Keep Your Boys out of those Dangerous Hallways
The Tampa Tribune ran an article posting the results of a self-report survey of the school district's middle and high schoolers views on sex, health and safety. More boys than girls admitted being physically abused by their significant other. Here are some more results of the survey:
Sounds like these Tampa school girls could use some anger management classes as well as sensitivity training in sexual harassment. Thanks to reader Fred for pointing out this article.
More male high school students - 16 percent - reported being physically hurt by their significant others than female students, at 11.8 percent.
•More than 9 percent of male and nearly 12 percent of female high school students said they were physically forced to have sex.
"I know that is happening, because my son constantly gets letters from girls who want to do sexual things to him," said Paula Thomas, mother of five children ages 9 to 16. "It starts in the sixth or seventh grade."
At school, the Citrus Park mother said, "They know to stay out of certain hallways because of the girls."
Sounds like these Tampa school girls could use some anger management classes as well as sensitivity training in sexual harassment. Thanks to reader Fred for pointing out this article.
posted by Helen at 2:21 PM
37 Comments:
Sexual harrasment of boys is not taken seriously in middle school or high school. I was called a "fag" and threatened on a regular basis (despite, you know, being heterosexual) after wearing our "rival school's" t-shirt to school on "school pride day". The day I wore the shirt, I also had food thrown at me, and was called a host of other unpleasant things.
In a later incident with one of the same students, I was told to "suck it like a dick, you faggot" in reference to the soda bottle from which I was drinking. The administration didn't discipline these kids at all on the basis that it was my word against theirs...despite many witnesses.
I never really felt in true physical danger, but as the kids were jerks and their behavior violated explicitly stated school policies, I felt they should be held accountable. No such luck on my part.
okay , now I have heard enough , I can't believe that this is really happening , the sexual advances towards boys from girls ? my blogger friend who also lives in the philly area homeschools her kids , I was seriously thinking about doing this myself , but I would still be wondering if I was doing the right thing , why can't these kids behave and be respectful of one another ?
I'm not surprised by these reports. Our media friends have pushed and pushed and pushed the idea that sex is no big deal, that everyone does it, that there is something wrong with YOU if YOU choose to act in a relatively chaste fashion.
Just look at television and magazines.
So it is natural that children would identify and try to incorporate these world views as a form of power or control.
Yep, the "repressed" period of society had many things bad about it. But a child could actually be a child...and feel fairly safe at school...back then.
Just my two cents, as usual.
EB
I just told a co-worker (who is very liberal) and he commented, "oh, but I know the girls being physically hurt and hurt far worse then the girls being hurt." Why does the left refuse to acknowledge that girls can be violent, also?
Sorry, hit the send to fast, edit that to say:
I just told a co-worker (who is very liberal) and he commented, "oh, but I know the girls being physically hurt are hurt far worse then the boys being hurt." Why does the left refuse to acknowledge that girls can be violent, also?
5:54 PM
ritchey ruff:
I assume your co-worker, like so many people, has a huge investment in thinking girls are not dangerous. It is far too frightening to believe that females who are/could be mothers could be dangerous. They are supposed to protect others and be nurturing. This is the biggest myth of our time.
Also, think about it--from a liberal standpoint, it is best to pander to the groups that support you--women and african americans so it is best to fight for their rights and few others. To deny women the right to be violent denies that they have a full range of human emotions. Instead of focusing on the problem which is, "why are girls becoming more violent and what can we do?" it is easier to say there is no problem. This denial of aggression in girls and women is quite common--juries let women and girls off much more readily and give lighter sentences to women.
The left often believes that women have some type of moral superiority over men--they are peaceful and only strike out if they are abused or victimized. It is too much like a male if a girl decides to aggressively pursue or abuse a male. Catherine Makinnon bases her feminist theory on "all men are rapists and all sex is rape." How can your theory hold up if the rapists are women? It is best just to deny that women can do such a thing.
We boomers, self-centered morons that we are, keep thinking that much of youth culture must be very much like what we remember. Our teen years were the central defining moment for the country, after all. Because girls seldom physically fought then, and few were sexually aggressive to the extent reported, we conclude it must not be happening, or not so much, or so badly as reported.
Our pleasure seeking and faux nihilism were a counterpoint to a previous generation which had bequeathed a base morality to us. There is a significant minority of the current generation which has its nihilism rooted in more nihilism, and its pleasure seeking untempered by other values.
This is what we ordered off the menu, and now we don't like it.
A girlfriend's brother used to teach 7th grade biology in the Tampa city school system. He reported a number of 15-year old 7th graders. He also had to break up a lot of fights- between girls. Usually they were fighting over a boy. More than a couple of these 7th grade girls were pregnant.
