"I asked [Brookins] if she would keep track of the frequency with which the boys and girls hit each other the first time. She agreed, but not one to miss a potential math lesson, she asked one of her classes to “do a survey,” to keep track of all the times the boys and girls initiated a slap or punch of a member of the other sex on the playground or in their classes.
When Liz reported the results, she was a tad embarrassed, “Well, it was almost 20 to 1 when I first started keeping track – mostly girls hitting guys on the arm, occasionally slapping them. But I’m afraid I screwed up the survey. I got so furious at the girls for ‘beginning the cycle of violence,’ as you put it, that I began to do mini-lectures in class, and the girls and guys doing the survey started lecturing the people they were observing, and soon there weren’t nearly as many girls hitting guys…. I contaminated the results!”
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Dr. Warren Farrell asked a high school teacher to record the number of times boys struck girls in class and the number of times girls struck boys. The research was not scientific but a three-year observation (1989-92) of high school students by Elizabeth Brookins, chair of the Department of Mathematics, El Camino High School, Oceanside, California. (via oratorasaurus)
Again, not scientific, but this fits with my personal experience. Most teachers weren’t this good, and actually enforced the double-standard, by punishing boys who hit girls more than boys who hit boys more than girls who hit girls more than girls who hit boys.
Funnily enough, that same discrimination exists in the adult justice system.
(via just-smith)
