[quote DirtyDancing]@Notenoughsleepmumof3 what you are saying there makes me think it’s happening absolutely everywhere. As you say, shitty parents, shitty kids. State schools aren’t excluded from the issue, but it’s perhaps magnified in private ed?
I am not trying to defend private schools, I am genuinely concerned and want to understand why this culture is emerging/ is about. I honestly do not remember this type of sexism, anti women attitude in my school in the 90s.
Why has it escalated in boys in recent years? I was in a state, mixed friendship group, it was mutually respectful in every way. Several of my group are gay, never any issues. I was bullied, but by girls. It was not the same issue.
I wonder if there is an element of ‘saying’ something on text that you would never say to someone’s face.. which in turn creates an actual dialogue and acceptance culture. Where on Earth do these attitudes stem from. Is it porn? Or Influencers creating constant emphasis on the way people should look (plastic surgery trends scare me)? Music?
I feel completely naive about the root cause of these issue[/quote]
Someone posted this up thread- maybe why things are as they are nowadays..
And meanwhile - almost nothing will have changed. Because the schools already have pretty comprehensive PSHE curriculums - they have been talking to their kids about these issues, a lot, for years. They already plead with parents not to allow their kids to host or attend unsupervised parties. They already have counsellors and pastoral structures and mental health leads and LGBTQ groups and urge students to discuss and report. Sure, they might now do even more of what they were already doing. But the underlying problem is that they're already doing it and it isn't working.
Why? Because we live in a society that doesn't understand what it wants and believes in. We shriek about how much we hate these overprivileged rich boys - while we pornographise wealth and consumerism. We wring our hands over girls sending nudes on Snapchat - while we spend our time posting every aspect of our #perfectlives on FB, craving positive attention, and allow our kids to sign up for Tiktok and Insta accounts when they're 9. We deplore the fact that our 13 year olds feel pressured to have Brazilians - while we prop up multibillion pound beauty industries trying to whiten our teeth and eradicate our crows feet and firm up our breasts. We lambast boys for objectifying girls, while failing to stop doing the same thing ourselves, because we don't really understand where we want the line to be drawn. We abhor paedophile rings while we lech over Britney in a school uniform. I could go on and on and on.
Scapegoating schools and seeking to make them put a public sticking plaster on the issue might make certain people feel better but it will not make the problem go away.