Oh jeez, next thing you know, the NY Times is going to report in astonishment that shit really does stink. Actually, to be completely fair, this report that shows that teenage boys desire relationships, enjoy the company of their girlfriends, and can fall in love needs to be well-publicized. Despite all evidence to the contrary, this myth that teenage boys universally see girls as subhuman sex dispensers persists. And of course, for some, that belief is extended throughout life, with men like Kim du Toit arguing that men don’t ever really get to the point where they feel love for women so much as just see women as multi-functional appliances.
I’m sure most of us have known, dated, or been a lovesick straight teenage boy, so why does this myth persist that boys can’t love girls? Referencing the du Toit piece above, I think it’s basically sexist objectification (the belief that women are subhuman appliances) mixed in with condescending control over adolescents, i.e. we feel free to insult the loveability of teenage girls under the guise of protecting them. And of course, it’s very, very damaging to boys to tell them that in order to fit this mold of masculinity, they should shut off their abilities to feel affection.
(Via.)
44 Responses to “News flash: Boys do not actually find girls fundamentally repulsive”
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Seriously. I offer up my high school boyfriend as anecdotal exhibit A. He was genuine, sweet, a little awkward, and totally devoted to me. We were each others’ best friends. And while I’m sure he was as excited about the prospect of sex as I was, his feelings went well beyond that.
Hi, yeah, meet every high school boyfriend I ever had. Sweet and loving kids, all of them. Also, meet all those guys I met in HS and college who were certain they were the only guys in the world to really want a relationship with a girl rather than just sex. Which made them think all the girls should want them, because we all know that girls only want relationships
Thanks for the link, Amanda. Popcorn’s point is well-taken, and worthy of a separate post.
Guys only feign affection to get the nookie. Kim du Toit and Christina Hoff Sommers agree on that point, so obviously it must be true.
Gee, not only that, but boys have emotionally intimate same-sex friendships. The New York Times finds this to be a shocking and counter-intuitive finding. It’s less shocking within the developmental psychology circles that publish in The Journal of Adolescence.
The comment section of the NYT is often depressing.
Shocking news! But Time Magazine scooped the NYT on this story a couple of years ago. It’s going to remain shocking for years and years, apparently.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1376235,00.html
Yeah, it’s sad how so many of the commenters simply refused to believe that a teenage boy would lower himself to loving and enjoying the personality of a teenage girl. Impossible! That’s like kissing a turd!
One of my sons, his best friend at about 10 years was a girl. Not a boyish girl, just a girl. He was watching an after-school special one day, and turned to ask me “Why do they always say that boys don’t like to play with girls?” So I told him that for some reason the powerful people wanted it to be that way and never missed a chance to say it was that way, and it worked because people mostly believe what they are told. Of course, we’re hippies.
Mrs Nice Guy
Well, they aren’t exactly alone. The fundies around here continue their quest to embarrass my state when St. Mary’s Academy barred a female referee from a game because “Women should not have authority over boys.” Once I got over the irony of a place called “St. Mary’s” saying women shouldn’t have authority over boys, I felt quite proud of the two male referees who walked off with her in solidarity. I suppose the commentaters would view those two guys as freaks.
Very. Well. Put. Kudos, Amanda. I would add only what you have already stated elsewhere: that it also demeans and dehumanizes the boys and the men that they become.
Because there are many, many, people who have a stake in keeping it that way. Those on the cultural or religious right I need not comment on; it has been covered very well here. What we also need to remember, though, if we are going to be genuine progressives aiming at genuine progress is that — sadly enough — there are also more than a few people out there on either the feminist or female side of the ledger — not many here, thank christ — who have a bit of a stake in such simplification too, and for some of the same reasons that the sexist males have: if you reduce the opposite gender to a simplistic stereotype then it makes it easier to rationalize and implement control of them, and to demean their feelings and needs. Your “side” wins and if that’s by screwing up people mentally and emotionally, so be it, the bullies feel. (Some of the commentary out there on male sexuality is depressing: boys and men are basically written off as ambulatory erections without any emotional needs or hopes or sensitivity or capacity for friendship or devotion whatsoever.)I think that for some older men, at least, there’s also a straightforward competitive undercurrent. The guys who didn’t get a teenage girl back when they were teenagers still (on some level) want one, and the guys who did want more, since the ones they got have all gotten old. (Yeah, many men grow out of that, but it’s still not bad as a first cut.)
