The Mis-education of the American Boy

Growing up gay (even in the closet) one often doesn't fall into the toxic masculinity category although one is well aware of all that term encompasses.  Indeed, if one is gay or rightly or wrongly targeted as gay, suddenly you become a preferred target of the toxic masculinity of your peers and classmates.  The result can become that you strive ever so hard to "pass" and be one of the guys. The emotional cost can be extreme and the effort difficult if you do not excel in team sports. I did not and was saved by the fact that I was lucky enough to have a family that owned a summer home and was vested in snow skiing which gave me the opportunity to excel at water skiing, sailing, snow skiing and other things that compensated for my other team sports deficiency. Despite my "lucky breaks," high school was one of the most horrible periods of my life. Most boys are not as lucky as I was and, as lengthy piece in The Atlantic lays out, America is suffering a crisis in the way boys are socialized and too often emotionally stunted and not allowed to be fully human.  The "jock culture" in particular leads to misogyny all to often.  With two young grandsons, I do not want to see their personalities stifled and warped by America's cult of toxic masculinity.  How this problem can be fixed is difficult to answer, particularly since so many fathers are victims of the same forces.  Here are article highlights: 

I’ve spent two years talking with boys across America—more than 100 of them between the ages of 16 and 21—about masculinity, sex, and love: about the forces, seen and unseen, that shape them as men. Though I spoke with boys of all races and ethnicities, I stuck to those who were in college or college-bound, because like it or not, they’re the ones most likely to set cultural norms. Nearly every guy I interviewed held relatively egalitarian views about girls, at least their role in the public sphere. They considered their female classmates to be smart and competent, entitled to their place on the athletic field and in school leadership, deserving of their admission to college and of professional opportunities. They all had female friends; most had gay male friends as well. That was a huge shift from what you might have seen 50, 40, maybe even 20 years ago. They could also easily reel off the excesses of masculinity. They’d seen the headlines about mass shootings, domestic violence, sexual harassment, campus rape, presidential Twitter tantrums, and Supreme Court confirmation hearings. A Big Ten football player I interviewed bandied about the term toxic masculinity. “Everyone knows what that is,” he said, when I seemed surprised.

Yet when asked to describe the attributes of “the ideal guy,” those same boys appeared to be harking back to 1955. Dominance. Aggression. Rugged good looks (with an emphasis on height). Sexual prowess. Stoicism. Athleticism. Wealth (at least some day). It’s not that all of these qualities, properly channeled, are bad. But while a 2018 national survey of more than 1,000 10-to-19-year-olds commissioned by Plan International USA and conducted by the polling firm PerryUndem found that young women believed there were many ways to be a girl—they could shine in math, sports, music, leadership (the big caveat being that they still felt valued primarily for their appearance)—young men described just one narrow route to successful masculinity.* One-third said they felt compelled to suppress their feelings, to “suck it up” or “be a man” when they were sad or scared, and more than 40 percent said that when they were angry, society expected them to be combative. In another survey, which compared young men from the U.S., the U.K., and Mexico, Americans reported more social pressure to be ever-ready for sex and to get with as many women as possible; they also acknowledged more stigma against homosexuality, and they received more messages that they should control their female partners, as in: Men “deserve to know” the whereabouts of their girlfriends or wives at all times.

Feminism may have provided girls with a powerful alternative to conventional femininity, and a language with which to express the myriad problems-that-have-no-name, but there have been no credible equivalents for boys. Quite the contrary: The definition of masculinity seems to be in some respects contracting. When asked what traits society values most in boys, only 2 percent of male respondents in the PerryUndem survey said honesty and morality, and only 8 percent said leadership skills—traits that are, of course, admirable in anyone but have traditionally been considered masculine. When I asked my subjects, as I always did, what they liked about being a boy, most of them drew a blank. “Huh,” mused Josh, a college sophomore at Washington State. (All the teenagers I spoke with are identified by pseudonyms.) “That’s interesting. I never really thought about that. You hear a lot more about what is wrong with guys.”

While following the conventional script may still bring social and professional rewards to boys and men, research shows that those who rigidly adhere to certain masculine norms are not only more likely to harass and bully others but to themselves be victims of verbal or physical violence. They’re more prone to binge-drinking, risky sexual behavior, and getting in car accidents. They are also less happy than other guys, with higher depression rates and fewer friends in whom they can confide.

