To be worried about teenage boys?

[Summerisicumenin]

I am a HLTA in a secondary school. Naice area, very well thought of school and all that.

Teenagers seem to think that adults are all hard of hearing, and because I'm working over a range of classes, I often hear some "interesting" conversations.

Recently, however, I have been struck by the attitudes that seem fairly common amongst the boys.

For example, in the last few weeks I've heard the following, all from different groups of boys chatting in class

• a conversation on how stupid feminists are, discussion of an anti feminism YouTube video they all seem to have watched and swallowed whole, how feminists are thick, stupid, whores.
• one boy was talking about his mother - she earns 40k a year in a responsible, professional role. We are far from London and this is a very good wage in our area. Her son informed his friends that she was a lazy bitch, her wage was pathetic, and she was stupid for working for anything under 70k.
• porn videos they have watched
• one boy got a girlfriend. She allowed him to "finger her". On discovering her pubic hair, he told her "that's disgusting, shave it off". Loud agreement from his friends.
• discussion of a local news story about breastfeeding. Agreement that it's disgusting and women shouldn't do it in public.
• once or twice when a nearby girl has attempted to join the conversation she is jeered at and told to shut the fuck up.
• people on benefits mocked

These are all specific examples. If I were to list the throwaway comments regarding women and girls, I'd be here all day.

On top of this, I've noticed an increasingly dismissive attitude to female members of staff, and in class it's almost always boys who are rude, disrupt the class, and shout down other pupils.

Girls rarely speak in class. When they chat amongst themselves, it is normal stuff about their day, whereas many of the boys have a default attitude of furious and critical.

I don't want it to seem as though I have a downer on boys - I absolutely don't. I've encountered many more who are absolutely delightful young men, and a joy to work with. However it seems as though a significant and growing minority of boys are incredibly angry, rigid and sexist in their thinking, especially around women. I can't help but think a lot of it is down to porn. I don't remember hearing boys speak like that when I was a teenager, and if I did I would have challenged it. I had just as many male friends as female.

It worries me that these boys will become men in a few years, men with views that I thought were outdated long ago, and nobody is challenging them. Or helping them for that matter, because they don't seem very happy either

I think, for the sake of girls at least, grown women have a duty to speak up. It might not make the boys change their mind, but at least the girls know that you will not just tolerate this nonsense. It gives them something to look up to, even if at the time they might think you're just being a boring old hag, at least when they grow up, they might think that you had their back.

"The worst, most dangerously misogynistic online groups hate porn as well as hating women."

I think this depends on your definition of "worst". Yes, there are some evangelical hard right conservative groups (especially in the States) who absolutely meet your description. But there's also a new band of libertarian alt-righters who take a much more liberal attitude towards porn, and still hate women - quite a few "incels" fall into this (though some also abjure porn too). However, I think you're right that "porn" isn't a cause of this - a rather different set of online groupings are far more to blame.

Sexist remarks should be deemed as serious as racist remarks and punished accordingly. This issue needs to be tackled head on and not tolerated. If I were a head teacher, I would tackle this issue in PSHE for all years and then issue a warning to everyone that remarks of this sort will be punished.

I totally agree. OP, please speak to the head teacher about this.

This sounds dreadful and helps me continue in my belief that same-sex schools are much better for adolescents.

I went to an all-girls' school - boys were like creatures from another planet. Now of course, we know they're from another planet which is an increasingly horrible one.

With my difficult hair and bad skin I sometimes wonder how much worse my teenage years could have been if I'd had to put up with this crap as well. I just hope that these ghastly specimens get 'what for' if and when they eventually grow up and go out into the real world where I hope they work under female bosses who aren't afraid to put these little shits straight.

Proper grown-up mature men are quite wonderful creatures but these youngsters are enough to send you to a nunnery.

How on earth are same-sex schools going to solve the problem of the indoctrination of young boys by these forums and Youtube videos? If anything, a male-only environment is going to exacerbate the problem. There is no way of getting around this other than proper education about the personhood and dignity of members of the female sex!

It's not a 'passing phase' for all of these boys either. There are plenty of grown men in these misogynistic groups.

pig but why should girls' education suffer in order to help these boys grow up?

It's been shown time and time again that girls do far better in single sex environments. No wonder why if boys are carrying on like this.

