anotheranon | a frustration

Whilst working furiously along today, I chanced to overhear some of my co workers talking. One of them had a baby a few months ago, and they were comparing notes about the difficulties of raising boys vs. raising girls. I didn't participate - I know next to nothing about parenting, and I was busy besides. Still, even though it wasn't my business one of them said something that made me flinch.

The conversation turned towards teenagers and how girls become more difficult at that age because "you have to beat the boys off with a stick". Said "difficulties" arise in limiting the teenage girls movements and activities so she's safe from predatory boys, a good reason, certainly.

So, why does this bother me?

Because I've heard this so many times, and having been a teenage girl I was subject to my own parents' attempts to protect me by limiting my activities. Don't go there, or don't go after dark, or don't go alone. Better, yet, just don't go out. You'll be safe.

All these concerns started when I was around 13 or so and being harrassed at school by boys - what am I supposed to do, not get an education? Even discussions of inevitable marriage seemed to turn on "all boys are potential rapists, so you have to date and find one nice one to protect you from all the others." How is this in any way a sane strategy based on what I'd been told and experienced?

And I can't hammer my parents too hard - they meant well, and in retrospect I am grateful they were looking out for me, no matter how much it pissed me off at the time. But still:

Please, please let's not be raising more girls to rely on either their daddy or a boyfriend/husband as a bodyguard, constantly second guessing their activities out of fear! Teach them to defend themselves - some little boy pinches your ass, you slap him! And why do I never hear talk about teaching boys not to harass girls, and not to put up with their buddies doing it either?

I put forth my humble solution, humble because I know jack about being a teenage boy or raising children of any age: teach girls it's ok to slap and talk back to harassers. Teach boys not to harass in the first place. And teach boys it's ok that if a girl is being harassed to get her back if she's fighting and the boy is twice her size - even if the girl is a stranger and the boy is their best friend.

</rant off>

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Sounds like good advice to this parent. :):):)

My younger daughter,

ladyalafair, slammed a boy up against a locker and put her knee where he couldn't help but notice after he'd been popping her bra strap in the 6th grade. Curiously enough, the word got around and nobody ever harrassed her again.

Of course you're right. Both of my daughters learned about measured response to aggressive actions. It's a much better thing than the "get a boyfriend to protect you" crap.

I was never told, but figured out pretty quick in 7th grade that if you slap the boy pinching your ass, he usually won't do it again. One idiot needed to be smacked twice, but very honestly it only took a couple of these interactions before my middle school classmates left me alone for good.

I'm glad you told your daughters! My parents meant well, but they had some contradictory ideas. I could write a book, but won't - no time and I try and leave the past in the past.

I am reminded of advice given to me by a beloved Aunt on my father's side of the family. "You best learn to take care of yourself because you can't count on no man to take care of you." I took her advice to heart and had not planned to marry at all until Tim proposed.
Under my mother's second husband's roof, my sisters and I were not allowed to date, attend any after school activities, and had to be in bed by 8pm. I had one date my senior year as my parents were starting to think I'd never marry and live with them the rest of my life. I choose a college 100 miles away and went wild. Did I feel I was being protected? NO, I felt I was being imprisoned and the Warden wanted special favors if you get my drift. I learned not to trust men at all. Tim is the exception.

I'm sorry that you had such rotten experiences under your stepfather's roof, and very glad you got out :(

It's a damn shame that more girls don't learn to stand up for themselves and more boys don't learn to back off - creates a lot of tension when logically we could all be autonomous and meet as equals :(

There'd be something seriously wrong if it didn't bother you ... it certainly disturbs me.

I've never been able to figure out whether this is a generational thing or a geographic thing or an urban/rural thing or what ... if a guy in my high school had been dumb enough to try harassing a girl, he would have had no chance to lie to his buddies about the bruises she gave him, 'cause it would have been all over the school (and the town, and the villages), and he would have been ostracized by everybody. I never even HEARD of bra-snapping until I was in my late twenties ... then that suddenly became an issue.

My mother says that guys harassing/being a threat to girls was unheard of in her high school years too. And any man who tried sexual harassment at work would have learned just how painful a stiletto heel could be (while suffering from the embarassment of having the female in question be very loud about whatever he had done).

It's scary ... for some reason each new generation seems to have more gender hostility than the previous one.

IMHO, your parenting advice is the epitome of wisdom. I've got a thirteen-year-old niece and I want her to walk through the world without having to resort to paranoia (knowing my sister and brother-in-law, I've no doubts about her being taught when to deck somebody who's begging for it, but it'd be nicer if she never had to do it).

P.S. I know my two oldest nephews (aged 18 and 15) know how to behave, so I can assure you that there ARE a couple of civilized teenage boys on the continent. :-)

P.S. I know my two oldest nephews (aged 18 and 15) know how to behave, so I can assure you that there ARE a couple of civilized teenage boys on the continent. :-)

I know there are nice boys out there - teenage, and the older types as well :) I just wish there were more!

And I wish more people would look at solutions that involve curtailing bad boy behavior instead of restricting girl ordinary behavior..

It starts with how they're raised. Parents that restrict their daughters have a tendency to let their sons run wild, and I've heard many a parent (scarily enough, it's the mothers who are the worst offenders) mouthing that tired old "boys will be boys" or "well what do you expect, he's a boy", rather than disciplining bad behaviour before it grows into something nasty. :-(

D. is one of the ones that was raised right. His mother was a charter member of NOW and so he grew up with a very feminist outlook. And I can say with great confidence that he's not a pig :)

The "boys will be boys" myth bothers me a great deal because it suggests that men are physically incapable of restraining themselves, and that's a crock - it's just an excuse.

I do not know what would have happened if I'd had a brother. My parents were fairly strict but my dad was crippled by an awful double standard that my mom never completely guided him out of. While I don't think my dad would have let a son "run wild", I'm fairly sure he would have been able to go out more often, stay out later, to more places, than my sister and I were. She and I have joked that if we'd had a brother, he wouldn't have made it to drivers license age :P

I gather that my Dad tried to instate that more lenience thing for my brother (who is the youngest of four children and the only boy). Mom stood her ground and said that the same rules at the same age applied to all (my mother grew up pissed off at her mother's double standard for my uncles and went into her own marriage determined to give equal treatment to both genders of her own kids ... thank goodness).

Amen sister!

The best lesson I ever got was from a babysitter who said something about what victims look like when they walk and how not to. No one ever messed with me and they don't now either. I mean, I get the occassional, "I love you," from strange men but I'm in Uganda and it's like the construction worker thing where it's not about me but about showing off for their friends. Even in junior high no one harassed me.

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