«A knife is quickly drawn on the way out»
My 17-year-old told me casually, as if he was talking about the biscuit he was cutting into pieces: «When we go out, we quickly pull out a knife. My colleague has one now too.» My maternal instinct startled me out of my doze. Knife?! Savvy from years of experience with teenagers, I didn't let on and casually asked: «Hm? How should I imagine that?»
«It's always the same. Some stressful person comes in, you can tell from a distance. They ask for a cigarette or something, then they start to provoke. And someone in the group always gets into it.»
Surely the one with the knife!, my motherly instinct shouted, reminding me of how often you read about fatal stabbings among teenagers my son's age. But by summoning up all my mental self-control, I managed to stay calm.
It's actually a scandal. While the whole world is talking about sexism towards women and there are thousands of initiatives against it, the everyday violence that young men experience when they go out is taken for granted.
«Wouldn't it be better to get lost straight away when stressful people like that come?» I asked. The little boy shrugged his shoulders and mumbled something. I didn't understand, but I realised that motherly advice wouldn't work.
It's actually a scandal. While the whole world is talking about sexism towards women and there are a thousand initiatives against it, the everyday violence that young men experience when they go out is taken for granted. And not only that. Because it has become customary to attribute a blanket share of the blame for everything that goes wrong in the world to men as representatives of the patriarchy, boys are penalised twice over. They are supposed to be responsible for the misery of the world, even though they had no part in it. At the same time, they themselves are confronted with a very specific male and violence problem, without knowing any remedies or answers to it. They are supposed to stand their ground and become real men, but nobody tells them how. They are alone with what they experience out there.
That is disturbing. When my daughter started going out, I talked to her about sexual integrity and how to protect herself. But my son's situation overwhelms me. Sexism is an evil, but at least it's somewhat predictable. Which can't be said of violence. That's what makes it so difficult. I don't know what it means to become a man - especially not in today's society.
In situations like this, the maternal instinct doesn't know what to do. «Your colleague is running around with a knife?» I asked.
«Only for self-defence,» my son replied.
«Wouldn't it be wiser not to get involved in such arguments in the first place?» I asked rather lamely. «That's pretty dangerous.»
It didn't help much that my son explained to me that you have to slash, not stab. And it also didn't help that my partner explained to me that simply avoiding the danger wasn't a solution for a young man either, at least not among colleagues. However, he also failed to come up with a solution.
My maternal instinct will probably not sleep peacefully for a while yet. And hope that the paternal instinct will take over.
