According to top child experts
Oh no oh no this new politically correct idea that girls are not public property for boys to fumble at whenever they like is HARMING BOYS.
Boys are being damaged by “an excessive cultural shift” against them triggered by the #MeToo and Everyone’s Invited movements that has left many lost, insecure and traumatised, according to top child experts.
Stupidest lede ever. Saying boys should not sexually assault girls is not “an excessive cultural shift” and it’s also not “against boys.” Some boys actually know they shouldn’t sexually assault girls!
Julie Lynn-Evans, a psychotherapist with 35 years’ experience, says the two movements involving girls and women speaking out about sexual harassment have led to a “dangerous” backlash against boys. Many have done nothing wrong.
Again: that’s just outright stupidity. There is no “backlash against boys.” A heightened awareness of sexual assault is not a backlash against boys, it’s a backlash against sexual assault. I know journalists have to take short cuts but this is more of a canyon.
While her clients during lockdown were mostly teenage girls with eating disorders, or who were self-harming, they are now “exclusively” boys who have been ostracised, punished or even expelled for behaviour that she describes as little more than clumsy “teenage fumbling”.
Is this supposed to be an argument of some kind? It’s meaningless. Maybe she is selecting boys; how do we know? Just telling us she had Z clients before and now has Q clients tells us nothing further. Also, even “fumbling” without consent is wrong and bad.
It goes on and on in the same vein and concludes with
[Lynn-Evans] said: “I like #MeToo and would like to give the woman who started it an award but I think it has gone too far. Now any boy who puts a hand on a bosom because he is slightly drunk and has not asked is being in danger of being ostracised and shamed. Girls are viewing teenage boys as aggressive predators. So the normal sexual dance that has gone for ever now seems not OK. Boys are losing their feet.”
Their feet? The poor wee bairns, are the schools chopping them off? She probably meant footing and the reporter, Sian Griffiths, didn’t catch it. What a lazy destructive stupid article.
It’s not excessive, but you don’t think it’s a cultural shift from thousands of years of rape culture?
‘any boy who puts a hand on a bosom because he is slightly drunk and has not asked’
This is assault and is a crime. I don’t believe boys should be immune from the consequences of criminal acts. Sorry Julie. Never mind ‘ostracised and shamed’; they should be going to jail if they can’t learn to keep their hands to themselves.
I have a friend who stated flatly a while ago that girls are taught to play hard-to-get, to say no when they really mean yes. I do not in the least think this is true, but I don’t doubt that a lot of boys and men do think this. From their standpoint, then, they believe they are getting mixed signals; do what the girls “want” and you’ll either be doing exactly the right thing or committing sexual assault. The males need to learn these ideas they have are myths.
I hear this all the time “I like #MeToo, but it’s just gone too far!”
I heard someone say “Anytime a man puts his hand on a woman’s knee, he’s considered a predator!” Damn right. Because that’s what he is.
“Anytime a man puts an arm around a woman at the copier, he’s considered a predator.” Damn right. Because that’s what he is.
“Anytime a college boy gets a bit drunk and breaks in a girl’s dorm room, he’s considered a predator!” Damn right. Because that’s what he is.
And all of these have been given too much license for too long. So boys are in therapy now because they can’t assault girls without consequences? I’m crying crocodile tears. I have endured far too many years of hands on the knees, arms around the neck, hands on the butt, elbows brushing ever so (not) subtly against the bosom…it makes being too old to be attractive to men a really better place to be.
Where have so many people gotten this idea that “boys just want to express themselves” is a good excuse for making girls feel unsafe? Where have so many people gotten the idea that “we don’t want to ruin a boy’s life” is a good excuse for acquitting someone who ruined a girl’s life?
Hey, that’s rhetorical. ‘Cause I know the answer. ‘Cause girls don’t matter. Women don’t matter. We aren’t the people, men are the people.
Sackbut, I’ve heard that, too. And worse. There are people out there claiming women want to be raped. Literally forced into sex. Because they want a strong man. Like that old song (I hate): I want a brave man, I want a cave man”. I think it’s called something like “Johnny Get Angry”, or something awful like that.
Forget the cave man. I’ll keep my mild-mannered librarian who knows the difference between sexual assault and consensual sex.
Good grief. It’s just not that difficult. It’s not like a guy needs to get a complex form completed in triplicate, or even a verbal negotiation explicitly outlining which hand, which breast, the manner of cupping, pressure, duration and whether nipple tweaking is included. People when flirting give off huge numbers of non-verbal cues. All the poor lads have to do is pay attention to the girls instead of her tits and they’ll be fine. And yes, if she tells you no, then no.
