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Actively or passively, our current culture and mainstream family life teach boys that there is a very narrow set of expressions and experiences that are acceptable. Starting as early as 4 years old, a boy who easily cries is shut down by siblings, parents, teachers and coaches. As the boy grows toward his teen years, he’s told to “Be a man” or “Man up” or “get tough”. Adults don’t say this because they want to harm the young boy, they teach it because they are afraid that he will be beaten to a pulp. They fear quite literally that his physical body will be in very real danger if he behaves in ways that are deemed too feminine, or overly sensitive. This is one of many forms of micro-aggressions perpetrated against boys, teaching them that toughness and insensitivity are the only safe and acceptable ways to be male.
We “GI-Joe” our boys, or throw them into sports, where they are powerfully encouraged and rewarded for being violent in their pursuit of winning. Stop and think of every single term you’ve ever heard for beating another team or player—even the word “beating” is violent:
pounding, annihilation, whipping, bashing, slaughter-rule, thrashing, trouncing, killing
A family doesn’t even need to be an abusive one to teach boys that violence, aggression, and hyper-sexuality (violence toward women) are the only acceptable and behaviors for men. A family only needs to be afraid that the boy will get beaten up himself, to harshly and powerfully school him on how to “be a man”.
If you’re not sure you agree, or if you feel that this is an exaggeration, consider boys who are gay, boys who are enthusiastic and widely emotional. Imagine boys who express joyousness, who might skip down a sidewalk or through a school hallway. Think about those boys who laugh too much, who use high-pitched, excited voices or jump up and down. What about the boys who dance, or read books too much? How are they treated at school or in their neighborhoods?
Those are the boys who get slammed into lockers. They are wrangled into bathroom stalls and dunked into toilets. If the family, the teachers or the coaches fail to hammer the expected narrow behaviors of manhood into these boys, then serious, sometimes even fatal beatings will do it. And even then, those failed adults may be looked at with suspicion and suffer consequences for having boys whose behaviors are outside our cultural norms for maleness.
This training we give our boys in aggression also spills into their video games. How many games are basically non-stop violence in every imaginable form, with female characters literally added in, just for the sake of killing. What about our media, what objects are marketed to men, and what is the focus of those advertisements? Ads that encourage a man to buy something portray the product as a means for the man to obtain “power over” a woman, or the elements, or a job, or whatever. Power over others is just another form of violence.
Girls and women who live here in our gun-loving culture have the same free access to guns as do boys and men, so how come nearly all violent shootings are perpetrated by men and boys? In subtle and not-so-subtle ways, we are teaching our boys that their role in our culture is that of violence, domination, power and authority. We raise them to be hunters and killers, even in our best intentions, wanting to prepare them for a role as family provider.
In that teaching, however, we also pass along the message that women and girls are prey, fair game. Boys and men are elevated as the better hunters and predators, even if they are hunting women. Perhaps especially if the hunting is of women. We literally create sexual predators of our boys as we show them by the rules enacted by their schools that girls will be punished, pulled out of class, made to change their clothes, and even suspended or sent home, just for being potentially distracting to boys. We send the clear message that boys are expected to be aggressive, impulsive, lacking self-control, and predatory. We convey that girls are expected to live their lives as prey, always on guard against attack, always trying to predict and prevent an assault. We expect to witness predatory language, attitudes, and behaviors from our boys. In fact, if we don’t see a certain measure of it, by a certain age, we can even come to worry that our boy is somehow defective.
We convey that girls are expected to live their lives as prey, always on guard against attack, always trying to predict and prevent an assault. We expect to witness predatory language, attitudes, and behaviors from our boys. In fact, if we don’t see a certain measure of it by a certain age, we can even come to worry that our boy is somehow defective.
I wonder what the world would look like and be like if the norm was to teach our boys to be the loving, joyous, enthusiastic, emotional and whole human beings that they are at four years old? What if we were to raise them up in ways that preserve and protect who they are by nature?
I wonder how our nation might be radically improved if we taught and expected our boys to be respectful of all females, to acknowledge women as fully equal in rights and capabilities regardless of gender differences? I wonder how we might heal as a human race if any woman could walk from one end of the land to the other, fully naked and know that she would come to no harm from any other human being? What amazing advancements might our species be capable of creating if our energies and attention were free to evolve, instead of being constantly focused on fear? I wonder what might become possible, when our boys and men can be fully, safely, exactly who they were born to be?
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“A family doesn’t even need to be an abusive one to teach boys that violence, aggression, and hyper-sexuality (violence toward women) are the only acceptable and behaviors for men.” So hyper-sexuality is a form of violence towards women? Could you develop that point? “This training we give our boys in aggression also spills into their video games. How many games are basically non-stop violence in every imaginable form, with female characters literally added in, just for the sake of killing.” Female characters that only exist to be killed do exist. However, most video game characters who only exist to be… Read more »
Thank you for your considered and thoughtful commentary. My thoughts on hypersexuality as violence toward women refers to the ways we reinforce that women should be seen as sexualized objects and boys are rewarded and encouraged with power over girls, as a result of this kind of behavior. Boy is distracted by girl in tank top at school. Boy doesn’t get reprimanded for his lack of focus or distraction. Instead, girl gets pulled out of class and forced to cover her objectified and hypersexualized shoulders so as not to distract boy. Boy gets reinforced and rewarded as he sees that… Read more »