I would also like to invite posters on this particular thread to avoid debating each other. There are plenty of threads already where contributors critique other posts. I?d like for this thread to be straightforward personal testimony, without criticism or response to other peoples? experiences.
To get it started, I went through the ?Just discovered this! From ex pupil of Girls school? thread and pulled out quotes regarding gender discrimination where people reported their direct experience of SES/SoPP policies or teachings regarding gender, and the effect this policy or view had on them personally, whether positive or negative. Brackets are for deletions [?] and my additions, usually the antecedent of a pronoun. I have tried to be fair and represent quotes accurately.
I?m afraid many new readers of this board get bogged down in the back-and-forth and do not find many of the most compelling posts.
SEScaped
I attended stj for my entire education [?] Being young and impressionable I grew up really trusting and loving the philosophy ? [?] As I grew older and they began to come out with all that crap about women I cannot begin to describe the sense of betrayal and frustration.
Shout
The reciprocal effect upon me of being isolated from female existance for me entire life is that I remain sexually retarded and unable to communicate with women.
SEScaped
In every situation we [child students at St. James] were role locked - the boys as much as the girls. Attempts at pushing these boundaries invariable came up with the response that we were doing things in order to have contact with the boys showing the sexual predator instincts "typical" of women - not because we might have interests of our own!!
Despite this growing feeling of frustration and anger I joined foundation group in the vague hope that I might be able to salvage some sense of that childhood trust and faith. I began to realise that in their world view I could not hope to reach any kind of philosophical goal without being married to a man who I completely submitted to and served without thought of myself.
Grimep
There's a very serious allegation raised here which I feel is in danger of being buried: that the SES has subtle mechanisms in place to encourage girls who enter the Youth Group to be married to much older SES men?their reward for many years of loyalty and service to the school. Even if only one girl a year goes down this route isn't that one too many? As I have said in another thread, if this is true and gets known, either in OFSTED, the NSPCC or the press, it would be Game Over SES / St James. Seriously.
TS
Re: Grooming -yes- yuck! At 16 a dinner was organised with older men from the SES. I didnt get it immediatley even though there was an exact number of these weasels to match the girls, Someone asked why one man who we knew wasn't there and the answer as if it was obvious-'Hes married'. One girl got drunk and found herself in the back of a car ( consentually whilst very pissed) then I got asked out by this man in his 30's who was our chaperone in our school holiday in Italy.
Shout
I did briefly encounter some of the girls at Old Boys/Girls events to ask them if they were told to marry an older man: 'Yes...take care of you', one said, bewildered, as if it was the most normal thing in the world. A different girl didn't seem to mind telling me about the sex on Foundation girl weekends, and another proudly defended it, even when it was between girls and men who were 'tutors'.
Shout
When I was in Foundation Group we were instructed that it was 'the natural law' to marry a woman 2/3 our age I think, or as the Freudian slip sometimes came out: 1/3. (maybe that was 3/4 and 1/4 -can't remember)
We were also told something like 'A man is intelligence and reason, and a woman intuition and emotion.'
daska
Part of our career/education advice was to go to a local college or university so that we could stay at home. This would be 'safer' for us than moving away and not having our fathers to protect us. And it would be cheaper so we would be less of a burden on our parents.
Now, this, on the face of it is sensible and caring advice. BUT did any of the boys get the same advice? And if they didn't, why is a girl's education a burden when a boy's is not?