Wondering what people think about this..

[BertrandRussell]

Ds is 17 and straight. He went to our local Pride yesterday and had a great time-including being chatted up quite a lot (he is very good looking in a Brideahead-y sort of way). He came home very cheerful and had had a massive confidence boost. Now I know that if he had been a young woman and had gone to an event where men had repeatedly propositioned her I would be thinking it was completely inappropriate. Am I being hypocritical in feeling differently because he is a boy? What's going on here?

Of course talking to people is fine! I was talking about passing comments about looks alone. Mmm!

There's the chat up, flirtatious line. Then there's the creepy, continued unwanted comments. I wouldn't mind receiving some of the former - way past that age, sadly. But would loudly object to the latter.

Strutting your stff at Pride? Guaranteed to get a big, bodacious flirty response, male, female, gay, staright and anywhere on any scale in between! You sone njoyed it you hypothetical(?) daughter would have enjoyed it. It wasn't unwanted and was a fun day out, it seems!

We all have an ego, your DS just got his stroked!

Most young people are metrosexual , and most young people live in the 21st century

I have always been a lesbian , but believe me this is all quite normal , my nephew and niece were proud to march with me and my girlfriend at many prides over many years

both my Niece and Nephew are straight , ! and both still do pride events with their old school friends who are LGBT

this Victorian attitude is ridiculous gay men know if a boy is straight and don't hit on him , same with us lesbians we don't hit on straight women

Its called GAYDAR ,

fekko

awesome

lass

Ds1 and boyfriend were here yesterday

Boyfriend said he reckoned he was gay because his mum wanted a girl....

I asked ds1 why he was gay

Overbearing mother apparently

Gay male culture is very different to heterosexual male culture. The type of attention your DS would have got might have been deliberately embarrassing, overtly sexual and definitely a high degree of teasing but probably wasn't actually threatening. You're right that lesbians don't tend to catcall and overtly sexualise young women in the street! However the way the gay men were behaving with your son wouldn't have been intended or experienced the same way it would have been with a group of straight men and a teenage girl.
When I was young I loved getting attention from lesbians in gay bars. I totally sucked up the non threatening validation

Foxylizzy there is a difference between hitting on someone and flirting with them!

I agree with pps above saying that this is about the power balance, and also I think the setting itself is important.

For example: if I was at work and men kept making comments and compliments about my appearance, I’d be uncomfortable- I’m at work. I’m in professional mode. It’s not appropriate to do so beyond the sort of ‘oh you got your hair cut, looks good, right about this dataset..’ thing.

If I’m at some fancy ball thing and dolled up to the nines, and men compliment me on my appearance, I’m Ok with that (and ok with women too.) if they pester then again I’m back to not being OK with it, because it’s gone beyond what’s appropriate in the situation.

There are settings where flirting is acceptable and ones where it isn’t. A street march, carnival, party, night out etc is the former.

As long as all these interactions were light hearted, and he didn’t feel threatened, then I think it’s all OK. I’m glad he had fun - pride generally is usually a really nice atmosphere.