Teachers describe a deterioration in behaviour and attitudes that has proved to be fertile terrain for misogynistic influencers
“As soon as I mention feminism, you can feel the shift in the room; they’re shuffling in their seats.” Mike Nicholson holds workshops with teenage boys about the challenges of impending manhood. Standing up for the sisterhood, it seems, is the last thing on their minds.
When Nicholson says he is a feminist himself, “I can see them look at me, like, ‘I used to like you.’”
Once Nicholson, whose programme is called Progressive Masculinity, unpacks the fact that feminism means equal rights and opportunities for women, many of the boys with whom he works are won over.
“A lot of it is bred from misunderstanding and how the word is smeared,” he says.
But he is battling against what he calls a “dominance-based model” of masculinity. “These old-fashioned, regressive ideas are having a renaissance, through your masculinity influencers – your grifters, like Andrew Tate.”
She has always been given a large amount of freedom and we have accepted her for whatever she wants as long as she is happy and healthy while she is in our care. We have never forced her to do anything she didn’t want to do unless it was necessary (getting a vaccine for example). The only restrictions we have on her is that she has to get up for school on time, she has to finish all of her school work, and she has to do at least one extracurricular activity of her choice. Initially that was girl scouts, then she chose drum lessons, and now, after a couple of years, she just started drawing lessons.
And in terms of social things, we have also been very open with her. When she was younger, we made sure she knew about birth control and STDs pretty much as soon as she asked where babies came from. It turned out to be less of an issue since she’s only interested in girls, but we want her to know she can choose to have sex if she does it safely. We’ve also been extremely honest with her about drugs, about how there are addictive kinds like heroin and non-addictive kinds like weed and that the drug war is bullshit and that she is hearing a lot of propaganda. In fact, now that I can oversee her health classes (and social studies classes) I can directly say, “this is not true. They are lying to you.” That’s also a great asset when it comes to social studies. She’s covering modern conflict in the middle east right now and I have been able to talk about things like American imperialism and Israeli apartheid (and now genocide) when the texts have been lacking- although they have been surprisingly good overall, if a little dated. And I doubt she would have even been covering that topic at all in her public middle school.
Sounds like you are doing a great job! Sorry my post was rather, judgy? I have just seen a good number of home school kids that either learn next to nothing useful, or worse, religious indoctrination with a splash of useless whitewashing of the world. It sounds like your daughter should turn out just fine, and I wish more people used home school as you have, to teach real topics in a way public school cannot without the Karen’s ruining everything.
No no, it didn’t seem judgy at all. I just wanted to clarify.
Trust me, compared to the guy who is claiming it’s my daughter’s fault for being bullied because “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” you’re calling her a straight A student and the most popular kid in school.
Being a parent is hardest when you’re doing it right. Keep it up!