The notion that the older, more powerful men should have access to the most desirable (for some value of “desirable”) women is pretty much a cornerstone of patriarchy, and if you’re going to be doing patriarchy lite, it helps a lot to gussy that notion up with the idea that teenage boys aren’t good enough (mature, responsible, capable of deep feelings blah blah blah) for teenage girls. And insofar as the idea does keep some teenage guys away from some teenage girls, it helps reinforce the woman-as-competitive-commodity idea so that future generations can be similarly screwed up.
So ultimately it’s just a socially-acceptable version of the mormon Lost Boys.
Guys only feign affection to get the nookie.
Indeed. If there was a class of women who offered sex for money, no strings attached, every straight guy would dump whatever woman had her claws in him and live alone.
I don’t believe it.
If boys saw girls as “love material” from such an early age, feminism would be far more irrelevant.
This reminds me of the study comparing Dutch families and the attitude toward adolescents spending the night with their boyfriends/girlfriends. The researcher found that Americans don’t believe teenagers can truly love each other, that their sex drive is purely hormonal, and that male and female interests are in opposition with each other. Now I wonder how much of that is rooted in the misogynist idea that boys can’t really love girls as human beings.
Mary Tracy9, I disagree. The boy I dated in high school cared about me. He yearned for connection because he had such a crappy family life. That crappy life within the misogynist culture in the US gave him some crappy ideas about how to get that connection and gave him a sense of entitlement that still made him a sexist pig. But that doesn’t mean he was motivated only to get a reliable sexual service machine in the form of a girl.
To clarify, I think boys can think of girls as people they want to know and bond with and care for but still be sexist and misogynist.
Boys can also think of girls as people they want to know and bond with and have sex with and not have any issues about it. And girls can also think of boys as people they want to know and bond with and have sex with and not have any issues about it. And boys with boys and girls with girls. And there’s a lineup of priests, ideologues and jealous prats going ’round the corner who can’t wait to fuck ‘em up.I sometimes can’t shake the suspicion that, left alone by the metacultures, most teenagers would actually grow up reasonably close to fine. Or at least a lot closer to fine than they are with their cultures’ “help”.
Ew! Cooties! But sexy cooties.
It’ll be pretty hilarious if in the future we find that those Highschool love people been saying as not real, actually is as real as it can get in term of emotion.
and college always mess with your head.
Thanks, Mary. I do believe my high school boyfriend loved me a lot. It wasn’t perfect, and it had to end, but it was real. I’m actually kind of loveable, in my own weird way. I know. I don’t believe it myself sometimes, and I blame a culture that routinely posits that women are fundamentally too screwed up to inspire love.
I also believe my current boyfriend when he talks fondly of his first teenage love. He is not lying to me—why would he?
There are guys out there who are pigs, but it’s mostly because people believe that in order to be a Man, you have to be a pig. So when you insist, Mary, that there’s a fundamental hole in the male heart, some guys will live up to it in order to feel like Real Men. People do live up to the expectations put on them.
I feel quite strongly that great swathes of the wing-nut agenda would fall to laughter and ruin if people could remember their own childhoods rather than replacing them with media constructs.
*I* remember being 7, and for that reason find grade-school kids en mass to be blood-thirsty mobs without conscience. Individually, the kids may well be sweet. By the same token, being told repeatedly that “Boys don’t really LIKE girls at that age” replaces people’s own faltering memories of having been there, and being In Love for the first time and how real and powerful that was. More mature loves may well await in the future, but in the moment the whole thing can take on a Romeo and Juliet flavor; you’re SO IN LOVE and MEANT TO BE TOGETHER and the adults around are all “whatever, it’s not really love, so don’t do something stupid like have sex” just gives it an air of the forbidden.
Bleh. People.
Kind of off topic, but a total bottom taught me that a chlorophyll capsule(available in the vitamin section of the supermarket)taken once a day will remove all oder from your feces. It works.
Shoot, as a teenage boy I turned down offers of sex because I was saving it for my girlfriend, who wanted to wait until we were a little older. Not abstract offers, but girls who were in my bed with no clothes on (we slept chastely at my insistence). The girlfriend and the others were all close friends of mine (and each other).
Maybe I wasn’t a boy - we were all lesbians or something.
Mary Tracy, keep in mind that the teenage boys of today are growing up under a far more equitable culture than our fathers and (for the most part) peers did. I daresay most of the teenage boys who participated in this survey had mothers who had careers, or had friends with such mothers. They play sports with their female peers and watch those women also excel in school. As such, I think the young men of today have a much easier time seeing their female peers as equal than men in generations past.
