If It Feels Creepy

I am  a little uncomfortable with something that transpired on the internet this week.

So I just want to say this:

If you work with teens in any capacity and someone, especially a teen, says you appear creepy, I think it's worth doing a little reflection about why you might be coming off that way.  You may have only the purest of motives and actions. But something looks off to someone.  And you might need to correct it. 

You may, after some reflection, be able to dismiss the assertion as just a couple of people being mean. This is possible. People are mean. Sometimes they are groundlessly mean and they pull out terrible accusations just to throw verbal bombs.

Still, I am a bit uncomfortable with calling down the big internet shame machine on the people who said this. 

Not because you are creepy.

But because it's important for teens to be able to recognize and trust and share their feelings when an adult's interactions with teens feel off in some way. And the importance of preserving and even nurturing this response may actually trump your hurt feelings.

In the high school I attended, at least two teachers had sexual relationships with students.  In three of the four high schools where I worked, there was at least one teacher who had sexual a relationship with a student. Maybe my group of friends is unusual, but without even trying, I can think of five people I know as adults who were sexually harassed by teachers as teens.

As a parent and a career teacher, I have a special hatred for people who abuse their positions and the trust of the young people they are supposed to serve in this way. Many of them get away with it for years. Decades even. Because they are not dirty, disheveled, socially-awkward corner-lurkers. They are charismatic, attractive, and popular. They often win awards. And their popularity insulates them from the truth about them.  Their victims don't speak up and their victims' friends don't speak up because these adults wield tremendous social power. So they keep doing it again and again for years.

So do you see why I'm a little uncomfortable with the events of last week? Many powerful people reminded us that there are real humans behind all these keyboards and that we should be careful what we say. I second that. There are real people behind all the keyboards. And so I ask you to think what you might have been teaching teens about what happens when you speak up  against someone with more power than you. 

[Thanks to a person I follow on Twitter for raising these issues in a way that helped crystallize my thinking. I'm not going to use her name or handle because she, like me, was deliberately vague  in order to avoid a lot of abuse. But thanks.]