I have taken to heart the thing about how instead of teaching our daughters to escape being raped, we should be teaching our sons not to be rapists. You’d think a big national rape case would provide excellent material for talking to our sons about not being rapists. But no, unfortunately yet again what we have is excellent material for talking to our daughters about how to escape being raped.
It’s especially frustrating because I just recently read somewhere that it feeds into rape culture to say “This is something that happens to women in our culture.” This makes it harder for me to tell my daughter what I want to tell her, which is the actual truth: this IS something that happens to women in our culture.
Furthermore, “in our culture” is only accurate if we mean “in our timeless worldwide human culture,” because this is an ancient worldwide problem and not a local or recent one. We are in fact fairly lucky if we live in a time period and part of the world where at least theoretically rape is against the law, and where a victim of rape is not put to death for the crime of being raped, or forced to marry her rapist. So lucky!
The basic timeless worldwide problem we are dealing with is that a certain percentage of humans, almost exclusively male humans, are rapists who don’t see anything wrong with raping, and don’t seem to learn otherwise no matter what we do. And that another certain percentage of humans, some overlapping the first group but many not overlapping, will defend those rapists and instead attack the women who have been raped.
And so two terrible things happen to a woman who is raped: (1) she is raped, and (2) she is blamed for it. (Well, at LEAST two terrible things. Other options include not being believed at all, having to deal with a pregnancy resulting from the rape, having to deal with an STD resulting from the rape, having to deal with the extensive and multi-layered psychological fall-out of being raped, etc.)
There is a big element here of that thing people do when they are scared and want to feel safe: if we can find something that the victim did, and if that thing is something we ourselves can avoid, then we have made a magical protection spell around ourselves. There have been plenty of articles written about how women have to live their lives constantly worrying about being attacked/raped by men, so I won’t go over that again here. But if you are living in that kind of constant fear, it is natural for certain superstitions to arise: if I don’t walk alone in the dark, if I walk confidently, if I stay in a good part of town, if I wear the right kind of clothing, if I don’t step on a crack, if there are an even number of steps between here and where I live, if I don’t let my foot dangle over the edge of the bed—if I do all these things right, I don’t have to be so scared because the bad thing won’t happen to me.
It’s too bad a self-soothing mechanism can so easily lead to saying “SEE?? You forgot one of the rules and THAT’S why you got raped! It’s YOUR fault! WHEW: that gives me some relief for my distress.” It’s an understandable panic/fear reaction, but education helps: as with the problem of the bystander effect, the solution is to know it exists. As soon as you know it’s a Thing, you’re much less likely to be tricked by it.
Well. What I needed was a version of all this that was geared for a 5th-grade girl. Sometimes getting started is the hardest part. What I started with was saying to her that there was a news story right now that was making me even more worried about her and her friends. Then I went slowly: we had about a 35-minute car ride, so even though the next few paragraphs may look as if I sat there ranting and lecturing and talking too fast, it was pretty casual, with lots of responses from her.
I told her that a man had raped an unconscious woman, and that he still didn’t seem to think he’d done anything wrong except drink too much, and that the judge had decided he shouldn’t be punished too much because that would have a negative effect on his future, and that a lot of people were saying it was the woman’s fault for being unconscious. I reminded her of the statistic that approximately 1 out of 6 women will be sexually assaulted, and that it’s likely that number is wayyyyyyy too low because of how many assaults go unreported, and that the majority of sexual assaults are done by a man the woman knows (which contributes to under-reporting and feelings of self-blame). I hope I adequately covered how very Not Your Fault a sexual assault is (even if you liked the guy, even if you were flirting, even if you were drinking, even if you were wearing sexy clothes, even if you participated willingly with other physical things, even if he’s your boyfriend, and so on), but we will return to that subject again and again over the years.
I told her that it was sickening and crappy that she would need to be taught how to decrease her odds of being raped, but that here we were. I mentioned the thing about teaching your sons not to be rapists, but that this situation in the news was not helpful, and she agreed. We talked about using the buddy system, and not letting your drink go unattended, and keeping an eye out for other women—strangers as well as friends. I told her about that other story that’s been in the news, about the women who were eating in a restaurant and saw a man put something in another woman’s drink, and they told the woman and also the waiter and also the police. This is the kind of thing we can do to help each other. Or if you see a girl at a party, and she seems drunk and you see guys circling her as if she is prey, you can help her back to her dorm/apartment or into a taxi or WHATEVER. If she won’t leave, you can go stand next to her. You can get some of your good guy friends involved. You can call campus security to help you. We also touched upon the topic of rape kits.
That was around the time the car ride ended, so I’ve left it there for now.