I had a good family life and grew up in a small town in New Hamphshire, so I was never exposed to domestic violence until I joined the Marines. There I was assigned to the Division Inspector's Office where we investigated DV crimes. Needless to say I was amazed to find that the majority of incidents were perpetrated by women!
Then, at another base, I had young female Marine who was being abused by her Marine husband. We seperated them for her safety, but she snuck back. We kicked him out of the Corps, but she refused to leave him. Finally, we transferred her overseas and she refused to go unless he could come.
Throughout this period I attended her domestic abuse counciling. I learned in those classes that in the most difficult domestic abuse cases there are often beators and beatees. And for all we tried, we could never get my Marine to quit her role as the beatee. We finally had to let her go. I hope to God she got out of it alive.
All these years later I continue to see domestic violence as a bit more complicated than it is portrayed in popular culture.
"anger management classes as well as sensitivity training in sexual harassment"?
Try teaching them self-restraint. Two birds with one (old-fashioned, non-PC) stone.
There used to be a term... before the Boomers... women aspired to be called... "ladies"!
And men wanted to be, oh yes... "gentlemen"!
Yes, there is a real problem with agressive girls today in schools. I teach in a small, well run school that tries to maintain discipline as well as we can. We still have problems. We have had probably three times as many fights between girls as we do between boys. Girls absolutely will not let a grudge go. We also have just as many other discipline problems with girls as we do with boys. Their language can be just as obscene as any boy. As to sexual agression, many of them seem to take joy out of deliberately intimidating boys in a sexual manner.
So yes, this problem needs to be addressed. Just bear in mind it was caused by a bunch of pinheads (mainly liberals) who have a vested interest in perpetuating the programs and attitudes that have caused this problem.
However I still want to emphasize that for every kid (male or female) we have who is causing problems, we still have several out there who are very active in doing something good, whether it is a project that they love, or some sort of community service, or just being helpful and nice to other people. We just need to work at providing proper guidance and examples to all of them. Keeping the professional 'victims advocates' away from them will help also
Bert
As a middle school teacher, let me tell you that the girl fights are way worse than the boy fights. I broke up one this year (http://www.thepirateknight.net/?p=163) and hopefully the one girl won't be back. I have a degree in education, not psychology/psychiatry, which is what she needs.
Also, Steve, from what I see, there are just as many girls on meds as the boys.
My self-defense instructor in college PE said women were much more dangerous in a fight than men because women typically have only two levels--off and on. Men usually have an intermediate level where they're fighting but they aren't necessarily out for blood. My instructor said with women, once they turn it on, it's on all the way.
Wow, those are some scary girls.
My own experience of 18 yrs in the Tampa school system is pretty much along these lines. I saw two fights between guys in that time. I saw at least four fights between girls.
Fortunately I was in the Gifted/Honors/AP track and so the girls who were in my classes were not that type. Indelicate as it may be to say, but the girls who have gotten into fights all tend to be in the less advanced classes and (in my experience) Hispanic. These girls aren't thinking about female empowerment, but they are living in a strange place where (in the broader culture) sex is used as a tool for manipulation and power grabbing and (in Hispanic culture) there are strong social pressures to get married and have children.
The students in my friend's experiences in Tampa were all non-Asian minorities, so to speak.
That said, I believe the issues involved were more of class than of race, although culture played the largest role.
Jeff said...
"Try teaching them self-restraint. Two birds with one (old-fashioned, non-PC) stone."
This is an excellent point. Things seem to have been deteriorating toward more physical violence since the days of "let it all hang out". Prior to those gurus of self satisfaction telling us that it's "bad" to repress our "self expression"... people tried to act with some sort of decorum in public. Not any more it seems.
I don't think humans have changed over the last 30 years or so - what has changed is what kind of behavior is tolerated and how bad behavior is often condoned and even celebrated. Women have always been capable of being very dangerous - we are simply seeing it more openly manifested than ever.
What has scared me for years is the mindset that women are NOT dangerous. It's willful blindness on the part of those who either have an agenda or simply refuse to accept reality. Either way - it's very scary.
maybe the boys who responded were lying on some questions; perhaps the girls were too.
I taught self-defense to a group of women in 1967. After the requisite girlish giggles, they got really serious, really fast. Guys took it as another athletic endeavor.
It was about that time I found Kipling's "The Female of The Species (Is More Deadly Than The Male)".
When I was a barback in Philadelphia, I got in the middle of a catfight between three drunken women and two female employees. It was brutal. One of the fighters had thrown a heavy glass beer mug at the head of a female bartender who ducked, letting the mug shatter several liquor bottles and a glass shelf and mirror.
We herded the women out of the bar, with one refusing to leave. She tried to run back in to get at the bartender. My manager, a young, athletic, 6-foot tall woman, tried to block the other woman, who responded with a clean right hook into the manager's jaw. So this 5'-4'' woman knocked a 6' woman out cold.
