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Like Bev, my current events knowledge is sketchy at best. My eighteen year old helps me vote on the issues and the candidates because he loves political science and keeps track of those things. I, on the other hand, like to write. Beside's reading, writing is the only other thing I really do. (Except watch House, but that's another blog)

So I never really paid much attention when the big story in these parts and nationally, was those two boys from McMinnville, Oregon who were in a world of trouble (facing permanent expulsion from school and sexual harassment charges) for slapping girls' fannies as they went by in the hallway at school. Now, I knew about the case mostly because of the age of the kids... these boys were in middle school... no older than thirteen. There were lots of opinions, but most everyone agreed that though the deed should be punished, years in juvenile detention was a bit much for kids who had never been in any kind of trouble before. The kids were punished, but (as I recall) the criminal charges were dropped. Bet they'll never slap another girl's fanny as long as they live. In fact, I would have thought, given the attention to the case in our area, that no one in Oregon would be slapping a strange girls fanny.

I was wrong.

This past week my daughter was at a wrestling match helping out as a mat girl.
She was keeping score (that's what mat girls do) when all of a sudden someone slapped her on the fanny. Hard. She turned, expecting one of her girlfriends/fellow mat girls. She was a bit annoyed because she was working. Instead of another mat girl, she looked into the smirk of a wrestler from another school. Someone she had never met before. He raised his eyebrows and gave her his best come-hither look, which pretty much meant creeper to my daughter. She handed another girl her score sheets and went to find her school's coach. Luckily, she found him at the same time she found the varsity wrestling team, otherwise things might have gotten ugly. The coach kept his boys under control and found the slapper's coach. An apology ensued.

But my daughter will never forget how she felt. Kind of like a peice of meat hanging on a hook. Violated.

I remember that feeling from my teen years... how a boy could make you feel cheap because of a nasty comment, a leer, or crude gesture. Slapping girls on the fanny was pretty common during the late seventies/early eighties and the term sexual harassment was just being bandied about. If you haven't watched the movie, North Country, you should. It's based on a true story about sexual harassment in the work place.




We've come a long way since the seventies/eighties... but we obviously have a long way to go. If all the coverage surrounding the McMinnville case didn't put the fear of God in young men regarding touching strange girls fannies, what will? These kid's lives were disrupted for months--both the boys in question and the girls who were slapped. So what do you think it's going to take to get this kind of behavior stopped? Do you remember a time when a guy made you feel cheap?

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