Current teenage boy culture

[definitelypossibly]

I have 4 children, 2 younger ones and 2 teenagers (DD 17 DS 14). DS had a few mates round yesterday and they were playing grime music. Some absolutely vile lyrics were present about stabbing, but then there was some sexual stuff that sounded non-consensual and in general just very grim.

"Strike me a pose (strike it)
Girl you're kinda cute you know (yeah, yeah yeah)
Here all alone (why you on you own?), Girl you gotta loosen up (ice)
Cuz your body wanna move you know
Uptight, just loosen up"

"Peng ting from Bellingham
No love, just suck this elephant (Suck it)
No wap gets flashed, man's wetting 'em
Energy, got enough adrenaline"

"Back my J-Lo and back shot man
They're Madeleine gang, cos they vanished and ran
Buck my main hoe, that's backshot gang
Baby bend ya' back and then dig it
Dig it, bend ya' back and then dig it
Back and then dig it, gyal want more dickin'
Back in one minute, bag up that spinach"

As you can see, some really lovely stuff. These are from 3 different chart songs and I've also heard "clean" versions played on the radio (swear words blanked but sexual euphemisms etc are kept in).

I've spoken to DS about it, I have always tried to raise him to respect women and he's always told me he will. When I asked him about the music lyrics him and his friends were listening to he genuinely didn't see the problem. "It's just what's in". I think it's fucking disgusting that this stuff is allowed to appear in the charts or even be made in the first place by official studios.

DD when in school experienced constant harassment from lads (asking for nudes, calling her clapped when she refused and was also the victim of a sexual assault in school. There has also been cases of girls being filmed without their knowledge. DD enlightened me to something called "expose accounts" on Snapchat where loads of boys have a group chat and share and compare the nudes they have pressured poor girls into sending. I hear teenage lads on the bus as well talking about the girls they know, pure objectifying. Going on about what so and so's body part looks like etc. I fucking despair, I really do. Nothing is fucking changing. A new generation of men are now emerging who are just as vile as the last.

I needed to rant.

Worse than the last I think, I know teenaged lads who’ve already slept with over 10 years and have shared vid/pic without their consent, it’s grim

That's how they've always been. When I was a teenager I supported single sex schools (because I had to go to a mixed comprehensive).

10 girls

Bag up that spinach????

Bag up that spinach????

Weed - I guess he's dealing.

20 years ago a group of teenage boys in my I.T class would bring up porn when the teachers were out of the class. They would trick the girls into looking at it. This was in a class room on a computer, not on a phone anywhere at any time.

The main boy pushing this was also very happy to sexually assault girls in school too. I can’t imagine what girls have to put up with now.

Well done for talking to your teenager about these lyrics OP.
We must all keep talking to our boys about this misogyny.
It's so important.

Totally agree. I have 2 DS aged 15&16. I talk to them about the real world a lot and it scares me.

Why is this chat in 'feminism'. It's not feminism to be worried about what our boys are learning?? It's teen talk.

Hard to say how ironic it all is, like we were with the Sex Pistols and "Belsen Was A Gas."

Fact is, adolescent boys always try to impress each other by behaving badly, and try to impress girls by behaving well. That tension eventually breaks in most cases in favour of the girls.

This sort of stuff can be pretty toxic, I think a few things contribute to teens who should know better not recognising it as such.

Some people just don't really listen to or think about words. My husband is like this, he doesn't know the lyrics of songs he's listened to for years, it's just background noise to him.

I also find teens don't always recognise things that have been sexualised in a negative way, they somehow don't connect it to real life. I see the same thing with a lot of teen girls who don't really understand the way fashion has been sexualised. "It's just the style" is the response you get, because for them it's not about exploitation, and they lack the maturity to see that it affects girls, how they see themselves, how boys see them, whatever their personal motivations are.

There is also a natural tendency for teens to want to push at what is acceptable to their parents. (I think this can be a good reason to pretend to be more of a fuddy-duddy than you are really, it lowers the bar for rebellion.)

