'Rape list' part of misogyny girls face at school

Dr Alex Blower, a researcher specialising in masculinity, inequality, and education, founded Boys' Impact, a UK-wide network which looks at improving opportunities for young men from working class backgrounds.

He praised the bravery of the girls for sharing their experiences and said more work needed to be done "with boys and young men to create a hopeful, values-based expectation for the type of dad, mate and romantic partner they can be".

But he said while there had been clear messaging for girls and young women about empowerment over the last 40 years, boys had been left behind.

"What we haven't done is created a parallel narrative for boys and young men surrounding what a happy, healthy, successful future looks like for them," he said.

"Instead, we've left a void, one which has been filled with nefarious online actors peddling their own narratives surrounding what a successful manhood looks like."

Blower said current interventions in schools could often start with the assumption that there was "something inherently wrong with being a boy", rather than creating conversations about the type of man they aspired to be and how they could be supported to achieve that aim.

So...boys aren't made to feel special. They're not given narratives that show what a successful future could look like for them. They turn to online misogynists to boost their feelings on inadequacy.
Because when boys (much like men) are unhappy, who do they vent that unhappiness on? You guessed it. Girls! To the point of making 'rape lists'.

Make boys happy.

Boys aren’t made to feel special……

is this a joke?

The patriarchy ensures that boys are ‘special.’

Glad to see this on BBC news. It’s so shocking that girls are being subjected to this in school on a routine basis.

So it's women's fault for not making the boys feel special enough that they need to come up with a ranking system for which girls to rape in revenge?

Oh, fuck off.

On the one hand, I agree that it is not women's job to come up with "masculinim". On the other hand, we want to end misogyny and create a safe world for women. Currently, a lot of boys and men feel threatened and look to the likes of Andrew Tate to give them direction - with catastrophic results for women and girls. So maybe women should think more about what positive masculinity could look like and who represents it?

Maybe, just maybe, men could demonstrate, to boys, what positive masculinity looks like. Maybe adult men could show boys how to treat women and girls as fellow humans.

I agree. Boys are not being taught that girls are not support humans and that they are not entitled to sex. About time they were. But a positive view of what it means to be a man would help a lot.
I am not into 'empowerment' for girls either. It mostly seems to be that you can be/do anything you want + sex positivity, which is also not a good recipe for womanhood.
Coupled with an epidemic of porn it's not surprising we have boys who think rape and anal sex are the bees knees which they are entitled to have, while girls are learning (not being taught) that anything goes with sex whether they enjoy it or not and if they don't agree they are frigid prudes.

your Post is really confusing, you say it’s not up to women, and then you say it is?
Feel threatened by what?

Their masculinity feels threatened and instead of analysing that, they react as if they are being victimised. They don't accept that their concept of masculinity is the underlying problem. For them, its core to their identity and sense of self worth.
For the boys and men who don't listen to women or respect us, we can't be role models for them. We can't find role models for them. It would be perceived as a further attack on their masculinity, We'd just be accused of feminising men and society even more than we are now.

My teenagers in NZ have witnessed/experienced the same issues at school. Many boys just talk about rape all the time, it seems – my son has mostly girl friends and avoids most boys because they disgust him. Meanwhile, my daughter's friends have been threatened with rape 'as a joke', and some of them at 14 have already had sexualised AI images made of them – and the saddest thing is, they generally just defeatedly shrug it off, because they know they can't do anything to stop it and there's no point in getting angry.

Interestingly, about 80% of the girls identify as asexual. I wonder why!

But of course, men and boys behaving badly gets turned into the fault of women and girls. They're never expected to be accountable, or take responsibility for not managing to treat women and girls with a bare minimum of decency. We're told we have to persuade and coddle them into treating women and girls like humans? It's disgusting.

In an ideal world, that's what would happen. In the real world, Andrew Tate is filling the gap.

Victims of abuse or bullying can't fix their abuser, it takes a third party to intervene.

@IwantToRetire "We're almost having 13-year-old girls being raped by 13-year-old boys," she said."

