Introduction to Love Like This, Asking out, Making a move, Keeping in touch vs. keeping tabs, Jealousy, Fighting fair, Breaking up
Copyright WSCADV Illustrations by Derek Sullivan
Tag: respect
Making a move
Introduction to Love Like This, Asking out, Making a move, Keeping in touch vs. keeping tabs, Jealousy, Fighting fair, Breaking up
Copyright WSCADV Illustrations by Derek Sullivan
Asking out
Introduction to Love Like This, Asking out, Making a move, Keeping in touch vs. keeping tabs, Jealousy, Fighting fair, Breaking up
Copyright WSCADV Illustrations by Derek Sullivan
Let’s talk about sex, ba-by
I just watched the trailer for Daddy I Do—a documentary about purity balls. What’s a purity ball, you ask? It’s basically a wedding-like ceremony where teen daughters pledge to their fathers that they will remain a virgin until they are married. There are so many things about this that get me riled up, like haven’t we moved past the idea that girls belong to their fathers until they can be married off?
In the trailer, some of the men talk about how they of course wouldn’t tell their daughters how to have safe sex, because they shouldn’t be having sex at all! It’s this way of thinking that is driving support for abstinence-only sex education. But we know abstinence-only sex education is not very effective at lowering teen pregnancy and STI rates.
When I was growing up in the South, this kind of thing was happening. I remember one day in homeroom, we all had a little slip of paper on our desks with the purity pledge on it. The teacher didn’t make us sign it, but she did ask that we take it home, talk with our parents about it, and seriously consider signing it. I was creeped out by it, but at least it wasn’t a substitute for the small amount of medically accurate sex education that we got in school.
These purity balls and pledges send messages that girls shouldn’t have sex (boys will be boys), girls bear the burden of this responsibility (because, boys will be boys), and girls’ virginity is more important than boys’.
But an even bigger problem is that it leaves a gaping hole in the conversations we should be having with our kids about healthy relationships. As much as we might want to stick our fingers in our ears and sing lalalala, the teens in our lives are (probably) making their way around the bases with their boyfriends or girlfriends. Let’s give them accurate and complete info about sex. And I’m not just talking contraceptives and STIs here. Let’s tell them that sex is about pleasure. Let’s tell them that there’s no shame in feeling what they are feeling (whether they’re wanting to have sex or not). Let’s talk about the things you should look for in a healthy relationship like love, respect, and trust and how that should apply to the sex part too. Let’s talk about how powerful they are that they get to make smart, informed choices about their bodies. Let’s talk about that.
Love Like This
I have been doing domestic violence work for a long time. Over the years, I have come across lists of the “red flags” or “warning signs” of abuse many times. These lists are helpful for sure. But you know what I’ve rarely come across? A list of what to do in relationships. I’ve seen definitions of healthy relationships, and even some concrete tips for how to get there, but not a whole lot. It got me thinking that we have spent so much time figuring out what an abusive relationship looks like and explaining that to folks, that we rarely take the time to talk about how to have a good relationship.
Healthy and fun relationships don’t just fall out of the sky (wouldn’t it be great if they did!), you have to work at it. So we’ve created something that we hope will help us share how to Love Like This (not like this). We’ll do that by illustrating some typical situations that occur in relationships and giving examples of how to deal with them in a healthy, loving, and respectful way, as opposed to an abusive, controlling, or coercive way. And bonus: it’s filled with cute illustrations of cats—true story.
Check out our Love Like This series and share with us how you are doing with your healthy relationship skills.
Asking out, Making a move, Keeping in touch vs. keeping tabs, Jealousy, Fighting fair, Breaking up
What does a Bat Mitzvah have to do with healthy relationships?
Recently, we celebrated the Bat Mitzvah of a cherished daughter of dear friends. While reminiscing with my twin daughters about their Bat Mitzvah, it dawned on me that this process actually prepares young people for entering into loving and respectful relationships. To prepare for a Bat or Bar Mitzvah, young women and men have to learn to speak publicly, think critically about ideas, and express their beliefs with each other and trusted adults.
The Bat Mitzvah process centers you in an environment that is bigger than your individual needs and wants. At age 13, you are seen as ethically responsible for your decisions and actions, and you are joining the Jewish community as an adult. Years of Hebrew school culminate in leading a Shabbat service, singing an ancient trope from the Torah (Hebrew Bible), and reflecting on your Torah portion (Dvar) and connecting it to contemporary life. The parents have a role in publicly acknowledging their child’s commitment. It is a moment to share a bit about who you think your child is and what you hope for them. I love this part of the service, and never get tired of hearing all the ways adults love their children.
My daughters had to interpret ancient teachings through their own experiences while adults asked their opinions and offered respect for their thinking. Pretty heady stuff at 13. The process immersed them in a community that amplified their voice and lifted their authority and confidence. And it gave me new ways of talking about respect, supportive love, and what a healthy relationship feels like.
