Thanks for sharing my article Nat. The feedback, especially from my son and his mates ( yes he liked it so much he shared it in the boys footy chat group, which on a side note, is a huge connection moment for me) has shown me how much work there is to do in this space. It validated that what I was seeing and hearing is what many of the boys are really feeling. These boys are not feeling seen and heard and if something doesn’t change soon, it’s a really slippery slope downhill for many of them.
I'm glad you wrote it Lisa and I get to share it here. It says a lot when a teenage boy agrees with his mum and openly shares what she wrote to his mates!
Couldn’t agree more with this article. I work at a facility that houses teenage boys. It’s a residential for teenage boys who’ve committed felonies and they’re serving the remainder of their sentencing there in hopes of rehabilitation and good behavior. The majority of them are and were raised by single mothers. What I’ve noticed is the facility lack traditional masculine philosophical teachings. Instead it tries to control their natural inherent teenage boy masculine hormonal tendencies and brainwashes them with feminize ideologies through group therapy and punishment for non pro-social behaviors. This place could really use this article. I (not to toot my horn, former combat OEF III Marine, former beat patrol officer of the law and body guard) am attempting (with my own under my own power with professionalism without going against any policies procedures or regulations) to change some of these institutionalized feminized disadvantages that this place blindly chooses to believe are working for these kids God willing.
You're doing incredible work and it would be disheartening to watch these boys continue to receive feminizing 'rehab' to further entrench their wounding and confusion. What strategies will you attempt to influence change (I get very excited when people do this stealth work)?
Boys raised without fathers suffer more than feminists admit, or even notice. The problem is endemic in the university training given to teachers and councilors: rather than listen to these boys' literal experiences (which are often difficult to articulate), authority figures start with an ideological lens and work backwards. Thus, the conclusions they draw about boys are generally consistent with "theory" but often the complete opposite of reality. Boys might consistently tell a researcher that they judge people by the contents of their hearts rather than the color of their skin or their gender identity, and the researcher will find that boys have "white ignorance". So, if you want to change this facility, you need to get them to question their education. I'd like to know if this article helps.
Every once in a while, a feminist will try listening to boys, but because they adhere to critical theory, they are incapable of using active listening skills without covertly transposing what boys are saying. In family scapegoating situations, for example, a boy might express to a councilor how he gets punished by the whole family for his sister's shortcomings (e.g. he gets blamed when she gets turned down for a job) and a feminist councilor will interpret this as proof that he is in denial of his male privilege. The councilor then proceeds to steer him towards confessing a causal role in her failure and an admission of privilege rather than helping him develop healthy boundaries. This kind of thing plays out everywhere feminists are councilors. Unless the underlying epistemology is rooted out, this sort of semi-abusive behaviour will continue to be unfortunately common .
He's an angry troll. He's totally right to be angry but using it to tell people off who are trying to help encourage masculinity and disrupt/dismantle feminised structures is hardly constructive.
What would be constructive is if he could share his strategies of what works beyond shaking his fist and insulting people.
'What I’ve noticed is the facility lack traditional masculine philosophical teachings. Instead it tries to control their natural inherent teenage boy masculine hormonal tendencies and brainwashes them with feminize ideologies'
Can you expand on this? I'm a father of girls but I see the problems being discussed here and would like to know more. Cheers
I was walking to work some time ago when a woman stopped in front of me to tell me that I was making her nervous. I replied that I had been walking this exact route every day for twenty years. She replied “then you need to get a life.” I am an older gray-haired man who wears a suit and tie. It was 7:30 in the morning and I was carrying a leather shoulder bag with my books and files. I never saw this woman before, even though I lived on the same street using the same and only sidewalk since 1994. Yet, she was imperious, angry, and demanding.
My community used to make blacks step off of the sidewalk when whites passed under threat of arrest or worse. I now know firsthand how they felt.
