Sexism and teenage boys - what do they think?

[wiltonism]

It's there, of course it is. My friend's very bright daughter was told to 'get back in the kitchen' by a boy in her class last year. And obviously I can't get what happened in Plymouth out of my head.

But what do teenage boys think about this? Is there any research? Where do I look?

@CBUK2K2, you seem to be making the assumption assumption people choose to report stuff because they crumple and can't deal with it themselves. Whereas, actually, they may be perfectly capable of putting the idiot back in their box with a sharp report while simultaneously believing that the issue needs to be formally addressed through "official" channels.

CBUK2K2, I haven't seen your answer to the question about who you are being prepared by your employers to defend yourself against. Is it more likely to be armed groups of hostile women who might endanger your life, or men?

I hope you stay safe!

The root cause of most of that violence is the very thing that causes a teenage boy to say "get back in the kitchen" and the acceptance of the violence is the very thing that causes females to ignore it.

You might find this big issue article interesting: it’s about the seething hatred of our times and the many ways it is leaking out. Says it all beautifully.

www.bigissue.com/culture/professor-green-generational-poverty-has-led-to-anger/

@CBUK2K2 you are so full of misogynistic bullshit it’s just not even worth trying. You don’t even get the same class of trolls in this degenerated world.

Men have never been women’s punch bags. Men hold power, more power than ever. And if they are so fed up of women, please tell all of those you represent to leave us alone. We would all be happier and better off if men would keep their hands and dicks to themselves.

Men hold power, more power than ever. And if they are so fed up of women, please tell all of those you represent to leave us alone. We would all be happier and better off if men would keep their hands and dicks to themselves.

Which men?

And who is 'we'? The 7% of women who claim to be feminists? I assume you're not speaking on behalf of all of us because vast majority of us want men in our lives.

PickUpAnOnion would be a better username because everything you post is full of bitterness!

Men in general, as a class. The current position in the UK is summarised by the Fawcett Society's Sex and Power Index

www.fawcettsociety.org.uk/news/fawcetts-updated-2020-sex-and-power-index-reveals-men-continue-to-dominate-every-sector-of-uk-public-life-politics-and-business

So, men do indeed hold the vast majority of power.

The request to "leave us alone" doesn't mean to have no interactions with women at all, obviously it doesn't. As the follow up sentence makes clear, it's about asking men to stop being inappropriate around women and girls. Not too much to ask.

And you also must surely know that addressing the issue of male violence will benefit all women, even if they are just one of the large majority of women that agree with the aims of feminism as a general concept, rather than the 7% who adopt the label of feminist as a political identity.

So, men do indeed hold the vast majority of power.

But isn't it a tiny number of men?

Technically, as a group they do but it's disingenuous to imply that this is relevant to the vast majority of men which is what people on here do. The Bulgarian labourers that were helping me yesterday probs don't have much power neither did the guys at the builders merchants either.

These guys were so grateful for the work it was difficult to get them to stop for a breather! I kept having to tell them not to lift heavy chairs on their own as I was worried they'd hurt themselves.

It's relevant to all men, because we are all part of the same system. Structures in a male dominated society will inevitably keep many men down in order to raise other men up. Hence Boris Johnson and his pals at the top end and your Bulgarian builders at the other.

It's of importance to all men but it doesn't apply to all men (as in a large majority don't really have much more social influence than their wives).

Are we talking about UK or wider at the moment?

How much of this is just 'bullying' rather than sexism? If I wanted to bully a fat person I would make a comment about their weight, if I want to bully a girl I make a sexist comment.

It's a sexist comment whatever the motivation for saying it. It isn't excused by regarding it as only as bullying.

don't really have much more social influence than their wives that must be why austerity largely affected women more than men then, and why more women were pushed out of the job market than men over COVID. Or why domestic violence affects women more than men, and why papers recording male violence still talk about poor men who are nice really (although this has been challenged occasionally), or why most single parents are women. Or why single mums are absolutely vilified everywhere but men get away scot free. Or why employment sectors commonly considered to be open to or mostly staffed by women pay less than those mostly staffed by men, or why women still don’t always have pay equality in exactly the same jobs. Or why women get dissuaded from joining or pushed out of lucrative job sectors, or pushed off gaming on the internet, or find going out for a walk at night far too scary to contemplate. I could go on, and on, and on. Male privilege is everywhere.

@MrGHardy

How much of this is just 'bullying' rather than sexism? If I wanted to bully a fat person I would make a comment about their weight, if I want to bully a girl I make a sexist comment.

This doesn't make sense to me.

So

If it's a girl say something sexist
If it's a black person say something racist
If it's a disabled person pick on their disability

But as it's bullying it's not sexist/ racist/ disablist (I think that's a word!).