It’s unfortunate, but the reality of the situation is that both we need girls to understand that it is NOT their fault and still teach them how to be defensive. I likened it this weekend to riding a bike. We rode our bikes to a friend’s house, which included crossing a very busy road. As we stood waiting for the light to change, I was pointing out the people making a right turn, and the people on the other side waiting to make a left turn with the solid green light. “listen, the light is going to change and we will have the walk sign, which means we have the right of way. HOWEVER, if those people don’t pay attention to you, they can hit you and even though it’s not your fault, you’re still the one who will get hurt. Watch out for those cars.”
brilliant analogy
This really is a great analogy. Thank you!
That is a perfect, PERFECT way to explain it. Thank you, I’m totally using this.
Yes. Except with rape, it’s like, sometimes the car will see you and realize you are vulnerable and hit you on purpose, so be ready to jump out of the way.
Hooray for Swistle. You ought to be writing an advice column; I know you don’t necessarily set out to give advice, but you are just so very good at addressing things with your kids. Thank you! I love this and will refer to it as my daughter gets a bit older. Which leads to my question…when did you explain to Elizabeth what rape actually is? My daughter is 7 and we are approaching the mechanics of sex talks but it hasn’t quite gone there yet (although somehow we have discussed sperm banks, which is sometimes where letting your kids lead the conversation gets you). I’d like to know when you explained rape and how you decided she was ready to hear it.
Yes, I am curious about this as well.
Oh, interesting. I am afraid I don’t remember when or how it first came up. My GUESS is that it came up during the Bad Touch talk. But it’s possible that I have not explained it to her, and that either she has understood it from culture/context or that she doesn’t know what it is and is worried to ask! I will have to double-check this with her.
I have occasionally raised an issue with someone by saying “This is not your fault, but it’s your problem,” which I how I feel about rape, only times a jillion.
I think I get what you’re trying to express, but I suggest not using that phrasing when talking to people about rape. “This is your problem” really does not feel great to hear as a rape survivor.
Thanks for the feedback.
Oh, crap, I am re-reading that and it sounds snide, and I really don’t mean it that way.
I really do appreciate your thoughts.
Thank you, Swistle. There’s something so calming and clear about how you describe all this.
Now that you’ve laid the groundwork with Elizabeth, is this a place where you could kill two birds with one stone? Involve one or two of the (older) boys in the next casual discussion, giving them chances to weigh in on the inappropriateness of all that happened? Just to get them feeling that defensive This Is Wrong feeling that any decent male should experience in hearing the rapist’s awful justification.
Like you, I’m horrified that we have to address any of the “don’ts” in this story beyond the great big “Don’t touch, penetrate, or otherwise harm any stranger who even SEEMS close to unconsciousness” one.
I also think it’s important to discuss the Do’s. Do be kind, think of the other’s feelings, look out for the person, be sure the other person is capable of consent, and make sure it’s what you both want. That seems to need to come before any kind of Don’t. I worry that leading with the Don’ts may normalize them as things that others may do, but he should not. I think leading with the Do’s is also important for helping a girl understand her own end of things. It’s really, really hard, because to talk about rape first is to lead with an aberration rather than what is normal, happy, and healthy. It seems like they should have a solid base of normal before you/we go there with the aberration. I realize that the news story is a prompt for a teaching moment, but we have to be careful about letting it force our hand.
I think it generally ends up being all mixed Do and Don’t at each level, sorted for the child’s age and maturity and interest. Long before a child is old enough to be thinking of herself as a consenting sexual partner in a loving respectful mature relationship, a child needs to be warned about applicable dangers from others.
But of course Elizabeth has already been told about regular sex, and she knows about boyfriends/girlfriends/spouses: I don’t think any of us would LEAD with molestation and rape.
Slightly tangential to the discussion here, but I have to add that if I see the phrase “All-American” used one more time in connection with this story, in a way that is supposed to intensify our feeling of sympathy for what the young man is going through, I will puke. Does that phrase literally mean “blond white athlete”? Could his swimming accolades possibly be any less relevant to the story, except perhaps to indicate that he probably has better-than-average upper body strength?
Six months, pfft. If my younger brother, who is black (and therefore, I suppose, not “All-American,” even though he’s a citizen), had done anything even CLOSE to what happened here, and been caught doing it, i would expect to never see him again.
this is one of the many (many… MANY…) things that sicken me about this case. the fact that he is a privileged white athlete means we should be more lenient, have more sympathy, be more understanding to his side of the story. I’m sure his victim is so thrilled he was white and rich!!
This is such a great point. I also saw somebody comment on how the picture we are repeatedly seeing of the rapist is him looking clean-cut and smiling, not him being booked into jail. It makes a big difference in how the public perceives him. (See also, black victims of police violence shown in mugshot form next to police officer perpetrator shown smiling in uniform in front of a flag.)
