To Raise Healthy Boys You Have To Like Men

Article here. Excerpt:

'When I was younger, and the boys were relatively small, I used to say I should have stuck to cats. Cats never grow up to be mass murderers.
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Look, speaking generally boys are more aggressive, even as small kids.  And once they get testosterone pumping in during puberty, they’re aggressive, they’re large, they’re stronger than most women by the time they’re 14 or so, and you can tell how many times during the day they meditate on violence, even if they don’t do it.  It’s the way the body is wired.  None of us – not one – are descended from non-aggressive apes, and throughout all of history and certainly most of pre-history, the duty to defend female and young of the band went to the male, usually the youngish male.
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And no one would believe seeing my sons engage in the amiable “rolling argument” how many times when they were younger I feared one would kill the other.  (Another permanent saying was “I know one of them is Cain and one Abel, I just don’t know which.”)

Thinking of all this, I thought of all the crazy mothers – and never mothers – who run around screaming about toxic masculinity.  And I shuddered.
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Yes, men are bigger, stronger, and tend to be more physically violent than women. But the good ones – and the vast majority born of caring parents turn out decent – learn to calibrate it and control.

However, if you treat any incident of boyish aggression or verbal aggression as a serious infraction they will never learn to control it.  Sure, tell them “you have to stop fighting with your brother”afterward.  I did.  I pointed out it was caveman behavior. And I waited till they could understand it.

If you tamp every little thing down, the boys will never learn how to deal with being a man.  They will send it underground, underneath their consciousness.  They will hide it from themselves.

Then instead of sane, controlled, strong males, you get the people Heinlein referred to when he said most “pacifist” males lower the white flag and hoist the skull and crossbones as soon as they can.  You get people still as aggressive as any other male, but who hide it and let it erupt in terrifying predation against those smaller and weaker.  This predation, both sexual and physical flourishes in “liberal” environments for a reason.'