It’s So Important To Teach Your Son That The Way They Talk About Women Around Other Men Matters

I grew up a child of divorce living with my mom and my sisters. It was, needless to say, a female-forward household. So, years later when I had two sons, it was extra important to me that I started teaching them how to treat women early.

Now that they are in their 20s, one is dating and one has a partner, but the teaching, of course, never stops. I also firmly believe in striking when the iron is cold and that our sons are able to absorb information from us when they don’t feel like they are ‘in trouble’. Just the other day I reminded them, once again, that how they talk about women with their friends or around other men matters. This talk wasn’t sparked because of anything they did, but I decided to have it because of something that happened to me.

I am friends with a man in my community. We frequent the same places and see the same circle almost daily. I thought we were on good terms even though he’s asked me out and I’ve declined. It got back to me that one of his buddies asked if he’d ‘tapped that’ — yes, that’s still a phrase that gets thrown around — after I’d walked by recently. Instead of telling the truth — that we were just friends — he laughed and shrugged. He told the guy he was a vault and he’d never tell.

I’m sure to young men (and apparently men in their 50s), this seems harmless and funny, innocent even. After all, he was ‘joking’ and he ‘didn’t lie’ — his words, not mine when I confronted him.

But what he clearly doesn’t get, even in his 50s, is that they were talking about me and my body. They were making a joke out of it as if I was just a portal for pleasure and nothing else. He let his friend believe we had been intimate when we hadn’t even come close. By the way, his friend is just as bad.

Why are we asking if a woman had been tapped anyway? We aren’t fucking maple trees.

No, it was never meant to get back to me and I could have brushed it off like I have so many times before. But I’m older and wiser now and I can’t do that anymore, so I asked him why he did what he did. He lied and stumbled over his words, then told me not to take things so seriously. But I take my body seriously. I take sex and consent seriously. And I want my sons to do the same.

I didn’t tell my boys what happened, but I did tell them that the way they talk about women says a lot about their character. I told them if they are lucky enough to have access to a woman and her body it’s because she trusts them. And that trust needs to be cherished. One conversation between one of their friends could ruin a lot and respect doesn’t disappear just because the person you are talking about isn’t around.

I want my two sons to know there’s nothing masculine about casually disrespecting women. Even if it feels harmless or they don’t think anyone will find out.

Sure, it used to be accepted. Everyone would just laugh about locker room talk and we’d say things like ‘boys will be boys.’ But if I have anything to do with it, it stops now.

Diana Park is a writer who finds solitude in a good book, the ocean, and eating fast food with her kids.