It wasn’t always thus. According to Andrew Smiler, a psychologist who has studied the history of Western masculinity, the ideal late-19th-century man was compassionate, a caretaker, but such qualities lost favor as paid labor moved from homes to factories during industrialization. In fact, the Boy Scouts, whose creed urges its members to be loyal, friendly, courteous, and kind, was founded in 1910 in part to counter that dehumanizing trend. Smiler attributes further distortions in masculinity to a century-long backlash against women’s rights. During World War I, women proved that they could keep the economy humming on their own, and soon afterward they secured the vote. Instead of embracing gender equality, he says, the country’s leaders “doubled down” on the inalienable male right to power, emphasizing men’s supposedly more logical and less emotional nature as a prerequisite for leadership.

Then, during the second half of the 20th century, traditional paths to manhood—early marriage, breadwinning—began to close, along with the positive traits associated with them. Today many parents are unsure of how to raise a boy, what sort of masculinity to encourage in their sons. But as I learned from talking with boys themselves, the culture of adolescence, which fuses hyperrationality with domination, sexual conquest, and a glorification of male violence, fills the void.

For Cole, as for many boys, this stunted masculinity is a yardstick against which all choices, even those seemingly irrelevant to male identity, are measured. When he had a choice, he would team up with girls on school projects, to avoid the possibility of appearing subordinate to another guy. “With a girl, it feels safer to talk and ask questions, to work together or to admit that I did something wrong and want help,”

There is no difference between the sexes’ need for connection in infancy, nor between their capacity for empathy—there’s actually some evidence that male infants are more expressive than females. Yet, from the get-go, boys are relegated to an impoverished emotional landscape. . . . Despite that, according to Judy Y. Chu, a human-biology lecturer at Stanford who conducted a study of boys from pre-K through first grade, little boys have a keen understanding of emotions and a desire for close relationships. But by age 5 or 6, they’ve learned to knock that stuff off, at least in public: to disconnect from feelings of weakness, reject friendships with girls (or take them underground, outside of school), and become more hierarchical in their behavior.

By adolescence, says the Harvard psychologist William Pollack, boys become “shame-phobic,” convinced that peers will lose respect for them if they discuss their personal problems. My conversations bore this out. Boys routinely confided that they felt denied—by male peers, girlfriends, the media, teachers, coaches, and especially their fathers—the full spectrum of human expression. . . . . Cole spoke of his mom with unbridled love and respect. His father was another matter. “He’s a nice guy,” Cole said—caring and involved, even after the divorce—“but I can’t be myself around him. I feel like I need to keep everything that’s in here”—Cole tapped his chest again—“behind a wall, where he can’t see it. It’s a taboo—like, not as bad as incest, but …”

Other boys also pointed to their fathers as the chief of the gender police, though in a less obvious way. . . . “there’s a block there. There’s a hesitation, even though I don’t like to admit that. A hesitation to talk about … anything, really. We learn to confide in nobody. You sort of train yourself not to feel.”

Only after multiple interviews did I realize that when boys confided in me about crying—or, even more so, when they teared up right in front of me—they were taking a risk, trusting me with something private and precious: evidence of vulnerability, or a desire for it. Or, as with Rob, an inability to acknowledge any human frailty that was so poignant, it made me want to, well, cry.

I was struck by how many had dropped athletics they’d enjoyed because they couldn’t stand the Lord of the Flies mentality of teammates or coaches. Perhaps the most extreme example was Ethan, a kid from the Bay Area who had been recruited by a small liberal-arts college in New England to play lacrosse. He said he’d expected to encounter the East Coast “ ‘lax bro’ culture,” but he’d underestimated its intensity. “It was all about sex” and bragging about hooking up, and even the coaches endorsed victim-blaming, Ethan told me. “They weren’t like that in class or around other people; it was a super-liberal school. But once you got them in the locker room …” He shook his head. “It was one of the most jarring experiences of my life.” . . . So he quit the team; not only that, he transferred. “If I’d stayed, there would’ve been a lot of pressure on me to play, a lot of resentment, and I would’ve run into those guys all the time. This way I didn’t really have to explain anything.” At his new school, Ethan didn’t play lacrosse, or anything else.

