Youth, culture, and Piedmont High’s “Fantasy Slut League”

Over the weekend, parents found out that male athletes at their children’s school, Piedmont High School in California’s Bay Area, had a “Fantasy Slut League.”  For over 5 years, male athletes earned points based on their sexual activities with female students.

Read the school’s letter to parents in the Piedmont Patch.

On Wednesday, three experts and several listeners joined KQED’s Michael Krasny to discuss the league and its implications.  Shira Tarrant summed up the mixed messages this league reflects:

This league is only one example of a culture that chronically tells girls they are valuable primarily if they’re sexy and at the same time our culture tells boys they are manly if they’re hooking up.  And then we tell girls that they’re either victims or sluts if they hook up or that they’re prick teases or prudes if they don’t.

In the midst of debate about appropriate consequences for the boys, conjecturing about the impact of the racial and economic makeup of the school and community, and caller comments about the lives of today’s youth, Brian O’Connor of Futures Without Violence said:

The fact of the matter is that respect and consensual sex and treating others how they would like to be treated is not a generational ideal. It’s not something that is reserved for poor people or white people or black people…It’s what we hope for.  It’s what we strive for.

While the radio program covered much ground, overwhelmingly  guests Tarrant, O’Connor, and Ponton made the case for preventing occurrences such as this by focusing on culture, educating youth, and creating strong, positive social norms.  As O’Connor argued, “It is about changing social norms around this behavior.”

Listen to the full radio program here.

For more information about the Coaching Boys into Men project discussed in this radio program, view materials from PreventConnect’s web conference about this program.