GW – I didn’t say that, so why ask?
Sackbut: “Playing hard to get” actually is something that girls are taught. It’s something of a logical consequence of a culture that equates female virtue with female virginity. Of course, there’s more to it. A trivial example might be something as simple as common “wisdom” about how long to wait to call someone or who should make a move. It doesn’t take much looking to find advice on how and why to play hard to get from sources that can seem reliable.
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Rob:
How does one learn non-verbal cues and what they mean? Should misreading these cues result in ostracism? It’s not like tying failure to catastrophic consequences makes learning more difficult or anything. Do non-verbal cues constitute consent?
I have significant difficulty with non-verbal cues, myself. If I misread one despite my best intention and effort, I should be shamed and shunned? Yeah, that’s definitely not going to exacerbate my social anxiety and keep me locked within the walls it’s built.
NiV, perhaps I misspoke in referring to “playing hard-to-get”; the specific point was “no means yes” (as infamously shouted at Yale). I suppose “play hard-to-get” includes feigning lack of interest, but I was thinking of something far beyond that.
Re the rest of your post, I think you have a point.
We have discussed here how a number of “diversity” programs fail to hit the mark; it is difficult to change hearts and minds, so such programs may make people afraid of dire consequences for transgressions, deliberate or not, including those that might be considered minor. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that, in some cases, sexual assaults are being (we hope) reduced or prevented by making boys afraid of being expelled for touching a girl, not by getting boys to understand, genuinely, that girls are human beings who should be respected equally. Maybe that’s the best or only way to deal with the problem, but it’s reasonable to see that it has consequences.
I recall reading a book (author and title escape me) long ago about the psychology of boys. There were many anecdotes about boys doing awful, stupid things that might hurt some other boy. They were asked how they think the other boy might feel. These boys had no idea, it hadn’t even occurred to them to wonder about that. That concept was striking to me. The disconnect, the failure to consider the feelings of other people, is of course not universal, but it is common enough. It is hard to overcome.
Sackbut: Oh, okay, I see what you meant.
And most definitely, empathy is as much a learned skill as walking, playing an instrument, fencing, or navigating social situations. I long ago lost count of how many people obliviously offered me unhelpful advice of the “just be yourself” variety. For the vast majority of people, social learning happens so unconsciously that they don’t remember ever having learned at all. (Much like how TRAs will call knowledge of one’s sex innate, because they can’t remember a time before they knew.) If boys aren’t taught empathy and aren’t made to practice it, then they’re not really going to be empathetic.
There are a couple of ways to look at this. Consent means consent, period. Non-verbal cues are used to indicate that there might be hope if you keep courting…if I may be so bold as to use an archaic word. A non-verbal cue that seems to be saying “maybe” doesn’t mean touch me, it means I might be interested. Until you have consent, which can be non-verbal if you can be sure (for instance, my husband can read my non-verbal cues pretty well) but if you cannot be sure, then do not touch.
This has to be the rule. Why? Because girls are weaker than boys. Because women are weaker than men. Yes, I know, exception exception exception blah blah blah…exceptions do not negate the truth, they only make it a bit nuanced.
When I see guys saying things like NIV said, I think…yeah, this is someone who never had to wade through a wall of hands, feel erect penises through jeans managing to ever so subtly rub up against you, never had to deal with all the bullshit girls and women have to navigate every day.
I think mis-reading the cues should result in education first. If the behavior continues, then, yes, ostracism by all means. Protect the girls. Boys can always claim “non-verbal cues” and how is anyone to know?
The second thing that I see in this is studies I’ve read about that suggest that boys actually do understand consent. They know what no and yes mean, and how to read the signs. Other studies have shown that boys will admit forcing girls to have sex, but deny ever having raped anyone. Cognitive dissonance? Who knows?
As someone who traveled that obstacle course, by all means, yes deal with boys who misread the non-verbal cues. If it was an accident, then apologies and long conversations about consent may be the proper way to deal with it. But I don’t believe men and boys are so hard at reading non-verbal cues; a lot of girls get harassed for being ‘frigid’ because their non-verbal cues say “no”. I know; I was one of those girls.
In one of her books Deborah Tannen writes about the idea that boys/men are more direct, and have more trouble understanding indirect speech…pointing out that they understand indirect speech just fine, and expect others to understand theirs, in other situations. For example, the ‘man of the house’ says ‘there’s no ketchup’ and the female members of the household know that that means ‘if one of you doesn’t IMMEDIATELY jump out of your chair at the dinner table and go to the refrigerator to bring me ketchup there will be hell to pay.’
