So at my uni there’s this middle school aged girl who’s going there. She and I are in the same study group and I said something along the lines of “I wish i got to go to college at your age” (just because I like the class structure more) and she replied with “there are a lot of pedophiles on campus so there’s some trade offs.”
I didn’t like…freak out externally. Luckily I’m good at hiding my emotions. But I just felt sick. Like physically sick. Like i nearly wanted to go throw up in a bin sick.
I don’t even know why specifically I felt like that. To be honest I don’t know how much she was being sarcastic. I don’t know if its that I feel like i can’t trust people at my campus [I already know there are bad people here. No shit. So why would that cause it?], or if its because i felt bad for her for having to be afraid of that [she’s pretty “mature” (for lack of a better term) so i don’t know if that makes sense either] or…I don’t know. I just wanted to tell someone because my therapy appointment got canceled and I just flet really, really bad.
Yeah, you’re a normal healthy person in this respect. I’m glad she has someone who’s safe like you in her study group.
You might have had such a visceral reaction because of the scale and the directness. We all know subconsciously that there are predators out there, but to be suddenly confronted with that reality, especially at the scale of there being ‘lots on campus’, can hit extra hard. The idea of this child not only being aware of them but actively defending herself against them (being ‘adultified’ at such a young age) could also cause a strong reaction.
Essentially, there’s nothing wrong with having that reaction, but if you feel it’s within your power then I’m sure she could use someone looking out for her, and in the process you might feel better too knowing she’s that much safer. It takes a village and all that.
Yeah. I don’t want to be overbearing or anything. I think she’ll be okay. I just know what it was like to grow up so fast and have a lot of expectations placed on me, and…Idk, obviously everything isnt about me. I mean, obviously she’s succeeding where I failed so I think she’s doing fine. Idk. I don’t interact with children that much, and never a child who reminded me so much of, well, me.
A few reframings might help here:
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We can be protective without being overbearing. She probably doesn’t need a bodyguard but if a creep is pushing boundaries a minor intervention is warranted. Most predators are opportunistic so merely denying them opportunity will ward off most of them. An ear to the ground or the ‘whisper networks’ probably wouldn’t hurt either.
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I’ve seen no areas where you’ve ‘failed’ so a bit of compassion for yourself might be warranted. Life is fucking hard and we aren’t all born with the same opportunities. A lot of us had to grow up a bit fast, and if we’re being honest helping others is often a route to subconsciously processing our own traumas. That’s healthy enough, just don’t lose yourself in the process.
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A 13 year old on a campus of Brett Kavanaugh-type bros would be a nightmare for her. Hard enough for standard aged young women to navigate. Sadly, it seems experience had made her wise beyond her years.
I think it would be rare for any girl around that age to_not_ to be confronted with older guys and men who flirt with them. This is just the reality and I suppose if you never heard of that it makes sense that it makes you feel sick. But I honestly envy your position of not having had to be aware of this reality before.
I’m sorry if it came off as privileged. I mean, obviously I knew about “creeps” (for lack of a better term for how I had imagined them in my adolescence) as a child. Don’t go off with strangers, don’t accept candy from vans, that kind of thing. Maybe I hadn’t considered…casually I guess. The idea that any person i talk to could be one of those people. I dont mind if its a psychiatric issue but to act on it has a sense of…disgusting selfishness that i hadnt considered possible in average people (edit: no, thats not right. Obviously most “average people” have the capacity for it. Theyre not all pedophiles, but it was the milkmen and school teachers who joined the gestapo and ss). It’s one of those things that makes me feel like I’ll never be a girl because I was never exposed to that kind of thing as a kid. (Not saying that being a girl is tied to how much you were abused, just that I feel like im…infringing on the space. That i get to be a girl without having gone through that. Hopefully that makes sense)
Sorry I didn’t mean to come off as invalidating either. Assuming you’re a trans woman (correct me if I’m wrong) you get your own experiences and confrontations with misogyny. Any of these experiences you can avoid are wins, it’s not a right of passage to face misogynistic abuse as a girl to be a woman. I’m a trans man who has faced disproportionately much when I lived as a young girl, it doesn’t make me less of a man either.
When you live your live as a women, you are at some point be forced to learn that dangerous people live among us. They can be your friendly science partner who suddenly takes advantage of you when you are in a vulnerable state. It’s a really sad reality but I think people just learn to live with… Everyone has different ways to cope with it though.
i hope this does not sound patronizing, but i’m very adamant about this. don’t ever think about yourself infringing on the space of women or unable to speak on having a woman’s experience as a trans girl. first. you’re a girl. you’re a woman. trans girl makes no difference, in fact it only further proves you’re a girl, who systematically faces equal/more of a brunt by society on average than a cis girl (in no way diminishing how misogyny is for cis girls). girl is a political designation as much as it is an identity. you are of that political designation, you are equally if not more oppressed on a systematic level. trans and cis girls are, by the social organizations and structures of family, patriarchy, exposed and vulnerable to sexual abuse/predation. trans girls are equally if not moreso exposed and vulnerable to misogyny however early (esp for girls that knew they were girls much earlier, but even late bloomers/anyone that feels like they realized late).
now, on the topic of individual experience: i’m a cis girl, and my individual experience with sex and sexual violence and individual people perving or creeping on me has very thankfully been minimal. if as an individual trans girl you have never experienced such things, that still wouldn’t really exempt you from talking about systematic oppression, even though lived experience is valuable for that insight on the worst abuses the systems allow. still even as a girl, if i don’t find myself exposed to the harsh realities that other girls around me are exposed to on a day to day basis, i still qualify to talk about structural misogyny and the like. i just want to make clear that like… youre still a girl, youre oppressed just like the rest of us, i dont know. just dont want u to feel as if there’s this major distinction that makes u less of a girl in any sense.
and as for the idea of the individual ‘creep’, it’s kind of shocking to really think about normalized sexual abuse, but that’s so often because. yeah what it says on the tin, normalized. family entitlement and the child as property, no matter how ‘normal’, all of its benign products often fall under that shit, infringements on the kid constantly and their body. thats another topic but idk its something i been thinking about. for some people they dont actually THINK about it, is what i feel, on the topic of sex abuse, like a mother can just touch a piece of their child’s body without consent and comment on it since they’re entitled, or a man can be overtly aggressive and violate boundaries since they wont face any major consequence. it’s not someone being constantly hounded by unwanted thoughts about touching and being violent to kids, which is why often i feel so sad when people who are really depressed about their intrusive thoughts are really believing that they are evil or going to do something when they’ve already shown more precognition about stopping themselves than others
You should be glad she knows what is up. Maybe she’s exaggerating and and that line is a preemptive defence. Like maybe there aren’t many pedos at your school but if she says that to every guy who is remotely friendly to her the pedos are going to never talk to her again because they will know she is on to them.
i think your response is completely justified. as salah said it’s something a lot of girls experience early on, but even i as a cis girl have never really had an outright experience with creeps directly hitting on me. so it’s still very blindsiding when you first realize the extent of that experience and how some girls have simply… grown around it.
it’s something that would obviously cause alarm and negative emotions, whether or not you think the extent to which it threw you off is ‘reasonable’ is something i wouldn’t think too hard about. it’s fair to feel like puking. it’s fair to feel completely off or knocked off balance. your mind is responding to a stimulus and maybe something else is converging that makes you have a much more intense reaction. it’s totally reasonable, it’s rational, it’s empathetic of you. take care of yourself today.
Yea, that’s totally healthy for you to feel that way. That’s utterly horrifying to hear.
