DEAR CLEMENTINE: Tween girls, sexualisation and empowerment

“Dear Clementine, 

I would love some advice on how to support the tween girls in my life to be safe in a society that sexualises girls, without prematurely terrifying them. Although I have mostly aged out of men's attention (truly the dream), my life is full of girls entering adolescence, and I remember so clearly how early attention from random men started, especially when we were taking public transport in our school uniform, or starting work in service jobs like supermarkets or fast food restaurants. 

How can I help prepare these young women for the inevitable attention they will soon start getting from unwelcome men in a way that is empowering and doesn't force them to 'grow up too fast' (as though girls are ever afforded the privilege of remaining innocent and protected)? 

Long time listener, XXXXXXX”

***

Empowering young girls in a misogynistic world is no small feat, but it's crucial for their well-being and future. This episode offers insights into the societal pressures that demand young women conform to impossible and contradictory standards. I discuss the premature sexualization of tween girls and the societal paradox that expects them to be passive in their objectification. By teaching girls to assert their boundaries and recognise their intrinsic worth, we can prepare them to navigate these challenges with resilience and confidence, while understanding how rigged the system is from the outset. 

You’ll want to listen to this one with all the young women and teen girls in your life!

Chapters

• 0:00 Empowering Tween Girls Against Misogyny
• 8:08 Understanding Sexualization and Gaslighting Tactics
• 13:17 Breaking Down Rape Culture Realities
• 21:14 Teaching Girls Boundaries and Self-Worth
• 28:26 Supporting Untethered

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hello darlings, it's Monday and that means it's time for another episode of Dear Clementine with me, your host, clementine Ford. Dear Clementine is the advice line that I run on my Untethered podcast channel. Think of me as your fairy godmother, the one who brings you all the advice you may not want but that you definitely need to hear. As I always say, I'm the mother you never had, the sister you always wanted and the auntie who always listens. I'm recording today on the lands of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. Remember, wherever you are, know whose land you're on. Today we're talking tween girls, confidence and how to ignore misogyny in a misogynistic world. Let's do it. Let's do it.

Speaker 1: 0:53

Dear Clementine, I would love some advice on how to support the tween girls in my life to be safe in a society that sexualizes girls without prematurely terrifying them. Although I have mostly aged out of men's attention truly the dream my life is full of girls entering adolescence and I remember so clearly how early attention from random men started, especially when we were taking public transport in our school uniform or starting work in service jobs like supermarkets or fast food restaurants. How can I help prepare these young women for the inevitable attention they will soon start getting from unwelcome men in a way that is empowering and doesn't force them to quote, grow up too fast, as though girls are ever afforded the privilege of remaining innocent and protected. Longtime listener, please help. This is a great question. It's also a perennial one. I've probably answered some version of this question I don't know 20 times on this podcast and it is really, really hard because, on the one hand, of course, you want to empower your daughters and the young women in your life and of course, you know that the sexualization that they are subjected to, the sexualization that men, subject them to the patriarchal world that tells us and tells them that we have to accept it with a smile on our face. You know that that's all bullshit. You know that that's all patriarchal bullshit designed to make girls and women because of course it continues into our adulthood feel as if we have no choice in the matter. We are subjected to objectivity because we are denied subjectivity in the world, that is, that we are denied interior landscapes where we get to decide who, when, how, what, where, why our bodies, our sexuality, our minds even, will be consumed or engaged with.

Speaker 1: 2:44

It's always struck me as particularly devious that the patriarchal society that we live in pretends, on the one hand, to protect children, to want to protect children and to want to protect little girls in particular and we do this via messaging like close your legs, don't speak, like that, smile, et cetera, et cetera that there is this pretense that somehow all of this hypervigilance and, you know, fear-mongering about children exploring things or little girls turning into adolescent young women who have some kind of command and mastery over their bodies, that this is dangerous. We can't let this happen, because if we have girls who are in control of their bodies, what might they use them for? The assumption that girls should, when they become adolescents roughly around the age of 14 or 15, suddenly switch from being protected by society, or this pretense of protection, to being willing and uncomplaining participants in this objectivity. They have to be willing and uncomplaining participants in the desires of men of all ages to consume them. However, they like to not question it, to not complain, to smile and giggle and say it's okay. And then, of course, we turn around and say to them well, why didn't you say no? Why didn't you stop them from doing that? Why did you play along? Why didn't you assert your boundaries? It is a game that we cannot win. We are not meant to win it. The boundaries are set against us, the rules are not in our favor and the goalposts are always shifting.

