Quick Hit: Respect and Violence
Check out this piece from the NYT featuring two pediatricians talking about young people and sex:
It has never been easy for adults to deal with young teenagers honestly and sensibly on this subject, and it isn't easy now. We live with an endless parade of hypersexualized images -- and a constant soundtrack of adults lamenting children's exposure to that endless parade. There's increasing knowledge of dating violence, including well-publicized celebrity incidents. And there's always a new movie to see about how adolescent boys are clueless, sex-obsessed goofballs.Stir it all together, and you may get an official worldview in which boys are viewed as potential criminals and girls as potential victims.
Thoughts on the whole article?
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I feel like this is a good opportunity to link to Tiger Beatdown, a blog that has been making me lol nonstop instead of writing my papers for the past two days:
http://tigerbeatdown.blogspot.com/2009/04/tiger-beatdown-for-teenz-presents-super.html#comments
An excerpt:
But wait, this article asks: what if, by teaching them not to be violent, we hurt their feelings? No, seriously, it actually asks that. So, while I get that its writer, Perri Klass, thinks we should teach boys to protect themselves from predators, and teach girls not to be violent assholes, and totally agree with her on these points, her constant worries that "you may get an official worldview in which boys are viewed as potential criminals and girls as potential victims," or that "boys need to understand that there are people — male and female — who will see them as potential predators, and judge them automatically at fault in any ambiguous situation," along with the whole let's-not-talk-about-the-fact-that-lots-of-girls-actually-are-assaulted-or-abused-by-male-peers aspect of her article, makes the whole piece, um, not my favorite.
I mean, I get it: you love your teenager, you don't want to think ill of him, and therefore you don't teach him not to be violent or to avoid treating girls like crap because you are afraid of offending his tender sensibilities, and that is the story of how you became that lady on the news segment about the Highway Chainsaw Lady-Dismemberer who says, "oh, but he was always such a nice boy."* I feel for you, I do.
I just wrote a guest post about this very thing over at Shakespeare's Sister: What About the Boys, Part One Billion
I think you hit the nail on the head. Even my casual read of the article and my casual knowledge of all the "crisis among boys" media narrative couldn't miss the blatant and laughable "boys are the victim" mentality of the article. What a joke.
However, if something could be rescued from this shitpile of an article, may I propose the question:
Are people uncomfortable with the "women are victims and men are victimizers" framing, especially in an approach to education?
I know I've read a lot of complaints here about rape prevention programs that focus exclusively on changing women's behavior (obstensibly to reduce the chances of victimization, but as has been rightly pointed out it has "blame the victim" implications), and cheered a recent article about male focused "don't victimize" program.
But I still feel there is a tension with accepting this frame, even if statistics support it. First and perhaps foremost, the power implications of it. Similarly, doesn't this frame affirm the "men are animals/women are delicate flowers" or "men want sex/women don't" narratives as well?
Thoughts?
Individuals commit crimes, not the broad overarching group they belong to. It wasn't men writ large, it was a man, or a woman, in some cases groups of individuals. Who committed the crime, further those individuals make up a minority of men and women, which was the point the article brought up, and which was conveniently ignored by all.
There is push back because people don't like the idea of "men as a criminal class" and "women as a victim class".
On the whole it alienates any man who doesn't feel like apologizing for things he didn't do and couldn't stop. Further it substantially interferes with the prosecution of any female perpetrator because everyone has it so ingrained in their mind that men and just men are the abusers that they couldn't possibly believe that a woman could be a criminal too.
Lead off any discussion with any person by assuming their a criminal, particularly when you're doing it because of their race or gender and the reaction will not be different in the slightest.
If individuals of a certain "overarching, broader group" are more likely to commit certain crimes, exaggerated amounts of crime, and/or does so particularly against individuals of another "overarching, broader group" then it would be irresponsible to not investigate into why that is.
We are not talking about investigating why it happens, we are talking about when people begin to view all members as culpable of the actions of the few.
The majority of men do not commit violent crime. To propose a world view which blames the majority for the actions of a minority is irresponsible and dangerous.
Who said that all people are equally as culpable as the individual perpetrator?
From what I gather, it's mainly about contributing in varying degrees to a dehumanizing culture that, across a spectrum, increases the risk of bias, hostility, discrimination, violent crimes etc towards certain other demographics to happen. And/or increasing the likelihood of a demographic to resort to such behaviour in general.
That is not the same as saying that because one man rapes a woman, all men are criminals or equally as guilty.
This is the logic I hear from racists. Constantly. Is that really where you want to go?
I was about to say the same thing - that's the same argument you hear in favor of racial profiling!
You very well know that you've participated in discussions on this blog regarding subjects like gendered behaviour, stereotypes and double-standards.
A basic template for discussion could be like this, for example: "A does X more often to B, than B does X to A. Why?"
