Webchat with Reg Bailey, author of the government report on sexualisation of children, Friday 10th June, 11am to 12pm

[KatieMumsnet]

Reg Bailey, chief executive of the Mothers' Union and author of the government?s Let Children be Children, is joining us for a webchat this Friday, 10 June, 11am to 12pm.

Following our Let Girls be Girls campaign , launched early in 2010, we?ve been asking retailers to commit not to sell products which play upon, emphasise or exploit their sexuality.

The government has now responded to our campaign and Reg Bailey?s report, which included these recommendations:

? Retailers to ensure magazines with sexualised images have modesty sleeves.

? Music videos to be sold with age ratings.

? Procedures to make it easier for parents to block adult and age restricted material on internet.

? Code of practice to be issued on child retailing.

? Create a single website for parents to complain to regulators.

? Change rules on nine o'clock television watershed to give priority to views of parents.

Please join us live to ask Reg about the report, or if you can't make it, please post your question here.

Oh FGS, having the opinion that boys should be taught to respect other human beings, including girls, is not "boy-bashing". Recognising that girls being groomed to be the sex class, is not boy bashing either. Being concerned about the level of violence and sexual bullying that girls are being subjected to, is not boy-bashing. Why do some people think that wanting women and girls to be treated with respect, somehow means that you want men and boys to be treated with disrespect? I too have a pre-teen boy and I don't bash him.

Of course I don't deny that boys need to be taught that. I'm not sure that anyone does, although the tone of Dorries-style interventions comes close.

Someone on the thread explicitly denied that it is a tiny minority of boys that are dangerous. And there is certainly an atmosphere in several posts of boys being assumed to be at fault here. Sounds like boy bashing to me.

To be clear, I think you have misunderstood my irritation. I agree that girls are groomed to be the sex class; I agree that boys (and girls) need to be taught respect, and I don't think that any policy related to that is boy bashing. I think posters on this thread were boy bashing.

Threadworm, if a third of girls are being sexually bullied and coerced into sex before they want to have it, how many boys do you think are bullying and coercing them? A tiny minority? They're getting around then, aren't they? And who do you think are at fault?

One of the most important jobs a parent has, is to teach our children personal responsibility. Teenagers know that if they do something wrong, they shouldn't be doing it. If they shoplift, smoke dope, break their curfew, we hold them personally responsible for their actions. But if they sexually coerce their peers...what... it's suddenly not their fault?

Which posters were boy-bashing Threadworm?

I actually thought that catsmilk was boybashing, when she said that older boys expect sex. I don't think most boys do have that strong a sense of entitlement, although if we let the porn culture take over, they will have.

What is clear, is that a significant minority do have extremely unhealthy attitudes to women and girls and it's no good burying our heads in the sand and pretending that acknowledging that is boy-bashing. We need to protect boys from forming these unhealthy attitudes to women, for their own sake as much as for those of their future partners and children.

I haven't said that. I was reacting in particluar to the denial that 'only a tiny minority of boys are dangerous'. I agree with all of your points about education, in fact I more or less made them before you responded to me. But my sons and their friends don't deserve to be labelled as dangerous as their default status

The report is called Let Children be Children. There are commercial pressures on boys and girls related to sex. Those are dangerous.

sorry, crossposts. As I said, the post that implied a label of 'dangerous' was the one that made me angry.

yy I do try to teach my boys that, of course.

Also the sad thing is that a lot of people do treat teenage boys if they are default dangerous already, precisely because we haven't had a root and branch overhaul of sexist attitudes and they fear them. Look at those horrible fathers of girls who treat their daughter's boyfriends as if they are Hannibal Bloody Lecter - threatening them with violence if they so much as kiss with tongues, implying that they are out to rape their little girls, when all the boy wants to do is to to to the pictures and be able to have joyful, sensual, consensual and mutual exploration with his girlfriend. And of course the hostile adult male is seeing this through the prism of the all too common abusive attitudes to women which abound and more often than not, assuming wrongly that his daughter's boyfriend holds those abusive attitudes. How can this be healthy or good? It's got to stop.

Absolutely HerBex, and that is why I was triggerhappy I suppose. I have a 15yo son and it pains me that just going about the place with his friends he is looked on with mistrust. Of course he needs education, and reminders, and modelling of corret behavious,but not an education that starts from the point that he is dnagerous or the enemy.

And this report is about commercial pressures, not about sex education. Pornification is a danger to boys too, though admittedly not in the same way, or to the same degree, as to girls

sorry, missed your post SAF. Of course education is a good thing ,and of course the emphass shouldn't be on girls to 'just say no'. I have already said that -- in my first post on the thread and thereafter. You are imputing disagreements between us that aren't there.

But why should you assume that the education I am advocating would start from the point that he is dangerous or the enemy?

Why the assumption that if you want to examine all this stuff honestly and thoroughly, it is because you hate boys and men?

