Hate disguised as humour is still hate, writes Anna Caldwell, and the Knox Grammar chat scandal exposes a deeply ingrained disrespect for women and marginal groups in our society.
The Knox Grammar website sets out their noble goal: to develop students of “faith, wisdom, integrity, compassion and courage” with “sure knowledge of who they are and how they should live”.
It’s hard to imagine a mission statement more at odds with the chilling hate chat exposed on the front page of The Daily Telegraph this week.
The jokes about rape and chat that demonstrates outright misogyny, anti-Semitism, racism and homophobia should chill us all to the bone.
What is even more horrifying are a handful of comments left on the story from readers declaring these types of “chats” are likely replicated at schools around the state.
The insight into the boys’ chat room will be distressing for women, gays, Jewish people and anyone of minority.
It will be distressing for the parents of boys who themselves want to raise kind young men.
But, in truth, it should be distressing for all of us. Because what this shows is a deeply ingrained cultural disrespect for women and marginal groups.
What has been exposed is a fundamental flaw in the way these boys have been socialised in order to believe that a private chat of this nature is funny.
What has been exposed is a damning sense of entitlement. I found myself struck by the parallels on Thursday morning as two major stories on the treatment of women broke seemingly worlds apart.
Read the article by Anna Caldwell in The Daily Telegraph.