Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. Only the apps you allow.

Meet the Other Phone.
Only the apps you allow.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

Devastated DS dealing with lad banter dissing me, his mum !

76 replies

ohnolostmymojo · 18/05/2018 21:07

Hi there, long time lurker first time poster.
14 yr old DS has become a little recluse, not wanting to go to school or go out with friends etc ..... After a lot of chatting, heart to heart, DS confided in me to state his ‘friends’ are actually saying derogatory things about me. These are boys I have known for years and I know their parents. Apparently it’s lads banter gone too far based on you tube/ comedy show, but I am devastated. Personally I want to face these boys with their parents and say to my face what have they been saying. BUT , my DS has confided in me and has said he will deal with it. I don’t want to go against his confidence and I am pleased and proud he spoke to me. On the outside I am saying that I am thankful I know what’s been happening and also that it isn’t about him directly. Inside I am gutted.

I would really appreciate any advise regarding how to manage this conflict of respecting DS confidence against letting the parents aware.
Thanks. Feeling really low so please be gentle.

OP posts:
Waggingmyginger · 19/05/2018 06:41

I don't think sparing the embarrassment of these boys parents does these children any help. "Lads banter" often gets out of hand, young men do get quite severely beaten once drink is involved. Telling the parents their son's need to learn social boundaries might stop them getting a smashed face one day.

DinkyDaisy · 19/05/2018 07:06

Hard. If school friends, maybe inform tutor so a discreet eye could be kept on them in case something going on at school.
Are these his only friends? Could he simply avoid them for a while by being with other friends? [My son did this though he is a little younger].
I hate the word banter as often an excuse for nastiness.

PamsterWheel · 19/05/2018 07:25

All these posters saying it's normal/it's what boys do/happens a lot/it's not worth thinking about WTF??

This is where it all starts. Disrespecting women.

But it's ok because boys will be boys right?

Enablers

youarenotkiddingme · 19/05/2018 07:35

No it's not normal but my point to my ds is you won't stop them / just inflame it by reacting.

So don't react, say something witty back or walk away.
I encouraged him to report as well - but the truth is unless teachers supervise the whole time these things will be said.

KeiTeNgeNge · 19/05/2018 07:43

Banter, that old crock.... and then women are objectified and treated badly and beaten and raped and society then throws its hands in the air and wonders how all these nasty people treat people so badly... its got to start somewhere, innit.

JustDanceAddict · 19/05/2018 07:55

Your boy sounds great. I have a same aged DS and he would feel the same if it happened (although I’m certainly not MILF material!!). I think you need to ask him what he wants you to do about it. That’s the route I go down and the amount of times I’ve wanted to speak to school/a kid/parents I’ve had to respect his or dd’s wishes to sort it out themselves.
There’s nothing wrong with a bit of light banter - even as adult - but when the person you’re bantering with says ‘enough’ then the others need to stop and rein it in.

whoosh · 19/05/2018 08:14

I had this experience too when a message about 'your mum' from ds's friend flashed up on the family iPad. I spoke to my son about it and he told me it wasn't personal, it was a trend, but I told him why i didn't like it, found it disrespectful and also hurtful because said friend had been welcomed in our home many times. He spoke to his friend who later apologised to me through my ds. It did lead to a good chat with my ds about that trend and I don't think he got any stock from his friends for avoiding that kind of banter.

boilerhouse2007 · 19/05/2018 12:50

'' It did lead to a good chat with my ds about that trend and I don't think he got any stock from his friends for avoiding that kind of banter.''

do not be so deluded, most boys would laugh it off you were any, your ds is likely telling you what you want to hear. Baffles me the amount of parents on here who think their child would never lie to them...Did you never lie to your mum when you were 14??

AskAuntLydia · 19/05/2018 16:36

" I don’t think anyone’s saying it isn’t misogynistic - just that if he doesn’t want to be a target, he needs to let it wash over him.

So, yes it’s misogynistic, but you need to suck it up and let it happen lest you look like a pussy.

Socialisation in a nutshell."

Indeed.

It's not surprising that so many teenage boys are vile, when they have mothers who accept misogyny as part and parcel of boys' lives.

FGS.

You've done a good job with your son, OP. Flowers

boilerhouse2007 · 19/05/2018 17:37

''It's not surprising that so many teenage boys are vile, when they have mothers who accept misogyny as part and parcel of boys' lives.''

believe me the girls are just as bad often.

AskAuntLydia · 19/05/2018 19:34

Girls aren't raping boys though, are they boilerhouse. They're not causing boys to turn up at A&E with anal tears and fissures from having been experimented on by boys whose notion of sex has been formed by pornography and indulgent parents who let misogyny pass as inevitable and normal.

