Fantasy Slut League

The Piedmont High School community was rocked by controversy on Friday when  Principal Rich Kitchens notified parents about a “Fantasy Slut League” taking place within the school. According to ABC News, this “league” is a point based competition in which male varsity athletes receive points for documenting their sexual activity with female students whom are ranked and recruited, for the most part against their knowledge. 

The responses by members of the Piedmont Unified School District have been almost as disturbing as the revelations themselves. 

The notice to PHS parents written by Kitchens and the PHS Staff  belittles the victimization of students in a way that should be judged as embarrassing and corrupt. 

“At this point, because we do not have specifics about participants or victims, our focus is on education and understanding moving forward, not discipline for past activities,” Kitchens wrote. 

Here Kitchens has accomplished something truly remarkable. In one sentence he has successfully divided those involved into two categories, neither of which allows for the possibility of a victimizer or perpetrator, summed up the systematic subjugation of students as nothing more than a “past activity”, and committed to a direction where discipline is not pursued regardless of how heinous the implications of this ordeal are. 

It is hard to imagine that the a system like the “Slut League”, in which young women are numerically ranked and young men are given points for completing sexual conquests, could be void of coercion and prosecutable acts of sexual violence.  Proof of instances like this can probably found within the documented engagements that males had to provide in order to gain points. A focus away from the past like Kitchens describes means ignoring the likely possibility that some of his students deserve justice for what lies in it. 

Unfortunately it is not even necessary to nitpick the specifics of Kitchens’ notice in order to see the embarrassing order of the PUSD’s priorities which were revealed in an ABC7 News interview with Superintendent Constance Hubbard.   

“The main thing is that I don’t want to blow this out of proportion; I don’t want to make this something that is some horrible big event that we found out about,” said Hubbard. 

It is truly amazing that anyone, let alone those in power within this school district, could call the “Fantasy Slut League” anything but horrible and big. To these supposed educators, calling the “Slut League” a blatant example of sexism which terrorizes students and eliminates the possibility of a safe educational environment would be “blowing things out of proportion”. Because they fear putting a ripple in their small community they refuse to define the situation by the pain, coercion, victimization, humiliation, inequality and injustice that students had to face. 

From the public statements made so far by the PUSD, it seems they are not even comfortable with admitting the severity of the situation. The notion that the “Fantasy Slut League” and the male varsity athletes actively violated the bodies of female students and made a mockery of consent is nowhere to be found. 

Female students have many people to fear at Piedmont High School, and they are not limited to the varsity athletes who ranked them, coerced them and called them sluts.