The Other Girls
To the girls who are told they've earned it
I’ve spent a lot of time this week diving into the Rotherham story that is currently unfolding on the world stage. Whether you love or hate Elon Musk, here he used his powers for good. He brought attention to the systematic dismissal and abandonment and, at times, prosecution of tens of thousands of mostly working-class girls across the UK who were raped, pimped, trafficked, drugged, and sometimes physically mutilated and abused at the hands of foreign-born men. The “Grooming Gangs,” as they are being called, are (finally) being covered internationally, and the discussion of this in terms of ethnicity, religion, culture, politics, and government is being covered at great length by many talented writers and journalists so I will leave those areas to other hands.
What I would like to focus on is the point brought up in this podcast with two women who advocated for these women and girls at major personal risk, which discusses the rape victims who themselves or their families went to the police and were dismissed on the grounds of sexual impropriety. In layman’s terms, they earned it.
I found myself in traffic, crying in my car, not for the inciting incidents and the abuse suffered but for the way it was handled. Girls as young as 12 or 13, much too young to consent to any sexual acts, were judged by police for having sexual relationships with older men, specifically sexual relationships with men of a different race. The way these young girls were described as “worthless,” “troublesome slags,” or that “any young girl who has sex with older men for cigarettes and vodka is bringing it on herself."
As if anyone, adult or child, could do anything to earn being locked in cages, gang raped, branded, burned with cigarettes, or in its most extreme expression, burned alive while pregnant in their own home.
I’ve written privately about the differences in the value placed on women in society, mostly based on my own history of sexual abuse and incest. It is clear that even in the era of #MeToo and overwhelming cultural shifts around the understanding of power dynamics, the divide between “Good Girls” and “Other Girls” is real, tangible, and expressed not just in language but in how willing we are to fight for the most vulnerable among us.
The females among us, young or old, who don’t have that sense of worth are obvious. You know them when you see them. It is unkind to say, and it doesn’t feel good to acknowledge. We all know it’s there. When you are an “Other Girl,” you know it. You act accordingly.
Those girls who are wearing too much eyeliner and smoking outside the schoolyard. The girl who might bring an older guy to prom and who everyone would bet money will be pregnant before she graduates. She might shoplift, self-harm, or talk back to teachers. She can seem exotic or exciting to other kids because she knows more about sex, about men, about drugs, and darkness than other girls. She is called a slut because she often behaves like one. She is comfortable in these waters.
We know that girl who lost the spark in her eye but gained a chip on her shoulder a long time ago. That girl who grows up to have an abusive husband, a closet drinking problem, or a not-so-secret drug dependency. That girl who makes choice after choice after choice, trying to situate herself in the world, trying to get her needs met, only to find herself outside of the ideal and seemingly beyond help. Even if you throw her a lifesaver, she will probably continue to choose it. She is comfortable in these waters.
These girls have a stamp on their forehead that says “I am ripe for misuse.”
These girls may say okay with their voices. They may get into those cars and sleep with those men. They may take hits of that weed and drink from that bottle. They may choose their choices all the way along.
This is where it gets murky.
Choices made from a lack of self-worth are still choices made. The ball is rolling, and you cannot always interrupt the consequences. The world is not so simple to divide women into Madonnas and Whores, Good Girls and Bad Girls, Deserving and Undeserving, and yet it often does, and if the outside world does not do it for us, we will do it ourselves through our choices, and our behavior.
Who is responsible for an event like this? These men who knew this and took advantage? These girls who got in the car in the first place? These parents who could have kept a closer eye? The social workers who saw things and didn’t make reports? The police who made a comment and judgment and made no move to help? Prosecutors who chose to prosecute these girls for trafficking? The government who covered it up? The political climate that protected rapists because of their background? Maybe the world and its brokenness? Maybe God for making a broken world in the first place? Maybe everyone and no one?
Maybe brokenness makes brokenness, and nothing will ever change. Maybe we can make a utopia through top-down control, and everything will be shiny. To be honest, I have more questions than answers.
Regardless of all the political noise about gender, we know what a woman is. We know that a woman is a vulnerable, fragile, beautiful thing. We know that women and girls are penetrable by nature and by design. We know that they are looking around and asking, “Who do I belong to?” from the moment they are born. We know that they are relational and look to gain their identities from the world around them. This is what makes a mother able to fully mother. This is what makes a woman a unique and precious thing. This is a sacred contract with the Divine. We mirror the Divine Mother in our gifts. Our cup can be filled in order to pour out to the world. This is a holy thing, a lovely thing, and a thing most often abused.
I bristle at being called fragile, but that’s because I was an “Other Girl” who was never allowed to be fragile. I was an “Other Girl” raised by an “Other Girl” who is raising my own “Other Girl.” I hardened up to survive. I got in cars to get my needs met. I got high in backseats until I made myself sick. I cut class and got pregnant. I was nonchalant and cool. I saw too much to be soft.
I have always been jealous of girls who knew their place in the world. I have always been jealous of girls whose softness was treasured. I have always been looking over my shoulder wondering what it would be like to be cherished just for being alive. It has taken incredible healing of my own woundedness to admit it. I wanted to be a “Golden Girl.” I still do, but that is a story for another time.
This Rotherham story is ultimately a story of brokenness. Maybe those men are brokenhearted boys who take power from women to numb their own sense of powerlessness. Maybe those boys were told by other broken-hearted boys that this was the way. Maybe those girls are girls that get in those cars to try and ease the ache of feeling worthless. Maybe those girls are part of a longer history of women not protecting themselves and each other from the darkness in this world. Maybe those government officials and cultural warriors thought they were protecting the right group rather than the wrong group. Maybe everyone is doing their best and failing wildly in execution.
Regardless of intention, these girls, many without support systems, some without steady fathers, and without a developed, embodied sense of self, were targeted for their social vulnerability. Naming this is important because it draws attention to something we all know but never want to say. It is important to say it so we can intervene. It is important to name it so we can look deep into the eyes of those girls and tell them unequivocally that they belong to us, that they are wanted, they matter, and that they are cherished. We can tell them not to get into those cars, not because people will think they are a slut, but because there is a whole world of beauty and love and pleasure and abundance waiting to meet them. That they deserve it.
In a world where some girls are worth protecting and others are lost to violence, we can change the tide. By acknowledging that girls who experience difficult childhoods are likely to grow up and have difficult adolescence and adulthood, we can direct resources, attention, love, and guidance to those who need it the most desperately. We know who they are. We all know who they are.
You can name this as patriarchy, misogyny, or rape culture, but frankly, all the intellectual, academic, ivory tower labeling does not and did not help these women. It passes the buck of responsibility and removes the sting from the excruciating picture of sexual abuse, violence, and cowardice. It makes it easy to talk about from a distance. It makes it easy to privately judge women and girls who we believe bring it on themselves.
Those women were once just little girls. Those little girls still had sparkles in their eyes. They are precious jewels among us, no matter how much they have hardened.
You know who they are.
Speak up for them.
❤️
