Michael Gurian believes we are in denial about boys and men—and what is needed is systematic changes to meet the needs of both genders.
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In working with her family therapy clients over the last twenty years, my wife, Gail, has said, “If I were a parent of a boy, I would really be worried.” She is referring to her fear for the social, economic, emotional, and spiritual lives of America’s boys.
As we raised our daughters, we asked our girls what they thought of the gender landscape around them. Gabrielle (then 16) came home from school in 2006 and said, “We had a discussion in social studies about boys and girls—everyone was talking like girls had it hard but boys had it easy. They were in denial.”
Davita (then 19), came home from college for the holidays last year and reported a discussion with her college friends. “I’m really glad I’m a girl, not a boy. The boys aren’t sure what to do, but the girls are doing everything.”
These discussions were anecdotal, of course. Both girls and boys, and women and men, can experience suffering in our world. Girls don’t have it easy. Women don’t have it easy.
But it is also true that boys and men are in substantial trouble today. They increasingly fill our principal’s offices, ADD/ADHD assessment clinics, and rolls of the homeless and unemployed. Boys and men are more likely to be victims of violence than girls and women, commit suicide at four times the rate of females, and suffer emotional disturbance, behavioral and other brain related disorders in higher numbers. They are suspended or expelled from school in much higher numbers than girls, receive two thirds of the Ds and Fs in schools, and lag behind girls in standardized test scores in all fifty states. They abuse substances and alcohol at higher rates than girls and are incarcerated at exponentially higher rates (for more data in all these areas, please see www.whitehouseboysmen.org).
Especially telling, the majority of government and philanthropic funding for gender friendly-programming goes to programs and innovations to help girls and women. The existence of this funding is to be celebrated, but the disconnect between the reality males face and the social justice attention males get needs to be examined by each of us.
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We are in denial about our males.
I believe this denial will continue (and we will ultimately rue and mourn the dangerous, socially debilitating consequences) unless we change our academic, media, government, and philanthropic programming to include a new ideological truth: just as the traditionalist paradigm regarding girls and women needed to be deconstructed and replaced by the feminist paradigm in the last century, the feminist paradigm, especially as it regards boys and men, needs to be deconstructed and, at least in part, replaced now if we are to meet the needs of both genders.
Why does it need to change? Because it posits that females are victims of a masculine society that oppresses them systematically, and this isn’t true in the developed world anymore. While individual girls and women can be dominated and demeaned by individual boys and men (and vice versa), we do not live in a culture that systematically teaches girls and women that they are second class citizens and boys and men that they are superior.
While some areas of life are still male dominant (mechanical engineering, senior leadership at some corporations and some areas of government), other areas of life and work are female dominant (management, medicine, education, mental health professions). The original feminist paradigm posited systemic male dominance in our culture, but male dominance is only systemic in small pockets of the culture and female dominance also exists in others.
Can our culture open its mind to our new reality? To answer yes, we will need to make a distinction between gender issues in the developed world and the developing world. In many countries in the developing world, systemic and brutal patriarchy does prevail and the feminist model of male dominance/female victimization is essential for encouraging social justice. My own parents, while they served in the State Department, helped build schools for girls in Afghanistan against impossible odds. In that world, systemic degradation of females was and is prevalent.
But in the developed world, we can’t keep operating out of a gender lens that blinds us to reality. If we do continue to remain blind, we will continue to avoid fulfilling our most human of imperatives: to take care of our children. If we do not fix what ails our sons–if we do not love them in the ways they need to be loved–we will create an increasingly dangerous society for girls and women, too. No parent of either gender wants that.
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Copyright Michael Gurian 2013
Male oriented society still is the cultural norm, professed as true by both men and women. Men because at least in part don’t want to give up their privilege, women partly because they can go both ways with more freedom and are not in a position to upset the apple cart. I too look forward to the day we stop this nonsense, but based on results it won’t happen soon. There’s too much invested in it. Women have made great strides toward their better vision, but there is no such assistance for men to go forward as a group. Too… Read more »
Oppression: From the Spanish word for “I ain’t getting a big enough piece of the pie, a pie I never helped to bake, the applies I never helped to pick or the wheat I never helped to sow”.
