A number of Year 12 girls at an elite private school in Adelaide have come under fire for shaming boys online using their photos in a “hook-up” collage.
The Advertiser reports girls from The Wilderness School posted photos and a slideshow of young men to social media with comments such as #quantitynotquality.
The large collage was reportedly hung in the Year 12 common room for several months. The ‘wall of boys’ was only taken down after it was featured in an end-of-year video, according to the report.
It was reported teachers previously believed the “hook-up wall” was an innocent collage of male friends and boyfriends.
One private school boy told The Advertiser he learned of the “hook-up wall” in March or April but had since seen several posts on Facebook and Instagram that took aim at boys’ appearances.
The boy said some posts had even detailed sexual encounters.
“It’s embarrassing to have that showed about you, what you’ve done in your private life,” he said.
“It’s frustrating how the girls treat it as a joke but, if a guy did, it would be objectifying women and promoting rape culture.
“I find it unfair that boys can be shamed in this way.”
The school has since reached out to Facebook to have the derogatory slideshow of boys’ faces removed.
In a statement provided to Mamamia, Wilderness Principal Jane Danvers said the images on the wall displayed in the common room were considered “entirely respectful”.
“The images were considered entirely respectful as they were portrait shots sourced mainly from the boys’ Facebook profile images or photos from the school formal,” she said.
“The context in which they were placed on the common room wall was deemed by staff as innocent and acceptable – girls displaying photographs of boys who were friends and boyfriends.
“The photographs later featured in an unauthorised and inappropriate Year 12 end-of-school-year slide-show presentation two weeks ago. The photographs in the Year 12 common room were then removed at the instruction of senior staff.
“The slide-show presentation was posted on social media on Wednesday evening and was drawn to our attention, steps were immediately taken to have it removed. Wilderness School does not tolerate such behaviour.”
Another private school boy told the paper the incident highlighted a double standard when it came to sexual harassment.
“If we did it, there’d be a massive outcry. The [Wilderness teachers] know about it. It’s been up on the wall for three terms,” he said.
“People think girls can’t sexually harass guys so [boys] don’t think they can talk about it."
The school is yet to publicly announce how the girls will be punished.
Feature image via Google Streetview. Social images via The Advertiser.
Top Comments
Ah, toughen up blokes. Try to be a man, not an entitlement fueled, teenage princess. You point out if that if the genders were reversed, everyone would be on their case? Guess what gentlemen, you've just had a lesson in the real world you're going to face when you leave school. What are you going to do next? Point out the assumption that women are the must vulnerable refugees and so get priority for resettlement with the kids too is making a blanket gender assumption that no man could be in a vulnerable position? That's it's a deliberately sexist based policy? It is! Welcome to life. Go try to find an employer who runs graduate programs just for males if you want, there's another life lesson to be experienced.
The worlds neither fair nor consistent. Just suck it up and work hard and try to make good choices.
“It’s frustrating how the girls treat it as a joke but, if a guy did, it would be objectifying women and promoting rape culture."
Yes, it would be an example of objectifying women and it would be promoting rape culture. The boys involved would also treat it like a joke (as is evident from similar case involving boys), much like this girls have and deserve to be punished for such behaviour, much like the girls do.
“I find it unfair that boys can be shamed in this way.” Absolutely, these girls behaved appallingly and should be held accountable for their actions. No one should be shamed like this and the boys involved have every right to feel upset and angry.
See, both can be correct.
Except the school left it up for months, it was only taken down when it was made public online...
Because for months, there was no shaming that was visible. It was just comments between the girls, and not made public. I think the teachers should have kept a more careful eye on the situation - the girls clearly kept it hidden well - but without things being made public, there was no way for the school to know what the real intention of the wall was. Just like no one knew about how the boys at the private schools were thinking about girls before their comments were made public.
Yes, that is part of what makes what these girls did so appalling. My point still stands.
Yeah, I don't see how this person's reply to my post counteracts anything I said. Both are bad, both should be held accountable.