The dark side of high school relationships
From bag checks for cards and gifts on Valentine’s Days to separate school shifts for boys and girls, most schools in Dhaka do what they can to make sure teenagers and preteens stay out of romantic relationships. Committed as such efforts are, they are symptoms of a much bigger problem about our schools: their devout denial of teens’ romantic and sexual lives. By focusing all their energy into futile attempts to prevent such relationships from happening, schools end up turning a blind eye to the actual problem: teen dating violence and harassment.
While issues such as domestic violence within marriages are more widely recognized as problems, teen dating violence rarely gets the attention it deserves. Most of this negligence stems from adults marking teen dating itself to be a negative thing, rather than paying attention to the actual problems that can fester within them. Such problems can stem from abusive or toxic behaviors, such as controlling who the other person is friends with and what they are allowed to wear, to actual violence and harassment.
Unfortunately, in the rare cases where such violence does come under the radar of school authorities, most schools respond in the worst possible way. Recently — for example — when a male student was physically violent with his female partner on school campus at a reputed school in Gulshan, the school’s response was to suspend both of the students involved. I can’t imagine the level of sexism that went in to justify punishment to the victim of a violent relationship, but what I’m more worried about is how doubly humiliating this decision must have been for her.
Dating violence isn’t the end of it, sadly. Teens are also more vulnerable to child pornography and sexual assault, largely because of their inaccessibility to legal and mental support from adults. Last year, in a small online #metoo movement, a number of brave young girls from various schools in Dhaka started posting the names of the boys who violated their privacy. Some of these boys were as young as 8th-graders, and the list of crimes committed by them went from “leaking” private pictures of their partners, to blackmailing them into sexual favours (which is a form of rape). As heartbreaking as it is that children that young have internalised that this kind of behavior is acceptable, it is perhaps even more heartbreaking that so many children have had to bear that trauma, often alone.
These were cases where one’s consent was very distinctly violated, but there are many cases where it’s more difficult to recognize for the survivor that their boundaries are being crossed. Sexual assault isn’t always someone ignoring your vocal “no”s, it’s also when they ignore your physical signs of discomfort even when you couldn’t say “no” or “stop” directly. When people are unable to fully understand and validate their experiences of infringed boundaries, navigating them can be a minefield of self-blaming and shame for the survivors, especially at such a young age.
Understandably, this isn’t the sort of matter one would share very readily with a parent, nor can friends of the same age be expected to offer the kind of support a young girl going through this would need. It is, then, the school’s responsibility to ensure that the students have accessibility to councilors who can help survivors heal from the lifetime of unresolved issues which can follow from such a trauma. As someone who has had to deal with such an event in their high school years said to me, “If I had someone older to talk to — who was not my friend or a parent — and guide me through how it would impact me in the long run, I would have had a better grasp of the situation.”
A systematic and proper access to information and guidance is also crucial in ensuring that these unhealthy patterns stop at a young age and preventing them from snowballing into domestic violence statistics in the future. Most of the perpetrators themselves are also young people who may not always realise the full impacts of their actions — not that this relieves them of accountability whatsoever. Disheartening as it is that we have a culture of rape and victim shaming that has led to generations of young men normalising such behavior, it is up to our educational systems to educate them out of it. A comprehensive sex education, inclusive of the importance of consent, would be a good place to start.
The romantic and sexual lives of teenagers will exist no matter what parents and schools do to stomp it out, just as it has for generations. Instead of blaming them for these normal urges, it’s imperative that schools take measures to ensure that teens have a safe and accessible space in their schools to end the cycle of violence and abuse. For that, the environment of victim-shaming and the taboos surrounding sex and relationships need to be replaced with a more judgement-free and understanding one.
