Hi,
Sorry, I feel really stupid asking this, but I'm trying to figure out how to discuss certain gender inequalities with DD8, who needs help understanding social issues and with whom we are constantly working on social skills (so maybe this should be in 2e? but it's a more general issue). So we've been watching Malcolm in the Middle with her and got to the episode where the Krelboyne (geek) group starts as freshmen in high school, and Malcolm fares badly because his mother embarrases him by trying to clean a stain off the front of his pants in front of a bunch of older kids. They nickname him "stain." Later in the episode, Cynthia attempts to help Malcolm regain social status by saying something about how if he doesn't do something (sorry, forget what), she'll "never have sex with him again." So DD is asking about this this morning in the car and I'm trying to explain how Cynthia was trying to raise Malcolm's social status by indicating that they had had sex and that that was very generous of her because at least in the past, having sex generally raised the social status of boys but lowered that of girls. (So question 1 is, is this still generally true among kids, or does it vary by school?) Question 2 is, why was this the case? She totally didn't believe me and said why and I had to say that I didn't really understand it myself, except that possibly there was a risk that the girl might get pregnant which could be a huge huge problem and mess up her future. So of course she said, well if they used birth control it wouldn't be a problem at all. So then I was discussing how kids should 'wait until they're ready' and have self respect and ideally wait until marriage, but I think I was less than convincing. So is there a (better/ good) reason specifically for why there was this double standard about reputations? (as well as any rationale that might be more convincing re why one should not??) Sorry I'm so ignorant about these things--I did read Queen Bees and Wannabees and some other books, but I have to admit when I think about this it doesn't make a lot of sense.
Also, I apologize if anyone is offended by the subject--I try to answer DD's questions matter-of-factly when they come up, partly because of her weaknesses in social skills--I want to have time to have her understand these things before she has to deal with them herself.