Talking back and moving forward
We bring you this post from Sarah LaGrange, our Policy and Prevention intern.
Lately I have been thinking about adultism. It is one of the most common forms of oppression and I would venture to say that every single person who is reading this has experienced it. And yet it is the least talked about “ism” that I know of. You probably haven’t ever heard the term.
At our Teen Leadership Council (TLC), they had never heard of it either. But once I started giving examples, every teen there knew what I was talking about. At the end of the day we asked: What do you want adults to know about teens? Almost every single answer was about wanting adults to treat them with kindness and respect. One youth wrote “I only talk back when you talk back to me.” Is that actually what we want kids to learn, not to talk back? Would we ever say this to an adult? What we really want is for kids to take some responsibility for their actions.
Another TLC member said “You don’t have to yell to get our attention.” Who actually responds well to being yelled at? No one. So why do we yell so much at kids? Because we are allowed to, perhaps even expected to. This starts sounding eerily like why men so often treat women with violence and control, because they have historically been allowed to and even expected to control the women in their lives.
Jody Wright points out, “When we talk of kids being ‘disciplined,’ we mean that they follow what others say or want. When we talk of an adult being disciplined, we mean that they are following inner motivation to do something.” How do we expect children to learn self-discipline and internal motivation when we raise them to do what they are told and not talk back? The problem is, we are teaching them to perpetuate oppression and inequality. If we want kids to resist oppression we have to teach them how to talk back and that they deserve the same respect we give other adults.
News you can relate to
Some news stories that caught our eye this week:
- September is Abortion Access Month, highlighting the struggles women, especially poor women, are forced to go through to be able to actually exercise their reproductive rights.
- A judge in Illinois ruled that police officers don’t have to enforce restraining orders, even when a woman’s life is in danger.
- A great debate online this week on the tension between expecting girls to be ‘modest’ and expecting boys to be responsible for how they treat girls.
If no isn’t an option, yes has no meaning
I am always amazed at what a difficult concept consent seems to be. She asked for it, she started the argument, she was into making out, what did she think was going to happen if she went there/did that …. are all variations on the theme of “she consented” and used to try to confuse our understanding of rape and intimate partner violence.
Most recently, I was shocked and repulsed at Ariel Castro’s gall in asserting that “there was harmony” in his home, and that much of the sex he had with the three women he had imprisoned was “consensual” and besides, the women weren’t virgins anyway. When I heard this on NPR, I began yelling “What the F?” in my car. Fortunately I was alone.
The good news is, it seems like most people reacted like I did, and that was heartening.
How is it that someone can be so confused about what constitutes “harmony” and consent that they can say with a straight face that it existed in that situation. Castro is an extreme case, but I suspect that one of the reasons he was able to convince himself of this is because it is generally consistent with the purposefully confusing and blurred picture men in particular get about female consent.
In other words, it’s not that far out of normal, and that is the scary part. Blurring the idea of consent plays out in all sorts of ways in our culture. And it is useful because it helps the dominant group pretend/ignore/claim that the subjugated group isn’t really being oppressed, but that they actually CHOSE or consented to their situation. This alleviates their responsibility to grapple with what relationships would look like if each person truly had equal value, dignity, and respect.
So in the interest of clarity, let me explain something about consent.
It is really quite simple: if a person can’t freely say no, then yes (or silence) has no meaning. Yes only means something if NO is a real—no negative consequences— possibility, something one can say free of the fear of violence, force, humiliation, murder, homelessness, loss of economic security, the safety of one’s children. If NO is dangerous, then YES is empty. It’s not consent.
Teaching kids consent
While I have no children of my own (yet), I provided childcare for many years. I’ve also been a sex educator, and for me, it is easy to see the connections between these two seemingly very different fields. Consent is one of the biggest. As a feminist sex educator, the subject of consent was one that came up often: what it means to give informed consent, who is able to give consent, and how to best obtain consent.
Children and tickling is a great example. It can be really fun, right? And who can resist the contagious and adorable laughter and squeals? But how many of us have continued to tickle when a child says no? Regardless of the intent, the effect of continuing the game is to teach that child that no does not mean no, and that as an adult, we can trample over their attempts at boundary-setting any time we want. Those lessons influence their own interactions and they carry that with them into adulthood.
What would it look like to teach consent to our children from a very young age? To teach them respect and bodily autonomy through our words and actions? I see this as a crucial component of prevention. I believe that children who grow up understanding that they have control over their own body and practicing consent will be far less likely to abuse and/or rape when they are older. This post from Vibrant Wanderings offers some thoughts and suggestions on how to do just that. (There are some great discussions in the comments, too!)
Can You Relate? 