Teenage boys' sexual harassment of teenage girls

[Nyac]

New study commissioned by the NSPCC shows worrying trends, although some of the reporting attempts to hide who the perpetrators actually are, calling the boys "friends" and "peers":

www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18088334

"The in-depth interviews with 35 teenagers at two London schools found that girls as young as 11 were being asked to send "special photos" to boys who they knew.

In some cases, the girls had to write a name in black marker pen on a part of their body to show it was the "property" of a certain boy.

The teenagers also faced a "barrage" of messages from boys demanding for intercourse or oral sex."

This is what happens when you expose a generation of boys to pornography whilst at the same time forgetting to have a society that treats sexual crimes against women and girls as something serious.

As far as I know schools are doing nothing about this. Girls are on their own.

It might be a start if we recognised allowing children to access pornography was child abuse. And actually prosecuting parents who don't have parental controls on the Internet at home, who are fuckwitted enough to buy smart phones with no controls.

We need to start from the premise that preventing access to porn is a parents job and its neglect or abuse if they fail to.

I would totally agree with that Laurie.

I actually can't get over this generation of parents who haven't cared enough not to let their children be exposed to pornography.

Boys did not behave this way twenty or thirty years ago. Probably not even ten years ago.

"Boys did not behave this way twenty or thirty years ago"--because they didn't have access to the technology. I really don't think it's a case of the youth of today, harrumph harrumph, wasn't like this when I was their age, harrumph.

And short of exiling the kids to an island that the Internet hasn't reached, keeping them away from porn is a pretty futile hope. You really can't blame the parents for letting them have access to pornography when they'll be avidly looking for it and it's trivially easy to find.

I agree with Nyac about porn etc. but would go further and say that it is also what happens when girls are not taught how to tell boys to F off in no uncertain terms. We are still in a society where females are seen as 'add ons' who somehow have to appease males- even if that male is some spotty 13 -year-old.

Parents, teachers, society should be giving girls the self esteem and self respect to stop running around after boys like little puppies. Part of their bodies being a boy's property FFS. In an age where women have (apparently) more autonomy they have ever had in the past girls are going backward.

This is absolutely not victim blaming, so don't flame me. On the contrary, we must give girls the emotional and mental tools to stand up to boys at the same time as we teach boys how to act as civilised human beings.

I'm glad I was brought up in an age where my contemporaries had no hesitation in telling boys to get lost if we were hassled.

That is disgusting.

I would be horrified if my daughter were treated like that, and beyond ashamed and angered if my son treated a girl that way.

You've completely misread me TeiTetua. My point is that these boys have been exposed to pornography and this is why they are acting out in such severe and sometimes criminal ways. This isn't something that can be brushed under the carpet and claim that nothing can be done.

Nothing to do with "youth of today, harumph" as you put it.

Allowing children to view porn IS legally classed as neglect and therefore abuse -and if it's encouraged that is straightforward child sex abuse. If a teenage boy encourages a young girl into sexual activity then he can be prosecuted for child abuse.

Nobody takes it seriously and it's appalling. It's a massive can of worms and they won't touch it.

The only encouraging news is that people will soon be able to opt out of having adult content on the internet.

In many ways I feel more sorry for the boys as their parents seem to think of it as a matter of course that they will be exposed to porn, where girls seem to be more protected and have a kind of 'yuk' factor that kicks in if they are exposed. Boys will egg each other on and encourage each other. Not all of course.

There should be a massive education programme underway, telling children in no uncertain terms that if they engage in any of this they could be accused of child sex abuse. Parents should also be educated about this, although they should know better.

I think we need to be very clear that no means no. Whether that's kids pestering for sweets/TV, messing around and one of them says stop it hurts or any kind of intimate/sexual encounter.

It's something that I take seriously, and I am both a teacher and a mother. The word no isn't used too often, but when it is, that's the final line and there is no negotiation about it.

I really do think we need to hammer that message home, especially for youngsters about their bodies. No, I don't want to try drink or drugs or sex or anything I am uncomfortable with should be something that they are able to say and that is respected.

I like your old-fashioned approach, angel, and I thoroughly agree that no has to mean no. Give them an inch and they just get confused.

Yes, and it applies in so many cases. I've done decades of youth/teaching work (blimey I'm old) and it really does matter that people learn when to stop. It is a basic safety feature of life.

today some preteen girls were messing around at lunch time trying to do gymnastic/circus tricks (human pyraimd etc) and one of them had friends 'helping' her to do something. At one point she said 'ow, stop' and they were slow to respond. Apparently she says that a lot - I pointed out that even if they thought someone didn't mean it they should stop. I've done some work with special needs and having to restrain 'bolters' etc. When you do that, you learn how to stop before you get taught what to do.

I think we need to teach girls that it's ok to say no, which is hard in a society which puts women's bodies on display all the time, at the same time as berating women who do say no for being a "tease".

The problem is boys are seen as the "in" class with girls, hardly surprising when they feature so much more prominently in the media, and girls often just want to get their approval.

The boy chases girl paradigm means that if a girl likes a boy the most common way to pursue him is to display her attractiveness to him, which is basically what sexting is, as anything with too much agency is considered stalkerish.