All-American is a sports designation for collegiate sports so yes your younger brother could be selected as an All-American. Any one could no matter what their race or ethnicity.
Ah, I didn’t realize this, but I see that that term does have a meaning that’s specifically about college sports, which is probably how it’s being used here. So yes, you’re right, within the world of college sports, my brother certainly could have been selected as All-American. I thank you for the enlightenment–it will actually make me feel less angry about this element of the stories about this.
I still think that (1) people often use and interpret this term in a broader way (to mean wholesome, honest, pedigreed, etc.), and (2) it’s irrelevant here no matter which meaning is in use. A person’s achievements as an athlete (or his/her embodiment of “American values,” whatever those are) say nothing about his/her criminal capabilities.
This is such a tough conversation and it sounds like you handled it really well.
I tend to take the “don’t teach women not to get raped” as an admonition for society as a whole: we need to be educating EVERYBODY about the importance of consent and how to make sure you have it, and we especially need to put a lot more energy into teaching men to respect women’s consent and autonomy. But that also involves taking down a whole bunch of related poisonous messages about sexuality in our society and it’s not going to happen any time soon. In the meantime, it is worth teaching our kids about common strategies rapists might use that they CAN do something about, while also acknowledging all the victim-blaming stuff that you talked about.
I seriously think the powerful statement written by the survivor should be required reading by highschool students. (I’m sure most people have seen it, but easy link just in case! https://www.buzzfeed.com/katiejmbaker/heres-the-powerful-letter-the-stanford-victim-read-to-her-ra)
SO POWERFUL. She just makes one excellent point after another. I am in awe of her fierceness — and it’s extremely well-put, too!
I love that you took advantage of this story to go over these ideas again. I didn’t think of it this time, but will follow your lead!
Once, my daughter came home from school and said, “Joey says I’m his girlfriend. Do I have to? I don’t feel that way about him.” And I said, with a nice big smile, “Sit down, honey, and let’s talk about consent!”
APPLAUDING for engaging in this super difficult conversation with Elizabeth! I especially appreciate that you intend to return to the topic, that it’s not all one-and-done, check-the-box-thank-goodness-that’s-over. APPLAUSE!
Thanks for sharing this. It’s difficult to know how to talk about rape and consent with kids. I’d love to hear what you have to say to the boys; I’m sure it is brilliant as well.
Wow, it sounds like you knocked it out of the park with this conversation! The female teamwork angle is so important, particularly in the college age range. When I was younger, my friends and I subscribed to the “Never leave a b*tch behind” philosophy: You like him? Great! Get his phone number and call him tomorrow. We came together tonight, and we’re all leaving together. I have since heard so many bad, bad stories about what happens when a drunk woman is stranded somewhere without a trustworthy ride home.
I also think it’s important to have conversations about consent with kids before they become sexually active. This should cover what consent is, how to get it (without sounding all formal and buzzkilly), and how to rescind it gracefully. Certainly it is important for girls to feel they have bodily autonomy and can tell their partner(s) what is okay and what isn’t okay (including the fact that you can change your mind literally at any time and the other person MUST stop). But it’s also important for boys to know that getting consent prevents misunderstandings that can have devastating consequences. If one person thinks whatever is happening is okay and the other person doesn’t, the end result is that it decidedly ISN’T okay. Knowing how to use your words can help prevent all that from ever happening.
It’s really amazing what kinds of things come up in affirmative consent conversations. My experience is mostly from talking with kids at the high school and college level, but the relief that a lot of them feel around all of this can be huge. (Sometimes it’s just going over the fact that asking ‘what would you like’ is far from a mood killer, and sometimes it’s a more involved discussion with a variety of examples, but it’s pretty much always well-received.)
One of the most interesting pieces (to me) is how a lot of the boys can end up thinking in really new directions, especially when things like bystander intervention and male victims of assault get brought up. Guys often consider rape in terms of ‘wow, what if I got falsely accused,’ but they’re actually way more likely to get assaulted themselves than they are to get accused of rape. It really helps to reframe the conversation, and gets them thinking about things in new ways.
The survivor of this particular case wrote a beautiful open letter to her rapist detailing how much she lost in this process. A colleague of mine (I’m a high school teacher) is having her social issues classes read it and respond to it as part of their final. Perhaps you might be able to use that document with your sons about the true cost of rape. I don’t know that I would have a middle school aged kid read it, but its definitely appropriate for high school aged humans.
This whole topic makes my eyes brim with tears of rage and injustice.
We already talk about consent and rape culture in my family (with my 10yo son). We talked about this case, and how the judge was putting more value on the criminal’s life than on the victim’s, etc. This one is very close to home (one county over).
I almost have more rage against the judge and the rapist’s father than I do against the rapist himself (almost).