That’s horrible. It’s like men and boys are now expected to manage the emotions and triggers of women and girls. Respect and consideration of others is a good thing but having to change normal behaviour like walking on the footpath to accomodate someone else’s anxiety shows where society is at. :-(
Completely agree, Its always been obvious to me, that the word inclusive means just that. You can't exclude people that don't fit the ideology, if you exclude overly masculine men, or straight people, or white people, etc, then by definition you are NOT being inclusive. I find it so bizarre that some people can call themselves progressive or well educated, while looking down on others that don't hold the same opinions as them, as it completely defies the definition of being inclusive. Inclusive means everyone! Let's be respectful of everyone, man, woman, child, race, colour, etc. Regardless of your masculinity or femininity, we are all entitled to be heard and included.
“Instead of being invited into the conversation, they feel pre-judged, like they’re being told what not to do rather than being asked how they feel or what they need”
🙄
What boys need includes paternal type positive male influences and to not be innundated with feminine perspectives. This includes female-free time and spaces.
My fondest memories of school as a lad were informal games of tackle football with other boys. No girls (they were happy playing amongst themselves, mostly) or women asking us about our feelings.
P.S. Didn’t mean to be rude; apology if my comment came across this way. But intra-feminine socialization patterns, even well intentioned, do not effectively translate to the males of the species. Just love us. If the feminization of society is in large part to blame for what society has done and continues to do to boys and men, it’s a bit disingenuous to think that women have to come up with the solution. Just don’t be the problem (e.g., be feminists).
There's an inherent problem with women telling boys how to act towards women and girls, which is that in practice, those women and girls will often appear to respect or prefer men and boys who behave precisely how boys have been told NOT to. I don't just mean romantically (although definitely romantically) but more generally women will respond positively to dominant male patterns of behaviour, whether it's at work, socially or whatever.
This isn't a criticism of women for responding like this, by the way. Without wanting to sound like a Jordan-Peterson-evolutionary-psychology douchebag, I think a lot of men have grown up learning to take what women say they want from them with a pinch of salt, because they've seen how women often appear to actually respect them less for doing what they say they should. I'm not trying to excuse bad male behaviour towards women, but none of the men who behave badly towards women do so because they weren't told not to.
As for boys "retreating into boys' clubs": So what? Would anyone worry that girls were retreating into "girls' clubs" because they spend more time with other girls?
Women saying men should be certain way, while rewarding the opposite behavior is an important issue. But I think you undermine your point with your last paragraph. We should all be very concerned when people retreat into exclusionary groups, whether that's girls clubs, boys clubs, echo chambers, or anything else.
For the United States of America, My country, the Flop began on 11/22/1963.
Ever since that day, ALL has been in decline.
For ALL empires in the flop phase, interpersonal interactions ALL become dominance games.
For Men who seek dominance, They use violence, and the threat of violence. Terrorism is the organised application of this paradigm.
For Women who seek dominance, They tend to run Their mouth, and seek to destroy the inner balance of Their chosen victims. These Women do this to other Women, and to Men and Boys.
In any event, things for Boys and Men will improve when the current paradigm goes up in flames, and Females will be
FORCED
to be nice to a Man in order to NOT be eaten by cannibals.
Surviving Men and Boys will organise, Warlord Style, in order to kill Their way out of problems presented by other groups of Men and Boys.
The Universe tends torward balance, and justice.
Things WILL improve in the future, but first, the lies that are lived by many People-not-Me will have to be destroyed.
This is a really important and well written essay. Increasingly for decades boys have been told that they are inherently dangerous and suspicious. As traditional masculinity has increasingly been shown to be "toxic", and feminism has increasingly shown girls they can do and be anything, the idea of what boys and men can be has been dismantled. There is now no clear and positive idea of what it means to be a man, only what being a man shouldn't be. This is an incredibly dangerous and uncomfortable place for boys who are reaching the age when trying to figure out who they are and should be, but are only getting negative reinforcement. This article does a great job of describing why this purely negative reinforcement is so dangerous.
