spring, if we had ever been drunk). They were on the whole receptive, if restless and often skeptical of our preachy tone. Learning about hallucinogens certainly livened up what could have been an afternoon of trigonometry.

But, far and away, the subject that penetrated the least was our unit on “relationships and abuse.” This dealt with date rape, molestation by adults, domestic violence and bullying. It never sunk in. Worse, while the guys were boorish in the extreme—one male student in one class said if a girl “snitched” on him for sexual assault, “I’d kill her”—the girls, I found, were even more likely to say that a male-on-female altercation involving kicking, punching and hitting was a girl’s fault. (“Why’d she make him mad?” etc.) Even kids who could rattle off the ins and outs of contraception without shame (one girl in my class had a toddler already) regressed mightily when it came to the issue of gender and violence. It was, honestly, chilling. What's that about?

What about Girl Scouts, Jr.?

Dahlia, Jessica,

Like you, I'm not entirely surprised by the depressing Girl Scout stats. But two thoughts spring to mind: First, I wonder what a poll of girls 9-12 would show. In my anecdotal experience with pre-teens this past election (my mother ran a secondary school that I used to spend time in), the girls in the 10-year-old range were picking up the excitement of the fact that Hillary and Sarah Palin were strong female candidates, and little of the debate over it. Second, adolescent girls are hitting that moment when they do begin to doubt themselves (the Reviving Ophelia moment) and so I wonder if this age group was particularly susceptible to absorbing the glass ceiling message. Just speculation. It'd be interesting to know more.

Girl Scouts and Glass Ceilings

Wonder Women or Women Wondering?

Courtesy of Feministing, a new study launched by the Girl Scout Research Institute shows that girls between the ages of 13 and 17 came away from this past presidential election with some very mixed feelings about females and power. On the one hand, these young women report big increases in engagement in politics, their confidence in discussing political issues, and their sense of their own power to change things in this country. But the numbers also show a huge uptick in their awareness of barriers for women. For instance, 43 percent of girls strongly believe that "girls have to work harder than boys in order to gain positions of leadership." (Just 25 percent of girls agreed with that statement only one year ago.) And the percentage of girls who believe that "both men and women have an equal chance of getting a leadership position" has declined from 35 percent to 24 percent in one short year. Zounds.

None of this surprises me. This election seems to have inspired and discouraged most of the women I know in just about equal measure. But I hadn’t stopped to think about how that would be experienced by a 15-year-old girl, who suddenly feels powerful and smart enough to change the world but deeply doubtful that she will get the chance.