And, what I believe to be the most important part - a reduced sense of shame over sex. I’m not saying our culture isn’t sexually dysfunctional - just that teenagers have by and large managed to escape the worst feelings of guilt and shame over having sex. A teenage boy doesn’t have to be ashamed to be attracted to a girl. Nor is he caught in a terrible catch-22 of wanting to have sex with her, but losing respect for his girlfriend as a ’slut’ if she does consent to sleep with him.
Also - it’s entirely reasonable to assume that a misogynist, patriarchial man can still love women - or at least, believe he loves women. It’s been pointed out that the patriarchy is designed to keep women dependent on men. And what better way to ensure the one you love never leaves you than if they’re utterly dependent on you? I’m sure even Kim du Toit loves his wife - I just feel sorry for him that he’ll never know what it’s like to love/be loved by an equal.
I’m happy for you, Amanda. But I was treated like a sex dispensing machine by my boyfriend when we were both teenagers. So my opinion on this comes directly from first hand experience, one which is hard to forget no matter how many people had how many wonderful relationships with teenage boys.
My first girlfriend (at 13) was a great girl. Smart, talented (in the band) and funny. My mom & dad liked her a lot and I got along w/her family as well. Her name still comes up all the time as I keep in touch w/a lot of high school friends and we’re always remembering stupid and/or funny things that happened back then. Since that was WELL over 25 years ago, my wife isn’t jealous, nor should she be. Just as I am not jealous when she talks about her old boyfriends. I am certain that I loved my first girlfriend as much then as I love my wife now and that she loved her boyfriends. I wonder why people find that so hard to believe or understand.
Mary, I’d hesitate to slam the good natures of all boys because you found some bad ones. There’s not a single person here who would say there’s no teenage boys who are users and assholes. No one is making that claim.
But to say that all men are bad because you found some bad ones is grasping. It’s also untrue, and promoting that stereotype only feeds the forces that lead so many men to be rapist pigs.
And as people pointed out, they may not have been dream relationships—your first tries are rarely your best—but that doesn’t mean they weren’t sincere.
Indeed. My high school boyfriend was an abusive ass and I still was pleased that the NYT published this article. Anything that suggests that it is NOT normal for men to want to treat women like disposable sex dispensers is a good thing, IMO.
Wrecker of Plans:
This is an excellent point. I actually think that there’s an ironclad inverse relationship between how well someone remembers (or wants to remember) their own youth and how much time they spend freaking out about “oy vey, de kinder.”
Hell, I’m two months away from turning 31, and I still find myself being a lovesick teenage boy more often than I care to admit.
Dan: I’m so glad to hear someone else has noticed this. Some people seem to have really poor memories, and I suppose I can’t blame them for that, but I damn well do blame the media for randomly implanting CRAP to replace what people have lost.
My mother was not, I think, overly fond of my first boyfriend. I was extremely angry when she told me I didn’t really love him. Of course I did; it was not *healthy* love: all consuming and irrational as only first love is… But that didn’t negate the reality of my feelings. Had she said “You know, this is really great now… but don’t discount something better coming later.” I might have taken her more seriously.
Kids do not have the best judgement, and their brains are literally not done growing… but they are, by and large, thinking capable human beings, particularly in reference to themselves. Discounting young people out of hand is… an unfortunate trend.
Good Gracious, don’t most people *look* at teenaged boys. Most of them have their hearts on their sleeves when they are in love. Their careful choice of presents — handmade paper flowers, if nothing else– the puppy eyed search for approval.
And from what I’ve seen in adults, Dan’s not unusual. That’s why a lot of men make jokes about how their wives are their bosses– they *don’t* mean she’s a nag, not in this era. They mean seeing her face light up is still a huge motivator for them. They mean they’d rather walk over broken glass than have her hurt.
Someone pointed out in response to the piece about how men weigh the pros and cons of a relationship that women seem *better* able to take a step back and evaluate things. I know when I was much younger, I did read an article saying that was true, although I don’t know what it was based on.
All I can say is my own experience agrees with that. And I find it endearing– and sometimes worrying– how emotionally vulnerable boys and men can be.
As a teenager, I lost count of how many times various adults told me I didn’t know what real love was, or couldn’t be feeling it. It must be baffling to them that, sixteen years later, I am still with my high-school girlfriend.
As a teenager, I lost count of how many times various adults told me I didn’t know what real love was, or couldn’t be feeling it. It must be baffling to them that, sixteen years later, I am still with my high-school girlfriend.
Slightly OT, but this thread has got me thinking about old girlfriends, that I supposedly shouldn’t have been in love with.
