Do We Really Need to Save Boys and If So, From What?
August 6, 2010
by Patricia Garrison
|The opinions expressed herein are those of the author, and not necessarily those of The New Agenda.
Hanna Rosin’s The End of Men (Atlantic Monthly, July/August 2010) set off a firestorm of comments about how and why women are surpassing men, but there have also been rumblings about the growing list of achievements by girls. Girls are besting boys at reading, and are far more likely to gain entry into school programs for gifted children. They area gaining ground in science and math, and are far more likely to enroll in and graduate from college. All good, yet cause for hand-wringing among academics, educators and parents. How, they wonder, can we ‘save’ boys?
I’m all for examining the weaknesses of our educational system. But, in terms of rescuing boys, I think we’re overreacting. Truth be told, more young people than ever are going to college, and a heck of a lot of them are male. College enrollment for males grew by 16% between 1994 and 2004 — it just grew faster for females (25%). Statistics show that boys still get better SAT scores and they continue to outdo girls in the sciences and mathematics. In elementary and secondary schools, girls outperform boys in reading by more than 10 points, but this has been a fact unchanged for decades. What has changed is that girls have improved their math and science scores to be about on par with boys. In short, they have upped their game.
Faced with greater opportunity in the work force, girls are going to college in record numbers. At every level and socioeconomic class it seems more girls are hoping to build a decent life for themselves. They are taking responsibility and not presuming that a man will take care of them. This is a significant cultural shift, and a move toward gender parity that should be celebrated.
Instead, we’re nervous. Why? Because whenever females inch closer to parity or, heaven forbid, surpass males, the ground shifts subtly under our feet. Whether we’re feminists, or not, pro-woman or not we overreact and worry about our sons. What will happen to them? Will they flounder? Will they feel disempowered? That’s an awful lot of worrying for what is essentially improved female math scores and more females enrolling and staying in college (often attributed in part to males’ greater access to blue collar jobs). This is not to say that boys aren’t adrift, but it’s patently unfair to downplay girls’ accomplishments because they’ve upset the ‘male superiority’ apple cart. It also lets adults off the hook, looking for solutions in loosely defined ‘boy-friendly’ educational environments or, worse, accepting the anti-female sentiment that plays right into the growing misogyny in high school and on college campuses. Not to mention, it’s alarmist and unfounded. Boys are not failing. It’s just that girls are doing better.
Coddling boys, academically and otherwise, is a profoundly bad idea that diminishes boys and cultivates a dependency and incompetence that will be hard to override as they move through adulthood. Rather, boys, like girls, need support in redefining what it means to grow up and become men and women in 21st century America.
In his book, Guyland, Michael Kimmel describes the world of young men between the ages of 16 and 26 as one of heated masculine frenzy, fueled by binge-drinking, academic mediocrity, and relentless misogyny. The rites of male passage he describes, played out on college campuses throughout the country (and I think many a high school corridor) are built on the degradation of females. The more contempt and abuse you show, the more a man you are. In a talk he gave recently in New York City, he allowed that young male environments have never been hotbeds of gender equality and enlightenment. Still, he argued that the enormous cultural changes now manifesting in the lives of our daughters have not been met with change in our sons. And we are complicit in that. Indulging our own gender biases, we keep our sons stuck in a grainy, washed out version of American life from some tired 1960s sitcom.
Time to get over it and, as enlightened women, put our principles to work. For starters, we can concern ourselves more with the kind of men we are raising, than with which side is winning the “boys are better than girls” game. We can make demands that boys focus, stretch and learn the difference between being assertive and abusive. We can let them know that equality makes men and women healthier, happier, and more alive (just check the research). By encouraging boys to take themselves and their lives seriously, and to respect – and perhaps learn something – from the other half of the human race, we give them what they need and what truly needs saving. Their full humanity.
“the enormous cultural changes now manifesting in the lives of our daughters have not been met with change in our sons”
Actually I think the changes have been met by our sons they just haven’t been met by the old men who run corporate media and the political parties.
What really is stunningly obvious is the men who run the Corporate Media and political parties are completely unaware of the changes in women’s lives over the past 100 years. Of course it is also possible the old media men and politicians see themselves as enforcers of a misogynist view of the world. But don’t be fooled corporate media (who owns government) reflects the culture and mind set of old, white, rich, Jewish men it does not reflect American culture at large because most segments of the population have no voice. Clearly these men want the advertising dollars of companies who want to talk to women consumers so they keep setting up “women’s channels” and hire “yes” women to program them. They put on the same idiotic offensive content punctuated by offensive advertising every 5 minutes and another Oxygen Network with no female viewers is born. Why is it the “men’s channels” have enthusiastic viewers and the “women’s channels” do not? It is a colossal waste of time and resources and if their content weren’t so completely lame that no one watches it might be polluting the brains of young people.