Thank you so much for posting this, Swistle.
Madga Pecsenye at askmoxie wrote this letter to her sons about stopping rape years ago in response to a different college rape case. It’s still so relevant (even for those of us with only daughters) and moving, that I hope you don’t mind a link to it here.
http://askmoxie.org/blog/2013/03/a-letter-to-my-sons-about-stopping-rape.html
I REMEMBER this letter and swore to share with my boys! Still a couple of years away, but still saving it!
Can I ask how you decided that now was the right time to talk to her about rape? (I promise I am genuinely asking because I am thinking through it, not judging!) I have a 5th grade daughter, and I haven’t discussed rape with her at this point. I am wondering if I am being naive in thinking that my kiddo is unaware that rape is a thing, if you know what I mean. We have had the bad touches talk, but I honestly don’t think she knows that sex can be used in a violent way. This post is making me think through when is the appropriate time for that part of the talk. (Are we all just flying by the seat of our pants, with no clue what we are doing?! Please say yes).
It was totally flying by the seat of my pants! It felt like the right moment, and the court case was on my mind, and we had a rare Just Girls errand to run. Also, I’m so aware of her being on the brink of adolescence and middle school, and it felt like time to level up.
Thank you for chatting me through your thought process! I know how rare it is to get time with just one (on a good day, where the conversation and moods are open. Oy! 😜). I had a recent “time to level up” moment recently too when my oldest got bumped up to youth group from Children’s Church. It feels like there are several talks that need to be had now.
Swistle, thank you for this. Adding to the list of things I’m saving away to talk about with my young boys. My older is 4-almost-5, and we have started having the Bad Touch talk in seriousness, and all about how his body is his own and is private. Did you ever post links to any kids books you recommend on the subject? He is a SPONGE and will believe and recall just about any factual information he reads/is read from a book, so I think a book on the subject would be really helpful for him.
I’m not Swistle, but I heard about the Robie Harris book It’s Not the Stork and bought it for my four-year-old niece. It is both amusing and extremely informative. For the slightly older crowd (7+) there is the follow-up book It’s So Amazing and the middle-school-appropriate It’s Perfectly Normal. These are more general sex ed kinds of books, but I believe they also cover things like privacy and sexual abuse.
I like the Robie H. Harris books. She has one called It’s So Amazing that I found great for starting the whollllllle talk: it’s kind of comic-book format, with a bird (who is very curious and wants to know ALL the details) and a bee (who is shyer and would prefer not to hear about it), and I felt like that made both types of my kids feel more comfortable (like, it’s okay to be curious about this stuff, and it’s also okay to find it a little uncomfortable). Then she’s got It’s Perfectly Normal for older kids. I like to have a couple of copies of each book out on the shelf, and then a kid can sneak it off to their room if they need the answer to a question but feel too embarrassed to ask.
Also not Swistle, but I really like The Baby Tree by Sophie Blackall – http://amzn.com/0399257187. It answered my then five year olds questions about where babies come from without going into a lot of detail and was a cute story.
Have you ever seen this video about consent framed as making someone tea? It is funny but incredibly helpful. I plan on showing it to my kids.
The most likely age for a girl in the U.S. to be sexually assaulted is 14. So have these conversations sooner. Much sooner than comfortable.
TERRIFYING. Where does this data point come from?
I too was curious about this and while I don’t know whether this is the source @Mommyattorney would cite, I found this one http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/saycrle.pdf which seems consistent with the information she provides (and deeply disturbing, I regret to alert you).
This is where I found the information.
The age for boys is 4. Somehow I overlooked that the first time. That makes me nauseous.
“The year in a male’s life when he is most likely to be the victim of a sexual assault is age 4. A female’s year of greatest risk is age 14.6.”
https://rainn.org/get-information/statistics/sexual-assault-victims
or… not. Because these conversations with a ten year old are gross. It’s not only “rape” at age 10. It’s pedophilia, it’s molestation, it’s assault, it’s egregious. It’s the worst form of “bad touching” that there is and anyone who would perpetrate it deserves no life left on this planet. It would shatter your daughter and you forever. But no amount of your sophisticated “blah blah” beforehand would make it ANY LESS AWFUL. What is wrong with you all for even thinking that could be the case? Or that “empowering” your 10 year old for the worst-of-the-worst could be “helpful” to anyone but YOU?
Trying to preempt the “adult” version of “bad touching” with such awful and ultimately-traumatizing, “helpful” conversations about “Drinking too much?” and “there’s this thing called rape that I need to empower you about?” at age 10? Seriously? And you’re all just in here patting OP’s back about having had such a “difficult conversation” with her daughter?