And presumably, those girls who are "as bad" as teenage boys, have the same indulgent parents.

boilerhouse2007 · 20/05/2018 10:32

''Girls aren't raping boys though, are they boilerhouse. They're not causing boys to turn up at A&E with anal tears and fissures from having been experimented on by boys whose notion of sex has been formed by pornography and indulgent parents who let misogyny pass as inevitable and normal.''

yea and boys aren't going around mutilating girls while the reverse is quite common in the media. Before you think women are saints-look at this video with a female audience. Yes and what happened to the hosts? Nothing.

TatianaLarina · 20/05/2018 10:34

believe me the girls are just as bad often

It’s extraordinary to see internalised misogyny passed off as simple bad behaviour.

boilerhouse2007 · 20/05/2018 10:35

''It’s extraordinary to see internalised misogyny passed off as simple bad behaviour.''

oh please mn is full of misandry and nobody bats an eyelid.

TatianaLarina · 20/05/2018 10:39

You’re unfortunately too stupid to bother arguing with.

boilerhouse2007 · 20/05/2018 10:43

Sigh so you another 'feminist' who ironically is not able to realise that the word come back to equality? Funny how all males are pigs on here yet when an audience and chatshow of females go on mainstream tv and mock a man getting his genitals ripped off nobody bats an eyelid...

Or when kelly brook goes on this morning laughing about beating up her boyfriends in her book, it still becomes a best seller...

Where are the feminists then?

TatianaLarina · 20/05/2018 10:51

As above.

A1hulahoop · 20/05/2018 10:53

You’re unfortunately too stupid to bother arguing with.

Was that really necessary?

boilerhouse2007 · 20/05/2018 10:56

A1hulahoop such posters usually turn to such tactics when they have being quashed and have a point made against them.

TatianaLarina · 20/05/2018 11:11
georgeisadinosaur · 20/05/2018 11:23

I think it is really hard to judge without hearing the specific comments made, the problem is with your DS's age group is they are in that horrible stage of being desperate to fit in.

I remember lots of "your mum" jokes from guys at school, particularly when the mum in question was young or attractive. I think if they are along these lines you are best brushing it off to your DS. If you make this a big deal and the school or parents are involved it could get worse from the other boys as kids that age are after the reaction.

AskAuntLydia · 20/05/2018 11:26

yea and boys aren't going around mutilating girls while the reverse is quite common in the media.

Oh fuck off.

There are 2 women I've ever heard of who ever cut off their husband's cocks. Lorena Bobbitt is one and the other one is the one you've just linked to.

Men have a whole system of mutilating women, it's called FGM and until men have stopped insisting on their brides having had it done, fuck off with your shit about 2 whole men having their cocks cut off by insane women who are not supported by society in the way sociopathic men are.

As for misandry, there is no such thing.

Misogyny is not just individual's men's hatred of women. It is a whole system of support for that hatred, buttressed by a 6,000 olod year framework of legal, social, emotional and psychological norms.

For misandry to come anywhere close, we would have had to have about 6,000 years of women ruling the Earth, while men were considered slightly less than human and there to serve women. They would have had to have been excluded from education, medicine, politics, law, etc. and confined to their homes to do the work that no-one else really wants to do. They would have had to live in a system which saw them as less human than women and needing to be punished more harshly for the same crimes. They would have been held responsible for women's bad behaviour and abuses of them. All this would have been underpinned by a religion where the mother goddess had decreed that men were there to serve women and any man who didn't, was defying the natural order and an ideology that said the abusive way in which men were treated, was natural and normal and in fact, decreed either by God(dess) when society was religious, or nature when society was secular.

All the laws, institutions, customs and assumptions all humans have been born into, would have had to have been inherited from that 6-10,000 year structure. It takes a hell of a long time to dismantle all that, longer than a few decades.

When men have lived through that, then come back and bleat on about misandry. Until then, a couple of women on the telly laughing at a mad woman, is fuck all.

boilerhouse2007 · 20/05/2018 11:35

'''There are 2 women I've ever heard of who ever cut off their husband's cocks. Lorena Bobbitt is one and the other one is the one you've just linked to.''

if u google it you will see it is quite common and your post stinks of misandry, suppose you are one of the modern day feminists??

AskAuntLydia · 20/05/2018 15:57

I've explained why there's no such thing as misandry and cock-lopping, in contrast to male violence against women, is not a common occurrence.

boilerhouse2007 · 20/05/2018 21:32

Sorry but you cannot just blame men for FGM,plenty of female are involved in that too.