Children as young as 11 who demonstrate misogynistic behaviour will be taught the difference between pornography and real relationships, as part of a multimillion-pound investment to tackle misogyny in England’s schools, the Guardian understands.
On the eve of the government publishing its long-awaited strategy to halve violence against women and girls (VAWG) in a decade, David Lammy told the Guardian that the battle “begins with how we raise our boys”, adding that toxic masculinity and keeping girls and women safe were “bound together”.
As part of the government’s flagship strategy, which was initially expected in the spring, teachers will be able to send young people at risk of causing harm on behavioural courses, and will be trained to intervene if they witness disturbing or worrying behaviour.
This is going to backfire hard. Kids aren’t stupid, they know when they’re looked down upon. These classes are going to be rejected by the boys who end up taking them, and they’ll resent what it stands for.
It reminds me of the US back in the 80s when schools pushed abstinence extremely hard. That didn’t stop kids from having sex, and this won’t stop misogyny.
The only way schools can contribute meaningfully to ending sexism is by providing a safe environment that requires young boys and girls to actually interact with each other in natural and healthy ways outside of class time.
Kinda like how DARE taught us what all the drugs looked like, how to spot fakes, and how to find the dealers?
After reading the article, it seems like there’s a lot more to this than just classes for boys. I struggle to draw the same comparison to 80s abstinence-only sex education, and I think schools can contribute in more ways than the one you listed, like the ones mentioned in the article.
Why so negative? I’m too lazy to read the article, but are you commenting on actual lesson plans, or on what you assume the classes will be like? It doesn’t seem like a stretch to me that this could work for some kids, especially for those whose behavior is the result of exposure to porn at too young an age.
They’re getting at something important at least.
Sad that it is required and that parents are unwilling to do it
“Step-bro mom and dad wanna talk to us.”
(I’m so sorry. I couldn’t not)
I doubt that the cause of misogyny in 11 year old boys is porn. I’m happy they’re trying something, I just hope it doesn’t backfire
It’s very sad to see negative comments like “I’m against everything the State does because the State is bad.” Basically, these are people who deny the harmful effects of porn and the porn industry. I assume they’re just a bunch of porn addicts who can’t handle criticism of their drug.
That’s a strawman argument, and I assume you know that. I can remember being a kid and my mindset then. The point isn’t “the State is bad” (though it is), the point is “kids naturally rebel against institutional authority figures and the programs those authority figures conduct.”
Remind me how successful DARE was?
This is essentially a childhood version of trying to legislate personal behavior and beliefs without addressing the social and material conditions that give rise to those behaviors and beliefs.
Want to stop (or at least start to tackle) misogyny? Hold companies whose algorithms promote it financially responsible. Actually convict, or at least prosecute, high-profile creeps like Prince Andrew. Make DNA processing of rape kits a priority, and stop giving rapists lighter sentences than drug dealers. Prosecute companies like Roblox and Meta who knowingly allow creeps to hit on minors (though that isn’t limited to just girls, it still helps contribute to the social conditions and sense of impunity). Teach your own kids to shame their friends who behave in misogynistic ways, and to fight back if they’re pushed to accept such behavior. In particularly severe instances, like boys who actually physically assault girls, maybe consider having the state examine their home life and, if appropriate, pursue some type of action against fathers (or maybe mothers but… probably not often) who condone such behavior.
And even a lot of that is still surface-level stuff. For example, if you want parents to be able to raise their children more and have the algorithm raise them less, we need higher wages and lower costs of living (or, even better, the full surplus profits of our labor which we are rightfully entitled to). Ideally, we also need those parents to be given a good education so they can critically think about the material they are presented with online. As with basically everything, the problem is, at least partially, capitalism. If you want children to learn how to be functional, healthy humans, they need unsupervised places to play and learn on their own - a recent study showed that most kids would prefer unsupervised outdoor play (where generally there are no Andrew Tate-esque figures yelling misogynistic garbage at them) to unsupervised screen time (where there often are), but parents more often deny the former and allow the latter.
