Don’t tell your daughter that when a boy is mean or rude to her it’s because he has a crush on her. Don’t teach her that abuse is a sign of love.
My mom always taught me yell or fight back. Boys would be mean and I would yell back. I would get my ass pinched and I would smack them as hard as I could.
Who alway got in trouble? Me.
They would call my mother and she always came in and lectures my teachers and threatened to sue for making her miss work and treating me poorly.
She always taught my brothers to respect women. The only fights my brothers ever got in was defending women from someone else.
The school tried to call my father once instead of my mother on us. He came in in his full preacher outfit (being a preacher and all) and gave them an entire sermon on what would Jesus day of he was called in. They decided dealing with my mom was better.
I think my favorite story of this is when some kid snapped my bra and I turned around, didn’t even think about it, and punched that little motherfucker right in the nose.
So naturally, I end up in the principal’s office, refusing to apologize.
“He shouldn’t have put his hands on me and I wouldn’t have hit him!” That’s the only thing I was saying.
These people had the unfortunate luck of catching my dad at home, instead of my mom. So he comes fucking sauntering in there, like he’s Clint fucking Eastwood in some western movie and looks at me.
“Melissa, did you punch him?”
“Yes.” I said.
“Why?”
“Because he snapped my bra strap.”
And he turns his squinty eyed glare to the principal and says, “You’re telling me my daughter is in trouble because that squirrely looking kid put his hands on her and she chose to defend herself? That’s what you are saying to me.”
“Well, sir-” The man kind of stuttered because my dad is kind of intimidating in the quiet sort of way that kind of whispers in the back of your mind that this person could be dangerous. “Melissa did make it physical.”
“No. That kid put his hands on my daughter. Are you saying my daughter cannot defend herself when some boy decides to put hands on her? Is that what you are teaching my girl?”
I didn’t get suspended that day.
*slow clap for excellent parenting*
This is the parent I want to be omg
I went to a nun school.
The nuns there were like, so rad.
It was a party organized for the end of the school year, and I was helping in the kitchen to prepare stuff with a nun and a bunch of little girls. There was one of the girls’ little brother who was there.
There was a little girl who was carrying a bowl of tomato sauce and was going outside, but the boy was just in front of her and he slammed the door in her face. She dropped the bowl on the floor and got all messy.
So what happened?
The nun went outside, took the boy by the arm, and gave him an epic speech going around the lines of: “Would you treat the Virgin Mary like that, young man?” “Nnnnno…” “Then treat every girl like she’s the Virgin Mary.” Not only the boy had to apologize to the little girl, but he also had to clean up and he was put on kitchen duty for the rest of the day.
Then another day, in catechism class (I was a in a girls’ school, mind you), the nun was there telling us: “If a guy touches you in a way you don’t like, punch him in the face. It’s not a sin against charity. On the contrary, you’re being charitable by showing him he’s sinning by impurity and you’ll save him from going to hell.”
So I was at my desk during class looking like this:
Reblogging for awesome dads and kickass nuns.
If the Catholic church were run by like 90% of the nuns I know, the world would be a much better, much cooler place.
I was minding my business in art class in high school, totally into whatever it was I was doing, when some dude decided he was going to touch my butt and say “hey, [deadname] ;)” right in my ear.
He drastically underestimated my startle reflex and next thing you know I’ve got my fist in his back so hard it’s left an imprint and you could actually hear it echo out of his lungs, so of course the entire room is now staring. The art teacher took us both out to the hallway and demanded to know what happened.
He was still trying to catch his breath (no, really, I slammedthat poor motherfucker, surprised!me has absolutely no concept of how much force they’re using, and even with disabilities I am and always have been a force to be reckoned with if I’ve decided one way or another that Something Needs To Be Hit) and I jumped the hell in before he had time to excuse himself. My narrative, fuckboy.
“He grabbed my butt.”
“Did you?” the teacher demanded, giving him the shittiest look I had ever seen out of this actual angel of a lady.
“It was an accident, I tripped,” he finally mumbled.
“If it was an accident why’d you go ‘hey, [deadname]’ right before doing it?”
“DID YOU,” the teacher asked.
He mumbled something completely noncommittal and unintelligible and sort of looked away.
“Do you want to talk to the principal?” the art teacher asked me, and I looked at this other kid, who was turning purple and white at the same time and standing hunched up like he suddenly had moderate to severe spinal bruising, because he did, and I thought about it a second, just because I figured he deserved to squirm a bit and I had a point to make, man.
“…nah. He won’t do it again,” I eventually said in a tone that implied that he had fucking well better not or I’d do him another fist print, and you know what, he didn’t, and neither did anyone else, because in a class of 58 students shit gets around with a quickness. I’m sure the principal probably heard about it anyway, everyone else did, but at least nobody came after me about it.
Unfortunately, the way I’d grown this backbone was that several grades prior some boy with a crush on me decided the appropriate way to express this was to poke me in the top of the shoulder so hard and repeatedly that I’d go home with bruises on both sides damn near daily, and it had taken me way too long to decide that all the teachers saying ‘oh it means he likes you!’ was bullshit and what he really wanted was an ass-kicking. Teach kids to not tolerate abuse, AND teach them to not do it to each other. This is a two-front fight, at least.
💜🎵GlowLite🎵💜 