‘We’re just talking about vaginas and cocks, foul language is for Scrabble’

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Sure, educate your sons and teach them what transgressive behavior is. Jorinde does her best with her own two copies. But actually, the three of them conclude at the kitchen table, everyone would benefit from a little more education.

Sunday night, stage night. Washed hair, clean pajamas, bare feet on the kitchen table. We started the tradition when my sons were four and six. Plates to the side, spotlight on, and bang your head against the ceiling. Every Sunday it was the turn of one of the three of us. To sing a song. Shout out all the dirty words you could think of. Show funny videos. Or, as they got older, bring up a topic that the next person thought was funny/interesting/important.

Stage night

The first and third group of the time are now overgrown teenagers. The table would collapse under their weight, so nowadays we just ‘podium’ (and no, we haven’t called it that for a long time, the boys prefer to talk about ‘cock cake’) from a dining room chair, hot chocolate and Oreos within reach. About why everyone has to go to school and get lessons in more or less the same way (“Stupid. You don’t ask a fish to climb a tree, do you?”). Friendship (“Do you think we will see our friends from now on, just like you?”). Sex (“You don’t do that when we’re home, do you?” – “What do you think, honey. You?” – “Mom, act normal!”)

Good way to keep up with what’s going on in their world. Laughing hard with and around each other. Or, like tonight, to be amazed at something. Sounds kinda Brady bunchbut the nuance is usually hard to find, with two children who have yet to learn to watch the news and for whom the world – no matter how open-minded and social they are – is still pretty black and white.

Unacceptable behavior

“I really don’t understand that some men think they can just touch all women,” says the oldest son – with his shoe size 43 already quite dry behind the ears, he thinks. “Yes, Ali B and Jeroen Rietbergen are really assholes”, adds the youngest, not yet fully recovered from the shock that the TV program that covered our Friday evening for years is defunct.

“I really don’t understand how some men think they can just touch all women”

“Hey, watch your words,” I say. But I swallow it. Because of course they are just right – although I hope they manage to keep the swear words to a minimum with strangers at the table. And that sexual and intimidating behavior would not cross their minds.

But hey, what are the chances that they cross the line at all? They have been raised by one woman alone for most of their lives. By me, to be exact. As long as they correct the stock filler that he brings the wrong tampons when the shelf is empty (“No, that’s great, I need Normal for my mother, those are the yellow ones over there”), paint nails because they just look very nice find and take home the quietest boy in the class because he probably has the most interesting story, I hope that the step to verbal or physical sexual assault will be almost impossible.

When in doubt…

Of course I know that a feminine upbringing is no guarantee for children with finely tuned moral compasses. So I also try to introduce some norms and values ​​by means of simple rules. So we just talk about breasts, vaginas, peepers and cocks, they save the foul language for Scrabble.

“We’re talking boobs and cocks, they’ll save profanity for Scrabble”

And when a person you hang out with says “no,” “maybe,” “I don’t know,” “I don’t care,” “okay then,” or something along those lines, it always means no. Unless that person says a resounding yes. Better still, it initiates itself and also confirms it again. Nobody touches your body if you don’t want to, not even your mother. If something doesn’t feel right, it probably isn’t. And if you later doubt whether you want something sexual, don’t do it until you are very sure that you do want it.

Inclusive and equal

It turns out that those kinds of rules still stick sometimes. The boy in group 7 who pushed girls into a corner and forced them to pull their pants down, they addressed with a heartfelt ‘act normal dude’. They then reported him to the teacher and turned their backs on him for good – even if it meant getting kicked every now and then.

When the oldest in group 8 (group eight!) got his first, careful kiss and told about it radiantly at home, he added, just to be sure: “From a girl. She started. But it was a lot of fun.” I’ve been hammering in everything from a young age. We try to be averse to pigeonholes, to see every person as a person and not as his behaviour, gender, orientation or origin. Very inclusive and equal – but is that really the case?

Nice example

“Watch out, you stupid cow!”, I exclaim when one day – the children in the back seat – I almost run over a suddenly crossing pedestrian. Stupid cow? Serious? An ordinary woman who had her mind elsewhere for a while, who knows why, immediately receives a derogatory judgment from me. True, out of the woman’s earshot, but not my children’s. Nice example.

