A Nova Scotia teen's passionate message about boys and attitudes toward sexual assault has gone viral, in video of a spoken word poem posted on Facebook.
In the video, Kayley Dixon, 14, suggests some men's abusive attitudes toward women start at a young age, and are often ignored and dismissed by authority figures with comments like "boys will be boys." At the same time, young women are taught not to wear revealing clothing and not to sexually provoke men, lest they be harassed or assaulted, she says.
The video was posted to the Take Action Society's Facebook page on May 2, and has received 1,600 views in its first eight days. In the video, Dixon speaks about how young women often endure men’s unwanted, sexually aggressive behaviour, from "cringeworthy" comments, to stalking, to rape.
"I was thinking about my personal experiences and what I've been through, and that is basically how I wrote it and what I wrote about," Dixon told CTV's Canada AM on Wednesday.
The teen says she's heard from women all around the world who were touched by the message in her poem.
"I'm inspired by everybody that's inspired by me," Dixon said. "I hope that people realize that this happens every day to women, especially young women and girls."
She added that people shouldn't be "brushing off" degrading behaviour toward women, such as sexual comments or uninvited touching.
"It's not 'boys will be boys.' This is something we have to take seriously, and these are facts that like I said (in the video), happen every day," she told Canada AM.
In the video, Dixon speaks about the lessons teenage girls are taught, such as how to avoid strange men who follow you on the street, or how to avoid distracting" their male classmates by wearing shorts or a tank top.
"The only thing that we were learning were tips and tricks to tie up our shirt so that it didn't hang too low, because that would show the guys that we wanted it," Dixon says in the video. "We went from playing with our toys to being toys ourselves."