A stern institutional finger-wagging serves to make the institution feel like they’re doing something and like the broken system under which we all live is capable of being repaired and reformed. Hopefully I’m wrong and this program is a massive success, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.
“Can’t talk now lads, I’m off to porn class!”
Tbh the threat of being labeled a gooner might do more to prevent misogyny than anything else
monty_python_meaning_of_life_scene.mp4
might as well tell them about the pickup artist grifters too, these are probably the primary source of that misogyny, i feel like porn is adjacent to this.
I personally feel that porn more than likely has fuck all to do with it and that this is part of a broader crusade against sex by the British government.
Children as young as 11 who demonstrate misogynistic behaviour will be taught the difference between pornography and…
You are correct sir.
American here but I first saw a porn magazine at 8 or 9 years old. My friend would steal them from his older brother. 11 years old is not unreasonably young to have been impacted by porn, if that’s what you’re implying.
trying to deflect from the actual sources, the right wing grifters, and pickupartists, if you go back far enough it ends up with foreign individual funding all of this and any right wing legislation.
Not shocked.
One day porn addiction was a thing suffered by… no one? A very small group of people? However many people there were that legitimately gooned such that their life was negatively impacted and couldn’t stop.
Then it was fucking everyone, everywhere, and watching porn at all meant you were a depraved addict. And deviation from the sexual norm for a man - porn addict. Any non vanilla sex interests? Porn addict. Difficulty orgasming? Porn addict.
It came out of fucking nowhere. Nobody sees the agenda behind this shit, they just accept it. Media literacy is borderline nonexistent.
I think anyone millennial or older can attest that access to porn has changed drastically in the past 2 decades. In the pre-youtube era video porn required physical media. Most teens were fapping to static images or soft core feature length films.
I do think getting access to the smorgasbord of pornography available these days at too young an age does short circuit the natural transition from boyish curiosity to healthy sexual interest.
Skipping over the phase where boobs is all it took and going straight to deepthroat anal gaping seems like a recipe for problems afaic. It’s like having absinth for your first alcohol instead of a beer.
no, it doesn’t.
the issue is economic insecurity, not watching porn.
also, just because stuff is available doesn’t mean anyone/everyone is watching it. you make a boatload of poor and false assumptions.
This explains so much about you…
It didn’t come out of fucking nowhere. It (to the degree we see it today) came out of social isolation caused by the pandemic, at least in the US and Europe. Japan kind of already had the phenomenon even before COVID.
And AI on top of that is like an adult equivalent of the wire monkey experiment, except the wire monkey is adequately-convincing for many people and tells you whatever you want to hear.
No mention of what behavior they are talking about, misogyny is a pretty wide and often vague subject. It’s almost like we’re not supposed to know the details so we can’t decide for ourselves if the behaviors need ‘correcting’ instead of taking their word at a claim of misogyny alone.
I’ve been called a misogynist a lot. Mostly when I am confronting a woman about her crappy behaviour towards other people or myself. It’s definable a term that is used to avoid accountability, or against anyone who doesn’t agree with benevolent sexism towards women.
TBF you are a tactless individual.
“I’ve been called a misogynist a lot”
i’ve also been called gay a lot. and yet i have no sexual interest in men. weird how other peoples perceptions of you may be totally incorrect.
it’s almost as if other people’s opinions have no bearing on what we really are.
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I’ve never been called a misogynist my entire life. People have made unfair criticisms, people have made fair criticisms, but nobody called me a misogynist.
I wonder what kind of rhetoric you consistently have for people to dig up for this word in particular when speaking about you. Should make you wonder, probably won’t.
They dig it up because our society, in america at least, sees women as children and thinks they should not be responsible for the consequences of their actions, nor should they be financially independent from men.
I get it the most from women when I tell them I am not interested in financially supporting a woman and tell them they should pay their own bills rather than be dependent on men for financial solvency. Turns out a lot of people HATE that idea and think if you don’t support women being financially dependent on men as a good life choice, you hate women.
