What would you say in a speech to 13/14-year-olds?

[ComeAlongPond]

My youngest brother is in year 9. His homework is to write a short speech lasting between one and a half to two minutes covering an issue he feels strongly about and he came to me a minute ago and says he wants to write about sexism and feminism

Never mind that this is due at 9am tomorrow and he says, "But I need help, I HAVE given you loads of warning!"

He doesn't have much time (either to do the thing or to actually speak) so I think going for the basics is best. And a lot of his class are little bastards difficult and will give him a hard time so he's being very brave.

So far we've decided to talk about 'girly' being an insult and street harassment.

Any more, fairly basic, suggestions of how you'd try to get 13/14 year old kids to think about sexism? (Boys and girls in the class by the way.)

(Off to eat in a mo but I'll be back later - thanks in advance for any suggestions!)

What aspects of it interest him at present, Pond? There's sexism in toys and still in children's literature and entertainment. Street harassment is a great angle; it's horrid for anybody to be called on their appearance but it happens to girls all the flipping time! Even the way we are taught history & geography is sexist - we learn far more about male rulers, explorers, scientists, herdsmen, etc than we do about women. He could maybe look at pop stars - why do female singers mostly perform in their knickers? Is that their decision, do you think, or did some man tell them to (and why)?

An alternative angle would be to look at why it's important - the burden of poverty falling on women; girls still being expected to make the tea while boys get more interesting jobs to do.

Most of all - hope he enjoys himself and it goes well :)

the pay gap

the big headline figures about how much of the world's property men own

how few women there are in parliament

IME fourteen year olds are capable of getting themselves quite pissed off about these things.

here you are, from UK Feminista:

'Women do 2/3 of the world's work, yet receive 10% of the world's income, and own just 1% of the means of production
100,000 women are raped each year in the UK, and the rape conviction rate is just 6.5%
Women working in the UK earn on average 23% less than men
Only 18.3% of of the world's members of parliament are women (the UK figure is under 20%)

Good for him!

How about gender role expectation? Clothes, grooming, toys, activities, careers, running a household, childcare, media image of famous people etc.

It's only a couple of minutes, so he can't get too in depth about anything but could challenge a lot of assumptions in that time.

Wish him luck.

Thanks everyone. My bloody neighbour went and interfered when she popped round, and LAUGHED at him for writing about it, so now he doesn't want to do it anymore. He'll come round in a bit though, he's just angry at being laughed at (unsurprisingly!) and is refusing to write anything at all on any subject.

I'll definitely put your suggestions to him - especially the 2/3 of world's work one, he's very strict about things being "fair" in all sorts of ways so that'll catch his interest.

He wants to talk about domestic violence too, he's a little bit in love with Rhianna and was outraged when I told him Chris Brown beat her up. He's deleted all his music from his iTunes in protest. If only people would stop laughing at him and putting him off!

Sexual Bullying , huge problem in schools

may be a bit heavy but a sugg,

Sounds like his best topic would be a good sound denunciation of that bloody neighbour.

The very fact that someone has laughed at him can be part of the talk!

I would think that some of the kids will be surprised at how recently women won the vote etc.

And how recent rape was legal within marriage. That never fails to amaze me!

Thanks everyone. His speech was great and he said it went quite well. One boy, one of the 'cool' ones who's a bit of a bully, laughed at him when he gave his title and said he was a girl, which made some others laugh, so he changed the order round to speak about why 'girl' is an insult first. The same bully laughed again later on, but nobody else did, and one of the other boys said "It's not really funny, is it?" and shut him up, so I think he made some of them think, at least :)

They're doing their options at the moment for GCSE so he decided to speak about why none of the boys take food tech or textiles and none of the girls take woodwork even though they probably want to.

He did really well and he wanted to say thank you for the suggestions and help :)

Yay! Tell him well done from this FeMNist and that he should be proud of himself for making a difference. And that he's made at least one person smile today.

Good for him Pond. Sounds like he made a lot of them think which is of course the first step.

I am really impressed with him thinking on his feet and changing the order round, that's fab!

tell him we need more boys like him in the movement and if he keeps it up he will have girls falling over themselves to go out with him

Aww! Pond, my DS is only 8 months old but I hope he grows up to be like your DS. You must have done something very right, there. Well done him - and you!

Excellent. A story like this makes it hard to be a total pessimist!

ROFL Seth, he had his parents evening the other day (he's just moved into the school from an all-boys school) and apparently the girls fight to sit with him because he is so polite and charming! I have never witnessed these supposed traits.

He's not my DS blackcurrants. He's my little brother :) He's pretty fab though. Well, usually

ah! - that'll be the 'arghwhatnow?' lack of concentration there, sorry. DS was trying to crawl up my leg and bite my knee while I was typing.

Ahem. MN v. good for my parenting and v. bad for my parenting at the same time :)

Your little brother sounds lovely, so glad his talk went well.

He told me this morning it was actually for a competition and he came second, voted by the class! Hurrah!

(The winning speech was "Why they should bring chips back to the canteen.")

Oh, well done him.

I can see that the chips issue would be seen as more urgent to that age group, though. Or any age group, actually.