But the author also reinforces the idea that the "feminization" of boys is the problem, and that accepting some form of masculinity is the solution. However, I think it has become clear that this is not true.
“what aspect of cultural masculinity is good for men to embody, and not good for women to embody?”
The problem is and has always been that traditional masculinity is a fundamentally broken and harmful way to live. Rather than treating boys and girls as some (bio-)essentially different types of creatures that need different ways of life, we need to recognize everyone's shared humanity, and teach boys and girls how to be *good people*.
I appreciate the article immensely, and the spirit is good. But there was a line in there I feel the need to address.
The quote in question: "It looks like boys defaulting to humour, sarcasm, or withdrawal because vulnerability doesn’t feel safe."
Vulnerability doesn't feel safe, because it isn't safe. Not emotionally, not physically. Full stop. It's the literal definition of the word.
Nobody who wants to make you systematically more vulnerable has your best interests at heart. This is a fairly basic idea most people grasp immediately and intuitively.
Exhorting anyone to be more vulnerable, especially young men who already have a clear sense that the system they are living in is hostile to their existence, will result in further mistrust and rejection.
It doesn't help that every young man, at some point, witnesses another young man display emotional vulnerability to a young woman, and take a emotional crowbar to their metaphorical crotch so hard their overseas relations feel it.
I strongly recommend a hard reexamination of the language and concepts behind the "men need to be more vulnerable" line.
Thanks for your contribution. You make a valid point. Sometimes it's the mistakes or not getting it perfect that allows the opportunity to see multiple perspectives, eg, you making this point. In saying that, didn't write it for that purpose but it has now allowed me to see where I got it wrong and can improve. Thank you.
I have had conversations with several women about the expectation that men/bosys should be vulnerable when it’s a feminized approach to making them express their pain in a more palatable way. Brene Brown’s work on the importance of vulnerability sure did a number on everyone as it’s been adopted by the managerial class and implemented everywhere as a priority. Vulnerability isn’t safe by definition is exactly right.
Sounds like you're fully aware of that issue! On a related note, something I've always found amusing is the insistence on young men "expressing their emotions".
There is a core contradiction in that idea. Speaking as someone who was once a young man, back in the mists of time: when a young man is making the acquaintance of large amounts of testosterone for the first time, the predominantly experienced emotions consist of (in no particular order): angry, and horny.
Two emotions that society at large has always frowned upon public displays of for obvious reasons (doubly so for the feminized expectations of modern society).
The message to young men ending up effectively being to either express your authentic (and entirely normal) emotions, which will then be condemned as disgusting and degenerate, not express your emotions to anyone, or create an elaborate farce of expressing emotions you are not actually experiencing, to manage the anxieties of the adults around you (taking a young man with enough problems managing the transition to adulthood already, and parentifying them).
It's been said that modern western society treats boys as defective girls, and this seems to be one of the places that is writ large.
"to manage the anxieties of the adults around you" There's so much in this sentence. I won't elaborate here but I am going to ponder this one and who knows, maybe write about it.
Regulating and banning internet pornography would show boys we give a shit about them. Instead of mocking them, as they get chewed up by a psychological meat grinder under the noses of their clueless parents. Speaking of consent, can a 14 year old boy consent to what happens when he Googles "sex" ? Obviously not. He's confronted with primal male rage-bait wrapped in a massive dopamine hit. So maybe stop making their first sexual experiences non-consensual and then lecturing them about consent. No wonder they're angry. We are gaslighting our boys into oblivion.
There's a fundamental misunderstanding about what teenage boys need and want, and what's good for them. This isn't surprising: we're mostly listening to women, and they now have most of the power in organizations which deal with these issues. Just as delegating the job of shaping and instructing teenage girls to almost exclusively men would produce some absurdities and misunderstandings, so it is when the sexes are reversed.
