I WILL tell my daughter to moderate her behaviour...

It's also blatantly linked to the huge amounts of violent porn that teen boys are exposed to. Teenage girls are being pressured into anal sex and threesomes, which was unheard of when I was a teenager. Porn has been such a destructive influence.

its never the victims fault but bad men do often look for certain things in their victims, and being able to blame and shame them is one of those things.

Those of us who are the parents of boys really need to step up. Sorry if people don’t want to hear this, but we do.

We do. I have two boys and yup, they’re only tiny now but I will sure as hell be raising them to treat women properly, and to respect physical and other boundaries.

And OP I agree with you. As long as you’re saying (which I’m sure you are) ‘you shouldnt need to do this, you should be able to live freely but in the current climate..’

We need to educate boys AND girls to respect each other and see each other as fellows, not objects. The ‘pants’ campaigns (and ‘stop! My body!’ Where I live) is a great start. It puts the idea of boundaries in from the start.
As they get older I suppose I will use situations/TV/the news as discussion points. Talk about what’s happening, ask them their opinions, give them different viewpoints, challenge any behaviours or attitudes that sneak in.
I will be open about bodies and sex in an age appropriate way - when the time comes we will have the talk about porn.

I’m very happy to hear any other tips or techniques others have for raising boys who are decent human beings. I hope dh and I model respect and equality in the home but there’s always more to be learned.

Im having a bit of a struggle as 14 year old dd likes to wear her skirt shorter than I'd like. She has sensitivity issues. I want to say wear your skirt longer as I don't want males perving over you but it sounds too much like victim blaming to me. She knows I want it longer and why but I just feel I handled it wrong. I can't recall what was said but I'm sure it will come up again when she has new year 11 uniform. School allowed the pupils to vote and they went from skater skirts to a short and clingy one.

FWIW I took very little precautions and was fine.

Twice I was raped it was in broad daylight by men I knew and trusted.

Most men are fine - I am a bit fatalistic about this stuff probably. If it's going to happen it's going to happen, so why not have a good time.

Certainly the police and wider society care little about women and children (rotherham, telford etc) being victims of sex crimes.

It's intractible isn't it.

Earlier I was thinking, so maybe if all women just say, we're not socialising with men any more. Enough. But that's never going to work, is it.

Exactly formerbabe. So much emphasis for girls on being "nice". Its hard to turn that off right until the moment you are sexually harassed.

OP I totally get you. I wish we had freedom and could teach our girls they do but the reality is they don't. Todays verdict shows that and we have to protect ourselves and those we love. If all girls turned inwards stuck with other girls and refused to engage with or attend parties with men like that, then what would they do?

I’m with you OP. I don’t want to have to teach my daughters to be fearful, but i’ll Teach my son how to be a decent human being so that other people’s daughters have nothing to fear from him.

The problem is that women and girls have always taken steps to "protect themselves" and men still find ways to rape them.

I think the real lesson here is not to report. With all that goes on in the UK I do wonder if this is a deliberate message.

I have daughters in their teens and twenties.

I get what you're saying OP, and I get why. The depressing thing is that I know my fun-loving, party-girl, nightclub-frequenting 19 year old won't listen to me saying any of that, because that's the thing about being 19 and fun-loving and all the rest of it. They live for the moment. It's never going to happen to them. Chill, mother, it's fine.

I totally sympathise with all the statements in your opening post, but I know that if I told my dd that she will get a reputation she'll find hard to shake if she has too many sexual partners, all that will happen is she'll stop sharing details of her life with me. The same with clothing - she won't change what she wears to fit my perception of what makes her safe. Me telling her to do that will only drive a wedge between us, and will very likely make it impossible for her to tell me if anything bad did happen to her.

I will draw her attention to the Ulster case. I'll express my utter disgust with the system and the way it treats young women. And I'll leave her to draw her own conclusions and decide for herself whether she needs to modify her behaviour.

Bertrand, could you outline what parents of boys need to do differently that I might not be doing now? I'd hope that I'd be raising them to be part of the solution, not part of the problem.

I also think it's massively important to teach girls that they don't have to be polite or a people pleaser. So many women especially young women feel like they can't assert themselves because they have been socialised to be accomodating and nice and polite. I remember when i was 20 being bothered on the bus by this much older man. I actually remember feeling sorry for him and that I must be polite and feeling guilty because maybe he was lonely. Now I'm older...I'd view it so differently.