What the longtime sportswriter Robert Lipsyte calls “jock culture” (or what the boys I talked with more often referred to as “bro culture”) is the dark underbelly of male-dominated enclaves, whether or not they formally involve athletics: all-boys’ schools, fraternity houses, Wall Street, Silicon Valley, Hollywood, the military. Even as such groups promote bonding, even as they preach honor, pride, and integrity, they tend to condition young men to treat anyone who is not “on the team” as the enemy (the only women who ordinarily make the cut are blood relatives— bros before hos!), justifying any hostility toward them. Loyalty is paramount, and masculinity is habitually established through misogynist language and homophobia.

Just because some young men now draw the line at referring to someone who is openly gay as a fag doesn’t mean, by the way, that gay men (or men with traits that read as gay) are suddenly safe. If anything, the gay guys I met were more conscious of the rules of manhood than their straight peers were. They had to be—and because of that, they were like spies in the house of hypermasculinity.

Guys who identify as straight but aren’t athletic, or are involved in the arts, or have a lot of female friends, all risk having their masculinity impugned. What has changed for this generation, though, is that some young men, particularly if they grew up around LGBTQ people, don’t rise to the bait. “I don’t mind when people mistake me for being gay,” said Luke, a high-school senior from New York City. “It’s more of an annoyance than anything, because I want people to believe me when I say I’m straight.” The way he described himself did, indeed, tick every stereotypical box. “I’m a very thin person,” he said. “I like clothing. I care about my appearance in maybe a more delicate way. I’m very in touch with my sensitive side. So when people think I’m gay?” He shrugged. “It can feel like more of a compliment. Like, ‘Oh, you like the way I dress? Thank you! ’ ”

Sexual conquest—or perhaps more specifically, bragging about your experiences to other boys—is, arguably, the most crucial aspect of toxic masculinity. . . . there’s this “race for experience,” because if you get behind, by the time you do hook up with a girl “she’ll have hit it with, like, five guys already. Then she’s going to know how to do things” you don’t—and that’s a problem, if she tells people “you’ve got floppy lips” or “don’t know how to get her bra off.”

No matter how often I heard it, the brutal language that even a conscientious young man like Nate used to describe sexual contact—you hit that!—always unnerved me. In mixed-sex groups, teenagers may talk about hooking up (already impersonal), but when guys are on their own, they nail, they pound, they bang, they smash, they hammer. They tap that ass, they tear her up. It can be hard to tell whether they have engaged in an intimate act or just returned from a construction site.

It’s not like I imagined boys would gush about making sweet, sweet love to the ladies, but why was their language so weaponized ? The answer, I came to believe, was that locker-room talk isn’t about sex at all, which is why guys were ashamed to discuss it openly with me. The (often clearly exaggerated) stories boys tell are really about power: using aggression toward women to connect and to validate one another as heterosexual, or to claim top spots in the adolescent sexual hierarchy. Dismissing that as “banter” denies the ways that language can desensitize—abrade boys’ ability to see girls as people deserving of respect and dignity in sexual encounters.

Boys may know when something is wrong; they may even know that true manhood—or maybe just common decency—compels them to speak up. Yet, too often, they fear that if they do, they’ll be marginalized or, worse, themselves become the target of derision from other boys. Masculinity, then, becomes not only about what boys do say, but about what they don’t—or won’t, or can’t—say, even when they wish they could. The psychologists Dan Kindlon and Michael Thompson, the authors of Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys, have pointed out that silence in the face of cruelty or sexism is how too many boys become men.

[I]t’s time to rethink assumptions about how we raise boys. That will require models of manhood that are neither ashamed nor regressive, and that emphasize emotional flexibility—a hallmark of mental health. Stoicism is valuable sometimes, as is free expression; toughness and tenderness can coexist in one human. In the right context, physical aggression is fun, satisfying, even thrilling. If your response to all of this is Obviously, I’d say: Sure, but it’s a mistake to underestimate the strength and durability of the cultural machinery at work on adolescent boys. Real change will require a sustained, collective effort on the part of fathers, mothers, teachers, coaches.

