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.
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.
Yeah, I agree with you on this
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.
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.
Is porn really behind the misogyny? What about the tards in the so-called “manosphere” saying all sorts of crazy and immoral shit? Those have more reach than whatever extremely weird pornography is supposed to be at fault. Is this what not being able to say “this is objectively wrong/right” because of Western moral relativism leads to?
It’s in the article and it’s very good. You should read it.
Preventing young men being harmed by “manosphere” influencers such as Andrew Tate.
That was one line in a whole article focusing on knowing porn isn’t realistic and whatnot… I just feel like if they had any hard moral beliefs (could be as simple and basic as the Ten Commandments, idk), they could build on them, this feels very inefficient.
Well, you know all the humiliation porn, hardcore porn, rape porn and such?
That’s not a very nice representation of sex that can be considered safe for anyone, especially young humans with a developing brain.
Can we say that is objectively wrong? Or are we all so addicted to porn that we get angry as soon as it comes up in such discussions?
“Young humans” sure. Not young humans, you absolutely do you.
There’s a bit of an emerging trend in leftist European circles in particular that sees porn as inherently patriarchal and wrong and we’re not ready for how much anti-porn is going to be the new terfism yet. This is going to suck a lot, and not in a good way.
in leftist European circles in particular that sees porn as inherently patriarchal and wrong and
i would just like to point out that not everybody sees it like that. i identify as leftist and don’t see things that way, even though porn often is exploitative. but that has nothing to do with the porn itself, but with the economic coercion that is at play when the thing is created: for money. that’s the problem, that it happens for money, and not voluntarily. and that’s an economic problem, not one of porn itself.
Absolutely it is not universal, but that’s… kind of the problem.
Porn isn’t that big of an issue either way. Left-wing movements can take a stance on whatever side of it. The problem is when issues like this end up being targeted at some portions of the left-wing spectrum but not to others and you end up with a split down the middle that one or both sides decide to make into a dealbreaking issue.
There’s a bit of an emerging trend in leftist European circles in particular that sees porn as inherently patriarchal
So long as women choose to do it to fulfill capitalist needs (which is to say, to avoid the implicit violence of homelessness and/or incarceration), rather than simply because they enjoy it, then it kind of is.
If not specifically patriarchal, then at least evil and exploitative in some capacity.
I don’t disagree with you, but if you’re going to take that position you have to include work as a whole, not just sex work. There are differences, sure, but we’re all selling our minds, bodies, and time just to stay alive.
Oh I absolutely do apply that position to all work. But I would do so with the caveat that if you have a career which helps people even despite the reality that you’re being exploited while doing so - like taking care of kids or special needs people or the environment or something - then that might provide you with more happiness than purely selling access to your body.
That’s not at all intended as a judgement of the mere fact, though. If you genuinely prefer sex work to the available alternatives to you, get that bag. Or maybe you even help people in your capacity as a sex worker, I don’t know.
It… kinda sounds like judgement.
So what happens to… you know, Uber drivers, software engineers for social media and Amazon drivers? Because there’s a biiig spectrum of work under capitalism, and it doesn’t fit particularly neatly in “selling your body” or “helping people”.
Look, nobody is saying that sex work can’t be exploitative or even that it’s not generally exploitative. The legal gray areas and general ickiness of the entire space is… a lot, and I think it needs specific regulation. But to take it as a uniquely patriarchal, capitalistic thing distinct from “normal” work requires not seeing it as proper labor, but as inherently… well, they do kind of abuse the word “abolition” very pointedly.
That has a long, nasty tradition with pretty unhealthy side effects, honestly.
In any case, that’s the rhetorical trick I’m worried about. You let the right own sex work AND you let the stance on this split feminist/leftist spaces in half and you’ve manufactured a mix of TERFism and the concession of “free speech” as a fascist talking point. It’s a political problem more than a policy problem, frankly.
So educating children about porn equals being anti-porn?
I want education about drugs as well as liberalization of the same.
You know, the world is not black and white, left and right, like they have led you to believe.
Think with your own mind and exercise some objectivity, especially on important topics like education.
That’s a cool argument you’re having with a thing nobody said.
Educating children about sex in general is educating children about sex (and nobody here has argued against it or equated it with being anti-porn).
There is a rising trend in European lefitsm, and particularly in European feminism, that argues that all porn is inherently pernicious and ultimately should not exist.
Note those are two separate statements.
You definitely dabbled in the second of those statements when you claimed that “that [can’t] be considered safe for anyone”. Whether you meant to say what you said is in your head, but as presented that slope is both mighty slippery AND very consistent with some of the very anti sex-work trend I’m talking about. The false equivalence and misquote at the top of your response doesn’t lead me to believe you’re treating this “objectively”, either.
LOL
As I said already, if you have any doubt you can do your own research like I did instead of trying to confirm your beliefs in a random comments section.
Also I’ll point out that your arguing about leftism, feminism, terfism and whatnot like you feel persecuted when we are only talking about educating children on the difference between porn and reality and about factual (that, again, you can look up) psychological implications of consuming porn, is all incredibly weird.
Is porn that important for you? Is it such a meaningful part of your life that you can’t even stand criticism?
Or do you think porn is some kind of free expression of sexuality that should be protected?
I like drugs and I use them, but I don’t lose my mind whenever a study finds out that this or the other substance is harming me.
What the actual fuck mate?
I, once again, did not say or imply that I am persecuted in any way.
I do think porn is free expression, of sexuality and otherwise, and should be protected about as much as any other form of free expression. Which is not universally and without limit, before you try that one.
And all of that is not the same as saying I “can’t stand criticism” about it. Which I didn’t say or think. I will actively, aggressively criticise actual porn, both as a media product and as an industry.
