This conversation is probably split right down the middle. Please make sure the comments are kept respectful.
My children will not be robbed of the valuable time associated with same-sex groups. For a ton of reasons. There is a time and place for co-ed, of course (infants understand that), but there is also a time for same-sex social development. There are plenty of avenues for co-ed and I’m sure they will get those (so relax), so I will focus on the better groups.
It is bad enough that there is no same-sex time during education. Girls have to go to the restrooms to get that time and to get away from boys. However, there are many girls ages 14, 15, and 16 who have told a clinician how it is normal for boys to come into the girl’s restroom and assault them.
“Patricia (age 13, white) told the interviewer: ‘They grab you, touch your butt and try to, like, touch you in the front, and run away, it’s okay, I mean … I never think it’s a big thing because they do it to everyone.’ Referring to boys at school, Patricia described unwanted touching and grabbing as normal, commonplace behaviors. (Phillips 2000; Tolman et al. 2003). Young women like Patricia described sexually aggressive behaviors as customary: ‘It just happens,’ and ‘They’re boys — that’s what they do’” (Hlavka, 2014).
So you’ll have to excuse me if I don’t want my daughter to normalize that or always be put in situations where it could happen when there are simple alternatives. With your kids, have at it.
In many places, restrooms are no longer places for girls. That was taken away from them, too. Society loves to throw women overboard at every turn and take away all safety and security measures, exposing them from the moment they leave their front door. Now, girls literally have no place to be together outside their homes. It sounds just like the Middle East.
I’ll mention just two other brief examples. The first one is the conservation camp I attended as a teenager. That conservation camp ended up being a reality TV show for relationships or a soap opera.
I was just like everyone else. I thought it would be a good 3 days out on the land, but once the girls started showing up, our priorities changed. I understand that for a lot of the teen girls who were there, they probably would not have thought that a conservation camp would be that fun if boys were not there. But they also did not ask for the harassment and teasing. Not to mention, merely being approached by men can be daunting for many women, and teen boys do not understand that, so approaching or flirting with girls there was not comfortable. Especially since they were stuck in that camp for 3 days.
I don’t disagree with that point, and I am not saying there should not be a co-ed conservation camp. What I am saying is that there should be other camps throughout the summer that are sex-specific for those who would rather be there. And that would also be inclusive for other girls of different religions and faiths who feel co-ed is not proper. My conservation camp was targeted at a pretty specific audience.
If you ask boys, and I’ll even be honest and say it, too, the camp would not have been as memorable without the girls. No doubt, the camp improved with them. But that comes from a place of attraction. Boys got to see the girls roll out of their cots in the morning (some brought unauthorized clothing) and go to the restrooms. They saw them eat breakfast, saw them in all different emotions throughout the day, and spent the romantic evenings at the bonfire with them, with the sunset in the background.
Look, that’s a date, in a man’s opinion. For those girls who allowed select boys to enter their space and interact with them, you got to see those girls then get attached to the boys. For the next two mornings, they would run up to the boys and be their “camp buddy.” For one girl, in particular, the guy she liked who led her on, found a different girl, and for the next two days, we had that drama. What if that was your jackapple son? Or your daughter? I brought her up because she told the boy some private things about her during that first half day, which had been spread around the camp.
I’m pretty sure that if we did research on that for several years, it would turn out to be a very positive endeavor. Not.
Second
The second example is the military. I’ve been through many field experiences while in the military. I would not say that it was a negative experience having women there. Again, no guy is going to say that. However, it was quite similar to the other experience. What was different with this experience was that many people have had sexual relations with one another and they were much more secretive than the teen camp. People exchanged plans in basic conversation, and you sat there and said to yourself, “If that was in any way code for anything, you’re freaking good.”
This one “buddy” group, in particular, I had not seen them near each other the whole training time. But then, once we got back, we were all hitting up the lower end together, I’ll say, borough; they were together.
If you have a pretty daughter, she will be nothing short of mobbed everywhere she goes. She does not want it. At least give her a few days when it doesn’t happen.
Although training did happen, there was always that sex attraction situation under that professionalism. It was always there and will always be there. There are logical aspects of males and females, which, more specifically, were designed to be attracted to one another and to procreate.
It’s no joke; the field is where guys are uninterrupted by the women’s husbands or boyfriends, giving them days and weeks to build massive rapport. As soon as men see an opening, like after they clear a building and have a few minutes before the next order, they pounce. It is insane. Men can really freaking spawn right beside women; after they were just on a roof.
It was common for guys to try to build a coworker connection with the women in the field, basically setting up plans for after the field. But the issue with that is that she currently has a sexual partner who has noticed the new interaction. So instead of training and working on our skills, that guy is worried about losing his bed buddy.