Personally, I am not optimistic.  Too many fathers and coaches are a major part of the problem. Yet, if things do not change, we can expect more Donald Trumps and misogynists and the dangers they pose to society and the world.

The Sick, Bizarre World of Trophy Hunting

Douche bag Walter Palmer and his victim

I will admit that I am anti-gun and anti-hunting.  In part this stems from early exposure to the lawlessness and selfishness of hunters.  Growing up in Central New York we lived in the county we lived on 50 acres and had horses.  During hunting season we had to fear for the lives of our horses and ourselves as hunters trespassed at will despite all the "Posted - No Trespass" signs that were up and down our property lines.  That experience was not unique and family members in the Charlottesville, Virginia, area experience the same problem to this day.  Personally, I think the phenomenon links with a psychological defect that makes some feel like "macho males" only when they kill largely defenseless animals.  Part and parcel with this mindset is an attitude that the law and rules do not apply to these "real men."  With the furor over they illegal killing of Cecil the Zimbabwe lion, much needed focus is coming on the sickness of hunters, especially trophy hunters.  A piece in Salon looks at this sick and disturbing world.  Here are highlights:

Minnesota dentist and trophy hunter Walter Palmer ignited worldwide outrage after killing the beloved Zimbabwe lion named Cecil. Hundreds have left angry reviews of his dental practice on Yelp and a Care2 petition condemning his actions has racked up more than 200,000 signatures. Focusing this rage on Palmer overshadows the bizarre practices and unscrupulous conduct that are a big part of business as usual throughout the trophy hunting industry. When wealthy clients pay thousands to kill exotic species, professional hunting guides face enormous pressure to deliver the goods even if that means breaking the law. Trophy hunters maintain that they hunt for the benefit of nature, but when the interests of profit and animals collide, abuse is inevitable.

The practice of trophy hunting originated as a way for humans to demonstrate power over large, dangerous animals, but now that modern high-powered weapons can subdue even the largest animals, the trophy hunter’s focus has shifted from animals that are dangerous to those that are rare.

[T]oday’s trophy hunters are corporate types who may spend tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands to kill a single animal. And the bigger and rarer and more beautiful the animal, the more a trophy hunter wants to kill it: An African lion hunt starts at around $39,000. For $60,000, power brokers can bag a bull elephant.

Exorbitant prices can pressure hunting guides to deliver a “successful” hunt no matter what. Hunters want to feel that their experience is real and that the hunt has not been staged, but when a hunt costs as much as a new luxury car, guides must practically guarantee that clients will take home the trophy they want. This leads guides to undertake unscrupulous and even unlawful methods to tilt the odds in their favor. Palmer’s guides allegedly used bait to lure Cecil away from the safety of Hwange National Park and illegally disposed of the lion’s radio collar. American hunting ranches use bait stations to concentrate animals and cameras to monitor their whereabouts. On African big game safaris, some hunting guides use bush planes to herd animals into firing range of a waiting hunter.

Trophy hunters argue that their pastime helps to conserve wildlife, but the reality of trophy hunting’s success as a tool of conservation has been mixed: The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, for the first time in history, may list the African lion as an endangered species—a move that could ban American hunters from importing lion trophies—citing overzealous hunting as one reason for the big cat’s decline.

[R]arity itself makes animals more desirable and causes collectors to value killing them even more, a phenomenon Franck Courchamp calls the anthropogenic Allee effect: “The human predisposition to place exaggerated value on rarity fuels disproportionate exploitation of rare species, rendering them even rarer and thus more desirable, ultimately leading them into an extinction vortex.”

Wealthy hunters don’t need to travel to Africa to shoot exotic big game animals. Hunting preserves in the U.S. offer the chance to kill a dizzying array of species, including fallow deer, antelope, zebras and even exotic breeds of domestic goats. Most were bred specifically to be killed, but some game farms purchase animals from exotic animal auctions and even zoos.

In 2014, the Indianapolis Star conducted the first comprehensive investigation into America’s trophy deer hunting industry.  . . . They concluded that the trophy deer hunting business “costs taxpayers millions of dollars, compromises long-standing wildlife laws, endangers wild deer, and undermines the government’s multibillion-dollar effort to protect livestock and the food supply.”

