E-Mentors?

In my last blog I talked about peer pressure girls undergo physically in junior highs and high schools across the nation and compared them to the peer pressure girls now undergo though the “Virtual High School” in social networking online. In one of the comments, someone talked about mentor programs that had older girls mentor the younger girls. For example, high school girls are paired up with junior high girls or girls in college are mentoring high school girls. I agree that this is an effective way to give girls someone to look up to and talk about things that they feel they cannot talk about with older adults like parents or teachers. There are places online that do just that. There is a website called gURL.com that serves as an online chat room for girls with questions they feel more comfortable asking in a more anonymous setting and with girls they feel they can relate to. In one of our books required for class, Instant Identity, it says “girls need safe spaces…outside of the traditional spaces where girls interact with the larger culture…They need spaces where they can know what they know and try new identities without self-censoring. Without safe spaces, girls will not be fully able to discover who they are and who they would like to become.”

This is a very good site for girls to express themselves, and they can do it anonymously if they would like. However, unlike the mentoring programs that are monitored by faculty in actual school settings, gURL.com and others like it are not monitored for things that are posted in reply to girls’ questions. I have visited gURL.com and I found some disturbing posts. While people were willing to give advice and try to help the other girls, a lot of the comments in the sexuality blog were very provocative and more sexual than helpful. I am not the person who believes girls shouldn’t have sex because it is unfeminine, but I am not sure how I feel about girls in the 7th grade reading about different sex positions or telling the girl to be proud about giving an hour long blow job. So while I commend such a place online for girls to be able to talk freely, I question whether this gURL.com is such a “safe place.”

As you can see, there are many pros and cons to “mentor” chat sites.