Posted on 06/04/2010 4:33:03 AM PDT by csvset
“In a modern society when we give most boys (the exceptions are those engaged in rigorous sport or challenging activities like tradtional scouting) so few chances to experience real physical challenges and have no manhood rites to allow boys to endure and show how tough they are, they make up their own.”
You bring up interesting points, and I know that sociologists and psychologists have used this perspective to explain teenage gang participation. However, I was wondering what kind of rites in the past, when boys would get their backsides tanned for this kind of behavior, did teenage boys participate in? It is true that boys knew what constituted being a man one day, but I couldn’t think of any specific “rites” that occurred then and are absent today.
See my post at #19. It’s not really a game, but a prank. And people do it nationwide. (I’m from the westcoast).
The way the sentence is structured, it indicates that the attacker was playing the game.
If a “game” involves attacking others, then people can CERTAINLY be involved in it involuntarily.
Nothing new is going on. These types of things are common and have been for ages. They just weren’t always so widespread, nor publicized.
The biggest problem with Home Schooling is that children will become properly socialized...
...I guess like here.
It's wierd, but girls still have the opportunity to go out and do dangerous stuff. There are Girl Scout camps all over the place. My daughter rides at a stable that has all girls. You look at her classmates, and the girls are the ones with the broken bones and bruises from sports and outdoor activities. The boys just sit around playing video games. A few ride skateboards, but that's just a few.
Parents are careful to make sure their daughters don't turn into hothouse flowers, but nobody is worrying about the boys.
Just the fact that they would have got their backsides tanned was part of it. They had the opportunity to experience and endure pain and learn how to handle it and to show they could handle it.
Other opportunities came in the most common sporting games, in wrestling and fighting with each other. Kids didn’t wear helmets when they rode bikes, or kneepads on skateboards. You got hurt sometimes. Don’t get me wrong - there are good reasons for a lot of the changes (I’d never let my kids ride a bike without a helmet).
I teach high school boys - the boys of today aren’t allowed to do one fourth of what we used to do when I was at school. They get hurt a lot less, and that’s not a bad thing, except boys are hardwired to show off their physical toughness and to compete with each other physically. As we give them less options to do this, they make up their own.
Personally I wouldn’t link it to gangs - that might be about seeking certain other things a lot of boys miss out on (cameraderie etc) but it’s not the same thing as this.
Boys want danger and physical challenges. Adults should do their best to make sure they have these as safely as possible, or they will make up their own.
Both my sons told me this is common in their high school when walking the hallways between classes. We live in Pennsylvania.
Well put.
I had to go on YouTube to see what “sack tapping” was — what a ridiculous game. You run around trying to slap/punch your friends in the nuts? Huh?
IBTZ. Some of the mods don’t like these stories.
On a serious note I've always felt that Lord of the Flies should be required reading for anybody before they are allowed to have a child.
Apparently the mods disagree.
Has anybody read the freaking article?
If it were my kid who was attacked there would be a big lawsuit in the offing. A really big one.
I could see that if they were kicking each other in the crotch... but using your hand? That's as gay as Richard Simmons riding a rainbow-colored Smart Car across the Golden Gate bridge.
Oh h*ll yeah.
Who won the game? Does it say?
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