5 Responses to “All these cool new ideas”

• #1

  Seth

  May 29, 2018 at 5:57 pm

  Quite.

  In a slight hijack, I had a bit of a moral quandary today that I think might be instructive to share, if only to seek some advice from the fine folks around here. It regards a group of young adolescent girls, an off-screen boy, and myself. (To make it a bit more relevant, I’d bet we can all imagine Jordan Peterson’s cool new opinions, even before I’ve explained the situation.)

  The scene: A city bus on a busy street, the back of which becomes dominated by a group of girls seemingly fresh out of school. Their proximity makes eavesdropping inevitable, but the conversation is the usual adolescent noise; my ears only catch when they mention a boy at their school who’s developed a habit of calling more than one of them “lesbian whores”, “prostitutes”, and getting unreasonably offended when they dare to hold open a door for him. The girls lament that Madame Such-and-such from their school knows about this behaviour and isn’t doing anything, and they consider going above Madame S-n-s’s head to a (male) authority figure who might be able to intervene.

  Immediately, I feel a deep instinct to impress upon these girls the prudence of their conjecture, that this boy likely needs some form of intervention in order to avoid being the kind of man who’s a danger to any woman who might fall into his orbit. But, on the one hand, it is manifestly not these girls’ responsibility to help the boy grow up; on the other hand, I’m a stranger, at least twice as old as they are, and a chubby bearded man who’s got no business approaching school children with unsolicited advice.

  I didn’t say anything, or give the children any cause to notice me at all. The conversation turned and I was able to stop paying attention before I left the bus. I realise now that my instinct was mostly a wish to be able to talk to the boy, or at least to ensure the boy had *someone* to talk to who could try and untangle such vile misogyny from his thought process. But I can’t; I can only trust, or at least hope, that someone will, and hopefully they’ll be able to help him before it’s too late.

  Those girls deserve better than having another violent woman-hating man in their midst as they grow, and he deserves better than to become one. But I’m not at all sure that I was the right person to reinforce that message in that context.
• #2

  iknklast

  May 29, 2018 at 8:29 pm

  Seth – as someone who went through some of that as a young girl, I would have to say I am torn. I would have loved to have someone give me some guidance, rather than the same old “boys will be boys” that has been the standard for so long. On the other hand, I probably would have been quite freaked out to have an unknown adult male (with or without a beard) speak to me unsolicited.

  Madame S-n-s needs to be the one to help them; unfortunately, it sounds suspiciously like she might be in that same old “boys will be boys” mode I grew up with.
• #3

  Josh Slocum

  May 30, 2018 at 8:21 am

  Ribbit.
• #4

  iknklast

  May 30, 2018 at 10:53 am

  Hey, thought this might be relevant:

  https://ofliberalintent.com/womens-writes/works/2018/5/30/sexual-market-value
• #5

  Seth

  May 30, 2018 at 1:01 pm

  iknklast, thank you for the reply. If it’s any consolation, there was a disapproving unanimity in the group itself, and one or two voices that clearly spelled out that the boy’s actions were wrong and needed to be addressed. Also, as my girlfriend pointed out, these kids have a lot more information and awareness at their fingertips than you or I had when we were their age. (On the other hand, the boy presumably has just as much information and awareness, but that didn’t seem to prevent him from starting down the wrong road.)

  In any case, you’re right that Madame S-n-s bears the responsibility for both recognising the problem and at the very least taking steps to insulate the girls in her charge from such abuse.