Ariel Chesler explains that the side-effect of boys not being allowed to show “girile” emotions, is that all they are left with is rage.
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Following the recent killing of Maren Sanchez, a 16-year-old honor student in Connecticut, by a fellow student — Chris Plaskon — who was apparently in love with her, everyone is searching for root causes for such violence. The alleged motive was that Sanchez said no to attending a prom with Plaskon.
By all accounts, Plaskon had a good home life. He lived with his father and mother and three brothers and was a member of the football, baseball, and track teams. He had friends and was known to be boisterous and a jokester. His parents were also involved at school and regularly helped with school fund-raisers.
It has been suggested that teenagers aren’t just teenagers anymore because their personal lives are now broadcast on Facebook and Twitter and other social media. So, a rejection is now experienced very publicly on social media thereby exacerbating the blow. While the way we live our lives online is certainly a legitimate and serious concern it does not tell us why young men commit violent acts, as they did before the rise of social media.
As with similar violent acts, including the many mass shootings we have suffered in this country at the hands of young men, many turn to mental illness as a possible cause. Chris Plaskon is now being held at a medical center under psychiatric evaluation and friends and community members are now questioning his mental health. While accounts note that Plaskon was athletic and well-liked at his school, friends are now reporting that he had come to school with cuts on his arm in the past and had told a friend he planned to kill himself. It is also being reported that in eighth grade Sanchez helped see Plaskon through a bout with depression.
However, there have been conflicting accounts about whether Plaskon showed signs of being troubled. Some, including teachers and friends, have said that he showed no signs of trouble in recent months and his school counselor, who he met with two days before the murder, did not observe anything of note. Others have stressed that Plaskon was very upset about not having a date for prom and that he seemed more detached than usual last week.
I agree with Soraya Chemaly’s assessment that this and many other examples of violence against women at the hands of men are the “product of pervasive, violently maintained, gender hierarchy.” As Chemaly notes, these assaults happen every day and will continue to occur until we face and change those in our society who promote and teach entitlement and superiority to boys, and who fail to teach boys self-control. As Chemaly says, there is a Self-Control Gap encouraged by the “boys will be boys” mentality and when a boy lashes out with violence we need to immediately think about status and power, and the use of violence to retain power.
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But, there is more. As Chemaly has also discussed, boys are taught in ways subtle and direct that they are to move far from anything that is considered “girly” i.e. inferior, thus establishing themselves as superior. Examples of this range from clothing to hair to toys, and even to dreams of their future professsion.
At the same time, the process of becoming a man for many boys requires them to place themselves into a “man box.” As bell hooks explained in her book The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love, patriarchal culture influences parents to devalue the emotional development of boys and teaches boys that “real men” do not feel or do not express feelings. In essence, patriarchal rules deny the full humanity of boys and prevents them from acknowledging and addressing their emotions and precludes them from learning and practicing empathy.
There is one emotion left to boys that is not “girly” — rage. And, as hooks notes, boys are taught to act out this one emotion through acts of physical aggression, which gets them attention. It is easy to understand why one would express anger when one is not permitted to express any other emotion. Coupled with the mass media’s glorification of violence and social acceptance of violence by boys, it is not a mystery why boys are so violent. In hooks’s words:
Even though masses of American boys will not commit violent crimes resulting in murder, the truth that no one wants to name is that all boys are being raised to be killers even if they learn to hide the killer within and act as benevolent young patriarchs.
In many cases, boys also learn violence directly from their fathers or older male relatives, or may experience a lack of emotional connection to their fathers. And, when boys later approach their sexuality and are subjected to pervasive messages telling them to objectify girls and to be the sexual aggressor, we have an explosive cocktail of entitlement, rage, objectification, lack of empathy, and lack of self-control.
It is thus no wonder that a boy raised in this atmosphere would use violence to express his rage that an “inferior” person rejected his advances and because he is additionally embarrassed by failing the “real man” test by having no date for prom.
So, what’s the way forward? As hooks states, we must stop demanding that males engage in “acts of psychic self-mutilation, [or] that they kill off the emotional parts of themselves.” We must “protect and honor the emotional lives of boys” by challenging patriarchal culture, by allowing boys to be their whole selves, and by relieving them from conforming to “patriarchal masculine visions.”
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Originally appeared at Huffington Post and is republished on Medium.
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Sadly, it’s a very valid point that boys and men turn fear into anger. This is something I’ve written about in my new book “The Remade Parent” and as long as we make the mistake of bringing up our young males in this way then violence will continue to be a very common expression of male rage. I have also argued though that anger, in itself, is not always a negative feeling and can also be turned into productive effort if the source of the anger/outrage is a social wrong such as human rights abuse.
In all honesty this article disgust me thoroughly, as it appears to be nothing more than a blame game of violence at the hands of men. I’ve seen, and experienced violently abusive women in my life, and in the lives of those around me. It isn’t a matter of gender, so much as a matter of upbringing and the ability to cope with and manage one’s own emotions. What this young man did was horrendous and wrong, but honestly the roles could’ve just as easily been reversed. I’ve seen girls in high school do cruel and terrible things to boys,… Read more »
True, Josh, there are surely violent and angry women, but the distinction here is that men and boys are cultivated to be violent because of how we construct masculinity; it’s association with aggression, violence, toughness, independence, battled competition and the suppression of emotions in boys at young ages. Women and young girls are not raised to be this way. Because we shine the light on masculinity, it doesn’t mean we are blaming men, but evaluating how we construct and, in many cases, demand that men be tough and aggressive, not gay, not sissies, not girly. From a therapeutic standpoint, emotions… Read more »
There are many veins that feed the main arteries of a violent masculinity and masculinity in general. Those noted in Chesler’s article are dead on and are supplemented well by observations that both Jonathan and Paul make. However, in studying gender and violence in men, which is a significant part of the blueprint for our construction and performance of masculinity, violence, and threats of it, are the at the top of the list in retaining male privilege and power. When we look at how men police the boundaries of heterosexual masculinity, whether against women, other men, and more significantly, the… Read more »
“There is one emotion that it not ‘girly’ for boys: rage…” Yes, we all need to discuss this with our sons and daughters…such a tragic loss…luckily, my 13 yo son attends a great middle school and was involved in weekly peer counseling groups…he has shown his emotional maturity in many ways and I am proud of the way he has reached out to other boys his own age….we need to open up the discussion to kids and adults now… I have been shocked at the utter rage and violence of grown men that we have called friends…it pains me to… Read more »
Excellent article. I’ve written something with many similar points concerning the specific endemic nature of male on female rape (which I think TGMP is afraid to publish). The only problem I have is (regarding the references to Soraya Chemaly’s assessments), putting too much emphasis on the whole gender hierarchy thing, at least in a one-sided manner. I believe it’s very true that boys are taught that, at least for them, girliness is considered inferior. But I think it’s important to note that the hierarchy flips if we talk about sexual desirability and special treatment. I think boys grow up with… Read more »
Great comment, Paul. I agree with what you allude to at a number of points, and disagree with the article: I believe that much male rage comes not from feeling powerful and entitled, but rather from feeling powerless and resentful, unable to live up to the standards expected of us.
This is very unfortunate, but it will be a Long Time before Men & Women ACT on the pretense of Men Embracing Emotions & that is OK w/o Scrutiny. The posts yesterday about making ” manliness cool again” and women “raising and accepting Intelligent & emotional boys that become men” conflict, and are the Crux of Masculinity- Past vs Future…..