Principal
How to Teach Consent to Boys — Without Shaming Them
Recent headlines about the situation between teenagers in the Eastern suburbs has led to parents and educators around the country grappling with how to avoid the issue occurring in their communities.
As a College in the Edmund Rice tradition, we want to help boys develop a mature understanding of sexuality and consent.
How to Talk about Consent
Most parents begin conversations about consent early in life. We teach our children that no one has the right to touch their bodies without permission, and we try, day in and day out, to teach our kids that they do not have the right to hit, touch or harm anyone else.
As our children approach puberty, our anxiety ramps up. We see what’s on the horizon—crushes, breakups, experimenting—and we suddenly realise that a bad decision at this point in life could have lifelong ramifications. More than any previous generation, we are acutely aware of the problems of sexual harassment and consent. We have seen powerful men we once admired accused of sexual misconduct, and we’ve witnessed the pain their actions have wrought upon their victims.
None of us wants to raise sons who sexually assault or abuse others and we turn our gaze from the news to the boys before us and vow:
We will do better. We will not allow the boys of this generation to prey upon others.
Our boys, meanwhile, are simply trying to figure out life. At the tween stage, they are simultaneously completely infatuated with and completely embarrassed by their bodies and other people’s bodies. They’re also just at the beginning of realising they can be powerful and are getting a lot of messages from the outside about what a powerful man is.
Many of those messages are confusing. Today’s boys are searching for a foothold in a culture that still assigns value to men based on strength and accomplishment. They’re trying to figure out what it means to be a man at a time when our societal definition of “man” is evolving and, unlike previous generations, they’re surrounded by voices pointing to “toxic masculinity” as harmful and a potential root of sexual misconduct.
The controversial buzzword 'toxic masculinity' refers to a version of manhood that emphasises aggression and power, but of course that’s not the only way to be a man. Too many boys are getting the message that all masculinity is toxic all the time, and that’s a really damaging message. We want to help boys acknowledge the toxic aspects of masculinity, but not fall into the trap of thinking that to be masculine is to be toxic.
The tween and teenage years are a great time to help boys wrestle with these mixed messages. We can help them start to differentiate between the masculinity we want them to emulate, admire and respect, versus toxic behaviour.
Boys are emotionally vulnerable and constantly looking for external validation of their worth. As a result, they’re acutely sensitive to public embarrassment and shaming. Yet parents and educators often use shame-based approaches to respond to boys’ well-intentioned but poorly thought-out attempts at connection and humour. Shaming someone doesn’t lead them to a more nuanced understanding of the topic. Instead, it typically leads them to avoid the topic, the person who shamed them, or both.
A better approach is to seize the teachable moment. We need to teach them that it’s hard to read other people sometimes. Sometimes you might think that someone wants you to kiss them, or wants to have sex with you, but the only way to know is to ask.
How to Teach Consent
Whether or not your kid is the one horsing around in the bathroom, now is the time to help him understand the importance of appropriate behaviour and respect for others. Here are some expert-approved ways to teach boys about boundaries and consent:
1. Introduce “everyday consent.”
Consent doesn’t apply only to sexual situations; consent is about respecting other people’s boundaries. Consent is required any time you’re going to interact with someone else’s body, property or reputation. Want to borrow your friend’s jacket? Ask for permission (consent) first.
We need to help boys first understand consent in a low-risk, not-fraught situation. The more practice they get at everyday consent, the better they’ll do when things are more intense.
Parents can also demonstrate everyday consent by knocking on their sons’ doors and asking for permission before swooping in for a hug. We need to show our boys what consent means and how it works.
2. Discuss power dynamics.
An imbalance of power makes consent tricky. As we’ve seen in countless adult situations, a person may go along with an activity if they feel that objecting would put them at risk of harm. Boys can understand this dynamic when you put it in terms they can understand. Talk to them about “ringleaders”, people with power in social groups. Your son is probably acutely aware of the ringleaders at his school and likely knows—from experience—exactly how hard it is to resist the ringleaders’ spoken and unspoken directives. Fail to comply, and risk ostracization.
