Here’s a quote I still can’t reconcile. It comes from Julie Weintraub, who does good work running the Hands Across Tampa Bay non-profit that goes to schools and helps address teen dating violence. She talks to both the girls and the guys. “Beating her, punching her, kicking her or shooting her should never be an option after a break up or because they turn down your sexual advances,” says Weintraub. “We have to say that, because they don’t know.”
We’ve all been teens. We’ve all experienced the hormonal rushes and dynamics of dating–from first kiss to final rejection. It’s a parallel psychological universe. But no one ever had to actually lay it out that you couldn’t beat up or shoot somebody you were involved with or wanted to be involved with. Of course, you couldn’t! It’s not what civilized primates do. As a society, have we devolved that much–such that “they don’t know”?