Attention high school girls: please don’t fall in love with a boy because that is an excellent way to get abused. Just give blowjobs instead.

Hook-up culture is STILL getting all the proper lady writers in a tizzy, and it seems like the blame for this sad state of affairs has not been laid squarely enough. It really looks an awful lot like a whole bunch of ladies are just sluts, but then again maybe the whole thing is a figment of everyone’s imagination?

Hanna Roisin at least takes a stab at trying to understand what it all means, and remarkably, she suggests that “people” have a fraught relationship with sex in general.

Maybe it means that people don’t take sex as seriously as they used to. Maybe it means women are less afraid of it than they used to be. Maybe it means that young people have learned to incorporate sex into their definition of friendship. Maybe it means sex isn’t so loaded, and doesn’t put you on a path to marriage or a real relationship anymore.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2013/08/15/hookup_culture_doesn_t_exist_new_study_shows.html?wpisrc=flyouts

Well, Hannah clearly needs to be spending more time with her fellow Double XX bloggers, because hook-up culture is far more than just “sex”, my pretty. Hook-up culture is actually a very clever strategy designed to allow vulnerable young women the opportunity to escape the inevitable abuse that comes with having a relationship with an icky, violent, cootie-ridden BOY.

Yuck.

Boys.

First they infect you with their childish crudeness, then they beat the hell out of you because once you admit you like a boy, everyone knows it’s punching bag city from there on out.

Right?

According to Amanda Hess, that’s exactly the risk young women run when they think in terms of anything OTHER than fly-by blowjobs after gym class.

Women in their teens and 20s still face an elevated risk of abuse and assault. But confining their relationships to casual sexts instead of jumping into intense relationships could actually help girls avoid violence from their partners now and later in life.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2013/08/16/nbc_sexting_story_the_today_show_takes_on_teen_hook_up_culture_internet.html

Hess, who apparently has a sliver of conscience left when it comes to perpetuating deeply hateful stereotypes against boys in particular, admits that rape and domestic violence in the population at large are declining at precipitous rates.

…when it comes to real crimes, modern American relationships have actually become a lot less “extreme” in recent decades. Incidents of rape have declined by as much as 85 percent since the 1970s (and when they do happen, victims are more likely to report the crime). Domestic violence incidents have also dropped precipitously since the ‘90s.

But those menacing boys tipping from adolescence into fully realized adult manhood still scare the bejeebus out of her. Even though women can and will chuck a few head shots themselves, and plenty won’t hesitate to settle their disagreements with a little bloodshed, Amanda is still deeply concerned the poor duckies might find themselves trapped in an abusive relationship with an intimate partner.

During the past two ­and-a-half decades, official statistics suggest that female delinquency has undergone substantial changes compared with male delinquency. Between 1980 and 2005, arrests of girls increased nationwide, while arrests of boys decreased (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2006)

https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/ojjdp/218905.pdf

Facts don’t bother Amanda, though.

[Boys] are seen as predators, and girls, their prey.

Boys trapped in abusive relationships with their highschool sweethearts are shit out of luck. Man up, you pussies! Who lets a girl hit them?

http://www.examiner.com/article/male-victims-of-domestic-violence-live-pain-fear-and-quiet-shame

What’s a girl to do? Well, concentrate on school, of course. Give yourself alternatives to endless beatings at the hands of your teenage Romeo! What Juliet needs to do is shift the balance of power into HER corner.

…intimate partner violence also drops “as women’s alternatives outside their relationships improve,” they found. As women secure higher educations and increase their earning potential, they’re “able to achieve self-sufficiency in the long-run.” When “battered women can support themselves, they are both more likely to leave and have more power within their relationships if they stay.”

And see how brilliantly hook-up culture fits into that?

Sexting is not “something that creates a very secure relationship,” child development specialist Dr. Robyn Silverman tells Lauer. Kids tell her that “hook up culture makes it so they can get a competitive edge in college and high school. They’re not worried about the relationship. They’re focused on school and the things that matter to them.”

And what things matter to kids, anyways? According to her own article, it’s not the pleasures of random sex with people you barely know.

…boys “often expressed a desire for a deeper connection with girls, but felt confused about how to make it happen.”

…when the boy sent her another message telling her that “he liked her,” she became “intrigued” by the possibility of a real relationship with him.

Let’s keep in mind that these are HIGH SCHOOL boys and girls we are talking about. Despite their own stated interests in actually exploring intimate, connected, meaningful, emotional relationships with one another – something BOTH boys and girls aspire to – Hess and her ilk continue to insist that boys really ARE predators, and girls really ARE prey. No matter how ardently, or clumsily the aspiration for a deeper connection is expressed, girls need to always keep in mind that BOYS ARE DANGEROUS.