By the time a ‘boy’ is old enough to be ‘putting a hand on a bosom’ he’d have had many opportunities to learn that grabbing other people is wrong. A child wouldn’t be jailed or ostracised for this behaviour, but an adult should be. (And you can bet that this ‘boy’ wouldn’t dream of grabbing or touching another man for any reason; he’s just never faced any consequences for doing it to a female person.)
Re ‘hard to get’, and imagining women say ‘no’ when they mean ‘yes’, learning goes both ways. Boys/men should start taking girls/women at their word, saying ‘ok then, nice to know you’, and walking away, allowing women to learn, if they need to, that their words will be respected and they are allowed to, and need to, express their desires and choices directly. But this is very unlikely to happen, because women still face serious consequences, including social ostracism, for expressing their desires and choices directly. Here’s what happened to Nina Paley when she committed to expressing herself clearly sexually.
https://4w.pub/sex-pos-memoirs/
This may not go over well with everyone, but I still think the only acceptable rule of thumb to apply is “anything other than yes means no”. The whole point of non-verbal cues is plausible deniability, but the very same lack of specificity that makes the deniability plausible means you can never be sure you have interpreted the cues correctly. Needless to say there’s an obvious asymmetry between false positives and false negatives in this case, so you want to err on the side of “let’s not go there”. To put it bluntly, not making yourself guilty of sexual harassment, or even assault, should not depend on having the dumb luck to only ever hit on women who (in retrospect) turned out to be interested. Talk of consent (as important as that is!) only gets you so far. Before consent can be given or withheld there has to be something to consent to (or not), and there is no “safe” way to get that “something” across. The very fact that someone is thinking about you “in that way” can be awkward and uncomfortable enough in itself if the feeling is not mutual. Thus by the time a woman gets around to say no, it means a boundary may already have been breeched (although not taking that no for an answer obviously means crossing an even more fundamental boundary). There is an irreducible element of hostility and contempt* involved in every act of courting: “I don’t care how uncomfortable this makes her. It’s what I want to do, and if she doesn’t like it that’s her problem!”. I strongly suspect that one of the major sources of misogyny in the world comes from men’s desire to justify this hostility and contempt to themselves. Of course many men hardly even make any secret of these attitudes, but never stop shamelessly bragging about it.
*In an opt-out system, which is why it should always be opt-in in my opinion.
(And once again, quite contrary to the common strawman argument about feminists’ portraying all men as predators or mindless beasts unable to control their impulses, I have only ever heard that claim from MRA and other anti-feminists. The very same people who keep endlessly repeating the “not all men” mantra are also the ones spouting “boys will be boys”. Portraying opposition to sexual harassment and assault as “anti-male” only makes sense if you think such behaviors are an ineradicable part of what it means to male.)
This to me sounds a lot like the “harm” that one is accused of doing to the religious when you don’t grant them their religious privileges.
It seems to be an ever recurring theme, that when one group of people is granted some kind of privilege, complaints of harm will be thrown around when that privilege is questioned.
‘Portraying opposition to sexual harassment and assault as “anti-male” only makes sense if you think such behaviors are an ineradicable part of what it means to male.’ Precisely.
axxyaan @15, yes. Very much that. It’s a variant on boys being boys, just let them it’ll be fine.
NIV (and others), at risk of being misinterpreted although it might be too late for that, non-verbal cues (NVC) are not (should not be) an excuse for crossing a boundary. Ever. But then neither should ignoring a no, and we know that happens all the time. Yes, some people have trouble with NVC, but then some people have trouble with language, especially if they don’t speak the same language. Humans use and become adept at NVC long before they develop comprehensive speech ability. It’s very much part of us as a species. Frankly, I don’t believe this ‘men don’t get NVC’ bullshit. It’s an excuse. Men use NVC all the time in many and varied situations. Sure familiarity makes NVC easier, but you can have quite detailed and complex ‘conversations’ with people using NVC if you can be bothered paying attention to them. Men not getting NVC from women or girls is largely because at that point in time and space they do not want to. Some will be actively predatory, but many, maybe even most, will have a fuzzy idea in their heads that unless the woman actively resists in some way it’s just a seduction.
It’s worth noting that woman and girls facing assault or rape. frequently freeze up. They don’t resist NVC or verbally, but neither do they take part willingly. That is itself an MVC that indicates anything but crystal clear consent andI have seen not used by prosecutors in NZ, admittedly with mixed success.
What I’m saying is that in normal human interaction, NVC is as valid as speech. Men cross boundaries regardless of how they’re drawn and that’s a different matter.