And to be fair a lot of adults think in terms of their childhood, when you could go buy a cassette and it would have a sticker for crude lyrics on it, and that was just stupid, They assume this is the same thing and after all, they came out ok. (But was it the same, and if so, was it really ok - people never seem to ask this.)

It can be ok for music to talk about things that aren't meant to be positive, so there is that. But I'd continue to encourage my kids to think about what they listen to and I'd not have it where I could hear it. Fourteen year old boys probably aren' going to be as sophisticated thinking about this stuff as a girl the same age, either.

OP, I hate these things too.

I have teenagers (DS, 17, and DD, 15). What worries me, though, is that DD is the one who listens to this stuff, and who is absorbing the messages about women. I loathe it. So DD is the one I'm talking to about mysogyny, rather than DD .

"DD rather than DS" is what I meant to write!

Trouble with "we did it in my day" is that communication has moved on. It's not just at school now. It's on the way to school, it's on the loo, it's at 2am in your room. Relentless pressure and potential for abuse and escalation.

I heard this somewhere else on the board today so it's not my idea, but I would support the idea that it should be every young girl's right to be able to go to a girls only school. And I mean girls only, none of that fucking girl-guides bullshit.

My daughter is at an independent girls-only school, @HorseWithNoAnecdotes It hasn't made the blindest bit of difference to her listening to this mysogynist shit. DS is at a boys' boarding school. He thinks it's all rubbish.

I was addressing this situation from OP:

DD when in school experienced constant harassment from lads (asking for nudes, calling her clapped when she refused and was also the victim of a sexual assault in school. There has also been cases of girls being filmed without their knowledge. DD enlightened me to something called "expose accounts" on Snapchat where loads of boys have a group chat and share and compare the nudes they have pressured poor girls into sending. I hear teenage lads on the bus as well talking about the girls they know, pure objectifying. Going on about what so and so's body part looks like etc. I fucking despair, I really do. Nothing is fucking changing. A new generation of men are now emerging who are just as vile as the last.

As for the music - some people love to listen to shit whaddyagonnado?

I don’t think teenage boys have changed but I think social media has made porn and sexist behaviour more accessible. My brother and I were born in the late 60s. My brothers access to porn was via magazines and videos which he had to ask for in a shop. It was less accessible. In terms of music there was no grime all we had access to was top of the pops, Pans People etc

Now everything is on their phones from the age of 12 when they go to secondary school. I’m constantly talking to my sons about consent, porn, treating girls with respect etc. But I feel I am fighting a losing battle when you hear about the Cyprus rape case.

Teenagers do like to shock as well. It's like a weird power dynamic.

Quite aside from the mysogyny, those lyrics are just utter bollocks. Like a sweary toddler speaking gobbledigook.

It's been over ten years ago grandson was bemoaning getting in trouble for saying something horrible to a girl in his class.
His excuse was that it was just song lyrics he was singing.
So I asked him to sing them to me. He couldn't do it.
Then I explained that if the lyrics were too embarrassing to sing in front of his grandma he probably ought not to be singing them anywhere, except perhaps the shower.

This misogyny is just so pervasive, we just can't seem to ever make any strides. Stormzy recently brought up inherent racism, fucking good on him, but why does he carry on using such degrading language to women? I actually love Stormzy and think he could make a huge difference. It just seems that misogynistic language will take so much longer (if ever) to stop.

@MiniGuinness right! Tweet him that! He may think / respond given his current political enlightenment

Rap music was funded by investors in private prisons in the US. To encourage crime (some sexual, mostly violent etc) to feed the money making machine that is private prisons. It worked like a dream. We should not discount the power of musical lyrics. It’s proven. Inciteful misogynistic lyrics should be criminal and banned. If I spoke some of these words in my job, I’d be fired. Why are we as a nation not up in arms about this influence on the next generation?

Oh I have! I am hopeful. He is a nice boy who loves his mum 😂

@MiniGuinness Link him this thread!

Stormzy on the MN Feminism board. That would be something to behold!