So I think our sons are clearly aware of the differences between “backward gyrating sex infused media woman” and “real regular woman 2010″. I also think most of them prefer “real regular woman”. And those of our daughters who aren’t destroyed by the demeaning, degrading invasive corporate media view of women are made strangely stronger because they learn to be themselves against all (very frequent) challenges and put downs. This generation of women are amazingly strong and resourceful and I look forward to watching them take over.
Patricia,
“By encouraging boys to take themselves and their lives seriously, and to respect – and perhaps learn something – from the other half of the human race, we give them what they need and what truly needs saving. Their full humanity.”
This sentence points out the crux of the problems that continue to exist between men and women.
It really comes down to how sons are being raised and the messages they are being sent by society, particularly, when it comes to the automatic “male entitlement” syndrome that screams “how can we save the boys”, whenever evidnece shows that young girls are not only keeping up, but passing them by. The male myth about their own superiority is what’s destroying them, and young girls excelling in school is bursting that bubble of dillusion that men hide behind in order to avoid the truth about the other half of the human race.
Sadly, I have doubts that the majority of fathers will raise their sons that “equality makes men and women happier and healthier”…. I believe this task will have to go to the mothers, at least to start the process. Hopefully, someday both parents will raise their sons to view women as their equals and that the “rites of male passage” will no longer be about the degree a young man goes to degrade and show contempt for women, but the degree to which they live up to their own potential.
Sadly, I have doubts that the majority of fathers will raise their sons that “equality makes men and women happier and healthier”…. I believe this task will have to go to the mothers, at least to start the process.
And this is the problem. When it’s something that girls do, and boys want to come into their own identity, they will do it by proving how NOT like Mommy they are. And they will do this by rejecting her advice. Mommy says not to hit girls — so go hit them. Mommy says not to say “cunt.” cunt! Cunt! Cunt!
If Daddy doesn’t do this shit, then it’s all to naught. And mostly, when Daddy tries his hand, it all comes out as, “Hold doors open,” “Say you’re sorry even if you don’t have the slightest clue what she’s on about,” and “Askyourmother.” I do not know what the solution is. I just know that, as one of those girls who could absorb math like water and crank out As without half trying, I biliously resent the implication that I have to cool it and act stupid to keep some boy from feeling bad because a female outperformed him, and that’s what this is about. It’s not about saving boys, it’s about saving boys from finding out that a girl might be smarter than him.
It’s about coddling. And like I said before, you can’t coddle a boy or man into accepting you as a reasoning human being. They don’t respect that even among one another.
Good article!
I think we need to be careful suggesting that parents just need to raise sons that value equality because it takes a whole village to raise a kid. Even the most enlightened parents cannot change the cultural influences that constantly promote male entitlement. Boys are pressured to conform to cultural norms from day one. They are taught to shun anything viewed as female, they are rewarded for putting down women and girls. And they are punished for not complying, homophobia comes into play, they are accused of being gay, they are ridiculed for throwing like a girl. It’s very difficult for boys to reject social norms.
I agree, but it was very difficult for ME to reject social norms that put a ton of pressure on me to giggle, act stupid, fail math and science, and hand out blowjobs like candy. They can, too. They don’t want to. :-/
Men need to make their own selves relevant to society and to women of this era. It’s not our problem. I agree that the University Frat experience is about binge drinking and trying to impress your buddies with sex and it is self destructive. I aimed my son at a University that didn’t have the Greek system as I suspected he would have been drawn down the Frat drain. My daughter went through Rush, and dropped out of her sorority within 4 days when they told her she had to wear white shoes, and hasn’t looked back. She is just far more resilient and she is able to see the possible negatives and positives of any situation, make a decision and act on it.
It is entirely possible that men need a man org to focus on what men are and how to be relevant and fulfilled. It hasn’t worked out too well to define themselves as “not female” or “the ones who degrade females” because real females are just so damn competent and formidable. And todays girls are in their face about it, two examples…my daughter skis in a shirt that says on the back “yeah I’m a girl, and I’m ahead of you” with two big black diamonds and I remember seeing many shirts that said “play soccer like a girl” after the women’s team won. If males aren’t faring well in todays world that’s their problem and they need to deal with it. Girls are moving forward with or most likely without men. If men decide to cling to their old ways that’s too bad for them but we should leave them in peace as long as they don’t get in our way. If they get in our way, I say violence is appropriate.
