Misogynistic Teen Boys

[livinginaweirdworld]

I have name changed for this due to some outing details.

I work in an all boys school, these are very bright boys in a selective school. But the sexist and misogynistic words I hear coming from them even in year 7 and 8 absolutely astounds me.

I have spoken to them when I hear them speaking like this, but they literally dont give any fucks whatsoever.

I have done tutorials on these subjects, I have asked how they would feel if there mum or sister were spoken about like this and they still do not care.

I am talking about rape being banter (akin to the Warwick Uni students), calling a girl frigid as she wouldn't send nudes or give them a blow job. Saying they were going to dump a girl as she wouldn't take it up the arse. They also seem to think women in the workplace will always be inferior as they have to go off and make babies and leave the bosses and the men with the proper work.

The treat female members of staff with disdain and contempt. Admittedly some of them treat male members just as badly but nowhere near as many as the female staff.

Where is this attitude coming from? I would say a good 75% of the students here have this attitude. Not all of them can get that from poor parenting surely?

AIBU as a woman to want to take my 2 daughters and move to Mars to get away from this kind of society?

@MirriVan

I type 'as a man' because I'm aware that the majority of posters are women and it is to avoid confusion (it's not, before anyone suggests as such, that I believe that my opinion is more important, just from a different angle).

Just to reiterate, I am NOT condoning some of the things the boys are talking about in OP's post, they are a concern and something that needs, if possible, to be addressed,

Sadly I can believe it. My DS has witnessed very similar behaviour and boys being horrendous to girls, following them round, name calling if they said no, sexual comments etc.
I remember facing the same at school as a teen, grabbing at backsides, comments about my breasts, sexual comments by boys I had said no to.

DS attends a male heavy after school activity in which he has had to step in because a younger boy (youngest is 12) has been harassing a girl who didn't want to go out with him (the boy not ds) and he won't take no for an answer and keeps pestering her.

@JaquesHammer

"Because you’re gender stereotyping."

It was an account of my experience at school, a factual recollection.

"The rugby mansplaining is hilarious"

How was I 'mansplaining'? My point was that physical play isn't necessarily a bad thing and is a lot less harmful (some would say even beneficial) than sharing disgusting thoughts about degrading women, rape etc.

And I do agree that crappy teenage boy behaviour is a phase that's always existed (though not so overtly or disrespectfully in many cases) and that most grow out of. It's a very crude (in all senses) realisation that they are different from girls and immature exploration of what that means.

But, that doesn't avoid the fact that they are saying these things out loud, in front of other people. The various impacts on those other people (staff, peers, people outside the school) must be taken seriously. The more seriously shitty nature of some of what they're saying needs to be addressed too.

It was an account of my experience at school, a factual recollection

Which, of course, cannot be extrapolated out to “boys play more physically than girls” as a finite statement.

How was I 'mansplaining'?

The word “rugby” would have sufficed.

My point was that physical play isn't necessarily a bad thing and is a lot less harmful (some would say even beneficial) than sharing disgusting thoughts about degrading women, rape etc

Physically play - rugby in fact - is beneficial to both boys and girls.

I'm so glad he clarified, up until now I though rugby was a non-contact collaborative effort

Aren’t you fortunate there was a man here to impart wisdom?

Sadly the internet and access to porn is to blame...girls too have a completely different outlook to sex from when I was a teen.

Geordie Shore and the like doesn't help...

Sadly the internet and access to porn is to blame

I don't think that can be true - the boys were even worse when I was at school and we didn't have the internet or reality TV

You mention “jacking it all in and moving into a different field” and I think that’s the best answer. Sometimes we think we can change a situation - and you’ve clearly tried hard to influence these boys’ appalling attitudes - but the situation somehow ends up changing us in a horrible way. If you can get out, U think you should.

*I

Some of the content may have changed. The phase, the behaviour, the simplistic extremist attitudes, the immature dickery, those have always been around.

@JaquesHammer

"Physically play - rugby in fact - is beneficial to both boys and girls."

