Where do boys get this rubbish from?

[TheSmallClanger]

Sorry, this is going to be long and probably ranty.

I have had one of my personal tutee students from the college in for my office hour this morning. She is 17 and a trainee veterinary nurse. She is beside herself with worry because she has found herself to be pregnant and has decided on trying to obtain an abortion without her parents finding out.

Among the things we discussed was how she came to be pregnant. It is part of my personal tutor duty to impart sexual health knowledge. Apparently, her boyfriend refuses to use condoms as he doesn't like them, claiming they are "passion killers". The student is not on the Pill for various reasons. I asked her as gently as I could why she does not refuse to have sex with him unless they sort out some sort of contraception - more suggesting that she should do this in future. She said that she tries, but once he gets excited it isn't fair to ask him to stop, and won't he get "blue balls" otherwise?

I was in full WTF mode. Where do boys get this bollocks from? However many years of sex education at school, and more subtly through TV programmes, and they are still talking like something out of the 70s. I remember our fab old school nurse in the 80s categorically telling us that "blue balls" were a myth, and that any man claiming that it hurt to stop was lying and taking advantage! Where do they learn this stuff - is it lads' mags? TV? Older brothers? It makes me so angry that women have moved on so much, and a large subset of men have not even taken the first step.

[AliceWorld]

Elephants - love your line

For me it's not about how much it is her fault or his fault as if it's a zero sum. Neither operate in a vacuum, so both are subject to norms, media representations of what is and isn't 'normal', how to fit in ad infinitum. Everyone who produces a magazine that perpetuates these ideas, produces a programme, sets up an 'ironic' group on facebook is to blame. As is everyone who doesn't speak out and challenge these things is also to blame.

I can also tell you from experience that after getting out of a relationship where for 7 years I was told this shit, being in a totally different relationship for 12 years, being highly educated and confident, I still have a part of me that thinks what my ex told me is true, getting on for 15 years later. I still have to check with my husband that it isn't, that I can say no and not feel guilty. My articulate, logical mind tells me one thing. The stuff I was told at a highly influential stage in my life tells me another.

And I find it interesting that I would be very surprised if people on this board said someone who stayed at home with the kids but really didn't want to was just stupid and lacked confidence to stand up for herself. We'd all talk about the barriers that exist that mean that it is more difficult for her to continue her work, structural stuff. We wouldn't say it was 50% her and 50% her husband. We'd discuss lack of childcare, lack of flexible working, sexist attitudes. So why is this so different?

[ElephantsAndMiasmas]

I wouldn't have sex with someone who was trying to have sex with me without a condom, or pressurising me, personally. But I certainly have had sex with people who've asked not to wear a condom, especially when I was a teenager/student. Can't say it made me think highly of them but I wasn't looking for true lurve :)

[ElephantsAndMiasmas]

...whether that be "I don't want to have sex with you" or "I don't want to have sex without a condom", that is.

Message about condoms is fading away IMO.

BTW for any lurkers/people with boyfriends reluctant to put a condom on, the line "I didn't know you were ready for fatherhood" delivered in innocent, quizzical tones has never failed me yet. The brilliant thing is, the more irresponsible the guy is, the better it works. :o

[ElephantsAndMiasmas]

Anyone saying - look girls and boys, if you don't want to have sex, don't let any arsehole pressure you into it etc - is treated as a "prude".

Nothing has moved on. Girls have never had the confidence IMO to say no to sex they don't want.

[TheSmallClanger]

Sorry for the post-and-run earlier.
I did warn everyone it was ranty. It wasn't just the boy (apparently her age, and not at our college) I was angry about, it was the whole situation, and the background situation that meant that this sort of thing could arise.

It just astounded me that someone who has grown up in supposedly more enlightened and female-positive times has an outlook like this. When we learnt the ropes in the days of Aids scares and Honey magazine, we seemed so much more willing to be in control. I know that is golden-ageism, but I'm sure it's true.

The young woman in question is not the most confident, but certainly not the least confident in her group either. I don't know for sure, but I suspect her parents don't know about the relationship at all, and may well not approve.

I took it out on the boy in question before because I've seen it before at college: girl gets pregnant/gets STD/gets in trouble with family, her whole world falls apart at least temporarily. Boy who is 50% to blame gets away SCOT-FREE, with no consequences, no disruption to his education, normally no heartbreaking decisions.

It makes me angrier and angrier as I get older. It sometimes seems like the world, and the world of young people more, is structured around men/boys/idiots getting what they want.

[earwicga]

One of the best messages I've seen for wholesale sex education in the style of the HIV/AIDS education I received as a teenager. Those lessons killed dead any thought of sex without a condom.

[Ormirian]

The boy needs a good kicking as well TBH. Twat! But she really shouldn't have fallen for it.

[seeyoukay]

remove the ' in the hers. Don't know what I was doing there.

[seeyoukay]

Nah, 50/50. His fault for thinking condoms are passion killers and her's for not telling him to feck orf.

[ElephantsAndMiasmas]

Boys don't get blamed for everything do they? Am certainly on for blaming the "urgh condoms no waaaay" babyish brigade though. Selfish tossers. (would that they were just tossers)

[JenaiMarrHePlaysGuitar]

I'd be pretty fucking angry (and that I'd failed) if I heard ds had spun a line like this.

[southeastastra]

still think it's 50/50 get fed up with boys being blamed for every ill in society

[ElephantsAndMiasmas]

Forgot "dads" and "other men on the football/hockey/basketball team".

[msrisotto]

I hadn't heard of blue balls when I was 17 and my boyfriend said he got it and I believed him, why wouldn't it you know?

[ISNT]

Sounds like a horrible situation aliceworld.

One of those things where unless you've experienced it, you can't guess what it's like to be in a relationship where the balance of power is so skewed.

[ElephantsAndMiasmas]

Do they really have those quite good mags for teenagers now though? Used to read Sugar and J17 and a couple of others (not Bliss which the school had because it was shit) and learned looooads. Basically all kids need to be given a really good sex education book at the age of about 10, and study it at school like they would any other book. They would be all ears! And they would keep the book and take it home.

[AliceWorld]

Well I'm not stupid nor would I say I had low self-esteem but I believed such things when I was with my abusive partner at that kind of age. If you get told it over and over and over, from an early age, from someone older than you, that you look up to, that tells you that as a proper adult man he knows more about that stuff than silly childish magazines, and where you are a politically active teenager who has a skepticism about the agendas of people in authority then you might believe it. Abuse doesn't happen cos people are stupid, so for me blaming her isn't so great.

Saying that I did make him use condoms, whatever he said, but I was in the generation where HIV was a huge deal.

[ISNT]

I don't understand it either. When I were a girl we were all reading mizz and just17 from about 13, which always had loads in disabusing myths "standing up for sex won't stop you getting pregnant " "his cock won't fall off if you don't give him a hand job" etc etc

[RibenaBerry]

God, how sad. How low must her self esteem be that she allows that type of behaviour.

I clearly grew up in a bubble, however, as I have never even heard that term or that line until just now.

[TheCrackFox]

She must have zero self esteem to have not have told him to "fuck off".

[southeastastra]

yes why blame the boys surely she must know what she's doing too, i certainly knew it all at that age

[Ormirian]

But why did she beleive him? Bloody ridiculous on both sides.