We Can Raise Boys To Become Good Men By Treating Them Like Girls

Article here. Excerpt:

'When I was a kid in the 1970s, the “tomboy” was queen — or maybe king. Even a non-sporty girl like me was dressed in the unisex uniforms of white-piped track shorts, Keds, and t-shirts, just like my brother. The lesson I learned from my parents, peers, the media, and the passage of Title IX in 1972, was that I had legal right to everything culturally marked as “for boys.”

But the same access to girls’ worlds has still not been granted to boys. Despite the recent media focus on toxic masculinity, boys still feel insistent pressure to be violent, to shut down emotions, to watch porn, and to have sex even when they don’t want or aren’t ready to. They feel pressure to reject anything associated with what’s culturally marked as “feminine” — kindness, vulnerability, love, seeking help, let alone dolls and the color pink — and pressure to look down on girls and women. Boys learn that “girly” is an insult, and they must at all costs distance themselves from it.'