I generally support the idea that men and women should be independent functional adults… and a lot of people see that as misogyny due to their gender bias assumption that men are to be providers/parents to women. And anyone who doesn’t aspire to that type of a relationship is hates women, because the only ‘proper’ way to be a ‘man’ is to have a woman you take responsibility for emotionally and financially.
I get it the most from women when I tell them I am not interested in financially supporting a woman and tell them they should pay their own bills rather than be dependent on men for financial solvency
I have a feeling that you were called a misogynist less because of this opinion in and of itself, and more because you probably bring this up unsolicited and seething at any opportunity.
Aaand there we go. The misogynist is called a misogynist for being an actual misogynist.
Quick and easy demonstration.
right, so if i don’t want to pay off my girlfriends college debt. i hate women?
yeah that’s exactly proving my point. according to you if I don’t want to pay $75K of someone else’s poor choices, and she is a woman… I hate women.
It can’t be that I just hate entitled deadbeat people or that I want a partner who contributes equally to a relationship.
Which is precisely why people view me as hating women. Because I treat them as equals and expect equality from them.
Thought this was The Onion for a moment…
We gonna have a class for girls on the difference between romance stories and real relationships?
No, because we all know that men not living up to women’s fantasy ideals is their personal failing as men. These boys need to learn that if they aren’t BDSM billionaires they don’t deserve a woman.
And men having fantasy ideals about women, is hateful and bigoted. We can’t have that, and since porn is mostly male sex fantasies it is wrong and bad.
Found the incel
These boys need to learn that if they aren’t BDSM billionaires they don’t deserve a woman.
I’m sorry but that’s not why you don’t have a woman. It’s because your personality is insufferable, from what you’ve shown in this thread.
I don’t think porn is to blame for that, rather social media but at least there’s learning.
They work in conjunction. Porn doesn’t present a complete picture and social media personalities fill those blanks with misogyny.
I mean this sounds entirely sensible.
But I do worry what a bureaucratic system is likely to decide a normal relationship looks like won’t capture reality either.
Hopefully they use it as a lesson in consent. And leave it at that.
I don’t know enough about England’s politics to form an opinion on how they will actually end up botching it, but I feel like it’s going to be botched.
That’s the problem here. The news is about things that haven’t yet happened, leaving a lot for imagining.
Waaay better than the porn bans and online age verification schemes, honestly.
I question why this is just for “children who show mysoginistic behavior”, though. Sex ed should be universal, and this should be a major part of sex ed.
I assume the fear here is parents complaining about their kids being talked about porn, which may end up being a larger underlying issue than the porn itself. I guess you just have to trust that education professionals handle the opportunity well and this doesn’t become a stern talking to for problem kids, which is likely to do as much as stern talking tos have done historically.
I agree, at least they’re actually focusing on an actual real world issue that widely impacts individuals. It is to point out, the highlight that only boys are talked about it - is oddly counter intuitive. If equality is the issue, then single sided efforts are going to further reinforce negative stereotypes.
And the point about sex-ed, is that it should be mandatory in education - it is a science like all and it prepares older children for when they become teenagers. Even so, stereotypical differences could be abolished if sexuality was formally talked in schools - after all we are all human, no matter what we have under there.
Yeah, I agree with you on this
This isn’t about sex ed, it’s about behavioural courses, which wouldn’t be appropriate for most children, just as it wouldn’t be appropriate to send every child who does something wrong to a referral unit.
As if boys aren’t discriminated against enough in the education system already. Make it easier for good male teachers to stay in the system and provide good role models to follow.
Pure Misandry. Really trying to stamp out masculinity. Its. Its not English young men or young men in general. Its the Islamic religion and the semolinan young men and young men from India who have a culture of rape and child brides.
That’s some deep seated racism innit.
If you wanna be part of the culture of humanity, they gotta stop acting like they’re above humanity.
Racism? Im black yo. So try again.
Black ppl can be racist genius. Odds are your either pretending to be Black anyway or an Uncle Tom and honestly I don’t know which one is worse
