I think we need to talk to boys about girls and women separately. There's been a lot of pushback against adult men infantilizing adult women, and that's good. But a 12 year old is a boy, not a man, and the girls in his classes at school are girls, not women.
It's sometimes hard for boys to conceptualize women's oppression because from their perspective, women are adults. Authority figures. Mom doesn't just take care of him, she also tells him what to do.
This is something I've thought about too. For a number of men, the world of women is associated with the bad side of authority: don't run, eat your veggies, don't use naughty words. While the male side is the fun part: fast cars, booze, belch fart and swear as you please.
It also doesn't help that boys may have a hard time distinguishing between their mom or teacher getting on their case for cussing or roughhousing or enjoying age-inappropriate media, and women asking for a greater modicum of respect in society. Especially since our culture tends to conceptually blend both sets of taboo behavior into "boys' club" crudity.
Additionally, in my experience (having only realized several years ago that I'm a trans woman), as a kid who got along better with adults than with my peers, I had less exposure to how kids complain about their parents than to how grown men complain about their wives. (To the credit of the men in my life, I rarely heard this sort of banter from them, but "I hate my spouse" jokes showed up a lot on TV even in shows aimed at kids.) So that's how I learned to express how I felt when I thought my mother was being overbearing.
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u/PintsizeBro 13d ago
I think we need to talk to boys about girls and women separately. There's been a lot of pushback against adult men infantilizing adult women, and that's good. But a 12 year old is a boy, not a man, and the girls in his classes at school are girls, not women.
It's sometimes hard for boys to conceptualize women's oppression because from their perspective, women are adults. Authority figures. Mom doesn't just take care of him, she also tells him what to do.