This isn't about girls behaviour, this is about boys' behaviour. It's really strange to read people talking about what girls need to do. Boys need to be getting much stronger messages that they have no rights to treat girls like this, and also be prevented from receiving messages that tell them that girls are there to sexually service them.

It's all very well telling girls to say "no", but the requests/demands for sexual pictures have already been sent by the boys. That's where the problem lies. Not with girls or their behaviour.

Nyac, I think it's sensible to do both, but yes you're right: prevention is better than cure, and it's only when boys are taught not to see girls in one dimension that this problem will stop.

NYAC - not sure how my earlier posts came across, but when i say no means no, then I'm thinking the onus is on the person who hears that to respond.

It would be great if we could get rid of the idea that other people are there for our sexual gratifications. I think that there's a growing trend for teenage boys to be 'buff' and happily strip their shirts off to reveal a six pack and tanned torso. Girls shouldn't be expecting that either.

I think that there are two levels to this problem - the macro, media wide level of just showing people as things to be ogled, and the micro, individual level where we respect each other enough to actually listen to what other people say - whether it is yes or no.

It is about the girls' behaviour, they are writing on their bodies and texting the photos while they are on their own, not while the boys are with them. It's about both.

I agree, we have to encourage girls to take responsibility for what they're doing. There's "enabling" behaviour here--the boys are doing the asking, because enough girls will agree to make it worth asking.

If only kids were totally asexual up to age 18 and then became adults immediately! But they aren't. It's a constant problem how to get adolescents to channel their growing sexuality into something respectful, while not encouraging them to be sexual at all. It is definitely not helpful having a universe of pornographyadult sexuality at its worstright in front of them!

Perhaps we need a couple of high-profile prosecutions of girls for creating child porn (because they are) and boys for being in possession/publishing same (because they are).

And of course they didn't do this 20 or 30 years ago, the technology didn't exist.

And perhaps some prosecutions of parents for allowing/facilitating the production etc of child porn.

Hi NYAC. You know, I hope, that I respect you and your threads and posts; but I don't respect the NSPCC which in my experience loves to start a campaign without properly validated empirical evidence in order to promote its own fundraising activities.

I would like to know more about the data it has generated, and its relation to fundraising.

That being said, I totally agree that allowing children to access pornography is abusive; and that schools should be coming down like a ton of bricks on exploititive behaviour at school, and helping to prevent it from happening by telling girls (and boys) to Say No. (Or Say Fuck Off as one poster suggested.) But the NSPCC - I don't trust it to get this right.

"The only encouraging news is that people will soon be able to opt out of having adult content on the internet".

There's a long thread elsewhere on the proposed opt out. MN techies are unanimous in pointing out that an ISP level "opt out" won't work. The best protection is via device based filters (you can set more precisely which content is blocked) and is harder to circumvent.

But the key point, in that thread and this, is surely education. Not just about on-line security, but much wider SRE, and setting consistent standards at home. But by the teen years, there is far less a parent can do to influence - it's a job for the earlier years.

Teens have always, and will always play "how far can you go?". The trouble is that the externally imposed limits have been fatally undermined by the Internet, and teens are still learning their own self-discipline. And it is compounded (one hopes as a one-off accident of timing of emergence of technology) by a teen generation which is more cyber-savvy than their parents.

Niceviper, one of my is a teen and the other is nearly a teen. I do find they want to talk about these issues and are not looking to push that particular boundaries. Some elements of this do have to be addressed with young children, but some can only be discussed from secondary school age onwards. Teens do pick which boundaries to push at within their own ethical convictions. They are not, for example, going to steal from my neighbours just to push a boundary.

Which isn't to say that I'm not aware that all manner of issues and boundary breaking may be heading my way. I just don't assume they will break boundaries over porn culture.

Some kind of grammar goblin attacked that post. Hopefully it will still make some vague sense.

KRITIQ linked to the actual report on this thread.

Read it. It is heartbreaking.

I cannot echo more strongly what Nyac said This isn't about girls behaviour, this is about boys' behaviour.

Even if girl's do not comply or say "Fuck Off" - they are still being sexually harrassed. They are still being exposed to derogatory and degrading comments etc.

Reading the report I was secretly "pleased" that I am arsey enough to say "Fuck Off" and am aware that this is part personality/part learnt behaviour/part priviledge.

Then I remembered that less that 1 year ago a man in a position of authority to me wrt to some voluntary work I do made a suggestive comment in front of a number of others when I said before a meeting that "We needed to go upstairs to check he was happy with how that room had been set out" (for a following on function/event). I said nothing. I made a face. It stills bothers me a lot nearly a year later. Bit of an eye opener for me making the connection and extrapolating to work out the impact on these girls.

I hate to think what these teenage boys and their attitudes will be like in 5/10/20 years time. .

Even worse is the fact that these girls are being routinely sexually assaulted on a very very regular basis in school.

I would say that is because you have instilled a "no stealing" boundary early.

I was thinking more of the boundaries in terms which start with playing nicely as toddlers, respecting other people, not pressuring friends into peccadillos etc (obviously not an exhaustive list). But only those who are sure of what makes up ethical conduct will be at all ready to withstand peer pressure, especially of hormone fuelled.