How to Talk to Girls

As a father of three sons, one of the things I worry about is teaching them to treat women with respect.

Now, when I say this to people (especially to men), I often get a sort of wide-eyed, all-too-naive response. “Don’t you want them to treat everyone with respect,” they ask, “regardless of their gender?” And, sure, I do want them to treat everyone with respect, regardless of their gender, but the truth is that there are some social factors that make it especially important to reinforce for them how to interact with women appropriately.

There’s the long (and often still lingering) history of patriarchy in our culture, the constant objectification of women in media and advertising, the ease of access to pornography (including material that is graphically violent and degrading to women), and the too frequently inappropriate examples provided by role models in sports and entertainment. All of this contributes to a culture of disrespect to women that I don’t want my kids to be a part of.

And it starts early. Don’t think it doesn’t. My middle kid was only seven when the school secretary took me aside one day. “I’m not offended,” she assured me, “because I know he didn’t mean it like that, but you’re son cat-called me and another teacher in the hall yesterday. We were coming around the corner, and he was like, ‘Heeey, ladies,’ just out of nowhere.”

I promised to talk to my kid about it, but it was difficult convincing him that women might not want him to talk like that. He pointed out (quite rightly) that people in movies and music videos do it all the time. When I explained that it was objectifying women (and went through exactly what objectification was), he struggled to understand why this was a bad thing. Wasn’t this how singers and actors and athletes behaved?

The subject has come up more frequently as the boys have gotten older, especially in conversations about the things I want them watching and hearing. They’re often frustrated that I won’t let them listen to certain music or watch certain movies. Their friends have even noticed (I’ve overheard some pretty funny conversations).

With all the recent allegations of sexual misconduct in the media, however, my kids now seem to be taking the topic a bit more seriously. It’s been informative for them to see major public figures held accountable for their treatment of women. Hearing women tell their stories, about how harassment and assault made them feel, has also been eye opening for them. They’re realizing just how serious these kinds of things are to real people.

It’s also been encouraging to see some male public figures take seriously their roles as allies to women in this respect. The other day my kids came across of viral video of Drake stopping in the middle of a club show to confront a man in the audience who was groping women. Now, I’m not much of a Drake fan (and to be honest I think that some of his music is pretty disrespectful to women in its own right), but when public figures take that kind of stand it helps provide a model to kids in ways that I appreciate.

I wish there was more of that. I also wish that more of the men I know would be willing to take similar stands in their own small way, as parents and teachers and coaches. Our boys need to see that the men in their lives take these issues seriously. They need to see men treat their mothers, wives, sisters, daughters, and female friends with the same respect that thy treat the men in their lives. It’s the only way that our sons will grow up to treat our daughters as they deserve.