What are you trying to say? lol. Okay then, so lets just oppress all the children as they never did anything for society yet, lets not give health care for anyone that never discovered a new form of therapy, to make it against the law to buy a house if you never built one in the first place, or better yet, lets make it based on the past behavior of individuals of their very own race/gender/sexuality/nationality/etc.! No, not really. Oppression is wrong and hurtful, it does not matter what. I do not believe you know a thing about what you… Read more »
With the recent spate of anti-choice laws and attempted laws, college rape statistics, Bechtel test failures and so on, I would not say that the developed world is free of trouble just yet. I think humans, in general, tend to overreach with initial societal change movements, but I also believe that they move back towards equilibrium. I look at all of the articles that have come out over the last few years, in magazines such as The Atlantic, that talk about how few men are “marriage” material these days, especially in terms of “marrying up” and I think that those… Read more »
While I wholeheartedly agree with the fact that boys and men need more resources like the ones that are given to girls and women, I would offer one critique: you say that females aren’t victims of a masculine society that oppresses them systematically; I would change that to say we all, men and women, are still victims of a masculine society that oppresses us systematically — the reason nobody wants to address these issues with our boys is because of outdated ideas of what it means to be a man (“real men don’t go to counseling”, “man up and just… Read more »
The problem is on one hand we are all supposedly victims of a masculine society but on the other the very ideals that are associated with masculinity are then used as reason to avoid addressing issues that affect males. In affect what’s happening is we being simultaneously being told that the problem is that we idealize white-straight-tall-handsome-rich-alpha males but as soon as it comes to time to offer help to people the traits you mention (“white-straight-tall-handsome-rich-alpha male”) become exclusionary criteria where if you have any of those traits you are assumed to not need any help (and saying that you… Read more »
I also do not agree with the stament that women are “not victims anymore” – but I also strongly prefer the formulation “men and women, are still victims of a masculine society that oppresses us systematically” as allie has put it. I have no doubts that the flip side of female suppression is as often explained on this majorly great site the oppression of mens feelings, of the idea that men are vulnerable too, are complex too, etc. Nevertheless, women are still strongly disadvantaged. Gender pay gap, still having to take on the major responsibility for child care which is… Read more »
PK. It is utterly impossible that a society can be masculine unless it consists solely of men or masculine people. Let me explain. First let us define society: a body of individuals living as members of a community. And all these individuals have their roles and each individual makes his or her mark on society. Many societies have, in the past and in the present divided the roles of society along gender lines. Meaning that men operating in one part of society or operated in one aspect of society while women did so in another part. And this is where… Read more »
Good write up. There’s a lot I agree with but I do have a few quibbles…. Why does it need to change? Because it posits that females are victims of a masculine society that oppresses them systematically, and this isn’t true in the developed world anymore. I wouldn’t say that it isn’t true anymore. But rather I would say that its not the entire picture. We’ve been led to believe that if we could do something about the way men treat women then everyone would be better off (for example just think of how often when someone brings up something… Read more »
I am from the developing world Danny (South Africa). And I’ve been to Uganda, Ethiopia and the Congo. I can tell that life is hard for everyone in these countries. Some of the hardships affect women disproportionately, and some of them men. But life is hard for all and few are interested in gender studies. They just want their families to eat and be healthy and happy.
I can tell that life is hard for everyone in these countries. I don’t doubt that. Speaking as an American the image that is often presented of those areas of the world when it comes to hardships is that women and girls are suffering, men are causing problems, and boys walk a line where they are acknowledged as needing help UNTIL they because adults then at which time they are treated as causing problems or simply non existent. But life is hard for all and few are interested in gender studies. They just want their families to eat and be… Read more »
Especially telling, the majority of government and philanthropic funding for gender friendly-programming goes to programs and innovations to help girls and women. The existence of this funding is to be celebrated, but the disconnect between the reality males face and the social justice attention males get needs to be examined by each of us. This is one of the most exasperating aspects to raising boys (I’ve got three). Boys have so many problems and challenges today, but no one cares. There are all sorts of programs and initiatives devoted to girls. The teachers (mostly female) take a special interest in… Read more »
I feel your pain. Not only did we raise three boys – now grown men – but our sons have had, as of today, four sons of their own. I began to see some problems in school for my sons (the last of whom graduated from high school in 1999), but I am very concerned about what is and will be happening with my grandsons. But take heart, Ciaran. There is a growing “boys’ movement,” with lots of wonderful people involved. Michael Gurian is certainly one of them, but there is also Jennifer Fink, Leonard Sax, Christina Hoff Sommers, Marie… Read more »