I repeat. Gross. And — sorry — very flawed. I intend to allow my 8 year old to be a child for a little while longer, thank you very much. (Do not get me wrong — she has had sex-ed by this point, she knows where babies come from and how they are made, she knows what sex is and that sometimes it’s unrelated to making babies, she fully understands “bad touching” and “stranger danger.” AGE APPROPRIATELY.) I don’t give a crap that this means watching over her like a momma bear. My helpful “dialog” is not going to protect my 8 year old, my 9 year old, my 10 year old, my 11 year old… (you get the gist) from “rape.” no “conversation” in the world at this age would help her either prevent — OR RECOVER FROM — the thing that comprises all of our nightmares. I’m all for empowering her to stand against it when she is sufficiently older, but on THIS DAY, I have zero desire to make my daughter’s childhood any shorter by having an earnest CHAT about the awful things that could happen to her once she hits the “average age of 14,”, thank you very much. And if that means letting her watch Minecraft videos for awhile longer as opposed to “hearing something on the news,” so be it.
How sad the extent to which we will go in order to make ourselves feel better as “good parents.”
Where on EARTH did this tirade come from? We do not talk this way to each other on this blog. Who even mentioned “empowering”? No one said that teaching a child of the existence of the crime of rape means we’re talking about 10-year-olds being raped. No one said that discussing the topic would make the actual occurrence of such a thing less terrible. We do not call other people’s parenting decisions “sad,” or refer to the way they talk as “sophisticated blah blah,” or accuse each other of making those decisions “in order to make ourselves feel better.” Make your point respectfully or don’t make it here.
Sorry. I do realize that was a tirade. Thank you for posting it anyway.
My point is that your conversation with your 5th grader was — at her age — rather like informing a 3 year old that there’s a bogeyman who might occasionally creep out from under her bed, but not worry too much about it because you’ve now empowered her to scream.
I think children deserve to remain children as long as possible, and that conversations are really worth examining in terms of how useful they are at the time, rather than just as tools to make parents feel better.
I think that it displays some very deep privilege to think that we can keep our children children for longer by not talking to them about what is happening in the world.
Similarly, I do my 10yo son no favors by NOT talking to him about police violence and his own personal risk as a brown child. My son is ten. Tamir Rice was 12.
Not talking about something doesn’t make it go away, and it doesn’t help your child.
Did you read the post that mentioned sexual assault of 14-year-olds?
There is no bogeyman under the bed. But there are plenty of people out there who will touch you when you don’t want them to. That’s not fair, but it’s not helped by silence. It seems to me that knowing your parents would be on your side — that they would be outraged about someone hurting you, no matter what your assailant tells you — is useful. It’s not some self-indulgent act “to make parents feel better.”
When the Penn State story was breaking, I mostly changed the station because NPR was providing details my kids didn’t need. But they could read the newspaper. They knew something was up, and I would have felt negligent had I not said, “This is what happens, and it’s awful, and one of the things that people who do that to kids count on is that the kids won’t tell. They’ll tell you it will be worse if you tell; they’ll tell you it’s your fault; they’ll tell you no one will believe you. But that’s not true. Tell us. We will help you.”
There is a world of difference between an 8-year-old child such as yours or the 3-year-old child in this example, and an 11-year-old adolescent who will be in middle school in a few months. And there is a world of difference between telling children about things that don’t exist, such as bogeymen under the bed, and educating them about things that do exist, such as rape. And I do not appreciate it being assumed that I make parenting decisions for any reason other than that I believe them to be the right thing to do, just as you do.
Think about your metaphor, SorryNo. Let’s say there really was a monster under your bed (and believe me, in this metaphor there very much is — I am a professor, and it lives on every college campus). If I told you, “If you scream, you’ll get help. If you watch out for other women who are screaming, you can help them, too, and be a total effing hero. Here’s a stake, and that might kill it; it’ll at least maim it. Here’s a good way to stay away from beds with monsters under them altogether.” I’d feel better hearing that. I think that’s the beginning of the conversation, frankly. When there’s danger to my kids, both in what someone might do to them and in the kind of people they might grow up to be, I like to prepare them for it, by stages. As Swistle did by starting this conversation with Elizabeth: giving her the tools to think about an issue helpfully and critically. That’s how children stay children and also grow into intelligent adults, bit by bit.
Something to consider: all of us, as parents, are human first, and our parenting styles, how early and how clearly we explain difficult topics, will to some degree reflect our own strengths and weaknesses.
Many parents feel anxious bringing up difficult topics; many parents feel anxious avoiding difficult topics. It is OK to parent the best you can, taking into consideration your own feelings as well as your child’s.
Like you, I was a child that sometimes had difficulty forgetting upsetting images (the first time I saw Holocaust photos bugged me for days), or upsetting ideas (THAT’S how sex works?). But isn’t our job as parents also to help children cope with the wash of images and thoughts and feelings that are bound to come their way, even if we try to shield them to some extent?
