Entries from November 2009 ↓

In The Way of Boys: Raising Healthy Boys in a Challenging and Complex World, Anthony Rao, Ph.D. cautions parents and educators to stop treating young boyhood as an illness.

One of the interesting things Rao says is that young boys do not naturally like eye contact.

I mentioned this at a party and a young man said, “It’s confrontational.”

Which is exactly what Rao says too. He says the males of our species are similar to other fight or flight mammals, like dogs, where direct eye contact is a direct challenge, an invitation to confrontation.

Rao says this is true for even very young infants.

Girls, he says, will soak up eye contact as intimacy and communication from their earliest moments.

Boys, naturally, will look away, take glimpses and rely heavily on peripheral vision. Often this makes teachers and parents believe boys aren’t listening to them. Often “no eye contact” is confused with a symptom of Asbergers or Autism, he says. This is simply the natural way of boys he said. Forcing a boy to make eye contact will feel emotionally terrible to them. They can work on improving how much eye contact they make, but they experience an inherent discomfort when making prolonged eye contact.

The eye contact has been a noticeable difference in my own two children. As I assume most parents have, I’ve gone through the checklist of symptoms and warnings for autism and thought, “well, he doesn’t make a lot of eye contact.”

I’ve been doing a little experiment to see how men, in general, respond to eye contact.

They look to the left, look to the right, look at the wall, look down at their papers, stare off into space, back up, blink and a few have actually spoken to me with their eyes completely closed.

Try it. It’s fascinating.

More about The Way of Boys.

The following is a press release issued by Parents Television Council at parentstv.org. I’m printing the release in its entirety because the information is so important.

In a new special report, the Parents Television Council found that storylines depicting violence against females are increasing and being shown more graphically and in ways that have not been seen in the history of television.

The PTC’s report, Women in Peril: A Look at TV’s Disturbing New Storyline Trend, examined fatal and nonfatal female victimizations on prime time broadcast television and found that there was a significant increase in all forms of female victimization storylines; an increase in the depiction of teen girls as victims; an increase in the use of female victimization as a punch line in comedy series; and an increase in the depiction of intimate partner violence.

“Our new research points to a disturbing trend: by depicting violence against women with increasing frequency, or as a trivial, even humorous matter, the broadcast networks may ultimately be contributing to a desensitized atmosphere in which people view aggression and violence directed at women as normative, even acceptable,” said PTC President Tim Winter.

In October, actresses like Nicole Kidman testified before the Congress that Hollywood probably has contributed to violence against women by portraying them as weak sex objects.  We all must pay attention to the fact that this is a problem in our society.  The fact is that children are influenced by what they see on TV and that certainly includes media violence, said PTC Director of Communications and Public Education Melissa Henson.

The study compares the qualitative and quantitative differences in the treatments of violence against women on prime time broadcast television between 2004 and 2009.  PTC analysts examined all primetime programming (excluding sports and news programs) on the major broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC)* during the February and May 2004 and 2009 sweeps periods for a total of 209.5 hours of programming.

Major Findings

1. Incidents of violence against women and teenage girls are increasing on television at rates that far exceed the overall increases in violence on television.  Violence, irrespective of gender, on television increased only 2% from 2004 to 2009, while incidents of violence against women increased 120% during that same period.

• The most frequent type of violence against women on television was beating (29%), followed by credible threats of violence (18%), shooting (11%), rape (8%), stabbing (6%), and torture (2%).  Violence against women resulted in death 19% of the time.
• Violence towards women or the graphic consequences of violence tends overwhelmingly to be depicted (92%) rather than implied (5%) or described (3%).

1. Every network but ABC demonstrated a significant increase in the number of storylines that included violence against women between 2004 and 2009.

1. Although female victims were primarily of adult age, collectively, there was a 400% increase in the depiction of teen girls as victims across all networks from 2004 to 2009.

1. Fox stood out for using violence against women as a punch line in its comedies — in particular Family Guy and American Dad — trivializing the gravity of the issue of violence against women.

1. From 2004 to 2009 there was an 81% increase in incidences of intimate partner violence on television.

“Our study today serves as a clarion call to all Americans about a critical issue with dire consequences.  We are calling on television producers and network executives, members of the advertising community, elected representatives and appointed government officials, and most importantly, the viewing public, to stand up against this disturbing trend.  In a country where more than 60% of children have been exposed to violence in their daily lives, according to recent research by Justice Department, we must take the utmost care not to normalize violent behavior – especially violence against women – through our television programming,” Winter added.

To read at the full report and view video clips from the study, visit:

http://www.parentstv.org/womeninperil.

*CW and MyNetworkTV did not exist in 2004. (Gossip Girl surely accounts for some of the increase.)

To speak with a representative from the Parents Television Council, please contact Kelly Oliver (ext. 140) or Megan Franko (ext. 148) at (703) 683-5004.

Harvard Business has a fascinating and super-exciting PDF about the female impact on the economy. Check it out in The Female Economy.

Maybe its our turn . . .

As a market, women represent an opportunity bigger than China and India combined. They control $20 trillion in consumer spending, and that figure could reach $28 trillion in the next five years. Women drive the world economy, in fact. Yet most companies do a remarkably poor job of serving them.

Click here for more.

When I started The Girl Revolution I had experience being a daughter, girlfriend, wife and mother of a very young girl. It would be fair to say that I believed boys and girls are “basically the same except for social conditioning.”