Call them out on it. Every. Single. Time. If it's about porn / sex, it's inappropriate in a classroom and needs to stop. Pass onto HoYs the bad attitudes to body hair / porn and hopefully this can be tackled in PSHE / sex ed lessons or even tutor time. Anything else, depending on whether it's relevant (obviously if not, again it's inappropriate and needs to stop), could be challenged and you could present them with facts, a different viewpoint etc. to make them think. I think it's important to do this to both remind them who is in charge and to role model to the girls that you don't just have to sit back and take their shit.

Well the would offer girls respite whilst the problem was solved. I went to an all girls upper school 13-18 and strangely misogyny and sexual harrassment were not part and parcel of getting an education there.

I'm pregnant with a boy and this is my single biggest fear. It's so utterly depressing.

Not just girls though. A lot of young men/boys/teenagers do not like current porn and are very uncomfortable with it as it doesn't equate with how they want their personal sexuality to evolve.

"pig but why should girls' education suffer in order to help these boys grow up?"

I'm not going into the positives and negatives of single-sex education here. What I will say is that this isn't a male problem versus a female problem. I can't tell you how much these attitudes are on the rise in adult men. I teach undergraduates, and I am disturbed at the rapid rise of alt-right politics amongst men on campus: these attitudes are now prevalent amongst students too. I'm afraid that this is now so widespread that it's not something you can 'protect' girls from until the boys outgrow a young teen phase - it's far deeper and more serious than that.

My daughter is in an all girls school for this reason.

It seems like parents have so little control or influence over what kids are exposed to these days, and porn culture has got so much worse

"it doesn't equate with how they want their personal sexuality to evolve"

By the time they realise this it's often too late

(sorry, that was poorly worded - I should have been clearer: what I meant to say was that this is a problem that extends beyond a narrow teen age range, and that girls and women of all ages are affected).

Not all of them Squirrel

All my three children went to same sex schools. Two girls and one boy.

I used to be in favour of single sex schools until I had experience of them.

Surely some if it is learnt behaviour, as in the boy calling his mum a lazy bitch for not earning enough, that underlying belief comes from his home life - you would think

pig but why should girls' education suffer in order to help these boys grow up? recent studies have shown that girls are psychologically better off in co-ed schools splitting them into separate schools is definitely not the answer and is not better for girls or boys

www.irishtimes.com/news/education/the-problem-with-all-girls-schools-1.3399028

pig but again, it doesn't make any sense that teenage girls should suffer in order to help these idiots be better people. You're not just delaying the inevitable by dividing them into sexes. If anything, maybe girls being able to express themselves freely and study without people talking about their tits or their pubes or whatever would mean that they would grow into women who were more confident and that they would feel more able to confront this kind of twattery.

dulra that article says they suffer from more exam stress, which is probably due to most single sex schools being private rather than because they are single sex.

I'm pregnant with a boy and this is my single biggest fear. It's so utterly depressing.

I’m also pregnant but we don’t know the sex. I must admit I’m terrified of raising a boy in this world. Presumably no parents would think their sons would be the ones to behave like this. It’s scares me that it’s clearly outside parental control. You’d like to think they’d carry the values they’re raised with at home but im not sure that’s the case now, the world of the internet is so all consuming for young people.

ThisIsTheFirstStep It is based on the Irish system where the majority of public schools are same sex. it is really hard to find co-ed schools here

I don't think it's about girls helping boys to be 'better people', though. I think that's the mistake. What I'm saying is that I don't think it's possible to protect young girls from this problem with same-sex education: they'll encounter it online, they'll encounter it in certain boys they do meet, and it'll be waiting with teeth when they go to university. I think the argument therefore swings both ways: is it better to allow girls a protected space in which to grow up, with the view to making them stronger and more able to deal with this when they are older at a later date, or is that just cloistering them and actually equipping them poorly with the skills they need to defend themselves, which are often learned in practical interactions?

durla Oh I didn't realise it was from the Irish papers.

Still, I have read many studies saying that girls do better/are more confident in single sex schools, so just one saying contrary doesn't seem to be saying too much.

(Behind this - I think there are many sets of skills that are learned at school, only some of which are tested in exams. Those that are not

• and particularly those associated with what I'd call "savvy" - tend to be underrated and underappreciated by the middle classes in my experience, perhaps increasingly so).