A friend of mine posted a link this this article "The Problem With Puppy Love". I was going to comment in the facebook post, but the essay ended up shockingly long, so I finally decided to bite the bullet and open my own blog account to put these things on.
I think she was reading too much into the situation. I am trying to remember when my peers started separating and becoming
icky. I feel like it was more like grade 5, but it is totally possible that it was grade 3, and the discussion of their relationship
by their peers does suggest this. At this point, there is a conception that there is a difference, and all sorts of weird reactions
from calibrating what does this otherness mean as well as defining rolls both fed from wider society, parents, and caregivers.
In essence, I think adult scripts are both being imposed on, and inappropriately attributed to these grade 3 children.
Script 1: "Billie has a girlfriend" The interaction between the Boy and his Parents: Reading between the lines, what hear happening is this. Says the boy "I like Katie". Says the parents, "Aw isn't that cute, Billy has a girlfriend. You should tell her how you feel." This interaction has some heteronormative elements, but also represents some pro-social elements too.
One aspect is the actual intention: When Billy says "I like Katie." does it mean "Johnny is playing stupid games, but Katie always has the coolest dolls on the playground."? or does it mean as the author claims "I want to have sex with Katie no matter her wishes." These are 8 year olds, which extreme do you think is more plausible? In truth I think it is a little bit of both in a way. I suspect Billy finds some aspect of Katie quite likable, whether it is her choice of play-style, play objects, her impecable manners, or her appearance is not clear. I think they are too young for it really to be an attraction to her "alienness" (the feminine mystique), however, maybe he is precocious and actually does think girls are actually significantly different, novel and hence interesting. His parents instead of teasing out the actual meaning of the vague "I like Katie", immediately imposed a heteronormative pair-bonding interpretation, and proceeded to suggest the adult script that goes with this.
Script 2: "He is stalking her" . "Puppy Love" is a common phenomenon, and is encouraged in the Courtly Love nostalgia represented by the Disney canon she cites. Kids have very underdeveloped filters. It has some similarity to stalking in that there is no calibration of "too much", and based on a weak understanding of Theory of Other (ie that there might be a lack of reciprocity in the feelings toward self from the other). However, it has some distinct differences. One very important distinction, is that it does not turn violent in light of rejection. This is because as a normal developmental stage, it is a learning exercise and when that calibration happens, and/or if it is clear the feeling is not mutual, instead of blaming the object of desire, the subject simply learns that just because I like someone does not mean they like me. While I am not a parent, I have distinct recollections of "Why won't Peter play with me?" from my own childhood. Thee is a true lack of understanding of reciprocity of feelings. This actually is reinforced by attempts at teaching social behaviors, like "Share your toys", which are premised on "Share, and you will be shared with.", or "How would you feel if Karen had hit you?" ie the attempt to reverse other-ness by fostering empathy.
There is a reason why there is such a similarity between puppy love and stalking. They are both based on an unformed or malformed social sense. The difference is that 99% of people grow out of it, and when I say grow out of it, I mean get trained out of it by going through rehearsals just like this.
Script 3: "How should boys and girls court each other". Let us assume that he truly is seeking a "girlfriend", that is not a playmate who happens to be physically female, but rather a yin to his yang, a compliment to his weaknesses, or whatever it means to be pair-bonded.
At an older age, the standard scripts are to dip hair in ink, assault, insult, snub, and all sorts of weird counter-productive behaviours, but I don't think these are particularly common until the 11-15 year range. Given this, the proposed script of "Clearly state your desires" is very much more pro-social. Surprisingly, Katie was less concerned about being followed around and slut-shamed (I will get to my objection to the assertion that script was in play later), and only when he wrote her a clear and direct letter, and she was no longer able to ambiguate his intentions toward her did she become so upset as to request assistance from her mother.
At a later point, we have The Rules, an intentional and systematic breakdown of communication.