The social conditioning appeared to be more in the boy’s favor than the girl’s. This was upsetting.

If I could just right the wrong, make the perception shift and give girls a more equitable social conditioning, well that would be my Girl Revolution.

I don’t think I agree with my former self. I’m not sure the theory pans out in real life. It hasn’t proven true.

Two main things happened to shift my perception:

* I’ve been married to a kind and decent man for nearly a decade now. The new has worn off. Neither of us are as motivated to “attract” the other because we accomplished the whole child-bearing thing. It’s a different sort of relationship than I’ve previously had with boyfriends or male family members. The longer I’m married to this particular man, the more convinced I am that men and women have entirely different motivators, ways of relating to the world, and even primary values. These appear to be inherent. The puzzling part is why I, and other women I know, are so baffled, confused, angry and in denial about how inherently different women and men are.

* I had a son.  He is very much like his sister in a great deal of ways. However, he is also inherently different. Intuitively I know that pushing him to do flash cards is the wrong method to teach him his alphabet, just as intuitively I know that it was the perfect way to engage my daughter. I attempt to buy them gender-neutral toys like Tinker Toys, yet I notice that she has played with them twice in a year and he has played with them nearly every day. She has no interest in the cars. Dinosaurs do not hold her attention. He never wants to talk, she wants to talk constantly. He doesn’t look me or anyone else in the eye, she makes eye contact all day long.

Men and boys really are  . . . different. Could that be true?

My perception of how The Girl Revolution is going to go down has shifted.

The Girl Revolution is far more achievable, fun and exciting not if girls and boys are the same and equity is achieved. Because the bar for equity – throughout the entire Women’s Revolution – has been masculine and patriarchal.

No good enough.

That bar is far to low.

The Girl Revolution will be achieved when girls and women are acknowledged, respected and rewarded socially, politically, economically, familially and relationally for their inherent feminine selves.

There is an economic shift going on right this very second on the planet. I predict girls and women are going to come out ahead. Except, not the way we’ve pushed forward in the last 35 years, pushing against our natural instincts and theirs. Yes, we can and yes, we did. Still, its so much harder to go against the flow than with the flow.

But, its time to take a deep breath and refocus, readjust, re-assess. I think we’re going to stake a claim to something much, much bigger. We’re discovering a strength in ourselves that the planet has not yet known before.

What do we really want? What does femininity seek to achieve for its precious daughters? What does it seek to achieve for its precious sons?

I suspect it has very little to do with achieving economic equality in the status quo. In fact, I suspect with the entry of truly honored femininity we’ll breeze right by the low bar of equity we’ve set for ourselves previously.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.

My extended family likes a good practical joke especially, one that involves fear and a few screaming children.

Poor Ainsley still won’t walk down my Grandmother’s hall because of the time her Great Uncle Nelson jumped out of the closet screaming when she was three. She was terrified.

When Uncle Nelson made his annual pilgrimage to Texas this weekend my daughter was afraid to go on the traditional night-time hayride after the scrumptious chili.

“I’m not going on the hayride,” she declared. “Last time Nathan jumped out of the bushes with firecrackers and scared us!”

“You’re going. It will be fun,” I told her.

She shared a hay bail with me on the back of the trailer.

“Listen everything they say on this hayride is a lie,” I told her. “Don’t believe any of it.”

Minutes later . . . .

“I just saw a bobcat,” shout a few cousins.

“Don’t believe it,” I told her. “Besides a bob cat is like a baby kitten, not scary at all. They’re afraid of people.”

Driving by The Shirley’s place we were chased by a pack of vicious dogs, that was a little scary, but they stopped as soon as the trailer made it passed their territory.

Just in view of the house, about to breath a sigh of relief, Great Uncle Nelson starts up a story:

When I was a kid, my Uncle Don told us he saw this thing out here. It was huge, bigger than a man and really hairy. He said it could leap from one side of this road to another like a Kangaroo.

He called it a Sasquatchian. Look there he is!!!!! It’s Big Foot!

We turned toward the woods and there was a Giant Black Gorilla.

Ainsley became hysterical, crying that she was scared.

We immediately knew my cousin Bonnie’s husband was the one missing and therefore had to be in the Gorilla suit.

“It’s just Barry,” I told her. I took her face in my hands and told her to look at me, “It’s just Barry in a Gorilla suit. Barry isn’t scary. It isn’t real. It’s a joke.”

My husband, Jeremy, tried to calm her, but she would not be calmed. She was carried away in a fit of fear. Zack was paralyzed with silent fear. Ainsley was just screaming and crying.

Suddenly, my husband got up, leapt out of the trailer and charged Big Foot.

Big Foot Barry wasn’t expecting a real confrontation. He turned around and blindly hightailed it for the woods.

Jeremy tackled the giant Sasquatch to the ground.

Bam! They hit the narrow oil top road.

Ainsley, Open your eyes! Quick! You gotta see this! Daddy’s beating up Big Foot! He tackled him to the ground, he’s punching him and kicking him! Daddy’s protecting you from a giant Sasquatch! What a hero!

Ainsley opened her eyes long enough to catch a glimpse of her Daddy kicking Big Foot in the stomach and in final defeat Sasquatch lay on the ground, unmoving – dead.

Daddy brought the giant Gorilla head back as a trophy.

I hope Ainsley never forgets her Daddy is willing to attack the Sasquatch from Sascatuan for her.