I mean, we have all seen that right there in the workplace. If anyone reading this thinks I will believe you that you have not seen any “plans developing,” then it was you. Haha! Or you were the target and did not have a clue, because he was a little peon. I will not at all believe it for one second. You might be able to lie to others, but I’m not your local gully fish. Over my dead body, have you not seen it if you are in place with at least 5 men and 5 women. Or you’re that out of it.
I would like my children to experience a couple of outings and events where they do not have to put up fake profiles while potential significant others are in the area. I desire to hear about those experiences the same day they happen. But after not talking to your parents for 3 days and those feelings having not been explored and talked about, they will begin to take root. The brain of the teen will have forged that situation all by themselves, promoting their separation from you in later events.
Differences in Experiences
Some may say that everything I said up to this point has not been their experience — and that’s fine. I’m not saying my experiences are anyone else’s, and I have never said that. But there is a conundrum.
Anyone who says that my experiences were not theirs and anything else that they can say to come up against biology points to one thing. It simply means they answer the questions differently.
That is the bottom line of research and statistics. Even if you tackle what the greatest life experience of all time would be, that will change based on people that you ask. If we say that hosting a TED Talk is the greatest life experience someone can have, answers will still change. Anyone in politics, law, and billion-dollar business wouldn’t probably learn anything new doing a TED Talk.
But we are not talking about that. We are talking about young kids who are in the early stages of pursuing romantic encounters and relationships and have zero experience in doing so. They are vulnerable. I have seen firsthand how negative experiences affect teens. To the point of them needing mental health counseling for two decades after high school. Again, go do it to your kids. Have fun. Why don’t we just speed it up for you so they can go ahead and get treatment started now? Maybe they will heal before they are 32 instead of 40. It only takes one event for it to happen.
Conclusion
I leave it at this. Leading a combat operation in Special Forces and working at the United States Supreme Court would be two of the greatest life-changing events a person could have. Most people cannot see why and that is fine. But if you want your kid to slip into the most mature and gut-wrenching work, there’s your goal. And any job that is close to those will have similar impacts. The feeling of that grave responsibility is surreal. Some people throw up from the pressure.
That said, most people who have commented on my stories did not consider that my views could still be correct even when their views are thought to be correct. Nothing in my stories was fabricated, including the sexual assault citation.
If we are both in the same pool for the research study, then we may have different answers to the same question. It might not mean anything aside from one of us having thicker life experience. I was one of those guys in both — the camp and field. My instincts would do it again if I were to go back in time. Would not even try to change it.
Only if the researcher plans on delving into our reason why we have come to that answer, will we see why a person comes to that answer. My Views undergo a very analytical process and thorough analysis before they become my views.
There are many jobs out there today where people do not work in co-ed teams. The only reason no one complains about them is that they don’t know they exist — or they do, but are not thinking of them right now. That is neither my job to tell you nor my problem. I have heard it from a project manager before. One of my previous female coworkers walked up to this project manager and said that she would love to be on the team. After she left, he said, “That ain’t f**king happening. The s**t I would deal with in that environment, in this type of job, is not something I’m ever going to do. My men are not those kinds of men.”
I can tell you right now that there are a few outlier situations that I’m probably going to run into in the comments. We have people who will say they have been able to focus on training and not other people with no problem. Awesome! You’re cool.
But they may have a problem; they may have a chemical imbalance. They probably don’t even know.
We also have people who say that, and it turns out that they have only been training with ugly people. I’ve seen that, too. Haha!
Other people can say that they have had no problems since training or outdoor activities just because they were not attracted to the type of people who were there. These types of adults gamble with their teens’ livelihoods.
I can go on for decades; the point is that unless someone has done a thorough analysis of the general conclusion, they will not know. I have seen everything that I have said firsthand. I’ve seen it repeatedly in every single environment I have been in.
Relationships did start in the conservation camp, and so did fights over girls. Cheating happened in the field all the time, or at least conversations began that way. I have seen workspaces that have had at least emotional flare-ups between some coworkers. It is everywhere. When the brain is firing on the right cylinders, it’ll happen.
I want my children to have the experience of not needing to navigate those situations—just to have a good time with peers. That is not much to ask for, and that is the reason why I will not spend money on lazy organizations. I’m not here to encourage ignorance or arrogance. And if that all fails, I’m still not going to sweat it. I’m just going to host the stuff myself. It is not hard at all. All it takes is a hard-working person.
If your son is not at my daughter’s sleepover, he shouldn’t be at her camp. Because that’s what it is.
Reference
HLAVKA, H. R. (2014). NORMALIZING SEXUAL VIOLENCE: Young women account for harassment and abuse. Gender & Society, 28(3), 337–358. https://doi.org/10.1177/0891243214526468
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Thanks for reading or listening today. I’ll see you back here for the next one! Thanks for positive comments (my wife reads the comments). Thanks for generous claps and being a Medium supporter!! Thanks for following and subscribing!
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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