Peace to all of us.
Slow clap for Swistle.
I wasn’t suggesting (as my original tirade DID indicate, in my defense) that you insulate your child from “good touching,” “bad touching,” etc. I have those conversations with my 8 year old all the time. She is empowered to run away. To not feel bad about herself. To scream. To be confident that her body is her own and that NO ONE, not even a DOCTOR, has the right to touch her without her consent.
My reference is in taking it to the next, much deeper, level and to the nth minutia just because she might have asked, “Mom, what’s rape?” because she heard it on the news.
* I* think it displays deep privilege to believe that you can insulate your child from horror by bringing it to the forefront of her mind. Your “conversation” is not going to protect her, should the unspeakable happen. It only serves to give her things to lie awake at night thinking about. I don’t know about you, but I have a very long memory, and I vividly remember being a 7 year old, and exactly what I thought about as I went to sleep. I am very, very grateful for my parents. Nothing they could have possibly said to me would have made an awful thing any LESS awful. Sorry.
Having a “dialog” with a 10 year old girl about “drinking too much” is not protection. It’s oversharing. To think that you’ve done your FUTURE 14-year old a favor by informing her of the potential horrors that her college experience may bring? No, not so much. It is only from a place of “deep privilege” where people would consider themselves to be doing their child a favor in having such conversations.
I am speaking only from the perspective of having an 8 year old, being a girl scout leader to 8 and 9 year olds, and having a co-leader who is a science teacher to 10 year olds. Neither of us would even consider attempting a traumatizing, deeply serious conversation about what might happen to them once they are past puberty (to put it into context: explaining “drinking too much” to a 10 year old).
My conversation with my 11-year-old was, you will have to trust me, appropriate for her level. You keep comparing her to your 8-year-old child and to your 7-year-old self, and those are not accurate comparisons. I did not have this conversation with my 9-year-old boy, or even with my 11-year-old boy (he would not be ready). And I did not have it “to the nth miniutia”; I discussed it to the extent I felt she was able to understand it.
I suggest you wait until you have a child of this age/development, and then handle it as you think is best; and in the meantime, I suggest you not assume you know how to parent other people’s children (especially of development levels that your child has not yet attained) better than they do, or spin their parenting decisions in such ugly terms. You are doing (and will do) what you think is best. I am doing (and will do) what I think is best.
But this doesn’t just happen once girls (or people) have reached or passed puberty. How is that privilege? The innappropriate touching is rape – or a lot of it is and if it keeps going it has the potential to become rape. I think the idea that you’re somehow insulated from this by not talking about it is privilege.
As for explaining “drinking too much” to a 10 year old, I fail to see the problem with that either. It is likely that an average 10 year old has come across this at some point as well, either from pop culture or life – big party, someone’s drunk uncle, what have you…and linking the two isn’t necessarily a bad thing. No, you dont have to be drunk to perpetuate rape or to be raped, but it sure does happen, more often than two random sober people meeting up with the end result being rape.
Furthermore, 10 year old do get their hands on drugs and alcohol and do experiment sexually. That’s why the phrase “playing doctor” exists. So knowing the potential pitfalls and consequences of such experiments is important as well as knowing that you can say no, and should that no be ignored, that is rape and that is not your fault.
Swistle, you’re handling this with much more aplomb than I would – my hat’s off to you. And you’re dead-on – this isn’t about empowerment or hoping to insulate kids from anything in particular – it’s about making sure that they’re learning about the world around them, including how to handle the bad parts. I was 12 when the Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas hearings happened, and I remember hearing a fair bit about it. We can choose what *we say* about these kinds of things, but once they’re heavily in the news, we can’t choose whether our kids hear about it.
You’re a good mom. Thank you for sharing this with us all!
My step-mother told us how their mother said to her (my step-mother’s) brother, “Don’t ever try to push a nice girl into having sex with you. There are lots of other girls out there who would want to have sex with you.”
Not an ideal version of “teach our sons not to rape” (e.g. the message that a girl who would have sex with him is not a “nice girl”), but this was 40 years ago.
When I was in first year university, I was interested in hearing several guys in the dorm having a talk about how they felt about rapists, and the consensus in that conversation was that they’d have no compunction about beating the crap out of any guy who they knew to be one. And this is from a bunch of young, nerdy math geeks.
Unfortunately, the same year one of the girls in my dorm was raped by a guy from another school who was visiting friends in the dorm, and I think the guy got away with it scott-free. The girl ended up dropping out and missing the rest of the year. I don’t think she ever reported it.
Thank you so much for writing this. I was just reading about this story and my fourth grade daughter came up behind the computer and I quickly shut the page…worried about how to discuss this with her. This helps so much. Thank you.
