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.
I think the problem is not just porn… Maybe… Also society, systemically? Maybe also the parents? Television, Internet culture, business culture, religion, oh yeah, also RELIGION.
You know what stops misogyny? Education and real leadership. Not blaming pornography and kids not knowing the difference between
musicmoviesvideogamesporn and reality.I thought they blocked all the kids from watching porn. How are they going to know what they’re talking about in these classes?
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.
Yep, except the opposite is happening in the schools. My Neice’s preschool punishes boys who pull girls hair (they’re four) and apparently the girls have learned if they don’t like a boy they can just start lying to get them in trouble… Wonder why misogyny is a rapidly growing movement among the youngin’s?
yep. nothing makes kids resent you more than being condescending to them or telling them something is horrible and bad and will corrupt them.
this puritanism nonsense makes zero sense. sex education should be about the facts of sex. not value judgements about waht is ‘good’ porn or not. and female students should be included. this notion that ‘women don’t watch porn’ is completely nonsense.
The more you look into what’s being planned here, the worse it gets
Ever been to saudi arabia? because… that.
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.
Are we reading the same things? Here are some quotes from the article that I found problematic:
Children as young as 11 who demonstrate misogynistic behaviour will be taught the difference between pornography and real relationships
They’re trying to pin porn as the cause of misogyny and that’s really stupid for a variety of reasons.
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.
See, these classes are not meant to be a part of the normal sex ed curriculum where they’re taught to everybody because the information is valuable. They’re specifically meant to be punitive. The idea is to signal out kids and force them to take these classes as a consequence.
To out of touch activists, this sounds good, but in reality the kids who are being sent there are going to feel humiliated in front of their peers, and they’re going to resent both the material being taught and the system that put them through it.
Keir Starmer, announcing the strategy, said: “Every parent should be able to trust that their daughter is safe at school, online and in her relationships. But too often toxic ideas are taking hold early and going unchallenged.”
This is a theme that’s echoed in the entire article, and it is also reflected in the actual strategy. I could’ve quoted a bunch of different statements, but I specifically chose this one because it’s coming from the top. You have the PM here pushing the false idea that only girls can be victims and that boys are the problem.
The much-trailed strategy is expected to focus on three pillars:
- Preventing young men being harmed by “manosphere” influencers such as Andrew Tate.
Are you kidding me? The “manosphere” is an online slang term, Andrew Tate is a meme. How can you possibly draft policies in general, let alone ones about education, on something so vague, unsubstantiated, and unacademic?
The point is that if the entire curriculum was taught like normal sex ed where it’s apolitical, fact based, and required to be taken by all students because it contains useful information that they need to know then there wouldn’t be an issue. However, that’s not the case. It is narrative driven, it is not entirely fact based, and it’s not applied to all students across the board. The whole thing just seems unprincipled and poorly thought out. This strategy looks like something planned by radfem weirdos on Reddit, not by people who are in charge of the education system of an entire country.
Schools should focus on facts. Not political narratives about the evils of pornography necessarily leading to misogyny and sexual assault or that they are all ‘manosphere influenced’ until prove otherwise. that kind of mentality is some witch-hunt bullshit.
Porn is also incredibly diverse its content. Like video games, or comics, it’s treated as if it was this singular mass of crassness and crudeness and could never have any redemptive value. There is a vast difference between sexual assault fetish commercially produced porn and a loving couple who just wants to share tehir passion for sexual pleasure with each other with the world and make a few bucks on onlyfans. And the former is a dying breed.
You’re focusing specifically on porn, but the plan in the article doesn’t. The plan isn’t to tell boys to “just say no” to porn.
You’ll find no disagreements from me that porn isn’t necessarily the root cause of misogyny, but I don’t think anything in the article suggests that.
You’ll find no disagreements from me that porn isn’t necessarily the root cause of misogyny, but I don’t think anything in the article suggests that.
… the headline does
Any large scale plan, involving teachers, and students needs to be boiled down to extremely simple concepts that can be taught in a few words. Most kids have a hard time with subtraction and division. This will become simplified and resented.
bingo. that’s the fundamental flaw.
sex and sexuality is incredibly complex, subjective, and nuanced. the government can’t even teach kids the basics of math and reading… and thinks it’s somehow going to teaching 11 year olds about sex is going to magically reduce violence… 11 year olds for most of whom sex is a foreign concept and will be until for another 4-6 years of their lives.
it’s political grandstanding really. they are doing this to score points with the public at the expense of school children.
no i’m focusing on value judgement crap that assumes boys are all evil unless educated otherwise, and seeks to socially isolate them to ‘re-educate’ them.
this is the type of plan that is likely to backfire, and will probably introduce potential abusers to the tools to become better abusers. The average boy has no knowledge or interest in any of these things. it’s punishing the majority rather than addressing a minority.
also what are the specific criteria that identity a boy as a proto-misogynist? interesting how that isn’t mentioned. nor what ‘healthy relationships’ means. will this program be espousing traditional sexist gender values as ‘healthy’ ones? as if those values were not misogynistic?
I think you’re making some leaps here. Nothing in the article is suggesting that all boys are evil, or that they’re going to be socially isolated. Granted, the article doesn’t exactly give specifics about how it’ll be enacted, but I feel like you’re filling in the gaps with the worst stuff you can imagine, and then getting mad at that.
From my reading of the article, it seems like they’re just adding topics like pornography, deep-fake/image abuse, consent, coercion, peer-pressure, online abuse, etc. to the curriculum, coupled with training for teachers to be able to recognize and address misogynistic behaviors. Again, I’ll grant that the article is missing some important details like how they’re going to teach those various topics, how they’re going to empower teachers to identify problems, the checks and balances they’ll use to prevent teachers abusing the system, what they’re defining as misogyny, etc. But I feel like those details are a little too in-the-weeds for this type of overview article, and until we do know what those details are, I don’t think filling those gaps by assuming the worst is productive.