I think part of the problem is that boys don’t begin to really find out how their roles screw them over until they are much older, whereas girls hit their noses on it fast. By the time you’re eight years old, you’ve already been told to your face in class GIRLS ARE STUPID!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and had teachers sit back and do nothing in response, or been told that you can’t do something you want to do, or been smacked down for acting the way boys act while they are praised for it, or been held back to make room for a boy … etc.
Boys by contrast may get a bit of that, but for the most part the heroin of male approval smooths their path over, and they don’t find out that their GIRLS SUCK attitudes will destroy their lives until the divorce, or until they start trying to reconcile GIRLS SUCK with wanting to get married to one of those sucky things, the beloved “I hate you I love you give me your pussy you bitch I need you” syndrome.
It hits us when we’re in single digits. It doesn’t start ruining their lives until they’re around 25-30, or older.
And when it all comes down to it, so what if they suck in class? They all still outearn us, and own almost every government on Earth, despite being demonstrably stupider or at least spineless enough that one smart girl can completely overturn their entire view of themselves and their achievements. They have all the money and all the power, and they get it despite being dumber than us. That doesn’t sound to me like THEY need saving, honestly. If they stink academically, it’s because they know that they can be slackers and still come out ahead of their smarter, harder-working female colleagues. They’re not in need of saving, they’re just lazy. They don’t need to be as good to succeed, and they know it. Conversely, girls know that they need to EXCEL-EXCEL-EXCEL in order to even get a foot in the door, so that’s precisely what we do.
“Men need to make their own selves relevant to society and to women of this era”
That’s very true. Boys need to adapt to the changing culture around them. It’s really not our problem, it’s up to them to adjust.
“I agree, but it was very difficult for ME to reject social norms ….”
This is also true, except girls growing up don’t have as much to lose. Even if you play the game properly, your reward at best is to be a second class citizen. There is no male entitlement waiting for you, no male privilege to constantly benefit from if you conform to the gender expectations. The cultural norms for women are not very rewarding. When you try to sell equality to young men, in essence you’re suggesting that they should give up making a full dollar for every 75 cents women earn, that they should have to study twice as hard just in order to compete. We’re asking them to give up their presumed status, to share the resources. In exchange we offer these vague assurances that men will be healthier, happier, and the world will be a better place. All true, but still a hard sell, especially to people still too young to see the big picture.
That is not to say that girls don’t have huge obstacles in front of them or that they don’t have an incredibly difficult time rejecting social expectations. It’s just that girls have something to gain from pursuing equality, while boys fear they have something to lose.
As to the title of the article, no we do not need to save boys. Boys need to save themselves, to adapt, to start picking up their end of the board. Hopefully, someday in the future, they are no longer going to be granted privilege and entitlement simply because of their gender. They’re actually going to have to earn it.
Guyland is a wonderful book. I think that everyone with children should read it so that they know what their daughters are up against.
Bes,
Even if a university doesn’t have National or Local fraternities or sororities on campus that doesn’t mean that their interest groups do not behave in a group mentality that you are referring. I did go to a private university that has a fraternity system and was in a sorority, and I understand their shortcomings but I had an overall positive experience and I still advise the sorority chapter at the university where I teach. The computer interest floor, the international floor, etc. carried the some of the most sexist individuals I had ever met. How about sports teams? It is unmonitored “group” mentality that can cause some of the most horrific abuses to women.
Some very fantastic individuals here at TNA were part of sororities and were then and are still fantastic positive contributors to the pro-woman movement. When I get the chance, I will write up an article about the National Fraternal system and what changes have occurred in the past 20 years that are working to create safe environments for college students and teach them individual and group responsibility.
–Optix
We’re asking them to give up their presumed status, to share the resources.
Yeah. Which is why we can’t keep asking them if equality is okay with them, and instead have to just start grabbing it for ourselves. The hardest thing is to convince women that they don’t NEED anyone’s permission and should stop making sure it’s okay with everyone else (men, natch) before we achieve something or facilitate another woman’s achievement. I mean, if we ask them, of COURSE they’re going to say no, it’s not okay, or can it wait for just this one thing here, or if only you could explain it to me in terms I can understand then I’ll say it’s okay but …
If they know they can stall and succeed in stopping us, then that’s exactly what they’ll do.
yttik,
It has been proven that when you have to “earn” what you get in life, instead of having it given to you is always the best way to find out “who you are”. Instead, the male mentality is to make certain that men have a distinct advantage in society over women. It’s precisely because of the unlevel playing field that men ensure for other men to succeed that with the continued evolution of women and their subsequent success in areas which were once exclusively male provinces, has created a “ruse awakening” amongst men that maybe by cheating women of their rightful chance to realize their full potential, they have inadvertently harmed themselves. Hopefully, they will “learn” from this, but I suspect it will be hard to give up entitlement which lowered the standards for men to achieve. For any woman to flourish in this enviornment tells me that women have learned how to rise above adversity, which men have shown to have a very difficult time doing.
