This past Tuesday loudounactivists, a liberal activist account on Instagram, shared images of an anonymous Instagram account named “domgirlsmarchmaddness” in which female students of Dominion High School were being ranked based on attractiveness using a March Madness style bracket. The brackets were bad enough by themselves, but the students behind this also chose to post Insta-Stories with side-by-side comparisons of two students, often clad only in bikinis, with polls for their fellow perverts to vote on who they found more attractive. 

It cannot be understated how repulsive these images were, nor can it be understated the amount of cruelty, animosity, and misogyny that went into creating this account. The persistence of these students is even more troubling as they  continued reuploading these images once the account had allegedly been taken down the first time, and indifference to the crushing weight of backlash, as shown through the only uncensored screenshot I’ve shared here, out of the many I shared with Dominion High School’s administration.

As Dr. Brewer noted during his announcements Wednesday morning, in a cruel irony this took place during Women’s History Month, though I have my doubts that the perpetrators were aware of this fact. They don’t strike me as terribly intelligent individuals. 

However, this irony also provides an opportunity for high schools, and parents of teenagers to reflect on the mistakes they have made in not having the right discussions, having the wrong discussions, or even encouraging sexual harassment. Harassment as well as violence against women is a far bigger and more pervasive issue than many are willing to admit, as we’ve seen from the bombshell allegations against powerful media personalities like Harvey Weinstein, Roger Ailes, Matt Lauer, and Bill Cosby, as well as important political figures like Former President Donald Trump, Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. 

The unfair and often inhumane treatment of women is a systemic issue, which you don’t need me, a teenage boy, to tell you. You could’ve heard the same from any woman with experience in the workforce. That does bring me to my final point, however. We as boys and men, who are capable of understanding that this type of behavior is wrong, cannot be silent, because silence is complicity. And parents need to raise their boys to not only understand that this is wrong, but that silence is wrong as well.