Be Nice! How Our Culture Creates Girl-Victims

I watched it unfold with horror. The little girl — maybe five years old — wanted to climb up the slide like the bigger kids were doing, when a boy pushed her out of the way and she shoved him back.

“Be nice!” her mother scolded, pulling her out of the pack of kids, “You can’t do that. You can’t go up the slide. You have a dress on” — as if this little girl should learn early and often that the clothes she wears will limit her freedom — “Don’t shove people!”

The grown up was embarrassed that her little girl had asserted her place in the playground queue and didn’t understand the decorum involved in climbing up a slide. Mom didn’t address the boy bully behavior, of course, but panicked and went into girl default mode: Be nice — dear God, what is that? We continue to teach our little girls to be “nice” when we should be teaching them to be fierce.

The #metoo “movement” is as old as human history. I’m 61, and from the time I was an 18-year-old waitress I’ve had some guy in just about every work environment try to push me around using sex. When I rebuffed the “advances” of the chef at the Jersey shore restaurant where I worked he ruined every order I put in, throwing the plates at me with burnt meat or watery vegetables. The customers yelled at me, my tips diminished and I quit. The pattern continued when I practiced law, from the time a male attorney grabbed my ass at the copier to the time a “rainmaker” state senator (who was a partner) asked me if he made me “wet.” The guy was…