Great article! Thanks! One issue that's really critical is we must have the courage to stand up to the small number of loud, neurotic, radical feminists who insist on erasing all men's spaces. Our leaders need to find a backbone. Until that happens nothing will change.
You keep saying they "Feel" this way, but it's an objective fact. They will DEFINITELY be punished. 100% lead-pipe certainty, for being anything at all. Go ahead: run a test anywhere, with anyone, in any school, with any group and tell me what your results are. Therefore nobody cares what they feel or don't feel. If objectively you put your finger out and get a bear trap every time, your feelings about it are entirely immaterial. Only the bear trap, which is a physical, provable, testable, repeatable reality. Therefore their response is not only logical, it's incredibly, supernaturally forbearing and generous. Even the suicides: they're doing that to serve you. So say thanks!
Also, I know you have to do this to get anybody to even possibly listen, but how many paragraphs did you spend caveat and defending girls/women while this top cause of daily death for men is going on for 25 years? 10% of the article on men is still about defending women? What were those paragraphs saying? They're saying everything you've done for girls/women is perfect, wouldn't change a thing, totally unrelated to the man issue. (Nods.) Are you sure? There seems a strong correlation about the same time. For example, when you can afford 100 scholarships and because woman's programs focus, 99 of them now go to women, this has no effect on men? Or if we have women's focus to have methods and phys ed games girls prefer better, this never causes a change that boys prefer less? Precisely as your very example? C'mon. Neither boys, men, nor even women will trust you if you prevaricate like this. At some point somebody's going to have to say, "Intentionally killing all young human males in Australia is wrong." We're not at that point yet, I guess.
Thank you for taking the time to read and respond. I appreciate your honesty. You’ve raised some really valid points that.
I can see how it might feel like I kept circling back to girls and women, even when the piece was meant to highlight what boys are going through. That wasn’t intentional, but I get how it reads that way.
As a women who has been on the receiving end of disrespectful male behaviour, it's not easy for me to be calling this narrative out. I've wanted to write about this as well as critiques on modern feminism for a while and probably been putting it off in concern for how it will land. So after the conversation with my son on the way to school the other day, I came home and wrote the article. Is it perfect, no, does it highlight how we got here, no, should it mention my work with female empowerment, maybe/maybe not. Regardless is was my first attempt to start a conversation on a topic I felt was necessary to talk about.
What’s been really interesting is how many teen boys have actually responded. My son read it and said, “This is good as. Can I share it with the boys?” And he did...to the whole boys footy chat. The feedback from his mates was powerful and they felt seen. Responses like "its elite", " i love it", and the captain of the footy firsts said " it's the best article I've ever read" Apart from being wrapped that 17 year old boys were reading a 7 minute article, it felt so good that they felt seen. My son even said to me that people would appreciate it coming from a women. It really highlighted that fact that these boys are craving to be seen and heard, even if it’s not in the perfect as you highlight.
And I watched the YouTube video link you attached and it’s true that boys and men need men and that they are feed up with the feminist message being projected on them.
Thanks again for your contribution to an important conversation.
I was very apprehensive of your response because I'm being overly sharp, but after decades of taking the soft approach and everyone being unheard, with millions dead, that's where the dialogue has come to.
1) As you can see, men are constantly, almost ceaselessly on the receiving end of female disrespectful behavior. We just don't say anything because: men; and nobody cares. No biggie but it wears after a while, like pointing at the sun and people denying it's there. So you're not alone in that.
2) I'm aware that every friend and peer you have is willing to disown you forever, in 6 seconds, after reading you wrote this. Your peril is real, in my estimation, yet you bravely wrote it anyway. (I'm American, no comment on better or worse than your nation) So writing it does mean something, but perhaps if you write in defense of your own children and people don't like it, further considerations are in order.
3) I'm amazed they were so chuffed, that's pleasant, shows how inured to the abuse they are and how unaffected, as boys and men generally are. It makes it easier to fix when there's motion and not depression.