“I am a good example for them when I call someone a stupid cow”

And when my youngest indicates that he finds it annoying that I invariably tap his bottom when I give him a hug – a remnant of his diaper time – I say: “Well, come on, don’t be so stupid.” Just add a hashtag to that: #educateyourmom.

Control over your own body

And then my boys also have their environment, which is becoming increasingly important. Social pressure. ‘Big’ boys from the neighborhood boast about their ‘body count’, girls who have already kissed several guys call them ‘slut’ and ‘easy’. “Do you hear what you’re saying?” I ask, startled, when the oldest tells about it.

Both sons are not exactly of the rough-husk, white-pit type. They are gentle, empathetic, and above all they have friends. They are gay, which is why schoolmates and neighbors invariably conclude. Clear story, especially with that nail polish. I hold up a mirror to them: “You get mad at other guys calling you gay because of that, but a girl who just does what she wants, who claims control over her own body, is a slut?”

Also read: Boys are just as vulnerable to sexual harassment as girls

With respect

Sexually and psychologically transgressive behavior is not just about MeToo and EducateYourSons – where the educate-part in my view also applies to daughters. And for parents who blurt out ‘stupid cow’, or much worse. It’s about inclusion, about prejudices and ingrained, old patterns and beliefs. It’s also not just about how men approach women. It’s equally about how men approach other men, whether women approach men, or other women, or how adults approach children. And there’s only one way to do that: respectfully.

“Don’t harass/intimidate/hurt someone who takes you seriously?”

You don’t know what’s going on with someone, I teach my children. Or at least I try. If the master behaved “like a jerk” that day, he might have been arguing at home. A shop assistant who is curt or even their own mother who snaps at them once; there is often a story behind it that you would probably understand if you would listen. Just be respectful, that person may be having a hard time already. And respect starts with taking it seriously. Because someone who takes you seriously doesn’t harass / intimidate / hurt you, right?

Not just the kids

“Well sorry, but as if we have to learn that now”, says the oldest pissed off. “I think adults have understood even less about it.” Because in primary school it was still about a boy who did not know how to behave in group 7, in secondary school there are all kinds of things that also make you think. A transgender friend had to pee during class, my son tells me. All the girls were allowed by the master, she was not. “Stop whining now,” said the teacher without batting an eyelid, “it’s not that you can have your period.” The class thought it was a good joke, apparently the school management too, because the teacher in question still works there.

Broadly speaking, my sons know a few of my own stories involving transgression—the stepfather disrespecting a closed bathroom door first. The officer who said: “But girl, in practice we don’t do anything with that at all.”

It’s not solved

“But Mom, with all due respect, that was in the past, of course,” says the youngest. “The candidates of The Voice Do they take the report to the police seriously now, don’t they?” The fact that they realize that is already a step forward, I think in the meantime. If they even think about it at all, it’s progress.

Yet the level of sexual harassment has not diminished in their generation, if I look at it that way. In fact, they have a problem with social media. A friend of the youngest, not even old enough to apply for her own identity card, receives a horde of hot reactions under every post on Instagram or Snapchat. And the boy who – not yet twelve years old – harassed dozens of girls in the neighborhood was ‘banned’, temporarily taken off the street by his parents, but recently presented himself again on all channels with a gangster photo with the text: ‘I’m back, bitches’.

“The border is not always a straight line”

Raise your child safely in between. How do you do that? And when do you start with that? At least not when they are twelve, but a lot younger. Sending your child into the world packed and packed with knowledge and boundaries is a wish of many, if not all parents. But that is certainly not always easy. The border is not always a straight line, there is such a thing as a social environment and when is a joke not funny?

Asking for it

A thick skin is a requirement if you don’t want to go under in this time, my boys think. “Intimidation is never good, but a joke should be possible,” says the oldest. On Snapchat, he shows a very young, unknown girl who dresses very revealingly. “Look, this then. Then don’t you ask for it?” “Why?” I ask. Son: “Well, attention.” “And if you’re walking around town with your nails painted and yelled at for being a dirty gay man, do you ask for it?” I object. Silence.

“Maybe we should just agree that we don’t just shout all kinds of things to others”, eldest remarks dryly. “And you certainly don’t do that to feel tough or better or more powerful,” says the youngest. “Let’s agree on that”, I wink – while guessing how long it will take before the first judgments fly over the table again. But at least they think about it. Look, I note with satisfaction. That educate of my – in this case coincidentally – sons may actually lead to something.

This article can be found in Kek Mama 05-2022.

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