Do you remember when you were in kindergarten or maybe 4th grade on the playground and all of a sudden a boy of the same grade came up to you and told you that you looked ugly, or that you stink, or maybe he just simply pushed you, just because?
Whatever he did, you got offended by this and told your mother, expecting her to support you and reprimand him only for her to say the dreaded words, “Maybe he likes you.”
This is horrible.
It’s not only wrong but also teaches little girls that this type of borderline abusive behavior is normal behavior for future relationships, while also normalizing boys’ anger and rudeness in public settings.
Teaching girls at such a young age that boys hitting them means they like them not only encourages and conditions young women to be okay with abusive relationships, but also tells boys, also at a young age, that it’s okay to act out, which doesn’t help the problem at all.
In the article, “He’s Mean Because He Likes You,” it states, “…being taught early in childhood that abuse and humiliation are equal to love certainly doesn’t help anyone to create appropriate boundaries. In fact, it’s childhood lessons like this that can grow up with a person, eventually leading to ‘he hits you because he loves you.’”
The article also provides a real-life example of the effects of this problematic saying, as well as including another article linked by the Daily Mail: “…18-year-old vlogger Romina Garcia was promoting to her fans in 2014, in a video that has been viewed more than 375,000 times. ‘If your boyfriend or the guy that you’re with… hits you or beats you up or whatever he does, stay with him,’ she told followers. Romina Garcia confusedly added, ‘He’s risking all… for you.’ The response is so entrenched that it’s a staple reaction to any interaction between young children of different genders – even if that interaction crosses over into the sinister.”
This saying has real-world consequences, and the impact that it has on someone who was once a child and now an adult still believing in it hurts. Ms. Shannon Patton, Rancho Cucamonga High School’s psychology teacher shared more about the possible impacts this could have on teenagers today in the 21st century.
“If they have been told that often enough and really do believe in it, it may twist their view in relationships and they might think it’s okay for a guy to hit them. I think for most little boys when they hit it’s a soft little punch, it’s not meant to do damage, whereas women still do believe that the damage would be, obviously, worse than an older guy doing that.”
Junior, Naomi Marie Clanor shared her opinion on the saying.
“It’s gross,” Clanor said. “I think it’s a lot due to the fact that we can’t blame people due to their own behaviors because it’s meant to be associated with a gender but it’s not, that’s not how it works.”
Mr. James Longo, AP Government and sociology teacher, shared his opinion on the saying.
“I think parents have to let their kids know that you deserve to be treated with respect and anyone that doesn’t treat you with respect, you should give the time of day to them,” Longo said. “That’s how I feel and would expect my kids and expect of my students to tell, and you especially if you are female who is interested, who is heterosexual, and looking for a guy, and that guy is mean to you then run away.”
UMSU wrote about another incident: “American mother Merritt Smith found this when her four-year-old daughter, who had been hit so hard by a boy in her school that she needed stitches, was told by a hospital employee: ‘he must like you!’”.
Yet again we’re seeing the wrong reaction needed to this type of violence against this blatant abuse of young girls. Something that would’ve never been normalized if we at the young age of kindergartners, and were never taught.
Junior Gean Steven shared her personal experience with this, “I had an ex and everyone was like, ‘he bullies you because he likes you’ and that ended really badly.” Steven elaborates by saying, “I was saying [in my head] that he teases me because he likes me, he puts me down because he likes me and it didn’t help me get out of that relationship.”
Maybe authority figures can stop spreading this information and overall fix these toxic behaviors that children think are normal. Patton said, “I don’t think a lot of girls thought of it that way, so when you tell them like, the situation, it’s like ‘Oh, wow, yeah’. So I definitely, think it’s fixable.”
“I think in society we’re allowed to call this stuff out more but in some cultures, it’s less accepted to say anything,” Clanor said. “Because in Japan when someone grabs you by the hand, you can’t say anything because you’re disrupting things. And I think we’re getting away from that idea of ‘don’t say anything because then you’re gonna seem rude.’”
Senior Dior Woods, agreed going a bit more in-depth on the saying.
“If he’s mean that means he likes you, but there are levels of the meanness, you know?” Woods said.
Maybe it’s time for authority figures to stop passing down this saying to there little girls and teach them to find kindness and support within a partner.
