In their op-ed in the Dallas Morning News and the Austin American-Statesman, co-writers Dan McCormick, assistant professor of Social Work, and Kris Sloan, associate professor of Education at St. Edward University, encouraged parents to talk to their sons about gender-based assault and harassment.  Sloan and McCormick suggest boys be taught how cultural hierarchy favors masculine characteristics over feminine qualities.  In the milieu of the #MeToo movement, Sloan and McCormick suggested parents should have conversations with boys about the meaning of consent and relationships based on shared power.  They point out that boys are taught from an early age to climb a hierarchy that exists between males and females, with a rejection of traits such as compassion, empathy, nurture, and vulnerability.

Boys Mostly Compete in an All-Male Hierarchy

I agree with the basic message of McCormick and Sloan about what to teach boys and about what is happening in male socialization.  What is missing, however, is what to teach girls in this same conversation.   McCormick and Sloan asserted that boys are taught to climb a hierarchy that puts boys at the top, ahead of girls.  While this may be true, far more ubiquitous and powerful is the teaching that boys/men must be at the top of the all-male hierarchy. 

We know from evolutionary psychology that boys and men ultimately behave in a way that secures the most sexual access to women. We know from mate selection science that men with the highest status and most resources have the most success in the mating marketplace. Studies even show that men who possess the “dark triad” of traits—narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy—have more consensual sex partners than the average man.  These men may also display very inappropriate behavior with a lack of consent.

Teach Girls to (Really) Prefer Traits of Compassion and Vulnerability

So, part of this conversation must be to teach girls that not only should their boyfriends and husbands have qualities of compassion, empathy, nurture, and vulnerability, but that they should prefer those traits over hierarchical status, power, and resources.  And the ‘sexiness’ of shared power is another issue and area of study. Good luck teaching something contrary to eons of evolutionary mate selection adaptation.  If teaching this to girls was done in parallel to teaching boys, we would have a holistic and transformative beginning to a much-needed sexual harassment reckoning.

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