So: the flipside of the 'teaching your daughter how to keep herself safe at uni' conversation

[Effzeh]

So I've raised two strong-minded, largely sensible now-adult daughters, and have managed to have that 'don't get so drunk you don't know what you're doing' convo without in any way implying that assault victims are to blame for what happened to them, etc etc. I have the radfem T-shirt, I can do common-sense without victim-blaming.

I'm now musing on how the equivalent convo looks when you are sending your newly-fledged 18yo ds out into the world. The cliche of 'don't teach girls how to avoid rape, teach boys not to rape' is too simplistic to be of direct practical use - I think it encourages boys to think that rapists are the bad guys 'out there', rather than teaching them how to apply the logic of consent to their own behaviour.

So what do we tell our sons? I'm talking sensible, thoughtful, well-socialised boys, who are used to being around women with strong opinions and who have a baseline understanding of sexism and male privilege.

My current mental rolodex for this convo contains the following broad themes (and yes, the boy in question is definitely heterosexual, fwiw):

-Don't get so drunk that you don't know what's going on. Just don't. For your sake and for other people's. If you know you've got to that point without intending to, take yourself home and sleep it off.
-If other blokes around you are getting fighting drunk, walk away.
-Remember that most women are not as stroppy and bolshy as your sisters socialised to please men, so be very aware of body language and make sure that they are genuinely ok with what's happening, not just telling you what they think you want to hear.
-You will encounter girls who are too drunk to know what they are doing, and who may throw themselves at you and proposition you. Do not get sexual with a girl who is pissed out of her head, find her friends and make them take her home. Failing that, walk her home yourself and once you know she's safe, leave.
-If your mates are hitting on a girl and she doesn't seem okay with it, step in to try and head it off.
-If you find yourself getting sexual with someone you don't really know (as in you only met them half an hour ago, you have never had a sober conversation with them, you don't know their full name, what subject they're doing, where they live, their taste in music and what football team they support), that is a giant waving red flag that you should probably stop right there.
-Condoms are your responsibility. Every time, all the time. Never mind if a girl tells you she's on the pill, do not have unprotected sex unless you are hunky-dory with the idea of paying child support alongside paying off your student loan for the next 18 years. And no, I'm not currently in the market for looking after a baby or for paying childcare costs.
-A good sexual experience for a woman is not one that consists of a bloke putting his willy in her and thrusting till he comes. Most women will not come from PIV sex alone. Do your research, spend time together, build up to it, find out what works for her.
-Did I mention condoms? Sexual health clinics give them out for free.

I'd be really interested to hear what other people have said to their sons, what worked, what didn't, what you think of it all. The 'teaching your daughters to stay safe' convo is such a staple of female conversations, whether online or IRL, but no-one talks about what we say to our sons.

Do you mean the flipside as in "'teaching your son how to keep other women safe at uni'" or "'teaching your son how to keep himself safe at uni'"

Some of your suggestions would be the same for both angles, of course, but I don't think many girls are getting a talk from their parents about researching how to make a good sexual experience for a man!

Sorry to placemark - am so clueless about this so am hoping for advice...

I think I would try to add something about his consent counts too, that if he's not sure and someone is getting sexual with him, it's right to say let's slow down, let's stop, no.

Oh god please don't instruct your son how to sexually please women. My toes are clenching just thinking about it.

If you wouldn't tell your daughters how to sexually please men, think why not. And apply that to your sons.

Can he say no, and can he accept it when its said to him in any context?

If you wouldn't tell your daughters how to sexually please men, think why not.

Most (nonfeminist) mothers do tell their daughters how to sexually please men. They teach them to apply make-up, to wear high-heels, to shave their whole bodies, and so on and so forth. This is all done under the guise of "fashion" or "hygiene", but in the end, it is all about sexually pleasing males.

I wouldn't feel a need to teach a son how to sexually please women, as I'd have seen to it that he gets decent sex ed and knows what the clitoris is and what it does. A reasonably intelligent boy would draw his own conclusions.

