There’s an unspoken premise belying the ill-conceived cyber civil rights movement that boys are bad and girls are good.  Boys do bad things online to girls, and by so doing impair the freedom of girls to express themselves without fear of attack.  And then there’s this.



The point, of course, isn’t that one incident, one video, proves anything.  Then again, neither does resort to anecdote prove the opposite, nor the self-assessment of young ladies that they feel threatened by people who disagree with them.

The case of this 11-year-old Fort Myers boy, held down and stripped by some 14-year-old girls, with a third girl who recorded the fun for posting on the internet, raises the full panoply of problems and issues that keep resurfacing in internet bullying cases.  Except that it’s girls doing it to a boy, which isn’t the way advocates want it to happen because it cuts against all their arguments.

Clearly, the image of this boy being stripped naked is humiliating, potentially giving rise to years of therapy or a career in porn based on things unseen.  Hopefully, he won’t dwell on it so that it mars his psyche forever.  The girls, and the police, saw it as a prank.  It certainly seems to be intended that way, whether it went too far being a matter of poor judgment rather than intent.

But it’s the reaction all around that presents the most curious aspect of this video.  The school says it happened off campus, so it’s not involved.  Great idea, although there are a long list of students whose off campus conduct has produced monumental in-school consequences.  Remember Avery Doninger?  It’s wonderful to hear that the school has taken a hands-off approach to conduct outside the schoolhouse gates.  It would be better, however, if that happened for others, whose “offense” was significantly less harmful, as well.

There is, obviously, the question of prosecution.  No zero tolerance policy here, as the police wrote this up as a prank and, later protestations aside, never considered sending in the SWAT team.  Again, the applause wells up for this exercise of sound discretion, except that few believe it would have been the same had this involved a few 14-year-old boys stripping an 11-year-old girl naked.  More to the point, it seems painfully likely that they would have been tried as adults for their indiscretion.  Not an indiscretion, you say?  Perhaps not, but then it’s no more a mere indiscretion when the genders are reversed, right?

And then there’s the 800 pound Gorilla in the room, the sex offender registry.  Can’t have sex offenders in a classroom with other children, can we?  Can’t have them going to college, right? Can’t have them getting jobs, or living down the street, or within a 1000 feet of anywhere a child might be found, no?  So it’s the de facto end of life as any normal person would know it.  Had this been boys stripping a girl, want to bet what their chances of being placed on the sex offender registry might be?  If you can get on their by receiving a sext message, this type of conduct should land one on the first page.

All the horribles that could conceivably stem from this conduct are too well known.  That they haven’t as yet, and  hopefully won’t if the mother of the 11-year-old doesn’t succumb to pressure to press charges, is a very good thing.  These young women engaged in some pretty foolish and harmful conduct, but not because they are criminals, or sex offenders, or the types of girls who grow up to be Lindsey Lohan.  It was a prank.  A bad one. A stupid one. But not one that compels society to destroy their lives.

There should be consequences for this conduct, both for general and specific deterrent purposes.  The girls need to know that they went way, way too far, and did harm to this boy.  Probably, the school would be the most effective agent in imposing consequences, as this goes beyond the parental disapproval level.  Going to bed without dinner doesn’t quite cut it.

That this isn’t right for the criminal justice system, however, because of its gross excesses and permanent damage to lives over conduct that had no criminal intent, is clear.  This is the right message for what happened here, where we can show that such improper conduct is not acceptable or tolerated, without wreaking needless destruction.  Every instance of bad, childish behavior doesn’t mandate dropping the atom bomb.

And the bigger message, the critical message for all, especially the cyber civil rights crowd who wants to convert all bad actions to gender discrimination, is that the same should be true for boys who behave poorly toward girls.  These are all children, doing childish and foolish things.  Stop ruining lives for your political agendas and prejudices.  Don’t ruin girls lives.  Don’t ruin boys lives.  Don’t ruin the lives of children for the transitory stupidity that characterizes what children do.  Don’t ruin lives.