The Message of ‘In Love and In Danger’

I read “In Love and In Danger” (Oct. 13) with considerable dismay. That the beating of girls by teen and preteen boys has become so common that it warrants an article in The Times is a sad commentary on the level to which our society has sunk.

When I was in junior high and high school, in the late 1950s and early 1960s in Central California, such acts were virtually unknown. The very idea was absurd. Any boy who hit a girl would have been universally shunned and scorned as a sissy, a cowardly crybaby who would certainly never achieve real manhood.

It was obvious to all of us that beating a victim who can’t fight back requires of the bully no courage, no toughness, no strength and no intelligence and, thus, is not a test or display of manpower, but is quite the contrary.

That knowledge seems to have been lost to the current generation and I wonder how that loss came about in this mass-media saturated culture of ours. Perhaps some folklorist can enlighten us on that point and tell us how to correct this sad state of affairs?

DENNIS ANTHONY

Los Angeles