This doesn't sound like anything new. I was abused, at least twice, by schoolboys aged 13-14 when I was the same age. Not rape but finger penetration, one time it was two boys holding me down. Over 40 years ago - long before the time of boys being soaked in internet porn or the manosphere. The only difference is that back then you couldn't tell anyone.

I am very sorry this happened to you @RogueFemale .

I think there is a difference in the frequency and quality of it, compared to earlier generations.

For instance, I have never been strangled while being kissed. That seems to be the new norm - consensually and non-consensually.

Also, none of my former schools ever held a parent evening about the risks of anal sex, because they had to take several girls with anal injuries to A&E the week before. Apparently this happened at a private school in my region. If a private school goes public with something like this, the situation must be truly dire.

I think a lot of parents are very naive when it comes to what their children are up to and the pressure they under.

Shelagh Fogarty spent an hour on her LBC show yesterday - well worth a catch up listen.

So bloody depressing to wake up to this.

As for 'banter' and 'jokes', they're just words to mask cruelty. Boys do need education & good role models for sure but whose responsibility is that? Not women's.

Ours went to a girls school. That was not an accident.

When dd moved to a mixed 6th form the majority of boys were lovely. There was however a minority lionised for playing a particular sport 🙄 who carried out systematic misogynistic bullying on girls. Dd is confident so her and a few others reported it. School were horrified Head was furious head of 6th in tears hearing of the behaviour towards the girls.

What happened? Nothing. When they tried to expel / suspend them the boys parents went mad and the governing body of the sport did too. So nothing happened. Dd actually feared for her safety at one point for speaking out.

It is the boys that need to be focused on though, because they are causing the problem here. We can work on the girls being confident etc. all we like (and that's worthwhile, don't get me wrong) but I don't see how that will make the boys behave better.

It's also not particularly helpful to say, "It's not women's job to teach boys to do better." Not in the aggregate, no. But it is the job of any person, male or female, with significant responsibility for any other person's upbringing (so parents and teachers but also other key figures in children's lives) to teach them to treat others with respect. The questions are: why is that not happening (for some children, mostly boys, it would seem)? And what can be done (by those responsible for these children) so that it does happen?

Maybe men could do that instead?

What’s depressing is the girls (and nicer boys who also made statements supporting the girls) did call it out but nothing happened. Parents of boys like this get very aggressive and defensive of their son’s behaviour. That needs to change. I would die if I had a son like that.

Whenever these issues come up, you generally see comments like "well it's not X's responsibility, it's Y's responsibility". I remember reading a thread where men were combating VAWG only for some MN posters to say that it wasn't men's responsibility to stop it, instead it was the state's. I see this with all the wildfires and a lot of people shift the blame elsewhere. We live in an age of contrarianism.

A lot of these boys come from single mother households, so what man is to tell them not to be like this? The mother has responsibility in raising her son.

Schools have become more and more female dominated and we demand schools teach boys, yet at the same time women aren't supposed to teach the boys about this?

It's all very well saying that the men need to sort the problem out, but when adult men are non-existent in boys' lives, well what do you do?

The most interesting thing about the Louis Theroux documentary, was that he noticed that a lot of these manosphere sorts were lacking a father. And I know that that conclusion didn't go down well with a lot of people.

Thank you for this thread. I was appalled that my 13 yo daughter was called a “bitch” by a boy at school. This was in the context of him wanting to drink from the drinking fountain that she was drinking at. “Move over bitch.”
She didn’t find this remotely shocking and was horrified when I proposed complaining to the school. I ended up not doing anything since she begged me not to.

Yes lacking fathers, because the sperm donor has fucked the fuck off to the far sided of fuck, because they’ve realised raising children is fucking hard work and they can’t cope with women wanting equality not just in the work place but on the home front to. Let’s not blame the woman for feckless men. Can’t you see what’s wrong with your post? Once again it’s all on women to raise the kids. How about as a society we start by with holding men who have fathered children accountable and pay basic maintenance. It’s a disgrace that men can be absolved from any responsibility/ duty to their offspring by simply walking away.
A selfless man is as rare as a pink diamond and as highly sort after.