No, the policy/program makes that assumption. Guilty, until proven innocent.
the article says they will be specifically targeted for being ‘misogynists’ but says nothing about what determines that qualification.
And if it’s like any other government education program, it will produce solely negative and crappy results and just be weaponized against students and teachers both, preventing free and educational discussions of these topics and teaching them according to some illiberal and idiotic stereotypical standards the know-nothing government officials have made out of ignorance and blanket determinations of what these things ‘are’.
I’m no in the UK but I’m well aware of how horribly the USA education system deals with these topics, and how all the schools take a HR approach to the topic rather than an educational one. We weren’t even allowed to ask questions about sex or relationships and it was taught from a narrow and ignorant perspective that ignored all the insights of modern science and social science.
If this was based on scientific research, you bet that the creators would be pushing the academics that formed the policy to endorse this. This is just junk pseudo-science. Serious researchers would do small sample testing before rolling out a wide program, especially for something like this
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.
Yeah, for those of us whose school-provided sex education was actually informative, including puberty and sexual health units in mandatory health class in multiple different grades, I don’t see why this would have to be inherently badly taught.
It’s a weird “oh it’s impossible to teach anything properly so let’s not try” attitude that applies to a lot of discussions about education, even core academic subjects like math and science and history.
I recommend you read the article, it’s a pretty quick read. The way that this is planned sets it up for failure. This sounds more like something some politicians came up with to appease the activists in their base than something made by actual experts in the field who have the kids’ best interests in mind.
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
Same! I don’t know if this is the answer. But at least it’s something.
Back in my day, we had Big Brother Big Sister programs. But those programs were overwhelmed by need even when I was young.
And as kids (boys AND girls) turn to the internet and AI for direction about the opposite sex and how to treat each other, we need something to provide a another resource.
yes, but if you were a unreasonable sex-negative person you would. and most people are unreasonable and have sex-negative views.
it’s also loaded with sexist assumptions that boys are sex offenders by default unless they are ‘corrected’ by society.
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 think I saw that one.
“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
They’re getting at something important at least.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Bro, when I was like 9 my friend was like: "oh cool, the internet, go to shiteaters.com and I was like: that’s a reasonable request, and it was exactly what you’d think it was.
I was using a 28k modem which was pretty good for the time.
Like. These days my ass.
Before all the tube sites there was likewise. And the tube sites are MUCH better in terms of the kind of content they freely offer, believe me.
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…
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.
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.
Kids dont naturally rebel against authority figures. If they respect the authority figure, they are remarkably adaptable and can make great change quickly. If they dont respect the authority figure, they will do as you say.
Well, maybe I’m just projecting then, but as a child I had no inherent respect for any authority simply for authority’s sake. I trusted authorities to give me a sufficient explanation as to why something was, or had to be, a certain way. If they couldn’t do that, I didn’t care how much older they were than me or what their titles were, I did not listen to them.
The example my parents always give when recounting my childhood is that my dad could say, “Don’t run in the street,” and the first thing I would want to do would be to run in the street. But my mom could say, “You shouldn’t run in the street because cars are very heavy, very fast, and can’t stop quickly, so they could hurt you very much,” and I would accept that and not run in the street.
I liked (most of) my teachers as a kid and I would never be mean to them or intentionally make their lives harder, but that’s not the same thing as listening to them or respecting their authority. Even in elementary school, I understood things like Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” policy and how that resulted in me being given work far below my level that wasted my life and potential. There is no reason for a child to respect any authority derived from the public school system, to be frank.
Granted that’s a very American perspective, but I can’t imagine it’s too much different in Britain given the near-analogous nature of our political parties.
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.
deleted by creator
“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.
to quote my uncle: “i’m not gay, i’m italian. it’s easy to mix that up.”
Yes, I am Italian.
People also assume I’m Jewish and argue with me when I tell them I am not. They insist that one of my parents must be Jewish and I’m just in denial or something.
lol
They insist that one of my parents must be Jewish and I’m just in denial or something.
u know that exact thought came to me so many times. That some of my grandparent must be jewish because … idk it’s just a vibe.
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. if i was gay and dating a man and didn’t want to pay off his debt, does that mean i hate men or a i hate homosexuals?
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…
Onion articles make more sense.
We gonna have a class for girls on the difference between romance stories and real relationships?
to quote a (woman) friend of mine: “es heißt er-ziehen, nicht sie-ziehen, weil frauen muss man nicht erziehen.”
translation: it’s called he-ducation, not she-ducation (in german), because women are born perfect or sth. it works better in german though because “erziehen” is a bit decoupled from “educating” (we have “bilden” for that instead) and more on the “tell them what to do/how to behave” side
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.
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.
Found the incel
I don’t think porn is to blame for that, rather social media but at least there’s learning.
I’d like to know, what’s your opinion on banning social media for minors?
I used to be all against it but now i see the point in it. It should be done at the device-level though, not website’s responsibility.
I agree with that.
I think parents should be responsible for keeping an eye on what their kids are doing online. There are already a myriad of tools available to facilitate that. The government doesn’t need to be involved and sites certainly shouldn’t be collecting IDs from people unless absolutely necessary for some business/official reason to know who that person is.
If we could leave it up to them then we wouldn’t have any kids on social media. Having this conversation proves it’s not able to be left up to the parents.
But device locks already exist as you said, the proposal is to have them on by default.
They work in conjunction. Porn doesn’t present a complete picture and social media personalities fill those blanks with misogyny.
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 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.
It’s because the goal here is for this be punitive, not educational. If the goal here was for valuable principles to be learned then it would be taught to everybody.
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.
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.
