Letter to the Young Men I Dated in HighSchool - Another Type of #MeToo

Something has been bothering me for awhile, and it’s a New Year, a fresh start, so I figured I’d take a moment to address it. I have let it sit in my thoughts for years, but I notice from FB that you now have wives and daughters, and presumably care about the females in your lives, so I want to start a generational conversation. 

I know that at various points, either long ago or not so long ago, some of you have said to other friends within our youthful social group that I had sex or slept with you. I know this bc others in our group have told me you said it, or told me you discussed it between you. You and I both know this isn't true. I was a virgin when I graduated from high-school. We may have kissed passionately, made out, groped around and consensually explored each other’s bodies with fingers and tongues, but you know and I know there was no actual sexual intercourse between us.

I understand the male need to brag about exploits real or imagined. I understand the need to save face, to act cool, join the club, to appear more experienced than one was, to avoid the appearance of rejection, and to trash talk about girls. I totally get it. I have raised a house full of sons and watched these dynamics unfold among 16, 17, 18 year old boys, both as a parent and as a teacher- where girls in high-school are several years older, socio-emotionally, than the boys, and tease, toy and manipulate the poor hapless fellows into a variety of situations. It’s a tale as old as time, and the very reason that teenage females were married off to older males, historically. 

I do not dismiss my own role in any of this. As a 16, 17, 18 year old young woman, I had passions, too, that I did not know how to channel. The ‘70’s were an era where young ladies read “Cosmo” magazine as a lifestyle hack and thought we were liberated when we did what it suggested we do. But I also had a strong self-concept, rooted in my own ego needs as a young lady with intellectual, cultural, religious, and social goals for my life, that I somehow managed to wrangle myself into achieving. I am not ashamed of anything I have done or not done - it has made me who I am today.

I did not have brothers or a father around to look after me, when I was a teenager, to have these conversations, to advise me, or stick up for me. But I write to you today bc it does hurt, even a strong minded woman like myself who has lived a good life and is above such petty things, every single time a man talks about a woman sexually in an exploitative way, even more-so if what he says is untrue. It is a form of emotional abuse to spread lies, to engage in dismissive braggadocio sexual banter about someone other than oneself that is untrue. It is, in fact, sexual harrassment. Please look at your daughters, wives, or other female family members and ask yourself: "How would I feel if some boy she knew spoke about her this way?" What sort of world are our daughters growing up in? Let’s change it.

No apologies needed......just stop doing it. Have a conversation with the young men you know, to let them know this isn't cool, and with the young ladies you know, on how to love oneself in-spite of it.

Listen to Joe Biden here talk about the issue (paraphrasing) “the important thing is to get guys to stop the loose talk about women.” The “loose talk” in general fosters the sort of environment where women are harrassed and not believed.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/biden-hasnt-contacted-anita-hill-weeks-after-saying-he-owes-her-an-apology