folio

So they say. But I’m afraid it doesn’t wash with me.

Here I am, trying to have a conversation with a young man about their interactions with the opposite sex.

It’s going to have to be an ongoing conversation, delivered piecemeal, lest I overload their neurons.

I start with the obvious: the words boys casually use to describe the girls in their vicinity. I’m getting straight to the point.

“Don’t you ever call a woman or girl a bitch.”

My correspondent pretends not to know what I’m talking about — at first, anyway. Eventually, they concede they’ve heard it at school but don’t know what it means.

Treat them with the respect due to them, I tell them. I’d say, “Be honourable” but they wouldn’t know what that means. As I say, I don’t want to crash their braincells.

Boys will be boys because parents refuse to have conversations with their sons about the rights of women. But if the boy is to become a man, they need to hear this.

Somehow, I’m going to have to find a way to keep this conversation going.