Very true, in fact my Stepdaughter played rugby up until the age of 11 (she does cheer now instead), at my school though it was exclusively boys that played rugby.

"Aren’t you fortunate there was a man here to impart wisdom?"

You're clearly looking to take offence when none was intended. I was just drawing a correlation between a playground game and one that took part during 'lesson time'.

Not normal. It may be 'normal' in porn but how on earth are they accessing it at that age. I would livid if a boy of mine behaved like that.

You're clearly looking to take offence when none was intended. I was just drawing a correlation between a playground game and one that took part during 'lesson time'

As I said, what was the problem with the word “rugby”? Why did it need the little clarifier?

Ah where's the Daily Mail when you need them.

OP, start a #shameonyou campaign, tell the world on Twitter. Why should punishment for this hideous activity start and finish at Warwick? Every institution should take action about this

imo we need to be getting to boys during Y6, they need to know that they'll hear this stuff going through secondary school and why it's important not to use misogyny as banter.
Not quite as bad but my dd boards and one of the girls dorm got an anonymous note through the door. It had all the girls names on them and they were ranked for particular things, mostly sexual like gropiness of arse etc.
I told her to hand it in to staff as the right staff member would speak to the boys. They are year 10 so not young.

Agree it’ll get picked up on

I’ve heard about more zero tolerance situations in the work place lately, instant dismissal

Time they got with the programme

Why should punishment for this hideous activity start and finish at Warwick? Every institution should take action about this

This in spades.

I really wish i could name and shame.... I will when I have moved on and got a new job. I can't afford to feed and keep a roof over my daughters heads without my job here. I have spoken to the Deputy Head who manages behaviour. He just squirms out of it, by saying things will be dealt with as and when they come up. He knows what I have done in my tutorials, he himself hears it walking down the corridors like all members of staff here do. Its a few of us alone that call the students out on the behaviour and they are all female sadly.

I may bring up in the next staff meeting a kind of programme that we could do to stamp out this behaviour and sanctions applied. Even release a press release saying on the back of Warwick this is what we are doing to stamp out this behaviour. I doubt they will go for it though.

It reminds me of a time when I visited my sister-in-law. She had two boys aged 18 and 13 and a girl of 15. My sister-in-law told my niece to do the washing up. My niece said she was fed up of always having to do the washing up, and why couldn't one of her brother's do it for a change. My sister-in-law replied with ' because they're boy's'.
Even my son, who was 15 at the time was shocked at my sister-in-laws answer.
It's attitudes like hers that raise the boys to have the attitude that they have towards females.
Depressing.

Porn. Incel culture. The "don't be a girl" culture. The lack of admirable female characters in history/ films, etc giving them the idea that men are superior (obviously a lack of awareness as to why) and the very immediate backlash from #metoo.

I know #metoo is recent but there's always been a push against Political Correctness and this idea that "things have gone too far" even as soon as they've barely started. The idea of the beleaguered white male is strong.

And I think girls are afraid to speak up because feminism has been so successfully villified.

I have 2 sons - the eldest is 16, the youngest is nearly 11. DS1 is young for his year and I insisted on monitoring his Instagram account until he was 14 (end of Year 9) - mainly because several of the boys in his class and year group are the sons of senior teachers at his school and I wanted ds1 to be mindful of what he posted. I noticed that the partners/mothers of these senior teachers were also monitoring what their sons posted.

I was shocked by the dozen or so girls (aged 14/15) from nice schools, i.e. private/selective, who were posing provocatively in their underwear, bikinis or the briefest of outfits (sometimes in shop changing rooms, on their beds, in the shower...) - fully made-up and pouting - bums sticking out, boobs sticking out...

Some of these girls I knew from ds1's junior school and one of them is a teacher's daughter - attending the mixed senior school her mother teaches at!

Thankfully ds 1 was too immature to care at the time, but I'm not sure about some of the other boys. And all of these Instagramers seem to have 'friends' in younger year groups - which means that boys (and girls) aged 10/11 are also seeing these shocking photos.