Essay about Citations: Human Sexual Behavior and Sex Education

Submitted By keyblo
Words: 2959
Pages: 12

Leonard Edwards
SOCY-498-01
December 4, 2013
Prof. L. Richards

Independent Study

Getting Played

Getting played is a book written by Jody Miller. It is essentially her recap of her

interviews with high school students in Saint Louis Missouri. She interviews both girls and

boys about sexual encounters in their school. The book asked the questions is there sexual

harassment in high school? and what should be done about it. Miller uses approximately

seventy-five students in her sample, forty boys and thirty five girls(Holland and Cumley).

Sexual Harrasment I

The answer is yes, there is sexual harassment in high school. She interviewed several

female and got their perspective on the issue. She wanted to know their personal experience with

sexual harassment. Several girls told the same story about boys disrespecting them walking down

the school hallway. Boys would try and talk to them by calling them or walk up to them and say

something like hello or what’s up and if they did not respond or talk to the boy, he would call her

a bad name, like a bitch or a hoe. If, she saw the boy again and he was with his friends, he tell all

of friends to start calling her names when she walked by them in the school high hallway. Other

girls talked about a similar situation when boys approached then in the hallway in school, but

they handled the situation differently, they would actually have a conversation with the boy to

avoid any disrespectful confrontation, but the side effect to this approach was that he going to

consider her his girlfriend, which would not be true or even worse, that you were having sex with

Independent Study

him and being passed around to his friends. This is a mild form of sexual harassment that some

of the girls experienced in high school(Miller,2008).

Sexual Harassment II

The next level of harassment is unwanted groping and touching. Once a girl lets down her

defense system and tries to be friends with the boy, the boy may try to hug the girl or touch the

girl without her permission. This is a more extreme and aggressive form of harassment, border

line date rape. This involves the physical interaction, not just mental interaction and also means

he is crossing the threshold of criminal activity. Most of the girls interviewed said that they

would not let the guy getaway with touching them sexually. These incidents normally led to

immediate confrontation with the boy(Miller,2008).

Options

According to a news article book review written by Ann Campos-Holland and Samantha

Cumley girls had few options to respond to boys sexual advances. Girls had to stand up for

themselves/show sufficient outrage, engage in avoidance techniques, third party intervention, or

ignore the incident. This placed women in a situation that Miller refers to as a “Gendered Double

Bind.” Showing outrage threatened the boys masculinity and was often simultaneously

accompanied by peer groups “Amping up the situation.” “Standing Up” ultimately led to young

women being labeled as “Stuck Up” “High Sididy Bitch” and “Too Good” for young men. As

the young men attempted to re-establish their masculine identities, they responded with gender

degradation or sexual and/or physical victimization. On the other hand, ignoring young a man’s

sexual advances tended to create an appearance that the girls were sexually available. In this

situation, the young women were labeled as “Hood Rats” or girls who were sexually open Independent Study

leading to continued or serial victimization and social isolation. Miller suggests that the school

peer context is a “testing” ground for these young to assess the sexual availability of girls

in the name of hegemonic masculinity (Holland and Cumley).

Prevention

What should be done about sexual harassment in high