Disclaimer: In Real Life is a platform for everyday people to share their experiences and voices. All articles are personal stories and do not necessarily echo In Real Life’s sentiments.
Recently, the hashtag #makeschoolsasaferplace became very popular due to people speaking up about school harassment. So I decided to ask around for people’s experiences of getting harassed in school.
These are some of their stories.
Ai Ling: “I had to roleplay as the teacher’s wife.”
When we were in Form 2, my school held a camping event for all the students. I don’t remember if it was compulsory to go, but most of us went, and we were thrilled.
On the camping day, the students would be randomly divided and put into a group.
In the beginning, it was enjoyable. I was just hanging out and talking to my friends. We were all sitting around until a male teacher came up to us and conducted an activity.
He said we were not doing anything productive and instead of wasting our time chit-chatting, we should do something educational that is useful for our future.
He told us it was a role-play activity: We had to act like we were the teacher’s wife and our task was to seduce him to eat dinner at home instead of going out.
Each group had to pick a girl for this task. Unfortunately, I was the one who drew the short end of the stick from my group. So there we were, just a group of girls competing to seduce my teacher, a grown man in his 40’s, into having dinner at home.
We had to act all sexy and flirt with him by biting our lips or calling him ‘baby’ or ‘sayang.’ He would even give us tips and tell us to whisper into his ear and touch him, which was disgusting.
When we were all done, the teacher would rank us from highest to lowest and decide who he felt did an outstanding job being a wife.
It was humiliating and awkward because while we girls had to compete, the rest would just laugh at us. They thought it humorous to see teen girls seducing a man.
They probably did not realise how wrong it was — even I didn’t. I just found it odd.
Because of my experience, I don’t trust camping or other activities held by schools. What if something goes on behind closed doors? We just will never know.
Nadhira: “My teacher would touch me inappropriately.”
I was in primary school, in Standard 5. Every Tuesday, we would have computer classes. I used to be the top in my class, always scoring high marks and I was the teacher’s pet.
Whenever I was in the computer lab and asked my teacher for help, he would come to me and place one hand on my back while the other on the mouse.
He would always just place it there first; and then slowly, he would start moving his hand around my back. Sometimes it would be slow, sometimes it would be fast.
I was too young to understand what he was doing. I just thought he was touching my back. But now that I am older and think back about it, I strongly suspect he was rubbing my back in a very sexual manner.
I realise now that it was not just an innocent touch, like a pat on my back. He was rubbing my back very aggressively.
I am now aware that his behaviour was not appropriate. No other teacher, male or female, touched my back like this. I don’t know if he did this with any other student, because it was never brought up between us.
People should talk more about these topics especially, with younger children.
If someone had told me about it, maybe I would have known that my teacher is not supposed to touch me like that, and I could have done something about it.
Sarah: My teacher would always talk about girls with mini-skirts.
When I was 16, I had a science teacher, let’s call him Sir, who had been working in the school for a long time. Therefore, amongst the teachers, he was highly respected.
However, the students felt differently towards him. He would always make questionable remarks that made us feel uncomfortable.
Every time we discussed questions after a lesson, Sir would always tell us to keep the answers short and sweet, but he would not stop there. He would add, “Just like a mini-skirt.”
It was his motto: “Keep your answers short and sweet like a mini-skirt.”
Every time he used his ‘motto,’ it was always followed by how much he loves it when girls wear short skirts. “It’s the sexiest thing a girl can wear,” he’d say, with a grin and a wink to the boys. On their part, they just cringed.
His remarks made the whole class uncomfortable. Since the uniform at our school for girls was skirts, we started thinking, ‘Is my skirt too short?’ or ‘Is he focusing on my legs?’
Once, he asked my classmate if he liked it when girls wore short skirts, to which my classmate said “Er, no.”
The student’s response made my teacher so shocked. He couldn’t believe that someone doesn’t like girls with mini-skirts.
He started going on a whole rant about how my friend has just not seen the right girl wearing it and that not every girl can pull it off.
No one said a word. It felt too awkward to say anything to him. It wasn’t an option to tell other teachers either, because they always thought he was the best.
Now, I can already hear some of you saying, “Well, at least these teachers are not sexually assaulting or molesting anyone. What’s the big deal?”
But how long are we as a society going to downplay suggestive behaviour from people in positions of authority?
Can we agree that any words that have sexual undertones are not acceptable when uttered by a teacher?
A teacher, someone who is supposed to guide students to a better standard of conduct?
This inability of the teacher to set clear boundaries on acceptable and non-acceptable behaviour leads to emotional and sexual abuse. They end up unable to determine whether something is wrong until years and years have passed. During that period, they may get abused by others who take advantage of their lack of knowledge or experience.
Let’s be more accountable with each other and be more careful with the impact of the words we have on others.
It’s only through conversations like these that we can learn from our mistakes and promise to do better in the future. After all, we all want our future generations to be better than us, right?
For more stories like this, read My Boss Touched Me Inappropriately And Tried To Kiss Me Even After I Said No And As A Woman, Here’s Why I’m Afraid Of Taking The LRT and Walking Home.
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