Speaker 1: 4:34

We are expected to accept the attention of men and to see it as quote unquote compliments, and when we complain about attention, we're criticised and condemned for being crazy, for being paranoid and also for being man-haters and also, ironically, but by design we are not allowed to ask for the attention that we want, and that might be attention for things that we care about, attention for political causes, attention for our intellectual purs causes, attention for our intellectual pursuits, attention for our intellectual achievements, for our physical achievements, even If we step out of line and behave in any way other than the grateful, dutiful little girls that they have cast us to be. If we say, well, no, I don't want you looking at me like that. What I would like you to look at is this cause that I care about, or I would like you to read this thing that I wrote, or I would like you to listen to my argument. Always, always, always. When they are mad with us, they turn around and then they say you're just an attention seeker. And that's exactly how girls and women are also treated.

Speaker 1: 5:44

When we articulate claims of abuse perpetrated against us, when we say that man touched me, when we say that person subjected me to an assault, when we say I just don't like how that person was looking at me, whatever it is, when we actually do what it is they demand of us and what it is they tell us is our job, which is to set up boundaries and barriers around our bodies, to gatekeep them, and we say that person violated my boundaries, that person tried to violate my boundaries, even Suddenly. We are not to be trusted, because of course, we are never to be trusted, but in that moment they tell us just how little they will allow us to be trusted. So suddenly we're attention seekers. Oh, she's just pointing the finger because she's seeking attention. She just wants attention. For that it didn't really happen. Girls are just attention seekers. On the one hand, we have to be gatekeepers to everything we're told. Well, you know what boys are like. You know what men are like.

Speaker 1: 6:42

Why did you wear that skirt? Why did you wear that skirt? Why did you wear that dress? Why did you go there? Why were you drinking? Why were you talking to him? Why did you kiss him? Why did you have sex with him? Why did you have sex with that other guy?

Speaker 1: 6:50

Whatever it is, our behavior and our choices, our consent in past occasions is scrutinized as reasons why whatever it is we're claiming or saying now is not to be trusted. Because we must obviously just be doing it for attention and this is something that has infuriated me for so long that we are expected, as girls and women, to receive gratefully the gratitude is an important part of this to receive gratefully attention. We did not ask for attention. We do not want attention that makes us feel uncomfortable and makes us feel small and belittled and disempowers us. That is a compliment that we are meant to accept as proof that we are accepted in this world, as proof that men will allow us to participate in the reality, the false, fake reality that they've constructed, in which they are the masters and lords of the universe. They decide what happens and we are just the pretty, pretty, pretty flowers that decorate it. So we have to accept that attention and we're not allowed to dictate the terms of reference for what attention we want.

Speaker 1: 8:08

These are all really important things to teach your young girls before you even get to the point of how to protect themselves against sexualization, because there's no way that we can quote unquote protect ourselves against sexualization in the first place, primarily because the patriarchal world that we live in makes it not just so easy for men to sexualize us and for the society itself to sexualize us, but that it is woven into the fabric of that society that the penance and the rent that we must pay for being here is agreeing to not question the sexualization and agreeing to be punished for it. If it blows up in our face that men can never be punished for their perpetration of crimes or abuses, or even harassment within this system, because that would suggest that somehow the system itself is flawed and they can't have that. So, before we even talk about how impossible it is to protect ourselves against systems that are designed with our failure in mind, we have to talk to our young girls and to the young women in our life about the flawed system, about how there is nothing that we can do that will protect us from it, but also that the very notion that protection somehow is our responsibility, even though it's a practical reality, even though every woman has learned in her own ways a myriad of responses to unsafe circumstances, and all of these different tactics. I mean, we know them, we don't have to list them off the keys, the you know talking on the mobile phone, smoking even, is one of them. It's apparently a way to dissuade people from attacking you. I mean it's just ridiculous. But all of these ways that we've learned to minimize the risk of harm are meaningless in a world in which the harm itself is so rarely recognized as being real.

