We live in a patriarchy. Misogyny and victim-blaming are rife. When a woman is assaulted it has become normalized to ask what she may have done to cause or exacerbate the situation.
What was she wearing? She should have known better than to walk there at night, alone. She does have a flirty personality though, doesn’t she?
Physical violence is the most obvious example but everything from the pay gap to the fitting of seatbelts in cars can demonstrate the disadvantages women face in our culture. Simultaneously, men are assured their comfort and convenience are natural priorities.
There is no justifying this status quo, and the pushback is rightly growing. One of the more common slogans we now hear urges parents not to protect their daughters, but to educate their sons. Alternatively, Don’t teach your daughters how to dress, teach your sons to respect women.
Starting early
I’ve always agreed with this sentiment and it’s how I intend to raise my children. I have a six-year-old daughter and a four-year-old son. At four, some might think my son is too young to be burdened with such a heavy load, but I’m not talking about dropping a tonne of text books on his little lap.
Many of the most important life lessons I’ve learned were drummed into me at an early age, so I’ve never even questioned them. But it works both ways: my mother raised me on her own, so I grew up in awe of women, but that didn’t stop me from absorbing a wealth of misogynistic tropes that needed to be unlearned. So I know that if we are not on the ball as parents, our son will inadvertently but invariably pick up all sorts of abhorrent ideas from the world around him.
It’s inescapable
We see it every time we turn on the TV, open a magazine, go online or even outside: advertisements, accessories, and shows all telling us where our places should be. Boardrooms, sports fields and building sites are for men, kitchens, classrooms, and bedrooms for the ladies. Men have their brains, women have their bodies.
It’s already begun. At school, my son’s teachers like to separate the children by gender as a form of crowd control. Before beginning formal education, I’m not even sure he was aware he was a boy, but it’s becoming increasingly important to him.
In terms of language, he’s always struggled with gender. He uses he/she or him/her at random. In a sense, it’s a positive that he’s never felt the need to categorize people into neatly defined boxes — he’s always been happy to (independently) use they/them as singular pronouns. However, lately, he’s been heavily favoring the masculine terms, especially for people he likes (whenever I’ve upset him, he tells me his mother is his favorite — “I really love him”).
How to respond?
So we do all the usual. We let him play with his sister’s dolls and buy him his own. His favorite socks are pink (though I’m concerned that’s because they have dogs on, and dogs are boys). We choose storybooks with appropriate morals and call out derogatory language or statements when they’re made in his presence.
The Super Sister
The problem is his sister — she’s awesome. She might not literally be a superhero, but at two years his elder she might as well be: everything he’s ever wanted to achieve, she’s already got down. And it isn’t like with adults, who are basically magic to kids at that age anyway — she’s small, like him (though the size difference is bigger than it ought to be — she even embarrasses him when it comes to growing).
She’s just small enough for him to understand they’re the same, though— so sometimes he struggles to understand why they’re not the same. She can run faster, jump higher and lift more. She can not only hold a pen properly, her drawings look like the things they’re supposed to — she can even read!
He may not be immune to outside influences, but right now his world is very small. To him, girls really are better than boys.
A tightrope
My worry now is that trying to counter a societal bias that is the direct inverse of his own experience might have the wrong effect. I know he won’t grow into some sort of dangerous ‘incel’ — as envious of her talents as he may be, he simply has too much adoration for his sister for that sort of bitterness to fester.
But I am worried that attempts to ensure his gender doesn’t make him feel superior might give him an inferiority complex. He’s fragile and sensitive, perhaps more so than his sister, and we have to ensure we put the correct weight on any lessons aimed at him.
Mental health
The permission to demonstrate sensitivity is one of the few areas where men are at a clear disadvantage. The constant degradation of supposedly feminine qualities, like empathy or the outpouring of emotion, is obviously harmful to women. But any resulting desire to shun or bottle up these ‘negative’ traits can be incredibly damaging for men.
Lately, there has been a positive increase in awareness surrounding men’s mental health. It is essential to make clear that there is no shame in admitting you’re struggling, revealing your emotions, or asking for help. But I also think it would be wise to take this opportunity to teach a wider lesson. If we can ensure that young men and boys are aware that being likened to or associated with women is, in fact, a positive thing, then we are making progress. Ultimately, this is something that will benefit everyone.
The need for our little men to understand their value is as important as the need for them to understand their inadvertent privilege and subsequent responsibility.
I want my son to be fully aware that not one person on this earth is better than him — but also to know that he is not inherently better than anyone else, either. It’s proving to be a finer tightrope than I’d imagined, but we’ll continue to do our best — for his sake, and for the sake of the society he goes on to help shape.
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Previously Published on medium
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You may also like these posts on The Good Men Project:
 White Fragility: Talking to White People About Racism |
 Escape the “Act Like a Man” Box |
 The Lack of Gentle Platonic Touch in Men’s Lives is a Killer |
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Photo credit: iStock