I rushed the puncher from behind and put her into a full nelson and dragged her into the parking lot. Whereupon another woman assaulted both of us with a flurry of kicks and punches. I dropped the first woman and the two started wrestling and biting. Three of us men pulled them apart. The woman I picked up took two handfuls of hair (this was Philly, after all). Two guys held the other one until her girlfriend collected her., screaming threats all the while.
They left without the cops being involved.
I work with a man who is abused by his wife. Every few months, he shows up to work covered in bruises and scratch marks. (He's a big guy; there's no doubt that he could physically subdue her. I suppose he doesn't because he's afraid of hurting her.) She's finally taking anger management classes, and hopefully those make some difference.
Oops, one more thing in regards to the man I work with:
His wife doesn't seem to be ashamed of this. She laughs about it, and says things like, "Yeah, I know. I can't believe I did that." Can you imagine a man owning up to beating his wife in this way?
I think a big reason men in these anecdotes are abused is more out of fear of being locked up in jail for retaliating than in tolerating an angry woman.
Men are generally physically stronger than women. If all other things being equal between an average man and an average woman (i.e. the the woman doesn't bring a knife or gun to a fist-fight), I would place all my bets on the man winning.
Funny how female dominance requires the consent of a (elite) patriarchy.
I knew a bricklayer whose ex-wife was physically abusive. She was maybe 5 foot 6, average weight. He was a former all-state wrestler, 6 foot 3, 250 punds of muscle. (He looked like a young Victor McLaglen). She gave him black eyes and scratched him up, not to mention bruises and broken household appliances.
During a custody hearing for their daughter she leveled accusations of domestic violence against him, saying that he had tried to choke her and nearly killed her.
His reply was to cite his wrestling record and to point out the size of his hands (huge). He said that if he wanted to he was more than capable of breaking her neck with one hand, that there would be no "trying" about it, and that the evidence would be overwhelming.
The judge disregarded her accusations. The ex-wife retained custody but the guy got visitation rights!
jic,
Girls often use knives or box cutters as weapons--they are more up close and personal which is why girls attack the face. They tend to disfigure others--especially other girls who try to take away a boyfriend or do something that makes the girl angry. In my research on violent girls, girls typically get angry when others call them promiscuous as opposed to boys who get violent or angry if they are called a coward. Violent girls also tend to have a "general or global anger" which means they are mad about things in general as opposed to a specific situation.
anonymous 6:03:
Your snarky comment about female dominance requiring the consent of an elite patriarchy is an insult to emotionally abused men who restrain themselves for all kinds of reasons, not just because they are afraid of being locked up--but since the law discriminates against men and treats them more harshly, this is not unreasonable behavior.
You are probably the same type that believes that women who are psychologically abused stay in a relationship out of learned helplessness but do not realize that men can have the same psychological problems--they can be abused by a woman and not be able to leave as she might change/need rescuing etc. The men who are being abused are often not able to psychologically get into a physical fight with a woman--dominance is not always physical.
steve-
I would tend to agree with your hypothesis that female sociopathy is just less-diagnosed than male sociopathy. I find it hard to believe that male sociopaths outnumber female ones by a very large margin. My guess would be that female ones are better at concealing it, or simply aren't suspected in the first place.
On the sidelines no more (retribution)
I stand between mother and child
When she has gone crazy wild
I held that child when it was born
How has her patience become so worn?
Then I Remember such far off times
When he committed all those crimes
I didn't stand with my mother
Against that crazy drunken other!
RJS
[From anonymous at 6:03]
Dear Dr. Helen,
You wrote: "Your snarky comment about female dominance requiring the consent of an elite patriarchy is an insult to emotionally abused men who restrain themselves for all kinds of reasons, not just because they are afraid of being locked up--but since the law discriminates against men and treats them more harshly, this is not unreasonable behavior."
Since we agree that "the law discriminates against men and treats them more harshly," and that this would explain much of why men try to avoid retaliating (and why women are emboldened to take on someone obviously stronger and more aggressive) I'm uncertain as to why you admonished me.
For what it's worth, I had exactly that kind of experience once as a middle-school student. At the time, I was a nerd and generally not very popular. One day, it so happened that some girls in the cafeteria, unprovoked, decided to throw food at me. I moved to sit somewhere else, but they moved with me and kept at it. When they wouldn't stop, I retaliated--I backhanded one of the girls, got called into the vice-principal's office, and seriously threatened with a good beating. (In those days, corporeal punishment was still allowed in school.) I got sent home, and the school authorities pressured my parents into beating me on their behalf. No one would even listen to my side of the story. (Telling stories like this is one reason I choose to post anonymously.)
