‘Idiotic idea’ brings out the indignant righteous
Seems we can accept stabbings, home invasions and car thefts, mostly committed by kids on bail, but let a few 16-year-old schoolboys get the idiotic idea of rating female students and look out.
Which is what happened during the week when it was discovered three Year 11 boys at Yarra Valley Grammar had created a disrespectful spreadsheet ranking female students in order of appeal.
Of course it was offensive and demeaning, and they deserved to be punished, but the media pile-on and outrage that followed was just a tad over the top.
The story was bled for all it was worth.
Even Premier Jacinta Allan who, with the Victorian economy in freefall, still managed to find time to vilify the students’ behaviour and, somehow, link it to the crisis of violence towards women.
And she wasn’t the only one.
One scribe suggested the boys actions were “on the same continuum violence against women that has murder and rape at one end and cruel social media posts on the other”. Serious?
To say the students’ offending behaviour, which, by the way, was non-criminal, could connect the two opposite ends of the spectrum was to draw a long bow to say the least.
So, maybe it’s time for a reality check.
First of all, it isn’t just boys at co-ed schools who are critical of the looks of girls.
Girls do exactly the same thing and can be every bit as nasty, particularly towards a male student who is a bit fat, a bit nerdy or a boy trying to deal with a bad case of acne.
Would there have been the same publicity and outrage had it been girls creating a spreadsheet rating boys? Of course not.
Double standards? Too right!
But these were boys, immature, foolish, maybe even downright stupid but, according to law, still children, being publicly vilified as “vile misogynists” by people just trying to grab a headline.
But hey, it’s news, right?
The matter should have been dealt with by the school without all the media hype and confected outrage.
The school could have, in addition to the suspensions already handed down, made the boys apologise to each of the girls and to the school, for their awful behaviour.
And then perhaps some advanced lessons, for the entire school, about a little thing called respect towards each other, irrespective of gender.
Since then, rightly or wrongly, two of the boys have been expelled. Whether they had a history of poor behaviour or not, we don’t know, nor are we entitled to.
But, it’s fair to say, the media and court of public opinion probably played a significant part in their expulsion.
What I can’t understand though, is that we accept escalating youth crime and violence without so much as a whimper but let three 16-year-old male students indulge in disrespectful behaviour and out come the pitchforks?
Whatever your feelings on the matter, one thing is for sure.
The boys involved will have learned a lesson they are highly unlikely to forget.