Same for teaching sons not to rape; I should hope at the time they leave for uni, they are capable of empathy and so already know not to rape.
(As mother, I wager you'd know whether your son sees women as human, or not)

So I'd focus on teaching them how to stop other men from raping, and how to keep themselves safe if attacked by other men.

Have you seen this video?

I'd sneak it on casually when the family is together (including your girls if they're home for the summer) and see what people say about it. Its a humerus (but good) starting point for the consent issue.

The rest of your plan is good - though all stuff which I hope has come up before and shouldn't be new to an 18 year old.

Does sex ed include how to please your partner? What to girls get told about this?

I think your points sound great. I disagree with other posters about not addressing consent because he won't rape anyone. I'm sure he won't, but explicit, clear discussions about consent are really important and always worth having. I also think getting boys to think about sexually please women is important even though I wouldn't do the reverse - we live in a culture in which women are constantly trained to please men; most of what they will have seen (porn and mainstream) will involve women pleasing men. This is deeply ingrained for women and they need to be taught that their own pleasure is important. Boys are just not taught subliminally that women's pleasure is important, so should be taught this explicitly.

We don't teach our children to not kick puppies when they go out into the world, do we? We assume they know already, or we have so utterly failed that trying to remedy that in a hour of talking would be pointless.

I view consent the same way. Either you succeeded in raising your sons to consider women as fellow human beings, or you haven't.

The only thing I would teach boys is to be explicit about consent.

Not because I think they are not perfectly capable of reading body language and understanding implicit messages, but in order to expose rapists.

If your sons always explicitly ask for consent, then the dudes who walk around wailing that they could not possibly ever know whether a woman wants to be touched by them will look like weirdos and idiots, as it will be obvious to everyone they could just have fucking asked.

Enthusiastic consent, that consent can be withdrawn (the cup of tea cartoon!), that you can't consent of super drunk.
The importance of the clitoris and that most women don't want anal despite what porn says.
Red flags of abusive behaviours - refuge website.

If you wouldn't tell your daughters how to sexually please men, think why not. And apply that to your sons.

Sons and daughters receive a very, very different impression through the media of their role in sex. Sex is overwhelmingly portrayed as for the man. I don't think we should necessarily teach some how to please women, but I think it's important to emphasise that sex should be pleasurable for both partners. My daughters are a little young for this now, but I want to impress on them that they should be enjoying sex, because I don't think they'll get that message from society as a whole. I think the opposite is true for young men.

Haha, no obv I'm not going to tell him how to please women! But flipping it around, girls do (directy and indirectly) get taught how to please men, and perhaps more importantly learn to sideline their own desires or enjoyment in favour of what the man wants. Whereas teen boy sexuality (and what they will have watched through porn, however enlightened the family background) is all about what the male wants.

I have actually had the porn conversation with him a few years ago, when his older sister chanced upon his search history on the family computer and very sensibly alerted me. The conversation went along the lines of, 'please do not fool yourself that this is normal, because it really isn't. Nor is this what women want, because they really really don't.'

He went a pleasing shade of beetroot, but I'd made my point. [mwahaha]

"teach boys is to be explicit about consent"
Amen to that.

"mothers do tell their daughters how to sexually please men. They teach them to apply make-up, to wear high-heels, to shave their whole bodies,"
Disagree with this - that's how to attract the attention of men, not how to sexually please them.

"teaching them how to stop other men from raping, and how to keep themselves safe if attacked by other men"
There seems to be the idea that men know who the rapists are, and I dont believe any (who would be influenced by this) do.
But yes to knowing how to intervene - and knowing that men and women have a responsibility to intervene - if you saw something that didnt look consensual.
Staying safe from attack (from both men and women) is especially important (for both men and women) I think. You can't prevent some nutter being in your vicinity, and I'm not blaming victims but if you learn the warning signs you may be able to avoid reduce your risks. That's not excusing anything, but I'd rather avoid a fight, for example, than recover from a beating.

Sons and daughters receive a very, very different impression through the media of their role in sex. Sex is overwhelmingly portrayed as for the man. I don't think we should necessarily teach some how to please women, but I think it's important to emphasise that sex should be pleasurable for both partners. My daughters are a little young for this now, but I want to impress on them that they should be enjoying sex, because I don't think they'll get that message from society as a whole. I think the opposite is true for young men.