When my second HS girlfriend broke up with me, I was suicidally depressed for about a year and a half. It wasn’t her fault, and I had other problems, but I’m sure I made her life pretty bad. I’ve always felt I owed her an apology. I doubt she ever thinks of me now, but I could probably get in contact with her through a few old friends.
If an old boyfriend/girlfriend wrote to you years later to apologize for their behavior, would that be OK, or would you find it creepy stalking-behavior?
I seem to have lost an earlier post to the spambot.
As a teenager, I lost count of how many times various adults told me I didn’t know what real love was, or couldn’t be feeling it. It must be baffling to them that, sixteen years later, I am still with my high-school girlfriend.
If boys saw girls as “love material” from such an early age, feminism would be far more irrelevant.
Only if you assume that boys are magically immune from the messages we all get fed by the larger culture that still feeds us stories about the “strong, silent type” who represses all of his emotions because they make him weak.
The worst part is that there are still a lot of boys who think they must be freaks because they don’t think of girls as sex-dispensing machines like all of their friends, their music, their TV, and their movies tell them they’re supposed to. If you get told enough times that you’re not “supposed” to feel something, you’re going to repress those feelings. Not only that, but you’re going to resent with a burning-hot hatred anyone who brings those repressed and vilified feelings back to the surface, and you’ll do anything to punish the person who does it to you.
IOW, MaryTracy, I think your teenage boyfriend was even more fucked in the head than you even realize.
It’s amazing the number of men on that NY Times thread who show up and say “Nah! Teenage boys are LYING! They only want SEX!”
I suspect that they want to insist that every boy was a dick because they themselves were dicks. It provides a convenient excuse for their dickish behavior.
I think this myth is popular for a couple reasons:
1) Very few of us are, as adults, still in relationships with the people we were in love with as adolescents, and there’s a prevalent idea that a relationship that ends has “failed.” Thus most adolescent relationships fail, which means that in retrospect they can’t have really been love.
2) Early crushes and relationships can be pretty intense, and one way of coping with that is to retcon it, and one of the easy, patriarchy-endorsed ways for guys to retcon relationships is to say they were only in it for the sex, or the social status, or whatever. (I guess very early relationships get retconned as platonic because there was no overt sexual component.)
It’s a fairly consistent pattern that in high school relationships, the boy has much more attached, long-term feelings towards the girl. Ultimately, the girl starts to regard this as a bit too much and breaks up with the boy– after all, the girl has plenty of suitors, while the boy just considers himself lucky that a girl likes him and wants to preserve that while he still can.
I used to find the boys’ slavish devotion to high school girlfriends whose relationships weren’t going anywhere to be completely silly until I, at the ripe old age of 25, fell in love with someone and realize, “Ahhh… so *that’s* what that feels like.”
Men and women do want the same thing out of relationships. It’s the power-differential that tends to distort this and the years of hurt upon hurt that everyone builds up from their previous relationships that influences their future ones as well as the perception of their previous ones.
Mothworm,
It would depend on how it was written. Even from the ex I called the cops on, if it said, “I just want to apologize for how badly I treated you, and I hope you are having a good life,” that would be okay. If it expected anything of me, like forgiveness or contact of any sort, or tried to be manipulative in any way, it would freak me out, and my ass would be at the police station with the report number from 13 years ago posthaste.
Thanks syfr,
It wasn’t as bad as your situation. I was immature and looking to someone who had no responsibility for how I was to save me from myself. Mostly I called her way too often and kept telling her how much I loved her, after she’d broken up with me.
Anyway, I’m not looking for absolution or renewed friendship, or even a returned email. I just genuinely want to apologize for who I was and for the stress I put on her life.
I don’t know. Maybe it’s still too weird. Thanks for the thoughts, though.
I browsed through the comments at the NYT site; my personal fave: a mom who claimed her 18-ye-old son and his friends were only thinking about “good grades,” not girls or teh sex, and that if they WERE thinking about those things, it’s because those teenaged GIRLS were all dressing like tramps!
I just genuinely want to apologize for who I was and for the stress I put on her life.
I’ve been in this situation before, and I realized that my desire to apologize was pretty much about me, to make myself feel better, to get closure for myself. I didn’t think the other person was going to get anything out of it, as I was fairly sure they had moved on. There was a part of me that hoped for a response, for some kind of connection from the other person, and I realized that wasn’t likely to happen, and it was only going to disappoint me. Because of that, I chose to try to get closure on my own, since I was the only one who needed it.