Good morning,
I’m working on a research project looking at harmful sexual behaviour in schools. Throughout the research we found that young people interviewed responded very differently to sexual harm as they might do (theoretically) to racism. For example,
we asked students to position themselves on a gradient depending on how they might respond to different forms of harm such as: a sexual image of a girl be shared around a school without consent, sexual harassment and name calling etc. Students gave varied
responses, mainly ‘do nothing’. While it wasn’t part of the study we asked them if this would be different for racist name calling, racist bullying etc. In all schools the responses were very different with most students saying that was ‘different’ and ‘completely
wrong’.
Of course racism still happens in school but I found this interesting. I wondered if members had any thoughts on why this might be and if they knew of any academics that may have had similar findings that I could reference. I’m also just
interested in people’s thoughts. I wonder how much this has to do with the idea of consent in sexuality and an essentialist view of race.
Have a lovely day.
Jenny
Dr Jenny Lloyd
Research Fellow
The International Centre: Researching child sexual exploitation, violence and trafficking
University of Bedfordshire
Mobile: 07707028417
Join the Contextual Safeguarding Network
Web:
www.beds.ac.uk/ic
Twitter: @jennyalloyd