Really, that is so sad that people have this automatic kneejerk reaction of "man-hater" when women try and discuss this stuff.

You don't assume people hate all children when they want to teach them right from wrong in primary schools, or that they are going from the starting point that kids are the enemy. You just accept that kids need to be taught right from wrong, the need to do that doesn't mean we think kids are evil. Why, when it comes to sexual behaviour between boys and girls, men and women, do people suddenly assume that we have to set one side up as dangerous or inherently wicked?

Jesus, I have said so many times that I agree with all the policies you are suggesting. I was objecting to some words that were explicitly used on the thread. You really are determined to see opposition where there is none.

And I fear we are skewing the thread. This thread is about sexualising commercial pressures on children. Not sex education. So I'm not going to respond on this point again.

Yes it is very sobering to think that so many boys will see images like that, long before they even kiss a girl.

sorry, x-post aginn. Yes, the relentless exposure to porn is a crime against our boys and girls.

I'm just so glad something - anything - is being done; that it's at last acknowledged as a problem.

The challenges facing our teenage dc - whether boys or girls - are intolerable. If I were that age now, I don't know how I'd manage to find my way through to a sane and healthy lifestyle.

What words were you objecting to?

Sorry but if you are going to accuse people who have sons, of boy-bashing because of their arguments, then you can't be surprised if they take umbrage and ask you to justify why you said that. I suspect you said it because of a kneejerk discomfort with me pointing out that someone who expects or feels entitled to sex with a girl, has a simiilar attitude to a rapist. Men who aren't rapists (the vast majority) do NOT have that attitude, but when you point it out, everyone gets annoyed. Also you are uncomfortable with the figures: a third - a whole third - of girls being coerced into sex against their will, means that there are an awful lot of entitled boys out there, not just a tiny tiny minority. It is not boy-bashing to recognise that, someone needs to come up with an explanation of what these figures mean, if they don't mean that too many boys have the wrong attitudes. I'm happy to engage in any arguments about it, but assertions that I'm boy-bashing, are not arguments.

It's not that I'm determined to see opposition where it doesn't exist Threadworm, it's just that there is so much minimisation of violence against girls and women, so much promotion of the view that objectification of girls doesn't matter, that I just feel passionately that where people are backing up the status quo - whether intentionally or not - that has got to be challenged really strongly and you came in just as I was getting tired so sorry if you feel I'm attacking you, really I'm not, I'm just trying to ensure that my arguments aren't characterised in the usual lazy way of "bloody man-hating feminists" and you rather got all the arguments thrown at you just before bedtime, sorry about that.

(Slight return)

HerBex, since you keep asking for the evidence, these were the words that offended me, and suggested boys, without proper teaching, would have attitudes and opinions little different to rapists.

"It's so depressing and yet so normal. And we as a society, accept that it's normal, we accept that this is the way boys should behave and that girl's regret is just a rite of passage. When are we going to stop saying "How can we better teach our girls to say no?" and start saying "how can we better teach our boys, that they should not be coercing girls into having unwanted sex with them? How can we give them attitudes and opinions which differentiate them more clearly from rapists?"

You made a clear statement that boys - all or most, not a minority - were coercing girls into sex and thinking like rapists. 'Boy-bashing' is a mild term for this imo. As for the idea that schools are constantly laughing off girls 'sexual bullying; I think boys are already growing up in a society that tells them to be ashamed to be male. This quote from Doris Lessing sums it up -

"I was in a class of nine- and 10-year-olds, girls and boys, and this young woman was telling these kids that the reason for wars was the innately violent nature of men.

"You could see the little girls, fat with complacency and conceit while the little boys sat there crumpled, apologising for their existence, thinking this was going to be the pattern of their lives."

Lessing said the teacher tried to "catch my eye, thinking I would approve of this rubbish".

She added: "This kind of thing is happening in schools all over the place and no one says a thing."

My point - as I may not respond to any straw-man arguments that ignore or obviously twist what I am saying - is that boys are not all bad, and girls are not all innocent victims. It's a very unhealthy schema for both sexes, that needs to go - and it was noticeably being flogged here by two or three people.

I don't think any of the things you impute to me and I am tired of discussing someone who responds not to what I say but to a template of what she thinks I might say. I agree with all of your exhortations to educate boys. I have already said exaclty which words I disliked. It was the implication that a lot of boys are 'dangerous'. And in fact you put my own case extremely well in your post beginning "...the sad thing is that a lot of people do treat teenage boys if they are default dangerous." That is what some words on the thread seemed to me to do. That is all I objected to.

I'm really not coming back on this issue again, because part of the problem is that the focus on educating boys in the ways you say (which I honestly can't imagine any one but an extremist objecting to) is dragging us away from the real enemy that the reprt and the thread is meant to be about-- the sexualisation by commerce of boys and girls