Bullying is usually sustained not a one off. So if it's a one off its sexist and if it's sustained it's not sexist even though the things said are sexist.

Don't get it.

Also picking on highly sensitive things about the person is a particularly pernicious form of bullying. So surely bullying is bad, sexist bullying is worse?

@NiceGerbil
Sorry for the late reply, I’ve been away and had very limited internet access/time.

You said: You don't seem to understand that the male and female experiences are different. And issues need to be considered in that context.

I have a wife, mother, sisters and lots of female friends I love dearly, I always try to be considerate of others opinions/feelings. However the big difference to me between the sexes is that women seem to put much more stock in feelings/personal experience than facts and statistics. For example in the UK men are much more likely to be murdered or the victim of violent crime, yet 90% of the press coverage is how unsafe the world is for women. There are young lads getting stabbed every day in inner city areas and it doesn’t even make the news.

You said: You talk about risk of being murdered or kidnapped. That's a risk from other men I'd assume? In engineering. A male dominated industry.

Based on the safety information we received terrorist/kidnapping gangs are made up of both men and women. It’s relatively common for women to lure men to areas when they can be attacked etc but also extremist groups have female members in offensive roles.

You said: ^Certainly around the world men and boys are in various cultures/ situations where they are at risk. Mining in China just came to mind. Very high death rate.
Loads of other stuff. Suicide rate you have mentioned. Car fatalities. Gang violence.
Women face different issues. That lots of women relate to and get angry about etc. And try to do something about.^

I accept that women face issues in life, I just debate how big an issue some of them are such as the “gender pay gap” which obviously doesn’t stand up to much scrutiny.

You said: What I don't understand is why men aren't note proactive (although there are some great charities around) working to help with issues globally?

Because there is very little funding or public sympathy/funding for issues facing men? Look at domestic violence, women are twice as likely to be victims of domestic violence, according to Women’s Aid there are 368 women’s refuges in the UK, by comparison there are 2 refuges for male victim’s of domestic violence.

You said: And what I really don't understand is what telling women they're weak etc on a feminist board is going to do to help with all these things.

Where have I said women are weak? I know lots of incredibly strong women, what I’ve said is we should be teaching young people to take advantage of this strength and look at the bigger picture.

@AssassinatedBeauty By almost any objective measure men get screwed more in life than women. Its disingenuous to claim that 0.01% of men are worth billions therefore all men are powerful/privileged when almost any sensible measure shows this is complete crap.

I don't often see my 18 & 20yos with their friends of GFs so I can't say for sure that there's not more laddish behaviour when I'm not around, but from what I do see, they seem genuinely respectful of female friends, admiring of their abilities and supportive when they need help.

For friends (rather than girlfriends) they genuinely don't seem to differentiate between boys and girls.

I'm not going to say it's perfect but it's a vast improvement on when I was that age.

However both my DSs have always been quite good at choosing their friends, I know some of the behaviour described here did happen when they were at school, but they were very disapproving and didn't want to be part of those friendship groups.

It happens a lot IMO (I work in school so see it) but it's not by any means all the boys. It's a small but significant group of boys doing a lot of it and absolutely it hasn't been dealt with properly.

[quote CBUK2K2]@AssassinatedBeauty By almost any objective measure men get screwed more in life than women. Its disingenuous to claim that 0.01% of men are worth billions therefore all men are powerful/privileged when almost any sensible measure shows this is complete crap.[/quote]
I don't know who you are responding to, because I have made no comment of that sort at all. It's interesting to see you are now happier to make your MRA beliefs up front and centre in your comments.

Your comment is childish and stupid. People of all different kinds get a rough deal across the world in many different ways, for different reasons. Women, in very many circumstances, are dealt a rough deal simply because they are women. In the UK, very much less so than other parts of the world, thankfully. None of that makes it acceptable for girls at school to have to put up with idiotic sexist crap as a matter of course, because boys couldn't possibly be expected to shut the fuck up.

@AssassinatedBeauty I’m not a men’s rights activist, I’m just a bit sick of the whole women good/men bad stance of society.

I’m happy to provide a fairly comprehensive lists of ways men get screwed far worse than women and have pretty much since the dawn of time.

Providing stats on how men are more screwed over than women is easy: data on things which affect women is just not collected (simple example: menopause migraines). Data on things which affect men is collected from everyone in society (e.g stats on balding patterns) .

I'm not saying men bad/women good. I'm saying that we are so used to men's voices that even when they talk shit we let it pass.

Men's shit talk needs to stop. Saying that women talk shit too should not give men a license to continue to be sexist pricks.