4) It's indescribable, but using the modern lingo, "Feeling Seen" is incredibly female-coded, practically incomprehensible. That's okay and fine, but as a man, I could totally care less if I'm seen. In fact, please DON'T see me if you want. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tch4v0L0GHA Means absolutely nothing to me, it's practically an insult because A) it presumes I'm weak, without any structure or self of my own, b) and that you are very very important and have all the leverage and value. Nevertheless, this is constantly used (And insults men with a glove to the face) while is meant totally as an affirmation and positive. Not trying to take offense, but when we're on the subject it stands out. It says, "Yeah, but we women still have all the power and you're nobody, actually." And again, when that totally isn't what's meant. For women, being seen is a deep, solid affirmation.
So taken the next step, (as a man) I could care less what anybody thinks, and especially do not care even a little bit what they feel. That's your private business, politeness demands you keep it to yourself. What I/we men care about is what are you going to DO about it. I can check what you do, I can't prove what you FEEL. Your FEELING bad, or sympathetic, or whatever, doesn't fix a thing, doesn't stop suicides, doesn't pay the rent, save your energy and breath, might as well not bother. --That's the man's response, if I'm speaking for them, which I wouldn't, which is why we mostly shut up about it. It shouldn't be this way, but at present, saying you're sorry, saying you feel, saying you see, is all for psychopaths as a way to keep abusing others without actually having to change. That's not for you of course, but we've reached a point where it's the default expectation.
And that's while boys like your son are being essentially murdered by the ten-thousands and laugh so you can see why I'm stern. There's kind of a clock ticking on to move rapidly. But what to do in each of our lives? That's a bit complicated, realizing it's true is first.
Important topic. Thanks for covering it. Sadly, like most things the modern movement gets a hold of to correct past wrongs, thay will push the "boys are bad" narrative until it breaks. Power is what is toxic, not gender. As more governments, boards of directors, companies and religion institutions are led by women, we have seen zero evidence that corruption, harassment and evil intent have decreased. I agree that the goal should be to make space for both males and females and not to simply to swap one gender for the other.
Exhausting to read this same type of story again and again and again. I have seen this play out so many times it is infuriating. Yet another women who fully supports the very things that caused these issues, and believes that it was "the right thing" and "necessary", until she gets one of those disgusting men herself. And now all of a sudden, big boo-hoo. Because the same backwards and destructive things she supported now no longer work in her favor and are hurting one of her own. The fact that these women don't see any connection between having supported feminism and all of these pro-women policies, and hurting men is truly something exclusively reserved for the feminine. Feminism is just trying to revert the roles, they want to create a matriarchy and base themselves on lies and perverted fantasies of how women were "oppressed" in the past and "return the favor" ten fold. You created this, and until you wake up you, and even worse, your and everyone else's sons, will have to live with the consequences. It is too late already for men in certain countries. They have been completely stripped off of any ability to resist and speak out about this, let alone work to resolve it. Women are not going to stop with their gynocentric thinking and thus this problem will never be resolved until the social infrastructure that oppressed and silences men is no longer present. Which will be when society has collapsed. Boys and men will need to relocate to another country and abandon this ship, it will not ever get better until everything is destroyed. And I don't want to wait around to see it, or pay the price for it. Nor would I recommend other men to continue putting up with this. It will only stop when men have removed themselves from these women. Until then, the decay and destruction will continue and accelerate.
I’m not here to defend every aspect of feminism or deny the harm some boys and men are experiencing right now. I’ve seen it up close, and I’m not blind to the damage. These are big, complex issues and they’re not being handled well in a lot of spaces. You’ve made a lot of assumptions about me, who I am, what I’ve supported, and why I wrote this piece. Writing me off as “yet another woman” who only cares when it affects her son isn’t accurate. I’ve been working in wellbeing for decades, and I’ve always believed in fairness, empathy, and the importance of listening to people’s lived experience, including boys.