"You are probably the same type that believes that women who are psychologically abused stay in a relationship out of learned helplessness but do not realize that men can have the same psychological problems--they can be abused by a woman and not be able to leave as she might change/need rescuing etc. The men who are being abused are often not able to psychologically get into a physical fight with a woman--dominance is not always physical."
I respect your credentials as a professional, and in general I respect your opinions as expressed on this blog. Yet I think you were a bit hasty in coming to such a conclusion so quickly about me.
anonymous: 12:24--
In lieu of your story about being abused by the food throwing girls--I assume you are a guy--your position makes no sense--do you see the school as the elite patriarchy who gave consent to the girls to do this? I don't--the girls probably did it because they thought it was funny. Do you mean they got away with it because the school let them? Sorry, but I do not understand your point.
The story was just an aside.
The "elite patriarchy" decides what is acceptable and unacceptable behavior. They make laws, inform courts, argue and decide court cases, enforce laws, and educate the next generation. This is not to say that women do not have significant influence in the corridors of power these days, but the power and influence they wield on many important social issues and institutions can only be sustained with the consent and support of elite males. Hence, feminist, anti-male agendas necessarily have significant support of society's elite males.
As to the elite males being patriarchial, men tend to be protective of women, whether women speak or act in a right way or a wrong way. Women who have less-than-egalitarian ambitions appeal to that protective attitude to further their agendas.
This may seem a little distant from us little men who get picked on by women, but standards for behavior formed at the top eventually make down to our level, as well as the means to enforce that behavior.
Unless we are reading the words "elite" and "patriarchy" differently, or have some disjoint view of what their combination signifies, I don't see how I can make this any clearer.
If my point isn't any clearer, perhaps you can explain what the words "elite patriarchy" means to you. It set you off, so it must mean something to you.
I'm a recent graduate of the public school system(Class of 04) in NYC and I'm not suprised in the least. Anyone who has spent even a limited amount of time in schools learn quickly not to get between two women in a fight.
Fights between two guys in a school are ritualized to a great extent-Marquis of Queensbry and all that. There are rules to a fist fight.
Females are viscous. They bite, they claw and they aim to leave scars. Someone who steps in between two males can hope to seperate them. Step in between two females and they are liable to turn on you.
Our culture admits and to a great extent permits male violence. Thus, it has rules.
Because female violence is not supposed to exist there is no cultural standard regulating it.
"Because female violence is not supposed to exist there is no cultural standard regulating it."
I agree. This is true of female behavior that is nonviolent but still agressive. I have witnessed and been subject to agressive behavior on the part of women that violated my sense of boundaries and really "crossed the line".
I'm talking about screaming, getting too close, pushing, throwing objects, rushing at a person, making fists at them in close proximity, and saying REALLY inflammatory things, including threats. Much of this behavior happened in the workplace, all of it in public.
If it had been a man acting in this way towards another man it would be understood as a provacation for a fight, intentionally or otherwise. Men will generally observe the understood boundaries and will not cross them unless they are asking for a physical fight. Some women take advantage of any latent sense of chivalry to flout these boundaries and abuse them without fear of physical response. Also without fear of a man simply matching their tone of voice or more physical (non-violent) acts, like shaking a fist or poking and grabbing.
When a man does that, especially with a woman, it is correctly interpreted as a threat of assault and is quickly condemned or restrained by observers. When a woman acts that way, needless to say it is usually ignored or excused.
Chris Rock made good observations about some women's abuse of the double standard in "Bring the Pain"
To anonymous 2:17pm
First, if you intend to keep posting here, please choose (or invent) an identity. It would make life easier for the rest of us.
Second, you are attributing the social environment to an "elite patriarchy". I think that you're overestimating the power of men in western society. If you want to see a real patriarchy, go to Saudi Arabia. I'm not going to respond further because a proper response would mean investing more time than I care to invest. However, I would suggest that you read "The Myth of Male Power" by Warren Farrell and "The Evolution of Desire" by David Buss.
bobh,
Good choices of books to recommend. I especially like Warren Farrell's work very much. I think it speaks volume about men in today's Western culture. Funny how many men continue to buy into the myths of male dominance and even see much of their own negative feelings as the responsibility of other men.
Several people refer to their experiences with violent girls in the public schools. All but one, who mentioned Hispanic girls, are being very pee cee.
The race angle on violent girls: most of 'em aren't suburban Barbie dolls.
david.davenport.1@netzero.com
It seems the problem of girls beating up on boys could be solved by boys beating the sh!t out of a girl who does this. As a prerequisite, of course, the boys would have to learn to fight. I mean, we can moralize about self-restraint all we want to, but it seems to me that the motive for self-restraint is some sort of fear.
希望大家都會非常非常幸福~
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