The CDC reports that teen girls are in crisis. The depression rate has gone up 60% in the last ten years. The number of girls who report being forced into having sex has gone up 27% in just two years. These numbers were before Roe v. Wade was overturned. And we haven’t even added forced pregnancy into the mix. It’s only going to get worse.
CDC’s Recommendations?
Teach girls how to negotiate sexual consent better and lean on school counselors. Nothing about teaching young men NOT to hurt their female peers.
There is no attempt to address the source of girls suffering. It’s all about how we need to teach girls how to cope with it, how to learn to live with it.
They are framing this as a problem of teen girls’ mental health. Their mental health is not the problem. Their depression is a reasonable and correct response to what is happening in America, where republicans and their white christian evangelical nationalists are destroying women’s rights.
A girl’s brain is working precisely as it should. Their brain is telling them there is something very wrong, this is not safe, and this is not good. Girls’ brains are doing what they’re supposed to do.
The real crisis is the society that is making them feel that way. The real crisis is the boys and men who are hurting them. But there’s no conversation about that in the report.
The conversation is about girls’ mental health. Instead, the crisis IS about the boys and young men and a culture that is stripping away young women’s rights and treating them like shit.
Republican Voting Moms, Dads, Guardians
Here’s what you can do:
1. Stop voting for republicans across the board. They may be “nice”, they may be “good-looking”, and they may be acting like a “strongman”, but if they are not actively against all the horrible legislation that’s sweeping America, they are NOT for women and girls.
2. Denounce any advice from people like Andrew Tate and Jordan Peterson. Their rhetoric is hurting women and girls, not helping.
3. Pay attention to your daughters and granddaughters. Be there for them 1,000%.
Don’t be like the Missouri republican father who answered, “If it’s God’s will.” to the question, “What would you do if your underage daughter was raped and couldn’t get an abortion.”
Moms, dads, and guardians, YOU, make positive changes happen in your daughter’s life and uplift them. Not an invisible sky-daddy.