Once again, the strawmanning and talking points aren’t doing much to disprove the notion that anti-porn activism will become the new TERF-like trojan horse wedge among ostensible leftist movements going forward. People don’t like to talk about those, but they are bad and this is incoming.
Again you keep talking about leftism and such, but you should invest the time you are wasting with this empty walls of text in reading some research on porn.
Would be definitely healthier than watching porn itself or fueling your paranoia against whoever you think is your enemy.
Good luck!
that’s porn
it’s not real lifeA simple web search will prove you wrong.
… humiliation porn, hardcore porn, rape porn …
the porn is porn
the real life incidents are real lifeI’m not talking about the tragic endings of the process, but about the process itself.
More violent porn being consumed leads to more demand of the same. It basically rewires your brain, like drugs. Look it up if you have any doubt.
Educating about porn should be mandatory like educating about drugs and all similarly harmful stuff.
So, rough sex is inherently bad?
That’s a pretty wild stretch to back bigotry.
Of course it is, it’s grotesque! But it’s faaaaaaar from the core of the issue. Men can be/are misogynistic way before they get a girl in bed consensually… like I said in another reply, very inefficient, like ice on broken leg.
It’s funny because your religion is deeply misogynistic too and that is blatant even in the cringe commandments.
I’m not Christian/Catholic/Trinitarian, I just mentioned the commandments because they stand on their own and they’re closer to the West…
So close that they shaped the patriarchal society we live in.
No, thanks.
The “patriarchy” is not why women are mistreated and porn is rampant… What kind of father wants his daughter to be abused or become a prostitute?! Your framework is all wonky and the words are all wrong.
Patriarch != father
Today you learned.
What world is it that you live in? Maybe trump didn’t want his daughters to become prostitutes, but that didn’t stop him and many other men with daughters to abuse children younger or the same age as their own daughters. Maybe if you spent some time in the real world, and less in a magical one; you could see that many things exist in it.
Lots of things feed into it. The porn is just one of them.
This is part of a big effort to combat misogyny right now, which will be for naught when Reform rolls into power, declares it all “woke” and makes the problem 10 times worse.
Western moral relativism
this is called post-structuralism btw, just so you can give a name to it
the idea that there is no (absolute) right or wrong, only subjective interpretations of the world
Thank you! I think I still prefer the way I put it, as I feel like the term “post-structuralism” kind of gives more weight to/normalizes this sort of nonsense, lol. 😅👋
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.
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?
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
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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.
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.
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
This is how I know you’re just being grumpy to be grumpy. This is extreme hyperbole at best. No public education system is perfect, far from it, but to claim every government education system ever has only produced negative results is insane.
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
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.
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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.
“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
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’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.
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.
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“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.
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)
Hate to say it, but this reminds me of that Monty python Meaning of Life sketch about the John Cleese teaching bored kids about sex
The healthiest thing is a decent sexual education to tackle all the topics rather than only this issue in these cases… but very welcome anyway
The healthiest thing is to learn good behaviors organically from the people and culture around you, not from a classroom.
I think it is overall a good thing that the UK is trying to make some progress. It is disappointing that it’s come to teaching 11 year olds about pornography.
As much as porn may be a factor, there’s a lot more beyond that single factor that is involved - reminiscent of video games causing mass shootings.
Parenting and parental examples are a huge component of teaching kids to be responsible adults. When I was a kid, parental controls if they existed were a challenge that I worked on learning to circumvent (and I learned a lot about computers), but today they’re pretty bulletproof. But parents don’t use them at all. There’s not even an attempt made to limit screen time or exposure to pornography.
It’s not just parents of course; tech companies are absolutely responsible as well. It’s a complex issue.
reminiscent of video games causing mass shootings
None of the many scientific studies into this claim has found any evidence of its validity.
Instead there is evidence that it is a byproduct of good ol’ racism, as it is used most often to try to explain why a white child would walk into a school and start killing. Because there must be an external reason right? It’s not like Timmy was one of those inherently violent blacks.
Yes that’s my point.
I think any time they could be exposed to something is the time to educate them about it. If that was even younger, that would be fine. Even very basic sex education can be taught to very young children to help keep them safe from abuse. Not talking about things openly, using scientific vocabulary, is a big problem.
Parental controls are excellent to stop “accidental” discovery, but at some point they will seek stuff out, and proper education should exist before that point. If parents are too embarrassed? ashamed? to have that conversation, it falls to the school/state/etc.
Parents not using parental controls are in my mind the same ones who would have been similarly oblivious or negligent in the past, I don’t think the technology has anything to do with it, except statistically volume and ease of access increases necessity. I don’t think I would blame tech companies any more than magazine publishers.
To be clear, it’s not that I oppose teaching sex ed at all. It needs to happen, because kids find it on their own. It’s just that it’s disappointing that society has come to the point where we need to discuss kinks with prepubescents. I don’t think their brains are developed enough to comprehend the complex decision process behind getting tied up and whipped, which I think partly this article is seeking to address.
It’s just a sad comment on society, I think. I want to have a healthy open dialogue with my kids about sex. The porn genie isn’t going back in the bottle.
It’s been my limited experience that parental controls are pretty strong these days. I think that a really key difference circles back to the social media exposure discussion. Sure, they seek it out eventually, but with always on social media they’re going to find out about things a lot earlier than they need to, which is why I also called out the social media companies for their unethical behaviour.
we need to discuss kinks with prepubescents
- Porn isn’t only about kinks.
- What’s wrong with discussing kinks with prepubescents? They will have them as adults.
I guess one good thing will come of this porn panic in England.
Still think there’s a lot better things the labour government could be doing with their massive majority.
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.
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
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
Futanari isn’t misogynistic, so I’m assuming this law would be OK with it.
The wrong people are in power.
