Parents are supposed to teach their children the basics of emotional control and how to handle confrontation, often reciting the childhood mantra, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” And for parents of boys, one unwritten rule stands out: never hit a girl– under any circumstance. But after a clip of a Georgia middle schooler body-slamming a girl classmate after she struck him first went viral, the internet is fiercely divided on the fragile line between girls keeping their hands to themselves, boys violently defending themselves and how far is too far.
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Cellphone video captured the chaos inside a Snellville Middle School classroom, about 30 minutes outside of Atlanta, from Dec. 3. At the beginning of the clip, a male student can be seen touching a girl’s hair, identified by local news channel 11 Alive as Paradise Muhammad. Why he was touching her hair is unclear, but immediately after, the girl can be seen on video slapping the eighth-grade boy in the face.
The male student, identified as Derek by his mother Adrianna Cotton to the outlet, was seen on video picking Muhammad up and body-slamming her into classroom desks.
“People were recording in the background saying, ‘Oooo.’ They were just making sound effects and stuff, nobody did nothing,” Muhammad told 11 Alive.
After the clip made its rounds online, Cotton told 11 Alive how the girl started the physical altercation. “Something was said, and after that, he just scrolled on his phone. It happened a few more times where she hit him repeatedly,” Cotton alleged.
Cotton added, “The part of the video that I showed you was the last slap that she did before he finally retaliated.” Reports claimed Muhammad’s family provided 11 Alive only the portion of the video of her being slammed to the ground. Muhammed allegedly denied hitting him.
When asked whether her son took things too far, she answered, “Absolutely not.” She continued: “And I say that because I teach my girls to keep their hands to their selves. If they were to hit a male, you know, expect to get hit back like one.” And many folks online agreed with her.
“They always show the aftermath but never show what led up to the altercation,” one person wrote on Facebook. Another mother described a similar incident with her son, writing, “equal rights equal fights.” A third Instagram user commented, “You can’t go around poking the bear and then decide how he gone fight back.”
Others say the boy’s response was inappropriate. “So she slapped him, and he basically tried to end her,” one person said. Reality star Bambi Benson from Vh1’s “Love and Hip Hop Atlanta” wrote in a post’s comments how she “would be so hurt if my son did this to a little girl.”
The Gwinnett County school district addressed the viral clip, writing in part, “To be clear, the behavior of both students is unacceptable and will not be tolerated. Striking, hitting, or physically attacking students or staff is a violation of the district’s Student Conduct Code. Both students will face appropriate disciplinary consequences based on their behavior during the entire interaction. They will be held accountable for their actions.”
11 Alive reported both Cotton’s son and Muhammed were suspended, but a Change.org petition was created to drop Muhammed’s suspension because she “did nothing wrong” and was “the victim.”
“Holding the victim of a brutal assault equally responsible sends a chilling message to students, especially girls,” the petition claimed. “It tells them that speaking up about violence, or simply being the target of it, may result in punishment.”
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