Fatima Barkatulla – Girls are Being Groomed Every Day

			So yeah, I had a very good experience at school, overall. But the things that troubled me were
things like,
		

			tell me I remember a day, when one of my best friends, I'll change her name Lucy, I'll call her
Lucy. She, she took me aside, and she said, Fatima, I really want to talk to you. And I said, Okay,
should we went into one of the classrooms, and she's, she started crying.
		

			And I was like, what was what's going on what's happening? And she said,
		

			Every day after school, that the girls would go up to a boys school, there's a boys school up the
road. And she said, we're all expected to do basically to, you know, do certain sexual favors for
the boys.
		

			And I'm,
		

			I don't want to do it. I don't want to do it. And she said, they're spreading rumors about me.
They're calling me and I had never heard of this word at that time, not in used in this context,
which is that they're calling me frigid.
		

			And they're spreading rumors about me, because I don't want to take part, you know?
		

			And I remember that was the first time because
		

			it sounds a bit strange, but I wasn't part of that culture. Do you know what I mean? I wasn't.
		

			And I think that's one of the things that, like, when you're when you're wearing a hijab, obviously,
I didn't have my face covered. But when you're dressed in a modest way, right, and dressed in the
way that I think women of God have dressed through the centuries, it tends to send a certain
message, doesn't it? Like yes, to society, and to people, you know, they, they treat you with
actually a lot of respect as well, because they kind of recognize that you're giving a certain
signal, right?
		

			So I wasn't part of that kind of culture of boys. And, you know,
		

			but also, I didn't have an insight into it until that day. And I think what she opened my eyes up to
was that although society kept telling us that women have never had it, so good, right.
		

			There was this pressure, you know, this hidden pressure, that was still there actually was probably
worse than it had ever been.
		

			To basically,
		

			take part be sexually active at a very young age, we're talking teenagers here, you know, 13. And
plus, to be very sexually active, very, very, to always put across this image of
		

			that you're not a virgin, for example, you know, that you're, you're fully like, available and
willing, you know, ready and willing.
		

			And my poor friend who she was just a lovely girl, you know, she wasn't particularly religious. She
was, you know, she was just a normal English girl. And she just wanted to be a girl. She just wanted
to go to school and just wanted to live her life. You know, and when she was ready, she could find a
partner, whatever. But what was happening is these girls, they had, I realized they had the
competition, you know, there was this competitive thing going on between the girls, but girls who
are the most promiscuous or the most kind of sexually advocate seen? Yeah, but also seem to have
done more. Do you know what I mean? Like, might have gone for bass? Yeah, right. Yes. Or
		

			experienced, I guess it would be yes. Something like that. They were kind of they had a certain
status, you know? Yes. Yeah.