It is understood that YS stands for “young sluts”
Boys at a private school in Melbourne set up an Instagram account last week in order to post photos of little girls and call them sluts.
Police are investigating an Instagram account which was set up by students at an exclusive private boys’ school to share photos of young girls without their knowledge.
The offensive account was created by two Year 11 boys at Brighton Grammar School and encouraged viewers to vote on the “slut of the year”.
“Offensive” isn’t the right word there. It’s misogynist and sexist and rapey.
A Melbourne mother who spoke out in disgust on her Facebook page after discovering that photos of her young daughter were uploaded onto the social media page, told Fairfax Media that she received a threatening phone call from from an “old boys’ club” parent on Sunday night.
The caller, who phoned on a blocked number, said the Instagram account “was just a group of young boys having fun”.
Having “fun” by violating the privacy of younger girls, by inviting people to call them “sluts,” by treating them as contemptible objects of sexual consumption, by expressing contempt for them themselves. That’s a deeply fucked up idea of “fun” and that parent should get in the sea.
One photo apparently showed a schoolgirl wearing bikini bottoms and a white singlet top and included a caption describing sex acts she would perform, the mother said. Another photo featured a group of grade six girls in their school uniforms as they walked to meet their parents after school.
“I am writing this as a mother of a girl that has not only been sexualised but violated within our small community,” the concerned mother wrote on a public Facebook post, which was shared hundreds of times before she made the post private on Sunday night.
What is this sick combination of sexual interest coupled with loathing and contempt?
The account – which was titled ys_academy_puspus – was set up by the students after school on Friday and deleted over the weekend after Brighton Grammar became aware of its existence. It is understood that YS stands for “young sluts”.
Maybe it will be the Facebook of tomorrow.
““Offensive” isn’t the right word there. It’s misogynist and sexist and rapey.”
I was telling myself the same thing when I saw you share the article on FB. Part of the problem with equivocal weasel words like “offensive”, is while on the one hand they can be used to rebrand petulant objection as serious grievance, on the other they can be used to avoid confronting language when confronting language provides the most apt descriptions. How sanctimonious cowards among the ranks of columnists must love that word.
What these kids did was predatory misogyny. They’re growing up to be predators of one stripe or another, and the school and the Old Boys’ Club are complicit.
I can’t remember whether or not this was Jeff Sparrow’s school – a quick Google search isn’t yielding the answers it once did.
I remember in grade school – grade 5 – when the boys on the playground called me a “whore”. I didn’t know what the word meant; it just sounded terrible, and my mother went white with rage when I told her, so I knew it had to be bad. The funny thing is, they used it against me because I was NOT sexualized at all. I was dressed more modestly than any of the other girls in my school. In an era when everyone else wore mini skirts, I wore my skirts halfway to my ankles. My mother wouldn’t tolerate much skin showing from the day I was six.
Funny thing, I still remember that. I still remember the shame and the fear when I found out what that word meant (my mother wouldn’t tell me; my older sister did). I was afraid the boys would believe it, and would attack me, thinking they could do what they liked.
My heart goes out to those girls who are now facing this at a larger level. My shame and fear was at least limited to my own school, my own city. These girls have to face that through an international social media forum. I hope someone does something to deal with the boys.
In my primary school the boys used to call us lesbians. That started at around year 5 (age 9-10) I didn’t even know what it meant at first. When I got a place at a girls’ grammar school, I was told that it was a “lesbian school”. At the time the thought of going to a school with no boys was very appealing.
Re ‘What is this sick combination of sexual interest coupled with loathing and contempt?’…
Fairly standard socialization? (Sadly.)
Seriously:
Leaving aside the extremely inappropriately young targets, here, that’s a combination shows up a lot even when you don’t have that other issue.
