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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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:
yorkshapudding · 18/10/2016 06:53

Tam sorry, crossed wires Blush

Oysterbabe · 18/10/2016 06:57

I was one who was held down and a hand shoved down my knickers when I was 13 and at school. It wouldn't have occurred to me to report it to anyone. I think encouraging the victims of such behaviours to speak out would be a start.

LumpySpacedPrincess · 18/10/2016 07:09

After recent events there will be a lot less women and girls reporting anything and the amount who did report was pitifully low as it was.

AndieNZ · 18/10/2016 07:22

I have teenage boys and my antenna would normally pick up on anything that is being currently done/said about them.

Where are you hearing all of this? I haven't heard anything!

BertrandRussell · 18/10/2016 07:27

Andi. As your boys how their peers talk about girls. Ask about porn use.

LumpySpacedPrincess · 18/10/2016 07:41

I don't know how anyone can be unaware of it. How can a boy grow up in our society and not absorb some part of this culture? It is everywhere, I live in a leafy 'burb and it was a problem in dd's primary school.

BertrandRussell · 18/10/2016 07:47

I think it's partly because some people can't or won't differentiate between "hideous sexual predator" and "someone who has internalised some of the awful messages about women our culture has posed on them"

RufusTheSpartacusReindeer · 18/10/2016 08:12

bertrand

Way to miss my point

As i said on another thread she was assaulted at 12, it was only "minor' but the police were involved

My point to sir was that her daughter couldn't know for definite that none of her daughters peers had been assaulted in the same way that my daughter couldn't know

My daughter doesnt even count what happened to her as assault!!!!!

Really pissed off, think i am done with this thread

LemonsAreNotTheOnlyFruit · 18/10/2016 08:20

"And OF COURSE I teach my son to be respectful of women"

And there you have it. We have to teach our sons to be respectful of women because we live in a rape culture and without explicit training to be respectful to other human beings, most of us fear our boys would turn into disrespectful .

BertrandRussell · 18/10/2016 08:20

I apologize, Rufus- I didn't read your other thread.

RufusTheSpartacusReindeer · 18/10/2016 08:33

I am sorry too bertrand

I was trying to be so polite to sir that what i was saying obviously didn't come through properly

I think that some girls dont tell their friends. I was assaulted at 13 and i certainly didnt tell anyone

I should try not to be so polite. I am not in real life

And obviously i am not done with the thread Hmm

i was going to lurk and seethe...which to be fair is my default position on mumsnet anyway

RiverTam · 18/10/2016 08:37

I think that Sir is, whatever she says, trying to cast doubt on the fact that this culture is very much alive and kicking. Your question was to cast doubt on the veracity of what a poster's DD said about so many of her girlfriends being assaulted.

Honestly? Shame on you. By taking such a stance you are a big part of the problem.

yorkshire no worries Smile.

RiverTam · 18/10/2016 08:37

Sorry, that was to Sir, not you Rufus.

Sophia1984 · 18/10/2016 08:38

I don't think it is the 'default position' that teenage boys are going round being sexually aggressive, but I can't see how a mum would know whether they were or weren't unless they were reported for it. They're hardly going to admit to it over breakfast are they?

BertrandRussell · 18/10/2016 08:46

I wish I knew why some women seem to have such a vested interest in insisting that sexism, or mysogeny, or a rape culture just don't exist. What's in it for them?

And how are we going to move forward on issues like this with so many not on board? Presumably if they don't think it exists, they don't feel they need to discuss it with their boys or to educate them about it?

RhiannasWeave · 18/10/2016 09:50

We have to teach our sons to be respectful of women because we live in a rape culture and without explicit training to be respectful to other human beings, most of us fear our boys would turn into disrespectful

^ This a thousand times over. No-one is on MN assuring everyone that they're bringing their kids up to be respectful of men. That's just assumed.

littleprincesssara · 18/10/2016 09:54

Seriously? You're chiding MN for being meanie poos about sexual predators? Hmm

Bitofacow · 18/10/2016 10:17

OK cat = pigeons time.

I find lots of teenage boys are protective of their mothers. They deliberately do not tell their mothers about conversations with friends, masturbation, swearing, porn use, attitudes to sex etc because they want to shelter their mum.

This attitude is often encouraged by fathers, "don't worry your mum about that she won't understand".

Now clearly that won't apply to anyone on MN. We all have open and honest conversations with our teenage sons.

Over the years many, many boys have said "I'd never tell my mum that".

Just a thought.

DryIce · 18/10/2016 14:05

I really don't understand this argument. Recognising a problem may exist, and that we are all part of a culture that aids and abets that problem, is not at all the same as calling all teenage boys predators.

Of course teenage boys (and teenage girls!) have healthy sexual feelings - but boys disproportionately are given unhealthy models of how to express that.

I don't think most of the world are thieves, but I still lock my doors

PunkrockerGirl · 18/10/2016 20:39

YANBU, OP.
I get totally hacked off about the way in which teenage boys are portrayed on here. Fortunately, its only on mn, not real life where this prejudice exists.
At ds1's 15th birthday, two teenage girls came up to me and said perfectly politely, "please, Mrs. Punckrocker, can we go upstairs with our boyfriends" No you fucking cannot - this came from the girls, not the boys. Said boyfriends were minding their own business with their mates listening to music and playing on the x-box.
So yes, I get unreasonably angry about the vitriol towards teenage boys on here, but thankfully, as I said, it doesn't exist irl.

CozyAutumn · 18/10/2016 20:45

At ds1's 15th birthday, two teenage girls came up to me and said perfectly politely, "please, Mrs. Punckrocker, can we go upstairs with our boyfriends" No you fucking cannot - this came from the girls, not the boys. Said boyfriends were minding their own business with their mates listening to music and playing on the x-box.

"No you fucking cannot"- Well said! Smile

BertrandRussell · 18/10/2016 20:50

"So yes, I get unreasonably angry about the vitriol towards teenage boys on here, but thankfully, as I said, it doesn't exist irl."
I
You know I don't think I have ever seen any vitriol towards teenage boys. I have seen a lot of frustration , anger and sadness about the influences on them and the culture they are having to grow up in, and discussions about how to help them navigate it......but that's a different thing.

brasty · 18/10/2016 21:34

My mum does not know I was raped as a 15 year old by another 15 year old boy, that she really liked as he was nice and polite to her.

Yakitori · 18/10/2016 21:50

Of course most teenage boys are all right. But it only takes a minority to cause a sexual harassment problem in a school. There were probably only 1 or 2 in each year (in a large school) who were a problem to that degree. But there were 2/3 or more in every lesson I had who would show off, be loud and disruptive, generally take over the lessons and waste everyone's time. I just thought school was like that at the time but it certainly doesn't have to be.

RufusTheSpartacusReindeer · 18/10/2016 21:51

Where is the vitriol

And surely there is about a 75% chance of posters on here having a boy

75% of us can't hate our precious little angels

And before anyone yells at me i am shit with percentages and i have precious little angels...if your boys are little gits thats hardly my fault

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