“I have a DD and a DS. I'll be teaching both how to keep themselves safe. I'd rather the onus was on others not to cause harm but I can't change society..”

Well, you can, actually. Those of us who are the parents of boys need to raise them differently because the way we’ve been doing it up to now is not working. That is how we change society.

@BertrandRussell I am very aware of my responsibility to teach my boys to respect women and their boundaries. And to be perfectly frank it is not that difficult to do. I've found the tea video very helpful re consent but mostly we talk about everything and anything in this area from relationships to porn to society's double standards to STDs to how much fun sex can be (they really hate this one).

This list is far from complete of course and I don't think we'll ever stop talking to the boys about the need to respect women's boundaries.

My DDs are learning karate and have been since before they were 5. Very heartened last week that DD1 (9) was being taught how to get out of a strong grip, how to not get pulled away and how to get out of an aggressive shove.

It's one part of the toolkit I hope to equip them with.

We had an internet issue a week ago where someone, having already asked and been told her age, asked her to join a chat room to talk about 'under wears'. The 9 year old was sat next to me and was 'errr Mum...' I typed an explanation about who I was and how I would be reporting him (which I did). I checked through her chat and she'd followed the give no identifying information rule and I congratulated her on her response. We further discussed internet safety with both her and my 7yo.

She was shaken though, and mentioned it at school to her friends who play the same game. One of the safeguarding teachers called me to check what had happened (and make sure that I did know) and was happy with how we deal with things. A little more trust left my children that day, and it's a shame that this is A GOOD THING.

Hate that I have to teach them how to be safe but not going to stop.

I will certainly be advising my teenage DS that he should not be socialising with anyone who refers to girls or women as sluts.

Absolutely. We really shouldn't have to, but the reality is that we do have to teach our girls how to stay safe.

We shouldn't have burglars but we still have to lock our doors.

I agree OP. It’s one thing having feminist principles but the sad fact is that most of the world is yet to get catch up. The pessimist in me wonders if it ever will as some men are just innately misogynistic. There’s no way I would want my DD to risk her safety to make a point.

It needs to be about the boys. I have had countless arguments about secondary PSHE which emphasises "educating girls" but does little to address the casual misogyny of many teenage boys. Too many teachers just do not get it. It infuriates me.

Oh wow, okay. Gosh, I completely understand why you would feel that way.

But I won't be teaching anything to my daughter that I won't be teaching to my son. Neither should be around men who think that way about women, because those are dangerous people to associate with. And arseholes. Underwear is optional, outfits are for the wearer. Fuck what people think, but be aware they may want to act on it; consider whether you care. I will tell them that neither should be walking home in dimly lit areas. I will pick them both up after the pub.

Perhaps that makes me the shit feminist, I don't know. I guess we're all just doing the best we can.

I have a DD and a DS. I'll be teaching both how to keep themselves safe. I'd rather the onus was on others not to cause harm but I can't change society...all I can do is teach my own children to respect others and how to avoid those who may want to harm them.

If I had a dd, I would no doubt teach her these things - with the caveat that she shouldn't need to know all this, that it's shit that she does, and that it's something that everyone should be trying to change. But that until things are better, she has to be able to take care of herself. But most importantly of all I would teach her that even if she does everything 'right' she may still end up being hurt - and that if that does happen, whatever the circumstances, it will categorically not be her fault.

As it is I have a DS, so I will be raising him to be the sort of man who is part of the solution (as will his father, who is a good example for him and of course just as responsible as me for raising him).

It's shit, but I firmly believe that you have to live in the world that we have, alongside fighting for something better.

Those of us who are the parents of boys really need to step up. Sorry if people don’t want to hear this, but we do.

Agree. Women need to protect themselves now. The law will not help. Their rapists will get away with it. The whole system is getting worse, not better. We can help our friends by not leaving them alone in risky situations.
It’s all well and good saying we should be teaching men not to rape, but that is not exactly working is it? The press seems to do nothing but write about ‘false accusations’. Saw a tweet where someone said that the men in her nearly all-male office CHEERED when the verdict was announced on the radio. Men, more now than ever, know they can get away with it.