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Feminism: Sex & gender discussions

Where do boys get this rubbish from?

31 replies

TheSmallClanger · 09/11/2010 15:01

Sorry, this is going to be long and probably ranty.

I have had one of my personal tutee students from the college in for my office hour this morning. She is 17 and a trainee veterinary nurse. She is beside herself with worry because she has found herself to be pregnant and has decided on trying to obtain an abortion without her parents finding out.

Among the things we discussed was how she came to be pregnant. It is part of my personal tutor duty to impart sexual health knowledge. Apparently, her boyfriend refuses to use condoms as he doesn't like them, claiming they are "passion killers". The student is not on the Pill for various reasons. I asked her as gently as I could why she does not refuse to have sex with him unless they sort out some sort of contraception - more suggesting that she should do this in future. She said that she tries, but once he gets excited it isn't fair to ask him to stop, and won't he get "blue balls" otherwise?

I was in full WTF mode. Where do boys get this bollocks from? However many years of sex education at school, and more subtly through TV programmes, and they are still talking like something out of the 70s. I remember our fab old school nurse in the 80s categorically telling us that "blue balls" were a myth, and that any man claiming that it hurt to stop was lying and taking advantage! Where do they learn this stuff - is it lads' mags? TV? Older brothers? It makes me so angry that women have moved on so much, and a large subset of men have not even taken the first step.

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OldLadyKnowsNothing · 09/11/2010 15:03

I'm not sure women have moved on so much if they're still believing that crap.

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ISNT · 09/11/2010 16:12

I have no idea where they get it from - there may be some kind of training course that some of them go on?

The same place they learn the smirk to give to an affronted woman whose bottom they have just randomly groped in the pub.

It is weird that the same things come around time and time again, like some kind of script.

I will ask DH when he gets in, whether he ever heard boys at school saying that it was something you could say to get sex, it seems to be a common thing to say and has been for years.

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slug · 09/11/2010 16:17

Blue balls does exist. It's the result of a foot being applied to the affected area firmly and with some force.

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AnnieLobeseder · 09/11/2010 16:17

That's very sad. If the young women is intelligent enough to get into vet nurse training, you'd think she's be intelligent enough to look after her own sexual health and know how to deal with horny boyfriends.

I'm very concerned that this kind of submissive behaviour still occurs in young women, and this kind of irresponsible behaviour comes from young men.

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abr1de · 09/11/2010 16:18

If they hurt so much why can't he just relieve himself with his hand?

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sethstarkaddersmum · 09/11/2010 16:20

I just looked it up on Wikipedia and according to that it does exist but there is also a parallel condition called blue labia.
(wikipedia is fount of all truth and cannot contain an untrue or biased statement, obviously)

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Ormirian · 09/11/2010 16:21

But why did she beleive him? Bloody ridiculous on both sides.

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southeastastra · 09/11/2010 16:23

yes why blame the boys surely she must know what she's doing too, i certainly knew it all at that age

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TheCrackFox · 09/11/2010 16:30

She must have zero self esteem to have not have told him to "fuck off".

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RibenaBerry · 09/11/2010 16:34

God, how sad. How low must her self esteem be that she allows that type of behaviour.

I clearly grew up in a bubble, however, as I have never even heard that term or that line until just now.

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ISNT · 09/11/2010 16:40

I don't understand it either. When I were a girl we were all reading mizz and just17 from about 13, which always had loads in disabusing myths "standing up for sex won't stop you getting pregnant " "his cock won't fall off if you don't give him a hand job" etc etc

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AliceWorld · 09/11/2010 17:55

Well I'm not stupid nor would I say I had low self-esteem but I believed such things when I was with my abusive partner at that kind of age. If you get told it over and over and over, from an early age, from someone older than you, that you look up to, that tells you that as a proper adult man he knows more about that stuff than silly childish magazines, and where you are a politically active teenager who has a skepticism about the agendas of people in authority then you might believe it. Abuse doesn't happen cos people are stupid, so for me blaming her isn't so great.

Saying that I did make him use condoms, whatever he said, but I was in the generation where HIV was a huge deal.

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ElephantsAndMiasmas · 09/11/2010 18:19

Do they really have those quite good mags for teenagers now though? Used to read Sugar and J17 and a couple of others (not Bliss which the school had because it was shit) and learned looooads. Basically all kids need to be given a really good sex education book at the age of about 10, and study it at school like they would any other book. They would be all ears! And they would keep the book and take it home.

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ISNT · 09/11/2010 18:36

Sounds like a horrible situation aliceworld.

One of those things where unless you've experienced it, you can't guess what it's like to be in a relationship where the balance of power is so skewed.

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msrisotto · 09/11/2010 19:23

I hadn't heard of blue balls when I was 17 and my boyfriend said he got it and I believed him, why wouldn't it you know?

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dittany · 09/11/2010 19:34

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

ElephantsAndMiasmas · 09/11/2010 19:43

Forgot "dads" and "other men on the football/hockey/basketball team".

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southeastastra · 09/11/2010 19:43

still think it's 50/50 get fed up with boys being blamed for every ill in society Hmm

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JenaiMarrHePlaysGuitar · 09/11/2010 19:50

I'd be pretty fucking angry (and that I'd failed) if I heard ds had spun a line like this.

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ElephantsAndMiasmas · 09/11/2010 19:51

Boys don't get blamed for everything do they? Am certainly on for blaming the "urgh condoms no waaaay" babyish brigade though. Selfish tossers. (would that they were just tossers)

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seeyoukay · 09/11/2010 19:52

Nah, 50/50. His fault for thinking condoms are passion killers and her's for not telling him to feck orf.

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seeyoukay · 09/11/2010 19:52

remove the ' in the hers. Don't know what I was doing there.

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Ormirian · 09/11/2010 21:10

The boy needs a good kicking as well TBH. Twat! But she really shouldn't have fallen for it.

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earwicga · 09/11/2010 21:11

One of the best messages I've seen for wholesale sex education in the style of the HIV/AIDS education I received as a teenager. Those lessons killed dead any thought of sex without a condom.

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TheSmallClanger · 09/11/2010 21:51

Sorry for the post-and-run earlier.
I did warn everyone it was ranty. It wasn't just the boy (apparently her age, and not at our college) I was angry about, it was the whole situation, and the background situation that meant that this sort of thing could arise.

It just astounded me that someone who has grown up in supposedly more enlightened and female-positive times has an outlook like this. When we learnt the ropes in the days of Aids scares and Honey magazine, we seemed so much more willing to be in control. I know that is golden-ageism, but I'm sure it's true.

The young woman in question is not the most confident, but certainly not the least confident in her group either. I don't know for sure, but I suspect her parents don't know about the relationship at all, and may well not approve.

I took it out on the boy in question before because I've seen it before at college: girl gets pregnant/gets STD/gets in trouble with family, her whole world falls apart at least temporarily. Boy who is 50% to blame gets away SCOT-FREE, with no consequences, no disruption to his education, normally no heartbreaking decisions.

It makes me angrier and angrier as I get older. It sometimes seems like the world, and the world of young people more, is structured around men/boys/idiots getting what they want.

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