The Juvenility of Men Behaving Badly

My kid is at the stage in life where fart jokes and moon­ing some­one are just about the most hilar­i­ous things he can think of. I’ve fre­quent­ly found myself sur­prised by a scrawny 10 year old back­side while doing chores. Even a wag­gly full-frontal, on occa­sion. He is uncouth. Now, I don’t care a whit about this. I’ve been see­ing him naked for a decade now, after all. What this sud­den onset of flash­ing has remind­ed me of is junior high, high school, and col­lege team sports. I can­not quan­ti­fy the num­ber of times that my peers and I tricked each oth­er into see­ing some­one’s body or bod­i­ly func­tion because we thought it was hilar­i­ous. In col­lege, the onset of shock sites like Goatse, Tub­girl, & Lemon Par­ty upped the ante a bit.

None of the guys ever real­ly want­ed to see any of that, but none of us ever real­ly cared either. The dis­til­la­tion of all of these inter­ac­tions is basi­cal­ly:

*nor­mal life*
“Hey, look at this hairy gum I sat in!”
“What the… son of a bitch!”
*laugh­ter*
*nor­mal life resumes*

Kind of a weird way for guys to devel­op camaraderie/intimacy, but it’s not like we have had much else to go on. When that behav­ior con­tin­ues into the adult world, and is per­formed around folks who haven’t been inured to it (i.e. women), it’s an issue. Lock­er-room & dorm mis­chief just don’t hunt. Clear­ly, plen­ty of men haven’t prac­ticed any oth­er way of com­mu­ni­cat­ing, or just don’t know their audi­ence. What engen­dered atten­tion & eye-rolling laugh­ter dur­ing for­ma­tive years is sex­u­al assault when you’re sup­pos­ed­ly grown-ass.

The last time my kid flashed me, I explained how I don’t per­son­al­ly care about him doing that kind of stuff in our bach­e­lor pad. I’m used to it. But I did explain how that behav­ior, when direct­ed at some­one you do not have a close rela­tion­ship with, could be con­sid­ered sex­u­al assault. Man did his eyes get big. I’m not sure he has a full grasp on what con­sti­tutes “sex­u­al assault” but he at least appre­hend­ed it. Hope­ful­ly he won’t end up as a man-child who thinks send­ing unso­licit­ed dick pics or whip­ping it out in front of peo­ple is hilar­i­ous.