Billy's parents told him to state his desires clearly, and when following her around did not adequately indicate his desire to play with her, he was encouraged to write her a letter. When that went unanswered, his parents recognized the "Girls are supposed to play coy, and encourage further courting, because if he does not have to work for it, he will not desire it" (Script 4) script. He was encouraged to write again, and a third time.
Katie's mother called up and said that no Katie was not enacting Script 4, but instead is just not interested. Billy's parents said "Ah. Ooops, ok, well we have been encouraging clear communication. Would she mind awfully clearly stating her disinterest rather than perpetuating the ambiguity of desire roll that has been imposed on her by society?" To which the author replied "No, clear communication is not something I wish to teach my daughter. I choose to see this as Script 2 (he is stalking her), and as such I want to impose Script 5, the TRO Script.
Script 5: "The Temporary Restraining Order". In the face of real psychosis, sometimes we invoke external controls in order to protect people.
In the case of real psychosis (rather than imposition of the script on other situations), one of the challenges in the third party communication scenario is that there is absolute certainty that the feelings are reciprocated and if these third parties, the crisis workers, psychiatrists, police, and justices, would just pass on the message everything would be fine. While I quite agree that it is not Just to demand of the objects of these obsessions, I think it significantly increases the ability of treatment workers to break down the fantasies if the object of the fantasy can directly challenge the edifice, rather than having third parties pass on the message and not have it believed. From a harm reduction standpoint, the lesser wrong is for the victim to participate in the process than for the victim to always be looking over her/his shoulder in fear, and possibly lose their life. Embarassingly, I do not know the stats on successful TROs, but the popular culture version of this script is "obsession, externally imposed third party restraining order, assault and murder", one that I would certainly not wish on my daughter.
The irony that this piece would appear on a site called rolereboot, when the author is reinforcing traditional roles is quite fascinating. Rather than saying "You are right, we need to encourage clear communication.", she instead inadvertently encouraged the feminine mystique role by encouraging her daughter to stay silent about her intentions. In addition, she further took away her child's agency by telling her that she is too weak to deal with her own problems.
How would I deal with it?
I am not a parent, so maybe I would make different choices in the situation, but in the cold light of day and theory-craft, here is how I would have approached the situation:
I would ask Katie "Have you clearly and unambiguously told him that you are not interested?" only after that did not succeed would I be going down the road of direct intervention.
Given that there is no particular reason to believe that we are dealing with psychosis, my direct intervention would begin with mediation, bringing the children and parents together, possibly with a third party such as the teacher character, in which I would ask the boy why he thinks his feelings would be reciprocated in the face of strong evidence to the contrary, reinforce the theory of other, her subjectiveness, and personhood, rather than objectness and hopefully conclude with everyone agreeing that he should find someone else to play with (for I would remind all the adults reading more into this than there is that we are talking about 8-year old not 18-year olds here, and what he is expecting of the relationship likely significantly differs from what the mother is expecting of this relationship).
I am still trying to decide if the author does actually understand this, but needed a hook to show off her research skills because the statistics by themselves are a little dry.
Just to be a little flippant, one could take a third-waver stance of power through sex, and tell her the story of Zelda Fitzgerald, offering her the opportunity to write a note encouraging the puppy love and have him do stuff for her, until he finally gets bored with it and moves on. I know I am being rather dismissive of their theories but ever since I heard about it, I have thought that this Power Throught Objectification idea was antithetical to the struggles that their mothers went through to win them equality. However, the fact remains that it is theory with popular proponents and to not offer her access to the full library of potential scripts is to deny her the agency to decide for herself how she wishes to negotiate sexual politics.
I think I might be particularly offended by this article because it hits on two of my sore points, the longstanding failure to communicate clearly in social situations, and my recent bugaboo that Children are Not Adults. I feel we have evolved a bit from the repression of the Victorian Age when children were treated as little adults. Maybe it is my bleeding heart liberalness that makes me think that children need to be gently taught how to live in society rather than imposing the extreme penalties that we impose on adults when they transgress.
No comments:
Post a Comment