If, according to your beliefs, basic questions like that are analagous to "racial profiling", why are you still here? Why did you ever take part in this blog?
Are you just being unwittingly hypocritical?
Arguing for racial profiling, is arguing for racial profiling. Whether using gathered data, gathered using certain methodology, as part your argument, or not.
Doesn't make the basic pursuit of knowledge "racist".
(Q: How come Germany was responsible for the Holocaust and not France? A: HEY, RACIAL PROFILING!!!)
So, for example, fields of social sciences like sociology, anthropology, psychology and perhaps most pertinently, criminology are inherenty racist.
That's sounds very anti-intellectual. Is that really where you want to go?
You must really hate the US Census Bureau.
Although I regularly read the NY Times online and skim through the readers' comments, I have never posted a comment myself -- until yesterday. The article's title caught my attention and I was intrigued, if a bit bemused, by the lede: "A perception that boys need special lessons in manners." This sounds more like "The Ethicist's" column or an Op-Ed than an article in the Health section penned by an M.D.
The author's gender reductionism and reinforcement of heteronormativity struck me as fairly retrograde (the latter seems to have prompted more critical comments from readers than the former). But these assumptions are everywhere in popular culture; what inspired me to hastily type my gut reaction and press "send" was something else.
When I checked today to see if my comment had been posted I saw that all the comments had been moved to a discussion on the "Well" blog -- and that Dr. Klass had personally responded to my post (#48):
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/13/talking-to-boys-about-sex/?apage=2#comment-287811
I wrote:
This sounds like something written in the 1950’s. I’m shocked that in the article doesn’t even broach questions of sexual health, namely how best to avoid infection by and spreading of sexually transmitted diseases. It is important for adolescents to understand that true respect for oneself and one’s partners is not merely a question of etiquette. Respect also entails taking specific steps (using a condom every time, getting regular health check-ups including std screenings, etc.). This has nothing to do with avoiding “bad people” as the article seems to imply.
Perri Klass responds:
You’re absolutely right that those questions of sexual health are key — I guess I was assuming that those were always part of the discussion with both boys and girls, and that there was no one out there who would consider educating the genders differentially around sexual health, and even pregnancy prevention. But I like your point about how that is also part of respect in a sexual context.
I'm not sure where this pediatrician has been living for the past decade, but I was floored to see her casually confess that she didn't address sexual health because she assumes that gender-neutral sexual health education is the norm. And while I certainly enjoy hearing from a NY Times writer that I am "absolutely right," I am dismayed that she seems to find my opinion novel.
What saddens me about this exchange is that it seems to have never occurred to this pediatrician (or most of the other 150+ readers who posted comments) that a frank discussion of safer sex practices and the concept of sexual health should be a central part of any attempts to encourage adolescents to express their sexuality with respect for others.
It seems to me that when it comes to public conversations about sexuality in the United States, discourses around "morality" and "ethics" have become the sole domain of conservatives. Abstinence-until-marriage advocates have no problem talking about self-respect and ethical behavior towards others, while liberals seem content to relegate sexuality education and sexual behavior to a kind of instrumentalist public health approach (i.e. "there are lots of diseases out there so you need to know how to protect yourself").
How individuals - boys, girls, everyone else - express and enact their sexuality is inherently relational, and therefore contains an ethical and moral dimension. Only by acknowledging the diversity of moral frameworks that inform everyday choices around sexuality -- as well as the consequences of these choices -- will we be able to open up this country's polarized conversation about morality and sexuality and begin to engage in a more honest national conversation about how best to promote sexual health among young people.
As a mother of 2 boys, one rapidly approaching adolescence and dating, I liked this article.
I don't buy in to most of the "crisis of boys" arguments, but I do find myself in need of guidance of parenting boys through the maze of gender identity and relationships.
Just the other day, my son asked me why a friend was concerned about his daughter having a boyfriend, but seemed unconcerned about his son dating. We got in to a discussion about perceptions of girls as victims/boys as aggressors, and how that was an unfair stereotype on both sides.
I recognize that a lot of the material on raising boys and boys' consciousness can veer dangerously close to the "boys as victims of the evil feminist movement." But dont' throw the good stuff out with the bad. We do have to stop and think how we raise our boys as much as we think about our girls if we want things to change.
I do think this article is problematic in ways previous commenters have more or less covered, but I also agree with kat-- this article raises interesting issues about making boys aware of the culture attitudes towards young males and how to raise them in that setting so that they are not perceived (and more than perceived, don't act out as) the "asshole-somewhat-intimidating teenage boy" down the street.
Most of my issues with this article are what it omits, not what it says, per se.
this article really rubbed me the wrong way. girls aren't delicate and don't need to be treated with special manners and "protected" by the "nice boys".