Please or to access all these features

Add post

Watch this thread

Save thread

Start a new thread

Flip thread

Hide thread

My feed

Active Unanswered threads

Getting started FAQ's

Unanswered threads Acronyms Talk guidelines

Hide shortcut buttons

Talk

AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Flip

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Original poster

To be a bit sick of constantlyse reading about how awful teenage boys are?

189 replies

lostoldlogin2 · 17/10/2016 13:01

Recently it seems to be a constant theme that girls need to effectively be protected from teenage boys.....and the comments are sweeping. The suggestion seems to be that boys are constantly being terribly sexually aggressive to girls. I teach in Spain. Now I teach primary but before I was teaching secondary.....and this really wasn't a theme.....barely happened at all...the kids just got on with life and did all the normal boyfriend/girlfriend type stuff in an age appropriate way....talk of groups of 15 year old boys holding down girls and touching them, "hounding " girls for sex, grabbing their breasts and vulva in the school corridors?????? Never saw it.....and if it had happened it would have been seriously shocking. I do not know....it seems as if boys are being painted as monsters. I have a son and another son in the way.....it makes me sad to hear the constant vilification of male CHILDREN.

OP posts:

MoonfaceAndSilky · 17/10/2016 13:07

I totally agree with you. I have 3 boys and they are definitely not like this. I also have a 15 yr old dd and she hasn't been constantly hounded by all these depraved monsters

There are quite a lot of man/boy haters on mn though

JellyBelli · 17/10/2016 13:09

You havent seen that on this forum, so why pot it here? Take it up with the people that post it.
If people are concerned about violence towards their daughters such as unsolicited dick pics and demands for naked pics, then telling them that you have nice boys isnt much help.

FlabulousChic · 17/10/2016 13:14

I have two boys five years apart, never had no problem with them at all, they are kinda geeks, stayed in all the time, computing. They are 28 and 23 now, and fantastic kids, an absolute credit, both have a Masters in Maths, never been much of drinkers, never too drugs, loved their home. But I dont believe in children growing up too fast. I was also a single parent.

Boundaries · 17/10/2016 13:15

Where are are you seeing this?

FlabulousChic · 17/10/2016 13:15

Neither of mine had girlfriends until they went to Uni.

RhiannasWeave · 17/10/2016 13:15

PickAChew · 17/10/2016 13:16

It doesn't need to be all boys and it isn't all boys.

I had the misfortune of being on a bus with a particular group, a few weeks ago, though. Both ways. On the way there, they were bad enough- arrogant, seat hogging, giving off a pretty threatening vine and making ample use of some quite unpleasant turns of phrase. I'm not easily intimidated, but did find them threatening enough to feel uncomfortable.

On the way back, there were some girls on the bus and they were downright disgusting - sexist, homophobic and really quite loud and strutting in their manner. They were clearly intimidating to other male students, too because everyone their age or female gave them a wide berth.

RhiannasWeave · 17/10/2016 13:17

talk of groups of 15 year old boys holding down girls and touching them, "hounding " girls for sex, grabbing their breasts and vulva in the school corridors?????? Never saw it.....

I've never seen anyone be raped.

I've never seen anyone be murdered.

I've never seen anyone be mugged.

I've never seen anyone be beaten up.

Doesn't mean it doesn't happen though does it

Dontpanicpyke · 17/10/2016 13:18

Never heard this and been s parent for 27 years. Have both boys and girls and they all respectful and good kids. Excellent parents too.

RhiannasWeave · 17/10/2016 13:19

talk of groups of 15 year old boys holding down girls and touching them, "hounding " girls for sex, grabbing their breasts and vulva in the school corridors?????? Never saw it.....

We need to believe young women when they tell us (whoever 'us' is, teachers, parents, society as a whole) these things and your horrible comment here doesn't sound supportive of that.

RiverTam · 17/10/2016 13:21

This thread will fill up with individuals talking about how great their induvidual sons are and they would never do this, whilst completely failing to see the bigger picture. Happens every time, completely stifling debate.

I agree with Rhianna completely. Just because this isn't your experience doesn't mean it isn't happening.

usual · 17/10/2016 13:23

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

MoonfaceAndSilky · 17/10/2016 13:24

I agree with Rhianna completely. Just because this isn't your experience doesn't mean it isn't happening.

Of course it happens but there is no need to vilify all teenage boys, which is what seems to be happening more and more lately.

