Teenagers think that “girls attack boys too, but they don’t talk about it.”

High school students in Catalonia believe that the following statement is true: “There are also many women who attack men, but they don’t talk about it.” A belief that feeds the masculinity that is “extremely troubling” to the Prime Minister, Security and Review Policies of the Ministry of Interior, Alba Al-Fajimi, who presented yesterday the latest edition, corresponding to the 2021-2022 academic year, of the School Coexistence and Safety Survey that is prepared every five years.

Generally, students give the preceding sentence a credibility of 6 on a scale of 0 to 10, but in the case of boys, the score goes up to 6.9, which which would correspond to “totally ok”. Another statement with a large degree of acceptance is: “Male violence is an invention: women also abuse men, but in a different way.” The boys surveyed roughly agree with this statement, giving it a sincerity of 4.7 out of 10. Girls, on the other hand, fundamentally disagree (2.2).

These assessments coexist with other assessments that call for more optimism about attitudes towards sexual violence. Thus, for example, they show themselves on scales equivalent to “strongly disagree” (between 1 and 3) that asking for a cellphone password is normal, or that boys are violent because they provoke them, or that it is common for your partner to ask you not to go out with friends to be exclusive with you. It is also unacceptable for a girl to work hard to do what her partner likes, or for jealousy to mean love.

In these sentences, girls rated the maximum degree of disparity (between 0 and 2), while boys scored between 2 and 3.

Oddly enough, the romantic idea of ​​love that would be represented by the statement “when you find your best partner, do whatever it takes to maintain the relationship, because he is your partner” is more pronounced among boys (4) than among girls (2, 3).

“We must address and attack these arguments to prevent them from spreading,” they noted in an internal article.

“We have to address and attack these discovered arguments (such as the first sentences) that have a higher prevalence among boys than among girls,” Al-Fajimi said, “to prevent dangerous ideas from spreading that end in stability,” as we saw in Sunday’s elections.

The survey showed that girls have a greater perception of risk and change their habits when they arrive at ESO for fear of suffering some kind of aggression, follow-up, such as looking for safer ways to go to school (35% of ESO girls), stop participating in social networks (18%) or stop going out with friends for fear of trouble (14%). “And this really represents his personal experience in the future,” says the chief of staff.

60% of girls say they have experienced sexual violence. 50% of girls are from ESO and 75% from high school

Perception of the risk of some kind of sexual assault among peers is high (this is reported by 3 out of 4 students, regardless of their gender), but it is even higher among adolescents. 86% of girls consider their peers to be subjected to sexual abuse, such as harassment or annoying comments, insults and touching, and 60% of girls say they have experienced sexual violence (50% in ESO and 75% in high school).

What kind of violence? Students say they have personally experienced comments of a sexual nature (46% of girls vs. 10% of boys), messages received (36% vs. 11%), requests for pictures of sexual content (35% vs. 11%), bullying or stalking (34% vs. 6%), groping (18% vs. 6%), onerous offers (12% vs. 4%), and violent sexual relations 2% (4%).

Primary school students (surveyed from Year 4 onwards) are not free from unhealthy behaviors. Nearly two in ten children under the age of 12 have at some point received comments of a sexual nature, 8.9% messages, 3.4% photographs, and 2.2% have experienced sexual touching against their will.

The report also details that more than half of students – including 27% in primary school – confirm that they have accessed pages with adult content – although it is not specified whether it relates to pornography, gambling or chats. This is a more common practice among boys (64%) than among girls (44%).

In general, 64% of students confirmed that they were victims of some kind of violence, a percentage that increased in the secondary stage by 17 points compared to the 2015-2016 edition, while it decreased in the primary stage by 4 points.

6 out of 10 said they had witnessed someone from their school suffer school violence because of their appearance, ethnicity or sexual status

For Alfageme, this increase is due to the identification of more cases of school violence by students who no longer see teasing, emptiness, or physical aggression as normal.

The main behaviors described as school violence are teasing (46%), causing space (39.3%) or physical violence (29.3%), while 15.8% also stated that they received comments or gestures of a sexual nature.

Similarly, nearly 14% of those surveyed consider that they have been a victim of digital violence, with practices such as threats to force them to do something they do not want (41.2%) or comments, messages or gestures of sexual content (41%).

According to the report, 62.6% of those surveyed claimed to have witnessed how someone from their school suffered from school violence – which more than half of them tried to help. The reasons given were physical appearance (38.7%), sexual orientation (12.7%) and skin colour, culture or origin (12.5%).

In this sense, bullying (negative actions that are repeated and persistent over time) affects 18.9% of school students, a figure that has not increased compared to previous cycles.

The intense x-rays of school coexistence in this report are based on a survey of 2,524 students in grade 4, 5, and 6 of elementary school, 5,158 students of ESO and 2,458 of secondary and intermediate level training courses.