You can use these examples to help boys understand how power disrupts consent and makes it really hard to say no; Then help boys deconstruct the messages telling them to always seek the upper hand.
Often our default to boys is, ‘Don’t let anybody make a fool out of you. You can interrupt and redirect those messages to things like, "Stick to your sense of right and wrong.’”
Such conversations can also help boys learn to stop and reflect before acting. Teach boys to ask the question, ‘Am I doing this because I think it’s going to give me more power or status over someone?’.
3. Teach boys the power of “no.”
Boys often get the idea that saying no is weakness, which makes it hard for them to object if a friend goes too far and hard for them to accept “no” from others. Instead, teach them that true strength is saying what you really mean. A boy who knows that he can say no if he doesn’t want to do something is more likely to respect a “no” from other people.
If boys are in the habit of saying yes when they mean no, and no when they mean yes, that’s what they’re going to expect from other people. The biggest responsibility we have in all consent situations is to actually say what we mean.
As your boys get older, your conversations can become more explicit. Together, brainstorm ways to ask for a kiss and deflect unwanted sexual attention. Discuss news stories about sexual harassment and misconduct. Listen at least as much as you talk.
All of this is messy and takes time however, if we want to raise a generation of kids who have a better understanding of consent than we did, we have to have these conversations.
International Women’s Day (IWD) 2021
The campaign theme for IWD 2021 is #ChooseToChallenge.
A challenged world is an alert world. Individually, we're all responsible for our own thoughts and actions - all day, every day.
We can all choose to challenge and call out gender bias and inequality. We can all choose to seek out and celebrate women's achievements. Collectively, we can all help create an inclusive world.
From challenge comes change, so let's all choose to challenge. I would love it if each boy sat and prayed this prayer with his mother, sisters, grandmothers and mother-figures to recognise the contribution of women in their lives and commit themselves to calling out bias and being inclusive young men.
Prayer for IWD
R: Who shall find a valiant woman?
Look! We are all around you:
in the work rooms of industry,
and of every functioning enterprise,
unheralded, invisible,
some say non-existent,
but we know otherwise. R
Look! We are all around you:
contributing, setting standards,
changing the course of history,
preparing, supporting,
challenging those resentful of our collegial claims and capabilities. R.
Look! We are all around you:
Woman of courage, compassionate, patient.
Our number is legion, our gifts diverse,
our goal one and the same:
that history hear, that history is cognizant of,
that history will one day recall our names. R.
We honour the women of the Hebrew scriptures,
especially Mary, the Mother of Jesus,
whose courage, persistence, love, and fidelity
kept the lineage of faith alive. R.
We honour the women of Jesus' time
Who cared for the community of believers;
Who followed Jesus to Calvary;
Who buried Him;
Who proclaimed Jesus' resurrection
Who passed the Gospel to their families, friends and strangers; R.
We honour the valiant women of our own time
Who nudge us back on track;
Who remind us of the promises of Christ
Who claim the Gospel for women, too;
Who preach the reality of wholeness;
Who strain against a patriarchal church
Who challenge us to grow! R.
Living God, today we gather in and among Your Presence.
Valiant women throughout the world,
and all gathered here, raise our voices in global petition
for your promise of wholeness --fullness of life--
to be realized in all our world, in our nations and in our lives.
This we pray in Your Name. AMEN.
Community News
Please join me in congratulating Mrs Helen Sharkey (Science Teacher), her husband Patrick and their family on the arrival of their twin daughters and sisters, Annie and Eileen, born on Saturday, 27 February. Mum and babies are doing well. We thank the Lord for their safe arrival and know these children will bring their family many blessings.
Funeral of Bishop Bede Heather
The funeral of Bishop Bede Heather, to be held on Thursday 4 March, will be live streamed. Further details regarding the livestream are available on Catholic Outlook.
Dr Vittoria Lavorato
Principal
SPC boys can do anything! *
*except divide by zero