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

boys will be boys.

This sums up so much that is wrong with the prevailing attitudes towards boys. I hear it said in schools when boys fight, when they don't like literacy, when they don't like books, when a million one things happen and it really, really annoys me. It just sends the message to boys that being a boy excuses all manner of things so is it any wonder that some boys think it is OK to behave however they damn well like and to hell with what anybody thinks of them?

My teenage boy is generally lovely, though he does have a tendency to call me an idiot when I want him to get out of bed in the mornings. We're working on that one.

I am nearly 40 so was at co-Ed secondary school 22-29 years ago.

There were boys then who talked about girls in a sexual way. I heard things I never knew existed. I remember boys asking for BJs and having no clue what they meant. I also remember boys openly groping girls when they walked past - boobs and crotch grabbing was commonplace. The weird thing was nobody complained, we probably laughed. I'm not saying we enjoyed it, far from it but it was so normalised it didn't really register as being terrible.

At least now I'm sure that wouldn't be tolerated. Hopefully?? The sex chat is just boys the world over surely? I can remember boys talking openly about girls in very crude language. Horrible but not unusual. I hated that and it's one of my main reasons for hopefully sending my DD to a girls only school. The low-level disruption created by boys in classrooms is so tedious, it impacted on my school days definitely and I don't want my DD to have to put up with it.

Even at her nursery it's the boys who dominate, hog the toys, shout loudest and push the girls around.

The anti-feminist thing in the OP is worrying and should be challenged every time any of us hears it. It's particularly concerning that feminist messages are clearly not being pushed hard enough within the school.

I have heard teenage girls say breastfeeding is wrong and gross and weird. It's precisely why breastfeeding women should be as out and proud as they feel they can be - young people need to see it around them for it to feel normal and not shameful when their own turn comes.

And I have two sons as well so I am very pro-boys and think they are mostly wonderful. But their behavior is completely different from girls, they learn differently and they socialise differently. I don't think we need to manage them to become more like girls at all, but they must know that they need to be respectful and not dominate. That's not emasculating them.

Sad and scary, OP, and I completely agree with you. Porn. It had exacerbated sexism, misogyny and violence against women to a degree we are only just starting to realise. The fear is that it's too late for an entire generation of young men.

*has

100% porn, yes.

All the shaved vulvas that women proclaim to be so lovely and clean and fabulous - porn, porn, porn. Don't kid yourselves.

There's a world of difference between saying that it's OK to harass 11 year old boys (which no-one has said) and saying that there is a structural, "socio-cultural", and gendered problem with violence and misogyny in wider society. This does NOT mean that all men are involved in the worst excesses of 4chan's /pol/ board, rape culture, PUA or incel resentment. But it does mean that most men benefit from being part of a society in which they don't have to consider gendered exclusion or gendered violence in the same way as most women do. My husband, who is absolutely lovely and a feminist ally par excellence, can still go running in the park after dark without any fear. I can't. (Does this mean that violence against men doesn't happen? Of course not. Again, we are talking about structural features and statistical averages, broad tendencies and broad flows of power).

Mumsnet is basically one giant argument for more social sciences teaching in schools. The lack of understanding of even the basics of structure in relation to agency is appalling. I'd expect some of these teenagers we're talking about to be more aware than this by GCSE level.

And, as PPs have already said on this thread, porn really is only a tiny piece of a bigger problem.

Porn is not 'a tiny piece'. It is polluting the minds of an entire generation of young men. It informs and moulds their views about sex and about women. It is highly addictive. It puts huge pressures on young girls and women to look and act a certain way and to do things they are uncomfortable with.

RTFT tulips.

pig really? I would say most MNers are pretty clued up on society and its structures, but I would also say that acting as if people are far far stupider than you and need to be educated is not a great way to get your point across.

just the whole shaving thing just about passed me by, at 38, I'm right on the cusp of the generation for whom it is an absolute necessity. When I was at university, it was considered a bit weird to shave everything off. Now it is seen as a basic piece of maintenance.

Not sure who I fear for more, my son or my daughter.

pig.

I agree. This isn’t same old same old. It’s worrying. And ruining our kids. Both boys and girls.

