I am standing on stage at a private college in London in front of 400 young people. This talk was only meant to be for the girls’ college, but the teachers decided the “boys needed to hear it” so invited them last minute. Once I found out this information I didn’t have time to change my content, and believe me, I would have changed my content if I’d known it wasn’t just for the girls; themes and information needs to be delivered carefully depending on the room and the dynamic.
”Sex” segregated education mean young people are separated by the binary, which causes problems for a) those who don’t fit into those categories and b) those who do but find the expectations restrictive. It also means young people aren’t in communion with people of other genders and so when they are brought together for short periods, power dynamics start to play out. This has to be handled carefully, and in this situation it just… wasn’t.
As I am speaking, I start to notice a group of boys passing post-it notes around, two of them are looking at me behind cupped hands. The post-its – supposed to be for writing anonymous questions – are being passed down a row and each boy who read them, either locks eyes with me and laughs, or stifles laughter in their jumpers. I continue to look at them as I talk because averting my gaze would mean they’ve won and co-sign them to continuing. I relax my face and body-language intentionally, and convince myself I am not hurt, I am in control, but behind my choreographed expressions I am angry, and I am hurt. I feel 4 inches tall on that stage in front of 400 sixth-formers, and I am fighting not to regress into fourteen year old me; a self-conscious, judged and nervous girl who is scared of the power these boys hold and what it means about her.
I get through the talk – which was mostly about my campaigning, the importance of activism and using your voice – say goodbye to the lovely staff and leave, walking to the tube through a rainy pitch-black London. On the way home I make notes about how these kind of requests need to be handled with with much more clarity, boundaries and expectations around them. I decide to revisit them next time a speaking request comes in.
A couple of days later I received an email from one of the female students whom I gave my email address to at the end – I often make myself available to young people who ask for advice. The email begins; “I am leading a small movement within the sixth form agains some misogynistic things that were said at the talk you gave us on Tuesday. These comments and actions were horrific, and upset us all.”
I read the rest and reply, affirming her and asking for more details, and she responds almost instantly: “thanks so much for responding. I apologise for having to send you these, and it’s going to be hard to read, but these are the things people hear”, followed by this list: