It started fairly innocently: the boys in our year would throw elastic bands and pencils at girls, in the classic attempt to get attention. Then came the comments. I was regularly told that I was flat-chested or too loud, that I ‘loved myself’ (how dare I answer questions in class), and, the killer; that I was ugly. The day I was told I had one of the weirdest faces ever seen – ‘not in a good way’ – will always be a defining moment in my teenage life. That night, I went home and stared at myself in the mirror. I was 14. My world had come crashing down and I could do nothing about it.

I started to obsess about the way the ‘pretty girls’ looked, how they managed it, what it was about their features that made them attractive. Following a comment about my ‘witchy nose’ I spent two hours looking up how much nose jobs cost, how old I had to be to have one, and working out how long I’d have to save up lunch money to afford it. In the meantime, I tried to draw attention away from my nose by dying my hair and giving it volume because that was recommended in an online magazine.

So the hierarchy was set up. From there, the same boy who had thrown things to get the pretty girls’ attention gave up all pretences of chasing, and began simply taking what he wanted. He would waltz in, touch a girl as intimately as he wanted, and start talking to someone else quite normally as he did so. Eventually, the laughter died away when he did this, and the other boys joined in: there was a circle of hot boys who targeted a circle of hot girls. Naturally, this transformed the social hierarchy in class, and it was quietly accepted by the attractive girls that this was a trade-off for respect and power.

“Finally, in year 10, a boy told me my body had ‘evolved,’ and with these words I attempted to nurse my fractured self-esteem back to health – at least now I was good enough to touch.”

In hindsight, the reasons the girls never stopped this, spoke out, or started touching them back are obvious. The biggest tragedy is linked to why there is so much rhetoric today around girls ‘wanting it.’ On my part, and it has taken a long time to admit that I probably did want it. Forget that, I yearned for it: I was desperate for their validation, to be seen as one of the hot girls, to gain power using my body. Finally, in Year 10, a boy told me my body had ‘evolved,’ and with these words I attempted to nurse my fractured self-esteem back to health – at least now I was good enough to touch.

It would have also been social suicide to speak out. This was something done by the cool boys to the cool girls, and was just a part of the teenage struggle to be accepted. Lastly, it didn’t become reciprocal because the notion of female empowerment and sexuality was never discussed in school (I didn’t know girls could have orgasms until I was 17), and any girl who was seen to be too forward was, predictably, called a slut.

I had always thought my experiences were unique – something not to talk about, an embarrassing blot in my identity as a feminist. That is, until I saw the poem ‘A Touch of Sexual Assault’ written and performed by 14-year-old Kayley Dixon from Dartmouth in the US. She describes how the girls were “spanked by the boys in our school/ but it was cool, because it just meant we had nice bodies” and explained that “if you were a ‘10’ you would learn to spend your days hearing whistles, purring and ‘damn girl’.” Here was someone thousands of miles away talking about exactly the same experiences as me, the same age as me when it first started. Similarly, simply asking questions about the experiences of my female friends opened a floodgate of anecdotes, not unlike this one: most had saved up and memorised bruising comments, and everyone agreed the problem is not talked about enough in schools.

Can’t keep your hands to yourself?

Today, these experiences seem a long time ago. Most of the boys I meet are kind and funny, and were outraged when I described this. I want to be clear: this was never intended to generalise about the behaviour of all teenage boys, nor to play the victim, nor to neglect the sad truth that most people feel insecure during their teenage years, so these experiences exacerbated normal feelings. But the truth is that this extreme behaviour is more widespread than is recognised. 59 per cent of girls and young women aged 13-21 said they had faced some form of sexual harassment at school or college in the past year, so my experiences are far from unique. As difficult and painful as this article has been to write, it is one of the true triumphs of feminism in the modern world that discussions like this can be openly had between people of all genders and none. The only way we can combat sexism is to encourage open and inclusive conversation, call things like this out for what they are, and promote positive feminist messages. In particular, there is a message that is applicable to all: validation and personhood must never come from appearance. Feminism has encouraged me to enrich myself through education and surrounding myself with lovely people, not from submission to sexual harassment. This is a power we must share with everyone