Opinion: Boys and men get everything, except the thing that’s most worth having
Article here. Excerpt:
'For many progressives, weary from a pileup of male misconduct, the refusal to engage with men’s feelings has now become almost a point of principle. For every right-wing tough guy urging his crying son to “man up,” there’s a voice from the left telling him that to voice his concerns is to take airtime away from a woman or someone more marginalized. In many cases, the same people who are urging boys and men to become more emotionally expressive are also taking a moral stand against hearing how they actually feel. For many boys, it can seem as though their emotions get dismissed by both sides. This political isolation has combined with existing masculine norms to push a worrying number of boys into a kind of resentful, semi-politicized reclusion.
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Perhaps it’s not surprising that in the grip of the culture wars, caring about boys has become subtly coded as a right-wing cause, a dog whistle for a kind of bad-faith politicking. Men have had way more than their fair share of our concern already, the reasoning goes, and now it’s time for them to pipe down. But for boys, privilege and harm intertwine in complex ways — male socialization is a strangely destructive blend of indulgence and neglect. Under patriarchy, boys and men get everything, except the thing that’s most worth having: human connection.'
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