I just want to say you are the best and I would read any book on parenting (or life!) that you wrote. I’m not a mom but I hope to be someday and I really think you do a fantastic job talking about and dealing with the tough subjects. Your kids are very lucky to have you as their mom.
Years before I had kids, my boss was a woman who was basically (imo) brilliant about kids. I remember being absolutely floored one day when she pointed out that there was a flaw in the “Good touch bad touch” theme, and that flaw was that sometimes the bad touch *feels* good (because our bodies respond to stimuli.). I feel like it also translates to the rape talk–because abcd might be what you want to do but efg are not and those two things can both be true.
Also, I read a letter by one of the friends of the rapist currently in the news and one of the main things it said was that rapists are monsters and this guy totally was a nice guy and not a monster. And that really hit home to me–that rapists aren’t monsters, they are sometimes very nice guys. You can’t judge whether someone will be abusive or rape by how nice they seem.
It will be outdated by the time my daughters are old enough (2 & 5) but I also very much want to use the father’s letter and point out all the flawed thinking in it, to help teach my kiddos about rape culture.
Thanks for sharing how you did this Swistle. I also think the in the car part is brilliant. Close but not too intense. I will have to remember that.
I remember going from my relatively safe 5th grade class into a larger middle school where we changed classes and there was a lot less supervision. There were predatory boys and sadly a couple of male teachers as well. I wish my friends and I had more information and warnings that went beyond stranger danger and focused on people we might know and maybe like at first. I wish the adults in our lives had felt more comfortable initiating discussions with us. I have a couple of friends from back then that went through things they never recovered from.
When my now 7th grade girls were in 5th grade, a friend at school told them about her cousin who had been raped. And then proceeded to tell them it was when someone forced you to have a baby. So yes, I had to explain to my 10 year old daughters what rape was. And you know what–we all cried out of the sheer injustice of it all.
But see this is what rape culture is–it is about having to explain an adult topic to a CHILD when you’d rather they stay innocent about that a little longer.
But you know what? It opened a door–we can talk about hard topics. Now we have important conversations like when my daughter’s first boyfriend kept wanting to touch her hair and how she didn’t want that and how I could say–it is your hair–tell him not to touch it. Don’t be coy, just say please don’t touch my hair, i asked you not to touch my hair etc, and then to get an adult if he wouldn’t stop. I’m hoping that this sticks in her mind when she has a boyfriend who wants to touch more than her hair. Because THIS is teaching consent at an age appropriate level. I just wish the I knew that the boyfriend’s mom would also say–if she doesn’t want you to touch her hair–DON’T TOUCH her hair.
I just want to put in a plug here for ANYONE to find their local UU church and ask if their child can take OWL. it’s comprehensive free progressive sex ed and most churches do it with a deliberately anti rape culture pro consent yes means yes lens.
And Swistle, it sounds like you had that conversation beautifully, and what a shitty conversation to have to have.
Ditto the plug. My daughter took the middle school OWL course at our UU church, and they spent time discussing consent and how if you are able to wear somebody else down to agree to something you want, that STILL isn’t really consent. You should both be equally enthusiastic before proceeding, and you shouldn’t try to pressure your partner into doing anything they are not ready to do.
Oh, and they also discussed how there are lots of non-sex ways to show affection for someone else (hand-holding, etc.). The leader said the kids are interested in knowing about sex, but they are even more interested in learning about relationships, which I thought was rather sweet.
Thank you for sharing your conversation, Swistle. I was in 5th grade when a male teacher made gross comments about my hips, so it’s never to early to start talking about this stuff. I have very little boys, but we have already started talking about consent. Thank you, vanessa, for the tip about OWL. I actually have a relative who teaches it, maybe I can get some resources for my kids.
This is so helpful. I have two girls, one a sophomore in high school and the other in 6th grade, and I’ve been trying to figure out a way to broach the topic. Thanks for these tips.
I’m also interested in hearing how you did/would talk to your older sons about this issue.
Swistle, I admire you so much and love the way you handled not only the conversation with Elizabeth, but also the comments. You are a class act.
Earlier this month my 8 year old son came home crying because a kid on the bus had called him gay. I was shocked because I honestly thought that using “gay” as an insult no longer occurred (I now realize that was very naïve on my part). Throughout my sons life we’ve always openly discussed that boys can marry girls or boys (and girls can too), however in my attempt to discuss these things in an age appropriate way, I never actually used the word gay. This wasn’t an intentional omission on my part, I didn’t even realize I had done so until this situation occurred and I learned that my son didn’t know what the word meant. He only knew that it was something bad, according to the school-bus kid, and something he didn’t want to be. We had a good discussion about the word and we reported the incident to the principal who spoke with the school-bus child. However, I can never un-do the fact that my sons first association with the word was a negative one, contradictory of our family values, and in a situation where he felt confused and unsure of how to respond.
