Boarding School: Chauvinist As Ever?

So, I came across this post on feministing. Although feministing is normally a site concerned with women’s rights issues from the perspectives of 20 and 30 something feminists, this post by a high schooler- listed as Cassidy F. on feministing- really caught my attention. She wrote:

I am female. I attend a private, 9-12, coed boarding

Last month, as I sat in the auditorium during our weekly All-School Meeting, a horde of senior boys suddenly leapt on stage, clad in only short-shorts and wacky accessories. Reel 2 Real's "I Like to Move it" (popularized by the movie "Madagascar") blasted over the sound system, and the audience realized that this year's highly anticipated Senior School Meeting had officially begun.

Senior School Meeting is a time-honored tradition at my school. It always hits at the peak of spring term, when the weather is nice and so-called senioritis is in full swing. It's always kept under close wraps, the details pronounced highly confidential so as to not spoil the surprise. And it always involves scantily clad senior boys - the jocks, the hunks, the creme de la creme - engaged in some provocative, pelvis-thrusting dance.

  Now, Senior School Meeting has never bothered me in the past. I understood that the pelvis thrusts, gyrations, and simulated sex acts were all done in good fun, if not good taste. I screamed and squealed with all the other girls. And the guys seemed to delight even more in this sexually charged, blatantly homoerotic spectacle.

But the hype reached a new level this year when the dancers came into a new, strange formation. Two boys facing each other spread their arms vertically, their palms touching. Other boys would enter the narrow space created by the arms, barging through downstage toward the audience. Check it out (skip to 4:10 to see what I'm talking about):

To go directly to the YouTube link, click here

It didn't take the crowd long to figure out what was going on. The screaming grew louder and peaked when two boys, who were repeatedly colliding with the "vagina," finally crashed through.

I admit that, at the time, the implications of what I was seeing didn't fully register. It was only later, as I sat in my room that I began to feel uneasy. I brought up the subject with my friend, and we realized that we shared that same feeling. It was a feeling of confusion, awkwardness, and marginalization.

Boarding schools have rebranded themselves in the past few decades as diverse, inclusive, egalitarian institutions. And this is, to a large extent, true. (Wealthy WASP males are now a minority at many schools.) Last year, my school celebrated its 25th year of coeducation (it is nearly 200 years old), touting the achievements of its female students, both past and present. Indeed, it is girls and not boys who dominate on campus. For example, the prize awarded to the dorm with the highest GPA has gone to a girls' dorm every year since 1991.

Yet female students have been largely failed by the institution that benefits so much from their personal success. Just look at our recent Senior School Meeting. It was boys who directed it, boys who starred in it, and boys who left feeling good about it. I can't speak for every girl in the audience that, but I for one (plus my friend, two) could not feel good about it at all.

"I don't think I've ever been in a room so testosterone-filled in my entire life," I said later to my friend.

"Yeah," she replied. "It was almost like being a girl at an all-boys' school."

I myself go to a private co-ed school- which has existed since 1915 but has been co-ed for maybe 25 years. Not quite as intense as boarding school, but those lovely patriarchal traditions are still largely intact, although nothing quite like what was described above. It has always confused me, though, why when the boys in our school act inappropriately and offensively in ways such as these, the “it’s just boys being boys” excuse comes to save them. Well, when girls are just being girls, it usually doesn’t include sexism, so why are boys being boys getting away with it?

*Kudos to Cassidy F- the author- on this. Tried to find your e-mail on feministing but was unable to. Thanks for writing this though!

**Also just realized that this school (Lawrenceville) is the same school that one of my very good friends goes to. I'm going to check with him and get his take on it. That to follow...