This phenomenon is much like the Chinese government systematically murdering baby girls at birth because they “favored” baby boys and wanted them not to have to share the limited resources available to them, such as food. Now there are not enough women in China for the over population of males. Their hatred for females blinded them to this happening! I view this as real KARMA and the men are getting just what they deserve for such horrific behavior.
Women are not the problem, the monolithic male view of the world is.
yttik, I think you’re right that girls have little to lose from rejecting social norms so they learn to do so early on. And most of them are rejecting corporate media norms daily so girls experience is with norm rejecting rather than norm conformity. Meanwhile the boys don’t really have any corporate media norms that are so “off” that boys must reject them just to “be”.
Actually you could compare the corporate media drawn female norms with cave men who draw animals on caves which anthropologists said was so they could gain some sort of power over them or perhaps worship them. So the old men in media keep cranking out their sexualized images of women in order to define women for themselves and have some sort of control over them. Or possibly they are just so dull they can’t do anything else. So we get “all young women are sex objects, all female crime victims are sex objects, murdered women are sex objects, old women can have the only female power men can perceive and be sex objects too” (this is a real modern and liberal concept in men’s minds). But none of this crap appeals to women, women aren’t buying it and girls are rejecting it with the support of their families and spiritual communities.
This does set up men for a major problem in accepting reality. They should do something about it but whining to women about it isn’t the answer. Call me Dragon Woman but my feeling is “tell someone who cares”. Or alternatively…I care about men’s inability to resolve their fantasizes with the reality of women as you all care about women having no authentic voice in media.
“old women can have the only female power men can perceive and be sex objects too” (this is a real modern and liberal concept in men’s minds)
It’s the Cougar stereotype. They can’t imagine a woman being powerful in her own right and have to still reduce her to a satellite of male desires.
And it’s all a lie anyhow — if women like the much-ballyhooed example of Sarah Palin only got where she was because of her looks, then why isn’t every politician on the planet a gorgeous woman? It’s because sex isn’t power for women, it’s just sold that way to get us to play sexual ball with them before we wise up, and by then there’s another younger generation of women who haven’t wised up yet in the pipeline.
In reality, all the true power brokers on Earth are always ugly old men somehow. If sex were REALLY power for women, every politician and CEO on the planet would look like Palin. And they don’t.
“If sex were REALLY power for women, every politician and CEO on the planet would look like Palin. And they don’t.”
Hmmmm Janis, I never thought of that but you’re right. But the ugly old men are just the ones who are really noisy about what power they have. It’s not like they are the only ones with power they just spend much of their time strutting and bellowing.
Did you all see this? http://news.yahoo.com/s/atlant.....eaving4618 Christina Romer is leaving her Obama administration job because she is being treated as a figure head, no doubt being used to up the number of token women in the Obama administration and Larry Sommers is the one Obama is talking directly to. Good they had the woman there to blame anything bad on though!
Check out Boys Adrift by Leonard Sax, an interesting book discussing the issues raised by the Patricia Garrison in the blog post above t
Bes: do you really believe that the media is established and controlled by old, white, rich, jewish men? A bit of stereotyping I think.
Bruce: Are you kidding me?! Stereotyping?! I wish. The heads of the 6 or so media companies who control all media and have as their number one business practice Gate-keeping others out are, Old, White, Rich, Jewish and Men. Look it up. It’s reality, like it or not. And media do not reflect our culture because most people do not have a voice in Corporate Media, currently our media reflect the views of Old, White, Rich, Jewish, Men. They have been very poor stewards.
I have to admit, I just don’t see the problem with the Jewish thing, sorry Bes. Even if they are, it doesn’t seem to be making any problems, or at least not problems that they don’t share with their WASP colleagues.
Optixmom : I didn’t mean to diss Sororities however I have a very low opinion of Fraternities because of the drinking and misogynist activities. I did not interfere with my Daughter doing Rush and as it turns out she was getting invitations from the Women’s Professional Engineering Society to go river rafting, and do the high ropes course and mountain biking which is more appealing to her than shopping for white heels so she went with them and I guess they are sort of sorority. I also think you are probably correct in saying that age group likes to be in groups, will probably end up in groups and are probably better off in semi supervised groups with some defined purpose than in aimless groups.