Speaker 1: 10:20

That, when it actually comes down to it, all of the monsters under the bed that we've been taught to fear, all of the scenarios in which we've been told don't place yourself in them, because you just can't trust men, Don't drink around men, don't talk to men, don't do this, don't say no, don't say yes, don't flirt, don't like him, don't like someone else, all of that. Actually, when the curtains are thrown open, we say, okay, the thing that you always warned me about, it just happened. They're like no, I don't believe you. I don't believe you Because it can never actually be true in reality, because if it's true in the reality, then the boogie monsters cease to be real, because the reality, as we know, is very often not the scenarios that we've been told to fear.

Speaker 1: 11:07

It is the boys and men that we know that we love, who other people know and love, who participate in their communities, who think it's totally normal I'm not even talking about outright criminal behavior here but who think and who have been conditioned to believe that it's their right to be able to speak to women however they like and to consume women in a visual or even physical way, as is their the ownership and the entitlement that they have as men. So when men on the street join in to verbally harass women or to cat call them or to make us feel unsafe, whatever it might be, again we come back to this idea that it was just boys being boys and they were just complimenting you. And the only reason women like me obviously get so upset about that is because I'm so old and ugly and fat and disgusting and man-hating, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So I must just be jealous. There's this bizarre, obviously absurd idea that if you are a woman who complains about harassment from men, whether towards yourself or towards other young girls or just women, then somehow it's because you're just secretly upset that they're not doing it to you, secretly upset that they're not doing it to you. These are the things. These rhetorical tactics are the things that we need to teach young girls, because once they learn how the rhetorical tactics are used against us, or rather are used as a way of gaslighting us, as a way of making us feel as if somehow we're the ones with the problem and also as if no one will believe us, and gets us to the point where so many of us learn to really doubt our instincts and our intuition, so that it doesn't really take that long. In the grand scheme of things, usually by adolescence, we've learned the lesson that whatever gut instinct we have about a situation or about a person or a group of people, our immediate secondary response after that is to go. I must be overreacting. I don't want to cause a scene. I don't want to make him feel bad. I don't want to make him feel bad is a really big one.

Speaker 1: 13:17

Think back to Louis CK and for anyone who is listening to this, who doesn't remember that case or who may be a little bit too young for that case, louis CK was is because, of course, men's careers never suffer an extraordinarily popular comedian, millionaire comedian, huge, huge, huge comedian who had presented himself as a progressive guy. You know, he was so clever, he was the only clever comedian who could make jokes about sexual assault because he was was so clever. He was the only clever comedian who could make jokes about sexual assault because he was just so clever. And we all knew, of course, that he wasn't really doing it because he wasn't like that. He was a progressive left-wing guy. He joked about it on stage. That's how we knew he wasn't doing it, except of course he was doing it.

Speaker 1: 13:59

He was exposed after years of allegations made against him that he just repeatedly refused to even engage with Allegations of him openly masturbating in front of women, openly harassing them on the phone, calling them up on the phone and, you know, like the classic kind of heavy breathers of old, masturbating down the phone to them. And these were colleagues and women with less power than him in the comedy industry, which was most women. And finally it became impossible for him to deny the allegations any longer and so he admitted to it. He wrote a long fucking letter in which he mentioned four times four times how admired he was and how he had believed that being admired meant that he could do these things, that he was just confused, et cetera, et cetera. Four times how admired he was and how he had believed that being admired meant that he could do these things, that he was just confused, et cetera, et cetera. Four times how admired he was. And not once in that letter did he say sorry, not once did he apologize. And the day that that letter was released after years of him denying the allegations or refusing to even engage with them, when women said look, we knew all along, look at this piece of shit, cancel him. That same day I remember because someone said it to me men started responding with well, he said sorry, what more does he? What more do you want? Is he's meant to lose his entire career Again?

Speaker 1: 15:20

These are the rhetorical techniques and tactics and also the goalpost shifting that you need to teach your daughters about, because there is nothing that we can say or do that will prove the reality of our circumstances, because patriarchy does not allow for women's realities to be and exist within it. Patriarchy is the reality of men and for men, and women can participate in that as long as they agree to play the game, which is the same as is true for men. Men can participate in it as long as they also agree to play the game, but there's no room in that for women's subjectivity and for our realities. And so when we talk about protecting young girls, yes, it's really important that we make it clear to them what the reality of the world that we are forced to live in pretends to be, which is one where, if we just do the right things as women, if we just behave in the right way, if we just limit ourselves correctly, then we will somehow minimize risk of these terrible, terrible, you know, tangential, definitely not men doing them just bad, bad, bad shadow monsters who live in the walls and in the alleyways and who none of us know. If we do the right thing, then we'll minimize the risk to us.

