How do you prepare for this?
Well, here’s a milestone. My nine year old daughter got to go to the park alone for the first time today (well, with a ten year old friend). What happened?
They got sexually harassed. Little boys (their size or smaller) started yelling about how they have nice butts.
The girls called me to come home.
The thing is, we had talked in the car that morning about how most girls have their first incident of sexual harassment sometime between nine and twelve. So OF COURSE it had to happen.
I feel grateful that their response was to get away from the boys as quickly as possible. I feel grateful that it wasn’t adult men or large teenage boys. I feel grateful that my impulsive, sassy daughter didn’t go start a fight.
But I feel really sad that I have to prepare my daughter for living in this world. It is so broken.
It is completely broken that boys in the six-ish to ten-ish range think it is acceptable to yell sexually evaluating comments about the bodies of little girls. What is wrong with our society, our world…
But sure, there’s no such thing as rape culture.