But I know about the drinking and carrying on that goes on in most Frats from my friends. Putting my son on that path was something I consciously avoided. But I would be interested in an article regarding their contributions especially one aimed at parents.
Also, if I had to be a woman in ANY country, Israel’s pretty damn good, let’s face it. They had a female head of state well before we did (and ever will), they have open service for lesbians and gay man in the military, and IIRC recognize same-sex marriages performed in other countries. Judaism has its religious nutjobs, but far fewer than a lot of others. I just don’t have a problem with it in particular.
How do I have a problem with Jews if I note correctly that they are the owners or heads of most Media Companies? My point is the owners and the people who have a voice in corporate media all look pretty much like each other and there are very few other people in this country who fit that description.
I find it extremely offensive when I am told that corporate media reflect my culture because I have no voice in corporate media, no one who looks like me has a voice in corporate media and I have zero control over the channels that are shoved into my home and therefore subsidized by my cable payment.
If old, Jewish, white, rich, men have a problem with people saying that corporate media reflects their values and their world view….too damn bad, They have the power to make changes, no one else does and they have seen to that with their gate-keeping. And i repeat, the men in charge have been very bad stewards.
It just seems like a strange thing to point out precisely because it’s not relevant. I don’t care what their hair color is, either. And the fact that it’s irrelevant is exactly what makes it seem like the only reason you’d have to raise their religion is if you do have a problem with it. I don’t know if you do — it’s just that it’s hard to see why else it’d come up repeatedly since, unlike their gender, money, and somewhat their race, their religion doesn’t seem to have any bearing on anything.
“I don’t care what their hair color is, either.”
LOL, what hair? Let’s make that old, bald, rich, white men.
Chosen religion or philosophy does have a huge impact on peoples world view. The problem is that all owners of media look the same and likely think the same as a result and no one else has a voice in media. If they were all Christian that would be a problem, if they were all Muslim that would be a problem. We should be seeing all different views in media, we do not need one type of person speaking for everyone. If the distortions and degradation we see in media were represented as the view point of old, white, male, bald, Jewish, rich guys then fine. But it is commonly stated by media people that media reflect American culture and that is not true it is extreemly insulting. I say that the guys who own and run media are very bad stewards of media and culture because they are very bad stewards of media and culture not because I am anti Semitic. If that bothers them then they should change the way they do business.
Every image of women blasted at me on the streets and online in the Western news media is a woman with her head chopped off, with a head tilt and smile, or just some other body part, but she is sexualized; a sexual derivative. Of course the women in Eastern and Western media present the perfect doll faced female. Does the world have a woman problem? Yes. I think males fear loss of their support. Get this. Men need to be supported. They need to be taught. They need to be cooked for and clothed; they could never figure out cooking on their own, nor ratio or math, but they can be taught it: so we have schools for most things that women are capable of figuring out on their own in nature. Men do hierarchy and power because it’s the only thing they can do. It’s clear that women want powerful sons and it’s not up to women to change the dynamic. It’s so damn obvious that men are full of shit when they claim power and superiority based on things they have achieved in society; for when women achieve the same things: education etc, they are no better off for it.
We used to have a single salary house; now..I mean, I do pretty damn well for myself; I’m a very small majority of women earners; and I have -never- had a man give me a pay check, but all the adult women I know, get a paycheck from a boyfriend or husband who supports them in their endeavours. I dont know any woman whose livlihood would provide for herself much less a family.
in short, there is no boy crisis. There is a crisis of understanding of how the system was ran in the first place, a system that led everyone to believe that there was a way to be successful other than having a penis.
there was one media clip that explained it all, if I could find it. Some male news anchor was acting incredulous that a woman was suing a vacuum for ripping her hair out. He couldn’t believe this could happen; none of the males could, she was a greedy, lying woman. Well, the other female in the discussion asked the man if he had ever vacuumed, or if he knew the mechanics of vacuuming under a bed; he admitted to have never vacuumed anything.
So when we’re all on par with men, who os going to raise oir children? Celebrated my foot.
Sorry for typos. Missed them before I hit submit. On my phone, didn’t proof.
Jen,
Both parents should raise the child! We are constantly told everyday how immportant fathers are in the raising of their children. Of course, while men love to hear how important they are in the lives of their children, strangely, a majority still leave it up to their wives.
Raising children is a very selfless responsibility, which requires maturity. It appears men have a difficult time with these two qualities, which women are expected to have even when they are younger than the father. I guess that’s why you often hear the father being included when a woman is asked “how many children do you have?”
the community should raise the children. Schools are kind of forced into this role, but it should be a specialist position. There is no reason for nuclear families which psychologically harm human beings.
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