In less than 40 years, deer breeding—which started as a backyard hobby—ballooned into an industry that operates primarily to give wealthy and busy clients the opportunity to kill trophy-size animals with a minimum of effort. The trophy deer breeding industry comprises at least 10,000 farms and hunting preserves in the U.S. and Canada. Over half of the states that permit the hunting of captive wild animals have few or no regulations regarding how captive wild animals are killed.

Chancellor also noted differences in how men and women approach animals right after killing them: “When they approach a kill, most guys high five or have a cigar,” he said. “Women will, almost without exception, sit by the animal, touch the animal. Some say a prayer. Some cry. Some walk with their head in their hands.”

These trophy hunters are a sick bunch and in my view must have microscopic penises if they so desperately need to kill rare and beautify animals so that they can feel like "real men."  Trophy hunting needs to be banned.   As for Palmer, I hope his dental practice is destroyed.  Perhaps he should have spent his wealth on penile enlargement surgery so that he would not need to be off killing prized and beloved animals.

The NFL's Wink and a Nod to Domestic Violence

I'm no fan of the NFL for any number of reasons, not the least of which is the homophobia that remains rampant throughout the league and its owners, coaches and players.  Yet another reason to view the NFL is its continued willingness to overlook bad behavior by players, especially when it comes to domestic and sexual violence.  Rather than worrying about Michael Sam's sexual orientation, the NFL needs to be purging its player ranks of thugs and criminals.  Perhaps recent bad publicity will finally force a much needed housecleaning. A piece in the New York Times looks at the NFL's sad record when it comes to players involved in domestic violence.  Here are highlights:

On April 10, 2007, after more than 50 National Football League players had been arrested in the previous football season, Commissioner Roger Goodell was widely hailed for instituting a newly stringent personal conduct policy. Mr. Goodell threatened to banish players for off-the-field transgressions and installed himself as the judge and jury presiding over every case.

Mr. Goodell insisted that he would mete out discipline without waiting for the judicial system.

“It is my job — not law enforcement’s job — to protect the National Football League,” he said at the time.

But in his role as the N.F.L.’s hard-bitten sheriff, Mr. Goodell appears to have had a major blind spot: domestic violence cases. Players charged with domestic violence routinely received considerably lighter punishments than players accused of other offenses, like drug use or drunken driving. Often, they were not punished at all. On Friday, seven years after he implemented the personal conduct policy, Mr. Goodell acknowledged publicly that it had failed and would be overhauled.

An examination of dozens of arrests of N.F.L. players since Mr. Goodell established his personal conduct policy in 2007 — and the fines and penalties doled out by the league — shows that suspensions of two to four games, and sometimes more, were far more likely for players arrested on drunken driving, marijuana possession or weapon charges. A vast majority of players charged with domestic violence crimes, if they were disciplined by the league at all, received one-game suspensions even after pleading guilty to lesser related charges or entering pretrial intervention programs.

 

The disparity in punishments within the league is illustrated in numerous cases.

“I don’t think the N.F.L. did anything more than give lip service to the notion that they were taking domestic abuse seriously,” said Ann DeLaney, an advocate for victims of domestic violence and the former executive director of the Julian Center in Indianapolis, a victim support group.  Referring to the Ray Rice case, Ms. DeLaney continued, “That’s what they did this time until it was caught on video.”

[T]he recent high-profile episodes have led to a firestorm of protest from inside and outside football.  Tyrone Thomas, a Washington lawyer who advises on sports cases, said the N.F.L. had always had the power to take a tougher tack in instances in which there were accusations of domestic violence, but had chosen not to. 

Besides the Rice case, the N.F.L. has also been harshly criticized for its handling of three other recent abuse cases — those of Adrian Peterson, a star running back for the Minnesota Vikings, who has been accused of injuring one of his children; Carolina Panthers defensive end Greg Hardy, who was convicted of assaulting his girlfriend; and San Francisco 49ers defensive end Ray McDonald, who was arrested last month on suspicion of domestic violence.

Nita Chaudhary, a founder of UltraViolet, a women’s rights advocacy group, remained critical of the N.F.L. on Friday despite Goodell’s pledge to revamp the league’s personal conduct policy and penalties. . . . . . We call on all of the N.F.L.’s sponsors to take a stand against domestic violence by withdrawing their support for the N.F.L. until Goodell is out of office.”