Yes, exactly - that is what I was getting at. I think porn (and culture in general) also encourages boys to see sex as a performance, something they have to achieve at in order to be manly/please a woman. That's an incredibly damaging message for both sexes, I think.

I think part of the education Is teaching our boys that porn isn't real and is very often disrespectful to women (there do appear to be some more positive porn sights out there? There is the one run by women showing clips of masturbation?)

My son is a baby, I want to have these discussions with him as he gets older but I do wonder how easy it will be. It was always easy for me and my mum to talk about sex, I would have hated my dad talking to me about it.

Consent, I think, is a general ongoing discussion. For me, it's important to teach my son about consent early because he needs to understand that others do not have a right to ones body. This serves as a way of teaching him about abuse but also teaches that while others have no right to his body, he has no right to theirs.

It's funny because I would want him to be considerate of a woman in bed - I think because I want him to be generally caring and respectful- but I'm not sure that's a conversation that can ever be had

A different topic but I don't always agree heels and make up are sexual behaviours for men. I only ever wear heels when out with friends because I bloody love shoes - DH only ever gets hairy ol' me in slippers and PJ's

It depends if you meant specifically around the issue of sex, relationships and consent. More generally in terms of challenging misogyny I'd teach him to always challenge misogyny and sexist comments from his male friends if they make any, as well as other boys/men when he can do so. This is part of what I tell my brothers (when we're not terrorising one another) and the elder of the two now tells me about times he's challenged sexism he's heard from friends. It could make a real difference to the general acceptance of casual sexism and the views of women and girls it encourages.

Consent is the huge issue. Enthusiastic informed sober consent from everyone involved. Boys are allowed to say no to sex-whatever their mates tell them.

And stopping their mates behaving like dicks. And if they can't stop them, getting themselves out of the situation.

I know there's a huge discussion above but on behalf of someone who's parents never uttered the word 'sex', banned any talk of getting drunk or similar, and who consequently got pissed out of her mind and had a one night stand that turned bad at 18, I just want to say you're doing a really good job. It took me until I met my current partner to realise I wasn't just a girl who had drank to much and acted like an idiot, as I believed. I had been assaulted by somebody much more sober than me who clearly didn't understand that if someone is too drunk to string two words together, they're too drunk to consent.

You're doing a good job.

@Bertrand
"Enthusiastic informed sober consent from everyone involved"
I think I've seen you post that before, and totally agree

One thing I'm hoping to explain to DS when he's a bit older is that there are effectively two mental models (for want of a better phrase) of what sex is about. One sees sex as a form of competitive sport: it's all about marks out of 10 for orgasm, athletic bendiness, extremity of acts undertaken. This is a crap mental model for sex. The other is more akin to a jamming session with your mate, where it's about having fun, enjoying yourself together, getting pleasure out of the good bits, laughing when it doesn't go quite as planned. That's a much better and much healthier mental model to have.

Definitely something about challenging his mates/other men when they say or do sexist things. I know so many 'nice men' who treat women perfectly well and talk the talk about feminism, but appear to be totally incapable of speaking up when other men are knobs

Massive cringe. My kids just finished uni
One has a partner. One not. Everything is fine
Give them some space

Very much so IrenetheQuaint. Boys and men challenging sexism from other boys and men is vital; it shows some of their peers disapprove, it's not impressing them and they can't spout it without being pulled up on it. If men don't oppose it when other men are making sexist comments it suggests they're also alright with it and it perpetuates it being an acceptable way to speak about and view women and girls.

I would say "don't be a dick".

Vestal

I agree with you 99%of the time, but when you say this:

Same for teaching sons not to rape; I should hope at the time they leave for uni, they are capable of empathy and so already know not to rape.
(As mother, I wager you'd know whether your son sees women as human, or not)

So I'd focus on teaching them how to stop other men from raping, and how to keep themselves safe if attacked by other men.

I do disagree.