What We Are Not Teaching Boys About Being Human

Deadlocked02 · 2021-08-07T18:21:22+00:00

Honestly, I’m in a point where I’m already failing to see the nuance of things and being outright skeptical from the get go. This article, even though it tries to have some, still disgusts me as usual. So this woman has three sons and that still wasn’t enough to break her obscene gynocentric bias. The whole article just feels like “How can we tell better stories to young boys in order to make the world a better place for women” or “Why can’t boys express themselves in more feminine ways?”.

The lack of positive people-focused stories for boys has consequences both for them and girls. In the narratives they consume, as well as the broader cultural landscape in which they operate, girls get a huge head start on relational skills, in the day-to-day thorniness and complexity of emotional life. Story by story, girls are getting the message that other people’s feelings are their concern and their responsibility. Boys are learning that these things have nothing to do with them.

Really? Have you stopped to think that maybe, unlike certain antiscience ideologies like to believe, boys and girls are fundamentally different and like different things? That maybe boys prefer action-oriented things, as opposed to feelings-oriented things? Really, just look at the male leads from the most popular stories for children and young adults. They are characters who worry deeply about their families, friends and communities. And it’s this concern that drives them to take action and even put themselves in harms way, which makes for interesting storytelling for kids and YA. I fail to see how being responsible for the physical well-being of everyone is any less important than being responsible for people’s feelings.

You, Ruth, is part of the problems that men’s rights activists have been trying to address for years: society currently highlights female forms of expressions over male ones, female forms of domestic labor over male ones, female ways of venting and dealing with problems over male ones, female efforts over males ones. It’s a long list. You mention that boys are falling behind in education, which is true, and that’s precisely one of the reasons. And the same can probably be said about areas such as mental health. Men aren’t defective for not functioning like women.

Besides, men are told all the time to police their behavior in consideration to the women around them. They’re taught that women’s feelings are their concern and responsibility. But you wouldn’t know that, would you, Ruth? You can afford to watch TV, browse your social medias or favorite newspapers and rest assured knowing that people care about you. That none of the world’s problems are your fault and that if your gender is being addressed, it is to talk about the ways you’re victimized, not about the ways you need to change to make everyone else comfortable. But that’s not the case if you’re a man. You’ll be constantly exposed to material that aims to teach how to make the world a better place for women, even though you never intended to do otherwise in the first place, even though you never had anything against women. It’s in your classes, it’s in the ads you see, it’s everywhere, including fiction. The reason so many boys prefer fiction that doesn’t actually include this kind of message is because they’re already being bombarded with it everywhere else, but apparently they shouldn’t even have a safe place to escape to. You talk about emotional labor, but how about the mental toll that this demonization takes on boys and men?

The impact on boys’ mental health is also likely to be significant. From a young age, girls’ friendships tend to be more intimate, deeper and more emotionally focused, providing a support structure that is often sorely lacking for boys.

And still, there’s no consensus about that even among women. Admittedly, I don’t know much about young boys, but adult men have plenty of ways of helping each other emotionally that are often downplayed for not being feminine enough. Several men report being more comfortable venting with their male friends than with their partners.

According to the American Psychological Association, this lack of support, and the masculinity norms that underpin it, can contribute to a range of serious mental health problems. Adolescent boys are also at almost twice the risk for death by suicide than girls — so this is an urgent problem.

Oh, yeah, the same APA whose guideline for psychological practice with boys and men defines masculinity as an anti-feminine ideology and talks about male privilege? Way to lose credibility.

“Although privilege has not applied to all boys and men in equal measure, in the aggregate, males experience a greater degree of social and economic power than girls and women in a patriarchal society (Flood & Pease, 2005). However, men who benefit from their social power are also confined by system-level policies and practices as well as individual-level psy- chological resources necessary to main- tain male privilege (Mankowski & Maton, 2010). Thus, male privilege often comes with a cost in the form of adherence to sex- ist ideologies designed to maintain male power that also restrict men’s ability to function adaptively”

So let’s work toward a brave new world, in which a boy can proudly shuttle between two birthday parties, sweating with compulsive people-pleasing. Let’s give boys some girl drama, teach them the dark arts of emotional labor and likability. We might all be healthier for it.

Sure, sure. Let’s teach boys to express themselves in more feminine ways and dominate typically female “arts”, so they can grow up to be men who’ll help their partners in typically female spheres, all that while women are largely exempt from typically male spheres of responsibility and the male gender role remains as static as it ever was, with men being required to be the only ones selected for military service, having to earn more than their partners/provide if they don’t want to die alone, being bled dry in courts for alimony/child support and being responsible for the physical and emotional well-being of all women, because that’s what men are good for, right?

Blutarg · 2021-08-08T13:55:24+00:00

“When we devalue things associated with femininity — such as emotions and relationships — boys miss out.”

And I'm out. If she really wanted to challenge sex norms, she would push back against the absurd idea that those things are associated with femininity. But no. Of course not. Not in the Grey Lady.

Why are boys raised with dump trucks, airplanes, and battleships? Simple: to prepare them for their role as society's tools, income-earners and life-protectors to be instantly discarded should they ever be unable to do as they are told. Maybe push back against THAT, instead of bemoaning the lack of pink-covered books for boys.

Feminists don't want boys and men to be fully human. They want them to speak their language as they do society's dirty work so they don't have to feel quite so uncomfortable around the help.

antepenult · 2021-08-07T15:15:21+00:00

This is pretty interesting article about media directed at boys, particularly the lack of stories about social and personal conflict and how to resolve it. The author mentions the apparent demand for such stories based on the success of things like “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” and “Big Nate”.

Also, sorry about the paywall. I don’t know how to find a free version.

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