One thing which I think is a contributing factor (although certainly not the whole story) is the demasculisation of boys and men. I think there is a tendency and a trend to assume boys and girls are the same, and an assumption that feminine behaviour is good behaviour. I believe boys are rebelling against this but in a totally extreme, unstructured, unsupervised way. If think maybe they should be taught, encouraged and allowed to express their masculinity in a responsible manner.

@pigmcpigface & @TulipsInAJug I think you actually agree with each other so let's not get unnecessarily snippy eh?

I'm more worried about some PP thinking this is about hating/blaming teenage boys which is not the point at all.

I think it will be a harder task in this society AS A PARENT to raise my boys responsibly than it will be to empower / protect my girls. That's why I'm so scared that I'm having a boy now. But the consequences and impact are definitely worse for girls. And it the problem has got much worse due to porn. Culture Reframed is a great resource, they also have a parents program.

@pigmcpigface totally agree with your post on structure.

I think society HAS transgressed in terms of make/female equality and attitudes towards it.

But I also think it extends to other topics such as racism.

In the main I blame the rise of the internet and social media, people are exposed to far more information and it's usually the extreme ends of the opinion spectrum we're exposed to.

It's made us regress, I think it will improve again but it will take time.....

I started a thread recently about raising boys-there are some very interesting thoughts on it.

I think it will be a harder task in this society AS A PARENT to raise my boys responsibly than it will be to empower / protect my girls.

Very much this!!! It's honestly one of the biggest worries to me, not so much raising him with the right values because I think they learn from what they see at home, but how to I tackle things/what do I say when he comes home and says "X in my class says girls are stupid, they can't do the things boys can and he says his Dad says so too..."

I think it will be a harder task in this society AS A PARENT to raise my boys responsibly than it will be to empower / protect my girls.

I don't personally agree with this. I only have sons so its a theoretical point, but I can't imagine anything much harder than trying to protect girls, because their safety is so dependent on the behaviour of others.

the parenting boys thread

Just "The low-level disruption created by boys in classrooms is so tedious, it impacted on my school days definitely and I don't want my DD to have to put up with it."

yes. I remember this very well and it was so incredibly obvious to me that it was boys and that it was considered the teacher had to spend half their class time managing it. I know some people are massively against single sex education but this is one reason why I'm in favour of it.

though I admit freely I don't know how classes of boys only are managed..?

I do sense things are getting worse, yes. I presume it's because boys are shown porn etc, and porn has gotten more violent and contains a lot of no consent...plus this inane "boys will be boys" attitude.

I don't get why it's allowed to continue. Is it just that so many boys would be excluded from school? I don't know what happens after schools exclude you?

"The low-level disruption created by boys in classrooms is so tedious, it impacted on my school days definitely and I don't want my DD to have to put up with it."

As I said upthread I went to an all girls upper school and I can assure you there was plenty of low level disruption there. Right up until we were setted for O levels most of my time was spent hunkered up trying deseperately to concentrate whilst the same piss-takers "entertained" us all. Single sex grammars may not have this problem (don't know), but single sex comprehensives certainly do.

My solution for my boys was to pick a (comprehensive) school where low level disruption is not tolerated, regardless of sex.

It's not as simple as disruption vs no disruption. It's also about dominating classroom participation, debate etc.

" can't imagine anything much harder than trying to protect girls, because their safety is so dependent on the behaviour of others."

Yes I get where you are coming from and agree but what I was trying to get at was in terms of the influence that you as a parent have, I'm much more daunted by the responsibility of trying to raise a boy right in this society, than I am by the task of educating my daughter in feminism etc. I'm still more fearful for the safety of my daughter, of course.

Don't worry, real life boys are a very different species to the mn version of boys.

That would actually depend what kind of area you live in. I live on a council estate and the boys are awful. My DD got slapped on the arse by a 9yr old she walked past a year or so ago. Shouted comments about her body are common too.

It was not like this when I was at school, it's much worse. I have a son who is 19 and I constantly pull him up on his attitude and the way he speaks to his gf, I didn't raise him like that but it's how all his peers are.