Boys

The Problem with 'Boys Will Be Boys'

via kateelliottsff.tumblr.com/

For months, every morning when my daughter was in preschool, I watched her construct an elaborate castle out of blocks, colorful plastic discs, bits of rope, ribbons and feathers, only to have the same little boy gleefully destroy it within seconds of its completion.
No matter how many times he did it, his parents never swooped in BEFORE the morning’s live 3-D reenactment of “Invasion of AstroMonster.” This is what they’d say repeatedly:
“You know! Boys will be boys!” 
“He’s just going through a phase!”
“He’s such a boy! He LOVES destroying things!”
“Oh my god! Girls and boys are SO different!”
“He. Just. Can’t. Help himself!”
I tried to teach my daughter how to stop this from happening. She asked him politely not to do it. We talked about some things she might do. She moved where she built. She stood in his way. She built a stronger foundation to the castle, so that, if he did get to it, she wouldn’t have to rebuild the whole thing. In the meantime, I imagine his parents thinking, “What red-blooded boy wouldn’t knock it down?”
She built a beautiful, glittery castle in a public space.
It was so tempting.
He just couldn’t control himself and, being a boy, had violent inclinations.
She had to keep her building safe.
Her consent didn’t matter. Besides, it’s not like she made a big fuss when he knocked it down. It wasn’t a “legitimate” knocking over if she didn’t throw a tantrum.
His desire — for power, destruction, control, whatever- - was understandable.
Maybe she “shouldn’t have gone to preschool” at all. OR, better if she just kept her building activities to home.
I know it’s a lurid metaphor, but I taught my daughter the preschool block precursor of don’t “get raped” and this child, Boy #1, did not learn the preschool equivalent of “don’t rape.”
Not once did his parents talk to him about invading another person’s space and claiming for his own purposes something that was not his to claim. Respect for her and her work and words was not something he was learning.  How much of the boy’s behavior in coming years would be excused in these ways, be calibrated to meet these expectations and enforce the “rules” his parents kept repeating?
There was another boy who, similarly, decided to knock down her castle one day. When he did it his mother took him in hand, explained to him that it was not his to destroy, asked him how he thought my daughter felt after working so hard on her building and walked over with him so he could apologize. That probably wasn’t much fun for him, but he did not do it again.
There was a third child. He was really smart. He asked if he could knock her building down. She, beneficent ruler of all pre-circle-time castle construction, said yes… but only after she was done building it and said it was OK. They worked out a plan together and eventually he started building things with her and they would both knock the thing down with unadulterated joy. You can’t make this stuff up.
Take each of these three boys and consider what he might do when he’s older, say, at college, drunk at a party, mad at an ex-girlfriend who rebuffs him and uses words that she expects will be meaningful and respecte, “No, I don’t want to. Stop. Leave.”
The “overarching attitudinal characteristic” of abusive men is entitlement.

(Source: lastlifeinuniverse)

(Reblogged from neuralwiles)

Your thoughts?

Why I Don't Listen to Focus on the Family

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/lovejoyfeminism/2013/03/focus-on-the-family-feminism-is-the-way-of-death.html

For real??

My favorite bit:
"Kassian: Women come to me, saying “I want to have a ministry, I want to help others,” and I just look at them, and I wonder—don’t you have children? Don’t you realize how important that is? How much more wise would it be to invest in your children’s lives than try to fix a Humpty Dumpty situation when they’re teenagers?"

So, just because I'm a woman, you automatically assume that I have children?  I'm not even sure where to start with that one.  I am female, I therefore have children.  Let's forget about the fact that the average marrying age now is somewhere like, what, 28?  That leaves about 14 years of perfectly biologically viable child-bearing time where women aren't having children.  What do you expect them to do?  What about empty nesters?  And what about couples that can't have children?  What about them?

I don't disagree with her that raising children is an important and valuable investment and ministry.  But what I do take issue with is her unwillingness to accept or understand other ministries beyond that. "And I just look at them, and I wonder..."  She seems completely confused by their requests.  And instead of asking them about their desires to be involved in ministry, she questions their parenting.  I don't have a problem with families or stay-at-home moms or anything like that.  What I do have a problem with is an unwillingness to imagine or understand anything other than that.  An unwillingness to understand the life of a single person that isn't focused on finding The Perfect Relationship.  An unwillingness to understand callings to the university, to the mission field (using here the traditional definition of mission field; overseas cross-cultural intentional ministry), to healthcare, to anything that isn't being a wife and mother. 

I know this isn't a well-written, carefully planned and researched post.  Attitudes like these have rubbed me wrong for *years* and with John Piper's comments on being able to read commentaries written by a woman because then he can ignore her female personhood, it's at the surface.  I know I've felt this for years, but seeing it in text, and reading it and others like it, and being able to understand it as a young adult, ...all I'm left with is this question, "Are you serious?"

I'm not even going to touch the bit about abused women.  Do you not see how your attitudes perpetuate the abuse?  (Okay, maybe I am.)  That, as Christians, men and women are supposed to accept abuse because we are to lay down our rights, by your logic.  I have wrestled with this.  Not because I've been abused, fortunately, but this idea that being a Christian means being a doormat.  Christ does call us to humility, to sevanthood, to turning the other cheek.  But  if we extrapolate that to mean that we have no worth, no personhood, no value, we are ignoring the other part of the gospel that says, "You are worthy!  You are a person!  You have value!"  We ignore that the gospel proclaims freedom for the captives and a restoration of broken things.  Jesus died for each of us.  That is how much we are valued and loved.  We must always understand humility and servanthood and surrender in this context.

Oh, that we may understand!  Help us to understand the world you created.  Help us to understand your purposes for the world, and help us to understand how you invite us to participate in it.   Help us to respect each other, and also ourselves.