The root of the problem?  Likely the macho mindset that thinks being homophobic is fine also sees beating you wife/girlfriend as being fine too. 

The Frightening "Manosphere" That Devalues Women

Image from "Return of Kings"

I've noted before the sick aspects of American society that pushes a warped view/definition of masculinity and too often produces males who see women as objects and targets for violence, both physical and sexual.   Many of these sick males likewise are raging homophobes and feel threatened by gays who do not fit their definition of brutish macho masculinity.  It's a sick world view that is too often ignored but which tracks directly to spousal violence and misogyny.  A column in the Washington Post looks at this frightening phenomenon, one that Elliot Rodgers apparently bought into.  Here are excerpts:

Elliot Rodger will forever be known as the 22-year-old who murdered six people in Santa Barbara on May 23. But Rodger’s extensive digital footprint, as well as his stomach-turning YouTube send-off and 137-page manifesto, suggest that he may have identified himself differently: as an “incel,” or involuntary virgin; as an aspirational, if frustrated, pick-up artist; and as an adherent of the so-called “manosphere” — that corner of the Internet where boys will be boys, girls will be objects, and critics will be “feminists,” “misandrists” or “enemies.”

If you’re not familiar with these terms, you’re not alone: The manosphere and its various components tend to only make mainstream news over tragedies (like this one) and controversies (like one “activist’s” opposition to date-rape seminars on college campuses). But to thousands of men across the Internet — including, apparently, Rodger — they’re home.

Rodger has personally been linked to an account on the pick-up site PUAhate.com, where he advocated an overthrow of “this oppressive feminist system” and envisioned “a world where WOMEN FEAR YOU.” . . . .  In his last YouTube video, in which he chillingly announces the start of his killing spree, Rodger even cops some classic pick-up lingo: “You will finally see that I am, in truth, the superior one. The true alpha male.” (Emphasis mine.)

Rodger’s misogynistic rhetoric seems undeniably influenced by the manosphere, and his manifesto has kicked off a loud debate about how modern society treats women, online and off. If there was ever a time to take a closer look at online misogyny, it’s now.

Alas, even from a distance, it doesn’t look too pretty.

When people talk about the “manosphere,” they’re basically talking about a vast, diverse network of blogs and forums that take a certain antagonistic stance toward women and dating.  . . . . their core philosophy basically boils down to this: (1) feminism has overrun/corrupted modern culture, in violation of nature/biology/inherent gender differences, and (2) men can best seduce women (slash, save society in general) by embracing a super-dominant, uber-masculine gender role, forcing ladies to fall into step behind them.

[B]elief in retro gender roles has fueled a whole system of sites that denigrate women and advocate for a socio-cultural regression that puts ladies back in the kitchen and bedroom.

[T]he “manosphere” is frequently enough to make any progressive lady — or guy! — choke back bile. The Southern Poverty Law Center, which identifies hate groups, even went so far as to publish a report on it in 2012. (“Although some of the sites make an attempt at civility and try to back their arguments with facts,” the report read, “they are almost all thick with misogynistic attacks that can be astounding for the guttural hatred they express.”)

[I]ts ideology regarding the “right” kinds of men and women is pretty inflexible, too. Gay, lesbian or transgendered people are, needless to say, completely out. “Masculine” women (i.e. women with short hair, women with high-powered jobs, women with outspoken opinions) also earn the manosphere’s derision. But the community reserves a special kind of disdain for “effeminate” or “beta” men — men who either do not have “game” or who are still taking what believers call the “blue pill.”

Blue-pilled guys are the hapless, sexless dummies still treating women as equals and asking them out in conventional, non-pushy ways. This distinction, while it sounds ridiculous, is actually pretty critical to understanding Rodger and his place in the manosphere … such as it was.

Return of Kings . . . . A sampling of recent advice from the site, presented without comment: “all women are nymphomaniacs who crave rough sex”; “if your girlfriend insists on a big wedding, dump her.”

Having two daughters and a granddaughter, I find this mindset very, very scary.   A look at "Return of Kings" will send a shiver down your spine.