High School Boys Rack Up Points for Scoring With Girls

Entering high school is nerve-wracking enough without finding yourself an unknowing "draft" in a game of sexual manipulation.

In Maureen Dowd's June 8th column, "Their Dangerous Swagger," she writes about last year's group of incoming freshman at the Landon private boys school in Montgomery County, MD, who set up their own "fantasy league baseball draft," where the "players" were local girls, and boys were tasked with rounding the bases to literally "score" with as many girls as possible at a summer party.

The boys went into great detail with their draft picks, drawing up profiles such as "sweet, outgoing, friendly, willing to get down and dirty and [expletive] party. Coming in at 90 pounds, 5’2 and a bra size 34d." And — extra points — her mother "is quite the cougar herself.” Ironically, the boys get extra points for schmoozing the parents of their draftees, since these are polite chivalrous boys, after all, and nothing makes the victory of exploiting a girl as sweet as duping loving moms and dads in the process.

The girls, of course, had not been clued in to the fact that what they thought was a friendly party invite was actually a set-up to attempt to score points with their bodies. When the plot leaked, the girls quite understandably felt outraged, violated, and deeply hurt at the actions of boys they considered "friends." The boys apparently gave no thought to how their little contest would impact these girls, so keen were they to prove their manliness in this game of kiss and tell and rack up points. While 14- and 15-year-old boys can do stupid things sometimes, it's a disturbing reflection on a misogynistic and privileged culture that these boys bound for an elite private school came up with the idea to relegate girls they'd grown up with to prey.

The Landon School was also in the news recently because of a former student, George Huguely V, who has been charged in the brutal killing of his ex-girlfriend Yeardley Love, who also hailed from Maryland, like those local girls. Both were college lacrosse players, and fellow teammates had seen Huguely assault and choke Love at a party and knew he was violent. Following the tragic death, attention was drawn to the way in which such aggression by men is overlooked in favor of a locker room (or fraternity) bond that protects dangerous men, but leaves a female fellow teammate vulnerable, and in this case, might have contributed to costing Love her life.

The fantasy hook-up draft of the Landon boys is perfectly designed to make girls mistrustful of the opposite sex; I would guess that most of the drafted girls will look askance at any boy who tries to befriend them or asks them out for at least a while, having been so thoroughly betrayed by people they believed to be friends. But while the "game" appeared to promote trying to get "consensually" (albeit based on lies and manipulation) into girls' pants, the mentality that views girls as prey or pawns for men to play with at their pleasure fuels the kind of culture where men believe it's okay to rape and abuse women as their possessions. It important to teach respectful and empathetic gender relations early, so we're not picking up the pieces of a tragic killing later.

Photo credit: InCase.