NoMoreGrimble · 17/10/2016 13:27

Sorry, but it happened to me at my secondary school and went on for a year or so. I was 12 and very naive. I wasn't the only one it happened. The school did nothing and I was too embarrassed to tell my parents. This was in the early 80s.

RhiannasWeave · 17/10/2016 13:27

It's not vilifying all teenage boys; it's drawing attention to the fact that all men and teenage boys have huge amounts of privilege by virtue of their maleness. An accusation of inappropriate touching at school will result in girls being asked whether they're telling the truth, what they were wearing and what they did to provoke them rather than men and boys being asked why they feel girls' bodies are public property.

ALL men and teenage boys benefit from that privilege. It doesn't mean at all that all men or boys will rape or sexually assault. Most won't. But it does mean that those who do are more likely to be believed, excused and get away with it.

usual · 17/10/2016 13:28

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

RhiannasWeave · 17/10/2016 13:30

It doesn't need to be every single boy though does it? It only needs to be one boy 'doing' the assaulting and a general culture of misogyny and silence which means nothing gets done about it. Of course not all boys at the school will have been like it.

madein1995 · 17/10/2016 13:31

In my experience not ALL teenage boys sexually assault teenage girls, in fact I would say the majority don't. But the amount of boys who harass/make girls uncomfortable is greater than the number of girls doing that to boys. In my school alone, I've had a boy grope me and try and harass me for sex. The majority of boys didn't. Lots of boys liked 'winding girls up' though - read: making uncomfortable. Shouts of 'suck my dick' etc. I hated that kind of laddish ness. Hated even more that the way to shoot it down was to challenge them, to tell them 'to get it out then', even in school us girls knew we had to act confident and with bravado to get them to stop that kind of talk. While not all teen boys do this obviously, the society we live in makes boys think this type of thing is acceptable and makes girls accept this kind of behaviour on the main part. Is not helped by teachers telling boys to 'stop being so silly' and that was it. Also, just because you've never seen it op doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.

NoMoreGrimble · 17/10/2016 13:32

No of course not! But it wasn't an isolated incidence and it wasn't just one or two boys. It was sustained and horrible. Maybe it was another one of those 80s attitude things that it wasn't dealt with.

Original poster

lostoldlogin2 · 17/10/2016 13:33

It is the general vilification of boys that I don't like. It's horrible and nasty and counterproductive. It is relevant that I don't hear or see this happening given that I work in a school whereas to read some of the comments on some threads here you would think that boys are on a constant sexual rampage. My comment isn't horrible....some of these attitudes to boys are though.

OP posts:

RhiannasWeave · 17/10/2016 13:37

You're using the logic of n=1 which is counter-productive.

I live on a street.

Apparently people get murdered on streets.

I've never seen anyone getting murdered on my street but it's relevant that I live on a street.

Also, you don't see everything that your pupils get up to and what they say to each other.

Either way, your individual experience is irrelevant, we're talking about a culture of tolerance towards male violence not individual people's experiences of that violence or not.

SukeyTakeItOffAgain · 17/10/2016 13:38

OP you have the wrong end of the stick I think. It's not that people feel girls need protecting from this stuff. It's wanting it not to happen in the first place so they don't need protecting from it.

RhiannasWeave · 17/10/2016 13:40

And that's the crux of it really.

Most people who you would understand as vilifying young men are drawing attention to the inherent misogyny of male privilege and a culture in which sexual harassment is rendered invisible by it's ubiquity. They are absolutely not commenting on individual men. Yet threads like these fill up with people assuring us that their partner, son, friend, dad wouldn't rape or that they've never seen sexual harassment despite working in a school, which completely and utterly misses the point.

I'm hiding this thread now. It's far too depressing.

CozyAutumn · 17/10/2016 13:40

Teenage boys have always been seen as sex-mad predators on MN. People don't realise that teenage girls also choose to engage in sexual activity and are very happy to do so. I've been a teenage girl myself and knew lots of other teenage girls when I was one so I know what they are like. Just because I had sex as a teenage girl it doesn't automatically mean it was forced by the boy. It wasn't. And it isn't forced on many others either.

It said a lot on here when a fucking 6 year old boy was branded a predator for looking at a girl when they were getting changed for PE. Do people not realise that girls look at boys as well at that age?

Original poster

lostoldlogin2 · 17/10/2016 13:40

My point is that it see.some to me that people speak as if the majority of teenage boys are behaving in this way when in fact it is surely a tiny minority.

OP posts:

Flip

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8