I went out to lunch with a few friends the other day. Colleagues from work that I’m sort of trauma bonded with after our year long experience under an awful supervisor, but that’s a story for another day.
One of my colleagues was updating us on her recent vacation. She’s a white woman, married to a white man, and she was telling us about something that happened on a golf course. I might be using the wrong terms because I know nothing about golf, but she said the group behind them kept starting before she and her husband were finished. It kept happening, and eventually she got frustrated and kicked one of their balls away when it came too close to her.
That’s when things escalated.
She said one of the men yelled to her husband, “control your bitch.”
She’s the louder one in the relationship, and her husband is apparently slower to anger. He tried to tell them to calm down, but she escalated, yelling back that she isn’t a bitch and calling them out. Her husband stepped in front of her and, from what she shared, seemed to threaten them. He’s a much bigger guy than the four men, so it didn’t turn physical. Eventually, security showed up and separated everyone.
But what those men yelled stuck with me.
Control your bitch.
As a parent of a 15 year old son and a 13 year old daughter, I keep thinking about the age boys start referring to girls as bitches. I believe I’m raising a son who would never say that to a woman, mostly because I’m raising him to respect women—and maybe a little because I’ve told him I don’t care how old we both are, I’ll still knock him out.
But with my daughter, I don’t wonder if it will happen.
I wonder when she’ll be called a bitch for the first time, and whether I’ll be close enough to hug her when she calls me in tears.
Because this isn’t just about one moment on a golf course.
It’s about what boys are learning, what they’re allowed to say, and what girls are expected to absorb.
So I’m curious—
What are you teaching the boys in your life about how to speak to and about women?
And how are you preparing the girls in your life to respond without shrinking themselves?