Speaker 1: 16:39

But if one of those men that we do know or work with or are friends with, or even are partnered with, if one of them does something to us, then we have to question what it was we did to invite it. That's how we are taught to think, because that's how the system maintains itself and maintains plausible deniability for all men. All men benefit, whether or not all men are perpetrators, which they're not. All men benefit from living in a rape culture. And again, if you're just hearing that term for the first time, a rape culture is not one where people are just indiscriminately raping on the streets, but it's one in which even the very idea of rape and sexual assault has been Hollywoodized to the point where so many people do believe it's just something that happens if you walk down the wrong street late at night, and it's definitely not anything that a man that anyone would possibly know or consider decent would ever do. There's always the plausible deniability afforded to men.

Speaker 1: 17:41

I think that arming intellectually our daughters against these realities by teaching them what the realities are and teaching them the rhetorical tactics, is just as important, if not more important, than giving them sensible, practical and unfortunate in that they shouldn't be required. But practically speaking, there's no harm in doing. There's no harm in educating girls you know, don't cover your drinks at pubs, that kind of thing. I mean I hate that we have to do that. But there's no harm in saying, until we fucking dismantle the system, just make sure that you are on your guard and not just around some men, that you're on your guard around all men.

Speaker 1: 18:30

And maybe that's how we need to reclaim that ground is because we're never supposed to say, as women, be careful, because you can't trust men. We're always meant to just pretend that that untrustworthy figure is some kind of shadow creature. Just be careful. Just be careful out there. Just be sensible. Don't do this because you just don't know who's out there, all right? Okay, well, let's just call a fucking spade a spade. And if you want to continue to teach girls that it's their responsibility, this is I'm addressing this to the broader society.

Speaker 1: 19:04

Now, if you want to continue to teach girls that it's their responsibility to protect themselves from an amorphous harm that society refuses to name, that being men, men pose the biggest risk to girls' health, wellbeing and safety then don't turn around and get fucking mad when those of us who are invested in the safety of girls actually call a spade a spade and say to protect yourself, you need to be aware that any man that you know, all men, pose this risk to you and be on your guard against them. Now, if I went into schools and taught them that I would be crucified in the press, you know, wow, surprise, surprise. But also, people would just not tolerate it. Parents wouldn't tolerate it.

Speaker 1: 19:49

The same people who think that it's completely normal to make it entirely girls' responsibility for protecting again that word themselves from men's abuse think and would say that I was deranged that I was brainwashing their daughters, that I was just a man-hater, that I was, you know, a hateful person, that I was paranoid, that it was hurting their son's feelings for me to go in and say you know what girls you can't trust any of these boys Can't trust any of them. So you've got to be on your guard around all of them. How dare you, how dare you malign all men like that? Do you think that we can just train all boys to stay at home? Well, that's what we've been trying to do for girls and two girls for generations is curb their behavior, is to limit their interaction and experience in the world. Their expression is to fucking clip their wings so that your boys can go out there and they can be unfettered and unchallenged in their expansion in the world. They can go out and they can do anything and be anybody. They can be Brett Kavanaugh, who abuses a girl that he goes to school with when he's 17 years old and grows up to be a Supreme Court justice, because boys will be boys. That is the reality of.

Speaker 1: 21:14

What you need to teach your daughters is to be prepared against every single way and method and technique and tactic and line that the world that we currently live in will use to discredit their own testimonies of experience in this world, and that there is nothing that they can do that will entirely remove the risk of experiencing or being subjected to harm, sexualization and male-led objectification, until we dismantle the very system and society that we live in that says that those things are not only okay, but that they are the acceptable expression of masculinity. That's what you need to teach them and, in the meantime, also make it so clear to them that, if they happen to be subjected to any form of abuse or harassment, that the very first person they know will believe them about it is you, that you will never turn around and use any of these rhetorical tactics on them. You'll never doubt them. You will never be the person that causes them to either feel unsafe in your company as well, or to question their own recollection of events, because you will give them the space to express and have seen the subjectivity that this world so desperately wants to beat out of them.

