In recent weeks, we have seen two teenage girls commit suicide following horrific campaigns of abuse against them. Amanda Todd and Felicia Garcia, both 15, died after suffering relentless bullying and abuse at the hands of their peers.
What links the two is that they died after getting involved in illicit sexual activity. Amanda was pressured into exposing herself to an anonymous man online at the age of 12, who then spread the photos around the web and opening her up to abuse from her schoolmates, which was unavoidable even after moving schools.
Felicia jumped in front of a train after allegedly sleeping with four football players with her school, and being ‘slut shamed’ for it.
The news reports have focused on the sexual activity of these two girls, but I feel they are missing the point. They were described as being ‘bullied’, but the word ‘bullying’ has lost all meaning in this context. We hear ‘bullying’, and we think of school children teasing each other in the playground. What happened to Amanda and Felicia was nothing less than harassment and abuse.
I fear that we will hear more and more of these stories if this is allowed to go unchecked. Reading the comments on the various websites reporting on the girls’ untimely deaths, it seems many people feel they were ‘asking for it’ and were just ‘sluts’ who deserved what they got. This is a frightening attitude to be so prevalent.
These girls made mistakes, yes, but they were not yet adults. They were not capable of making the correct decisions without the education that they very obviously never received. Where were the adults in their lives to guide them in the right direction? Why were they never taught to keep themselves safe, to respect themselves enough not to crave the attention of the men and boys who took advantage of them? In the case of Amanda, why was she allowed such unsupervised access to the net at such a young age?
There are several issues that are starkly brought to light by Amanda and Felicia’s deaths. They died because of the terrible attitude towards teenage sexuality, or at least the attitude towards the sexuality of teenage girls. Not enough has been asked about the man who made Amanda flash him, or the boys that Felicia was meant to have slept with. Not enough people are questioning their involvement in these events. They are simply put down as ‘sluts’, before people move on.
This isn’t acceptable. We need to change attitudes towards teenage sex. A girl is not a ‘slut’ if she sleeps with someone, or several someones. She may have made a mistake, but that does not mean that she is a lesser human being.
If you are suffering right now and need someone to talk to, I strongly suggest you speak to The Samaritans if you are in the UK, or go to the IASP to find a crisis centre in your area. Whatever you do, don’t suffer alone.