How the phrase "girls can not offend" breaks the psyche of children

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

The seemingly harmless phrase "girls must not be hurt" does real damage. It seems to parents that with her help they will bring up a kind, attentive son, because girls are weaker physically and cannot give change (although girls are also different). But what happens in the end.

Even terrible parents - tormentors, narcissists and others like them - sometimes quite sincerely believe that all their actions are from love, let alone normal mothers and fathers. Imperfect, with their "cockroaches", of course, but not cruel, not fixated on themselves, but ordinary ones - after all, their intentions are also good.

Only we all know which road is paved with such intentions.

This phrase hints that something is wrong with the girls

Let's say you come to visit a friend at a party, and the friend says:

Listen, my friend Pavlik will be here. So, you can't offend him.

What do you think of Pavlik? It is likely that Pavlik is either an aggressive neurasthenic who can break loose at any moment (that is, Pavlik is dangerous), or he is, say, mentally retarded or disabled (that is, unable to take responsibility for his actions and / or completely helpless).

Even if all this is not fully realized, the brain still absorbs and analyzes information in the background (we call it the subconscious), and especially the growing brain of a child. And with such phrases, you, in fact, tell the boys that girls are not the same as you. They are different. They are either dangerous or, more likely, "defective." Be careful with them.

She unties the hands of the cruel girls

This problem is especially evident in the relationship of already grown boys and girls. I bet you have heard (or told yourself) at least one version of this story.

She tells me nasty things, presses on all the pain points that she knows so well, deliberately provokes, but I remain silent and clench my fists. Can't hit a woman. And she sees it and uses it.

I actually think hitting people regardless of gender is rather a bad idea. The last frontier, which makes sense to cross, when civilized methods, despite all efforts, do not work (and it is impossible to escape) and one has to resort to barbaric ones. Most likely, this will not be of much use, but I can easily imagine a situation where this can be justified.

This is about gender bias. He has objective reasons, because most women will not be able to adequately fight back, and yes, this is so, and this must be taken into account. But if it were not for the attitude “girls must not be offended” that was not inherent in childhood, which later turned into “women cannot be beaten,” then many women prone to manipulation and emotional provocations (as well as cruel girls who are almost on a par with boys in terms of physical strength) would have behaved much more restrained. Not even because of moral insight, but in order not to substitute, because they know:

For what I'm doing now, you can get it in the face.

Someone will say: “What about domestic violence? Doesn't this attitude inherent in childhood help to reduce the percentage of abusive husbands who beat their wives in the future? The answer is no.

Adequate husbands do not beat their wives, not because they were told so in childhood, but because they are adequate and know how to resolve conflicts differently. As we can see, this does not stop the inadequate.

She deprives girls of equal status

Remember Pavlik from the example? Which you shouldn't touch because it's either dangerous or defective. With the "dangerous" sorted out above, but what if the boy is not a dangerous girl? Doesn't scandal, doesn't bully. And it looks like normal, there are arms and legs, smiles, says something. Why can you offend other boys, but not her and others like her?

Because weak? Because she is in some way inferior to me?

The girls have not yet managed to do anything, and the boy is warned in advance about how not to behave with them (not with all people, namely with them). One gets the feeling that the girl is not quite a person or a person of some special, incomprehensible sort. That she is helpless, or that she is not responsible for her actions and decisions. That, no matter what she did, she needed to forgive everything and be careful with her.

Boys and girls are different, but we do not help anyone, teaching boys to think that girls are such strange creatures that "do not touch, otherwise they will fall apart." Firstly, it won't fall apart, and secondly, isn't it better to develop kindness in your son, tell him how to comfort the girl if he accidentally offended him? And then these dances on tiptoes around "fragile" princesses bring up the girls themselves more. For example, they make a manipulator from the previous paragraph.

She puts the boys in a "box of masculinity"

I'm using the free translation here for the phrase man box that Tony Porter used in his TED talk.

He talks about a crooked culture of masculinity and what criteria a man must meet in order to be considered one. And the criteria are legion. One of them is resilience. Absolute, almost superhuman.

When we say “you can't offend girls”, the return flow in the form “but boys can be allowed” suggests itself. From here comes another crazy phrase - “ boys don't cry". These phrases, like a host of similar ones, come from the same source and serve the same purpose - to educate "real men" who endure everything, never get upset, show no emotions and have no vulnerabilities.

Someone else then wonders why men die earlier.

- What do you do when you feel bad and you are torn apart?

- Nothing. I tolerate it.

You can't live like that. Nobody. Do you know all these stories, when there was a boy (and this is almost always a boy), so calm and polite, and then he takes a rifle and kills 20 people? Except for clinical psychopaths who were born that way, and cases of domestic violence, I think this is the reason. Not the only one, but one of the fundamental.

A normal child without terrible psychological trauma lived for himself and experienced stress. Maybe he was teased, maybe he read something offensive or humiliating on the Internet, but he had no one to talk to, he was afraid to express his feelings, to show weakness. And feelings accumulated, wandered in it, gradually, day after day transforming the psyche - and this is the result.

Good news - there are many alternatives

For example, this.

Don't hit girls if they don't hit you.

Agree, a completely different matter. After all, it all started with the fact that girls are physically weaker and it is dishonest to attack them, right? Show this difference, this balance.

Or here.

Try not to offend others as long as they don't hurt you.

Don't laugh at others for not being like you.

It is better to resolve disputes with words rather than fists.

Children are curious, their minds are very flexible, and whatever you put into it will stay there for life. Don't oversimplify. The desire to simplify everything is from mental laziness. Fairness and tact are very subtle things, so explain, chew, go into details. Let not immediately, but after many years, but you will definitely see the fruits of your efforts.