Speaker 1: 22:44

Before we even get to the point of how, in the moment, to deal with this unwelcome attention or criminal behavior, we need to make sure that our daughters and the young women that we know and love, which is all of them, hopefully, that they know from the outset that, however they are experiencing that attention or that touching or that objectification, however they are experiencing it is legitimate, that they will not be questioned or doubted, that their own feelings about it are valid, that they're not overreacting, what they are doing is reacting, they are having a very normal, legitimate reaction and that they are entitled to that reaction and that, yes, maybe someone else would find what was happening flattering, but that doesn't matter, because it's their reaction and no one can tell them what their reaction should or should not be. That is the first and most important lesson that we need to teach them that how they feel and how they respond is real and no one can take it away from them. Once we start down that path and we start really solidifying the strength and the boundaries around girls and women's own subjectivity, so that we have fewer and fewer, to the point where, hopefully, one day we will have no young women ever question or doubt their version of events or experience or say that they are overreacting to themselves and just suck it up and just decide oh well, that's what it takes to live in this world and I should be flat All of those things that we've always been told and forced to fucking swallow, so that men get to continue, as I said, in that great expansion. Once we solidify the strength and the boundaries around that, it is so much easier to tackle the rest, because by solidifying and strengthening the boundaries and barriers and truth that they place in their subjectivity and in their interpretation of their own experiences, we give form finally to the monster that they've always been taught to fear but that has never been allowed to exist in its true state, which is just that, at the end of the day, it's just humans and it's just men.

Speaker 1: 25:21

Now, just quickly, before I wrap that up, if you're talking about very young girls, that might all be a little bit complicated to distill to them, but that's certainly not just a conversation that you can have with teenage girls, but that I would hope that you would play this episode to them and if you are listening to that right now, if you have had a mother or an older woman, play this to you, or you just listened to me anyway. Firstly, hi, welcome, I love you. But also don't ever fucking let anyone tell you that your experience is not valid, that your interpretation of your experience isn't valid and that you have to accept someone else's desires or version of events or belief in their own entitlement because they said so. You do not. You get to be in charge not just of your own body, but in charge of your own story and in charge of your own subjectivity. If the world insists on objectifying women, then the very fucking least it can do is allow us to have our own subjective interpretation of that experience. Don't let anyone take that away from you as well.

Speaker 1: 26:27

If you're wondering about little little girls, there are ways to have these conversations with them, and that's just to repeat from a very young age, I will always be here for you. I will protect you no matter what. If anyone does anything to you that you don't like, if someone wants to play with you and you don't want to play with them, or if your friend says something that you must do it because they want to, you don't have to. I believe you you're allowed to feel however you feel. Your opinion matters. I mean all of these things. We just have to boost and build up not just the self-esteem of young girls and young women everywhere, but the knowledge that they are allowed to fight for themselves, not fight against attackers, although they can do that as well but they are just existing, inexisting, allowed to fight for their own fucking well-being, for their own independence, for their own right to articulate their own experiences. That is a right that they have as humans living in the world. I feel very fired up now and inspired and I hope that that has been helpful not just to the person who asked this question but to anyone listening. And remember, if you would like to submit a question to Dear Clementine, you can email me on untetheredpod at gmailcom. Everything is anonymous. I got your back, don't worry.

Speaker 1: 27:57

And if you like the show in general, I obviously do the Friday Five on Fridays, which is the rundown of the week's news stories. I have my Wednesday conversations. This week's conversation is going to be with Lucy Cavendish, who is one of Australia's most famous witches, and we had a wonderful discussion about patriarchy, misogyny, history. A wonderful discussion about patriarchy, misogyny, history, energy and why witchcraft in particular has attracted so much misogynist violence over the millennia. That's on Wednesday.

Speaker 1: 28:26

You can check out the liner notes of this episode as well for ways to support me and my creation of Untethered. The best way to do that is by becoming either a subscriber to Substack or Patreon. You can do that on Patreon for as little as $2 a month. You can also directly subscribe to Buzzsprout. There's so many ways to support me and, really, truly honestly, a little bit of financial support from a lot of people helps me to make these things, helps me to make this podcast, helps me to remain completely untethered from the bullshit and, in doing so, completely uncensored. So I appreciate you, I love you, thank you so much for listening. Subscribe. If you haven't yet, rate it, review it, share it with your friends and, in the meantime, I hope this podcast has found you well. Yours sincerely, clementine.