A disgusting text from a boy is bad, but a serious commitment with the sender could be a lot more dangerous.

Some young ladies, of course, are simply not going to buy into the myth that a relationship with a boy is pretty much asking to be regularly back-handed, and the name we have for those girls is STUPID. No matter. We’ll do our best to help them choose the least rotten apple!

First up, try and avoid the 50% of young men who volunteer and give back to their communities. I mean, sure, philanthropy is nice and all that, but when boys volunteer they still have to be all BOY about it, taking on physically demanding and challenging activities, and helping people younger than themselves learn about fair play and rules and winning and losing and all that sort of nonsense.

Boys were more likely to undertake physical activities such as environmental cleanup or working with younger children in sports, while girls were more likely to help the homeless and other needy people or to work with arts groups.

Boys are just practicing for the inevitable moment they will get to overpower and abuse the girls silly enough to think they are, oh, lovely, caring human beings. Don’t buy the lie, ladies!

http://philanthropy.com/article/Half-of-American-Teenagers/135278/

Stay away from all those boys involved in extracurricular activities, especially sports and student governance, which lead to high self-esteem and the development of leadership qualities! High self-esteem in boys can only mean they feel free to beat the crap out of their girlfriends. Predator/prey, remember?

A considerable difference was observed between males and females in athletics and sports team participation in both school- and community-based activities. School-based extracurricular activities were appraised as most beneficial to the development of self-esteem and leadership role development.

http://lin.ca/Uploads/cclr10/CCLR10-112.pdf

And for heaven’s sake, steer way clear of those young entrepreneurial men who are increasingly one of the driving forces of innovation and development, not just in the modern economies, but around the world! Ladies have good reasons not to dirty their pretty mitts with tough and scrabble, live or die BUSINESS.

In other words, in contrast to young men, young women are less likely to see opportunities, have a higher fear of failure and therefore, less likely to engage in entrepreneurship.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/babson/2012/12/05/closing-the-gender-gap-for-women-entrepreneurs/

Those boys are just trying to get money and power so they can abuse their girlfriends.

Teenage boys: more likely to get involved with their communities and schools, volunteer with children, create meaningful business ventures and do the dirty work we need as a culture to survive.

Data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor statistics for all workers suggests that male workers are much more at risk than female. In 2009, 93 percent of the workers in America who died in the job were men.

• Also in July, 17-year-old plumber Benjamin Graham died in Albany, Georgia after being electrocuted while working under a home on a water pipe.

• In August, 16-year-old Damon Springer of Osgood, Ohio was struck by a bobcat frontend loader while working with his father in a family tree service company. Springer’s father did not see the boy and accidentally backed into him, crushing him.

• In September, 17-year-old Stephen N. Tiller was killed when crushed by a garbage truck while working for a family-owned sanitation company. Tiller was riding in the front of a front-loading garbage truck when the truck hit some bumps and sent the boy and another worker flying in front of the truck, which then ran him over.

• In October, 16-year-old Armando Ramirez died in Lamont, California after inhaling hydrogen sulfide in a drainage tunnel at Community Recycling and Resource recycling company

http://www.travelingsalescrews.info/pdf/2012_worst_jobs.pdf

Amanda Hess is rather audacious to draw an analogy between prey and predator in her writing. Does she honestly think that some of us, especially the mothers of sons, won’t see the truth? These grown women who sit in air-conditioned offices with their high heels and manicures, chastising their younger counterparts not to trust or love young men are the predators.

And both young men and women are the prey.

When a grown women who presumably has a modicum of sense and humanity and understanding tells young women that random blowjobs are a good idea because hey, at least you will avoid being abused by that evil boy, it’s time to question who is speaking in our culture, and what damage is being done.

The TODAY show panel talks about that like it’s a bad thing, but “real relationships” don’t erase the potential for abuse; in some cases, they leave girls more vulnerable to repeat offenders.

The repeat offender here isn’t the hapless boy sending poorly worded texts to a girl he likes. The repeat offender is Amanda herself. The need to spin stories ever more crassly, to point blank treat young women as if they are stupid and young men as if they are monsters is telling in itself.

The cracks are beginning to show. The rhetoric of hate is becoming so amplified, it can only lead to one outcome: revolution.

The sadness of the women’s movement is that they don’t allow the necessity of love. See, I don’t personally trust any revolution where love is not allowed.

Maya Angelou

Me either, Maya. And one revolution always follows the next.

Sooner or later.

I’m betting on sooner.

Lots of love,

JB