Over the past few months, there have been a spate of sexual assaults in the Bloor/Christie area, and this week, the police apprehended the person they believe to be responsible. He is 15.

After his arrest, people were tweeting their shock that a 15 year old could be capable of committing these crimes, as well as creating a culture of fear in a community. Writer Emma M. Wooley, however, was unsurprised. Doesn’t anyone remember what teenage boys are like?

On her blog, Emma wrote a powerful piece about the experiences she had as a teenage girl: Experiences that, like so many of us, she took for granted as regular boy behaviour, but seen through the lens of time, look an awful lot like assault. I remember, when I was 13, buying bras that clasped at the front so boys couldn’t undo them in Infotech. I remember behaviour like this, and actions that were considerably more threatening or demeaning, being normal, and no one ever questioning that they weren’t. Many of the experiences Emma remembers are simliar, many are worse, and a bunch of them definitely happened at my middle school. Emma’s point? We have to stop telling girls to be afraid, and start teaching boys, from a young age, that this kind of objectification isn’t okay.

Read Emma’s post here.