Pretty sure I mentioned it previously, but, yeah, I think I learned this in grade school, too. My peers then had all sorts of ideas about girls. Girls were icky, for a while. At some point, later on, it evolved to: okay, they may be icky, but if none of them want to fuck you, you’re a loser. Oh, but also, if they want to fuck anyone at all (especially, mind, anyone else), they’re sluts… You’re a lucky dog if it’s you, but they’re still sluts…
Then there was porn (I could be cutesy, here, put in the ‘or so I’ve heard’, but do let’s get real). The guy present was frequently contemptuous toward his sexual ‘partner’, but calling her that actually seems very wrong. ‘Partner’? This implies equality, and this is probably much of the problem here. She can’t be a partner. She has to be a conquest. Has to pant and perform and be thoroughly delighted to be part of this… he, on the other hand, may even look _bored_… Yeaaah, sluts, get ’em all the time, whatever…
What’s going on? Always had ideas about that. Figured it was something like: the version of masculinity being sold here is itself a cobbled-together, self-contradictory mess of different ideas. Power all wrapped up in ity, so you get some mangled set of directives like:
1. He-men don’t need anyone.
2. He-men should be desired for sex by women.
3. He-men want sex, but it’s really only to prove their dominance.
4. He-men are superior. To everyone, really, but especially to women.
5. He-men don’t really _need_ sex.
6. But they should want it. Virile=horny=masculine (yes, this kinda contradicts 3, actually).
7. And should get it.
… then mix in that it _can_ be a very intimate act, might lead to all sorts of emotionally complicated, messy places, if you let it. What to do about the woman? Contempt is distancing (and how). And see also that male porn star’s apparent disinterest. Going back to girls are icky, like he-man is ever to admit he might (shudder) love this person, need this person. So it’s: insist she’s just a receptacle for his animal urges, or the act some kind of dominance display, and he can pretend he’s still in control over it all. Never mind how compelling desire is, how compelling love is, how is that compatible with 1)? So insist, even as you desire, that you feel contempt, all the same. Desire otherwise might make you vulnerable, and we can’t have that…
As you age, depending on whom you run with, this may become more fungible, negotiable. Most men do realize what an absurd mess it all is, and, as they negotiate it themselves, will in their various, frequently painfully awkward ways accept that men _do_ love. There will be one in every crowd, though, to crow you’re ‘whipped’ if you actually care about anyone but youself… He may say it like he’s kidding, but he’ll still feel compelled to say it, apparently… And many of the best of the rest will still be trying to tell themselves, despite learning it almost from the crib, that there’s nothing innately comtemptible about desire _or_ love… Oh, and then there’s the women. The women you’re in relationships with. Who you might like to think would know better, for their own good, but may be as individually tangled up in all this as anyone. Got their own bizarre, contradictory socializations, glossy magazines and movies telling them what they should want from a man, demand from a man, expect from a man. Much of it will cross oddly well with this. They should want a cowboy or something, or a Don Juan, be grateful for his every grunt or lie. Never mind what a toxic deal it turns out to be for everyone involved.
And if you’re thinking it all sounds absurdly complicated, why, yes, yes it is. I figure the man who actually tries to live by all this at all seriously is forever balanced on an impossible knife edge, living impossible contradictions. You mentioned just previously how fragile masculinity is. And it is that. And I figure that’s at least some of why.
I wonder if the fact that Brighton Grammar is still a boys’ school increases the sense of ‘otherness’ and predatory attitudes towards girls. Of course the fact that most of the parents are loaded probably would be a factor, yes, I’m thumping the class drum again. Most private schools become co-ed years ago.
When I was at a private school in the 60s some of the senior boys sexually harassed a waitress at a local cafe (“How about a fuck?”) I was amazed at their arrogance and stupidity. They were punished ‘in house’ by the headmaster and his cane and the incident was treated with ‘discretion’. Nothing much appears to have changed in the past 50 years apart from the fact such incidents are much harder to cover up these days.
I was a working class boy, naturally I didn’t assume any privileges.
Something has changed.
http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/brighton-grammar-expels-students-who-created-vile-instagram-account-20160720-gq9oxj.html
Not so easy to cover up in 2016
@AJ Milne The phenomenally well put. I’ve been working on untangling all those messages from my head for years. Just wish I could have grown up without all those messages.