I know this example is very tame relative to a discussion about rape and consent, but it really opened my eyes to the fact that my kids are encountering situations that I would never have predicted. We are all just doing the best we can and I really appreciate hearing about how other parents handle discussing complicated and sensitive subjects at various ages.
Swistle, you’ve handled all this really well, including the comments in this post.
I completely agree with your emphasis on age-appropriate and kid-appropriate.
You can’t just start talking to a kid about sex the night before they turn 16. On the other hand, of course you can’t go into detail with a 4 y.o. about the mechanics of sex and what it means to go down on someone.
*Age-appropriate*.
I am really crap at scheduling these things, mind you, and I think I need to talk to all my kids a bit more! But what I am fairly confident about is how we’re handling some things as they come up, and a large part of that is due to smart things I’ve seen from you and people like you.
My 6 y.o. is too young to really talk about sex and consent, but when she and her 11 y.o. sister are tickling each other and one of them says no, then I tell them to stop. I tell them that it’s “Your body, your choice.” I use that phrase a lot. Same for if someone’s encouraging them into a hug and they don’t want one, or someone wants to play with their hair.
When my son was about 8, he was watching a sitcom where one of the adults was ‘hilariously’ drunk. I talked to him there about alcohol, and about how it’s not OK to take advantage of people, and how it’s important in fact to protect people.
My 11 y.o. daughter has had a couple boyfriends at school, and any time she’s decided she’s had enough, I support her thoroughly in that. I tell her she needs to be kind to them* but she 100% doesn’t have to be anyone’s girlfriend ever if she doesn’t want to be.
(I’m aware of Nice Guy issues. I don’t mean she should indulge them wanting to sit with her and hold her hand just because they want to do that. She has autism, and her manners are frequently not the best, so what I mean is that I talk to her about telling them gently but firmly that she’s not their girlfriend, as opposed to standing up and yelling YUCK I HATE YOU, which she’s much more inclined to do. I tell her that if they keep annoying her, to tell the teacher. The teachers always support her.)
I’ve talked to both her and her sister a little bit about sex, and how people like to touch each other to feel good sometimes. Haven’t gone into detail because one is 6 and the other one is very much repelled. I’d talked more to my son by the age of 11 because he wasn’t as repelled, and wanted to listen and talk through some things. I haven’t gone in depth about the mechanics of it with any of them; I’ve focused on the most important thing being that you and the other person need to be gentle and care about each other and only do things that both of you want to do.
As my son is nearly 16, I’ve had a very quick version of the hugely embarrassing mother talk about masturbation (which was largely a gabbled “It’s fine if you do it, everyone does it, but do it PRIVATELY and CLEAN UP AFTERWARDS PLEASE” while we were both bright red), and I’ve also talked to him a bit about how women in porn do not represent women in reality.
We’ve also talked about stuff to do with his friends. He has a couple close female friends, and sometimes they boss him around a helluva lot. I’ve talked to him about that and about how he doesn’t have to do everything he’s told, and that how he’s feeling matters too. He pushes back a lot more with male friends. They’re not romantic, at least not as far as I know, but that stuff matters generally AND matters between friends too of course. I want him to know that he needs to protect his female friends / any partners that he might have, but also that he deserves protection and to feel OK too.
(We’ve also very definitely had the it’s OK to be gay talk, and the it’s OK to be asexual talk, and the it’s OK to feel one way right now and feel a different way in a year talk.)
So, yes. The point of my ramble here is that I’m very much in agreement with you about doing things at age-appropriate levels!!
I’m always interested in reading how you do these things, Swistle, and I don’t even have children! (I did teach sex-ed in to teenagers though, but it’s different when they’re not your own children.)
This post made me realize that despite that fact that my parents NEVER talked to us about sex (except that one time when I got my period and after my mom told my dad, he said to me “you know that you can get children now, right?!”), they DID teach us about consent. They never forced us to kiss or hug anybody if we didn’t want to – if we had to say hello or goodbye, a handshake would be the maximum to be polite, even with family members. I remember vividly an aunt at a birthday party telling me “come, give me a kiss goodbye!” and me being confused because I didn’t want to. My mom smiled at me, at my aunt, and told me “shake her hand to say goodbye, that’s enough” and moved on to the next family member waiting. I’m reading all these articles about consent now and I’m realizing my mom and dad did it so naturally, which added even more to the feeling that consent it the norm, that it’s normal to do only what feels right. (And for those wondering – no, we were not spoiled kids who never had to do anything we didn’t want to, on the contrary. There were many times when we were told to suck it up and just do it, whether you want to or not, but this was always things like chores or homework, never physical or emotional.)