A friend sent me a link to this commentary, "Why I Fought for Two Boys I Never Met," by Dennis Prager. It tells the story of two thirteen year-old boys in Oregon who inadvertently got on the wrong side of some authorities who genuflect to the high priestesses of feminism when they created something called "slap butt day" at Patton Middle School in McMinnville, Oregon.
The boys were arrested and the district attorney brought FELONY SEX CHARGES against them.
This is truly unbelievable and unconscionable. Of course it's not appropriate to slap girls on the behind, but that's what junior high boys do: inappropriate things -- all manner of inappropriate things. They're fascinated with fire, and flatulence, and females -- not necessarily in that order. They climb too high, ride too fast, and jump off roofs. They talk inappropriately about girls, slap tushes, and, in my day, snapped bra straps. And that's why parents and teachers have the important tasks of parenting and teaching. If adolescents engaged in no inappropriate behavior, they would be weird.
Girls are not exempt from inappropriate and even raunchy behavior and talk either. Teenage girls are gossipy, mean, provocative, and vulgar. That's why we don't set them loose on the world at thirteen.
Unfortunately, the Oregon boys' immaturity (or rather, the appropriate level of maturity for thirteen year-olds) led them to engage in behavior involving one of the sacred cows of contemporary American culture: feminist understandings of gender relations. To feminists, adolescent boy teasing that touches on male-female sexual differences is inextricably linked to the patriarchal oppression and abuse of women by men, and, therefore, any and all measures are legitimate when rooting out this incipient evil.
Boys need to learn how to treat girls respectfully, and girls need to learn what precisely to do with the power their sexuality has on boys. This is a process that contemporary culture does nothing to facilitate.
-Clive