This article wasn’t written to excuse anything, or to attack anyone. It was to open up space for honest reflection about the boys I’ve been speaking with directly, including my own. I’m not trying to score points in some gender war. I just want better outcomes for the next generation, all of them.
If the article doesn’t land for you, that’s fine. I'm open to real dialogue and varying perspectives, but I'm not to being used as a punching bag for wider cultural rage. That just adds more of the same noise that keeps us stuck.
It is exhausting to read these stories and deal with the backlash of toxic feminists and disgruntled men who want to remain in perpetual victimhood and revenge. Everyone has to own their part in how we got here and how we need to work together to get through it.
Thanks for sharing my article Nat. The feedback, especially from my son and his mates ( yes he liked it so much he shared it in the boys footy chat group, which on a side note, is a huge connection moment for me) has shown me how much work there is to do in this space. It validated that what I was seeing and hearing is what many of the boys are really feeling. These boys are not feeling seen and heard and if something doesn’t change soon, it’s a really slippery slope downhill for many of them.
I'm glad you wrote it Lisa and I get to share it here. It says a lot when a teenage boy agrees with his mum and openly shares what she wrote to his mates!
Couldn’t agree more with this article. I work at a facility that houses teenage boys. It’s a residential for teenage boys who’ve committed felonies and they’re serving the remainder of their sentencing there in hopes of rehabilitation and good behavior. The majority of them are and were raised by single mothers. What I’ve noticed is the facility lack traditional masculine philosophical teachings. Instead it tries to control their natural inherent teenage boy masculine hormonal tendencies and brainwashes them with feminize ideologies through group therapy and punishment for non pro-social behaviors. This place could really use this article. I (not to toot my horn, former combat OEF III Marine, former beat patrol officer of the law and body guard) am attempting (with my own under my own power with professionalism without going against any policies procedures or regulations) to change some of these institutionalized feminized disadvantages that this place blindly chooses to believe are working for these kids God willing.
You're doing incredible work and it would be disheartening to watch these boys continue to receive feminizing 'rehab' to further entrench their wounding and confusion. What strategies will you attempt to influence change (I get very excited when people do this stealth work)?
Boys raised without fathers suffer more than feminists admit, or even notice. The problem is endemic in the university training given to teachers and councilors: rather than listen to these boys' literal experiences (which are often difficult to articulate), authority figures start with an ideological lens and work backwards. Thus, the conclusions they draw about boys are generally consistent with "theory" but often the complete opposite of reality. Boys might consistently tell a researcher that they judge people by the contents of their hearts rather than the color of their skin or their gender identity, and the researcher will find that boys have "white ignorance". So, if you want to change this facility, you need to get them to question their education. I'd like to know if this article helps.
I agree with you. Too many assumptions not enough listening to boys experiences.
Every once in a while, a feminist will try listening to boys, but because they adhere to critical theory, they are incapable of using active listening skills without covertly transposing what boys are saying. In family scapegoating situations, for example, a boy might express to a councilor how he gets punished by the whole family for his sister's shortcomings (e.g. he gets blamed when she gets turned down for a job) and a feminist councilor will interpret this as proof that he is in denial of his male privilege. The councilor then proceeds to steer him towards confessing a causal role in her failure and an admission of privilege rather than helping him develop healthy boundaries. This kind of thing plays out everywhere feminists are councilors. Unless the underlying epistemology is rooted out, this sort of semi-abusive behaviour will continue to be unfortunately common .
As a fatherless youth i joined the Panther Boys Club I n 1959 and it was good! It helped .
So fathers matter... Werent masculine men toxic? The left has killed society. And now what? A pair of post Will suffice?
Women shall shut up and let men speak. Stop womensplaining.
Are you accusing me of womansplaining?
He's an angry troll. He's totally right to be angry but using it to tell people off who are trying to help encourage masculinity and disrupt/dismantle feminised structures is hardly constructive.
What would be constructive is if he could share his strategies of what works beyond shaking his fist and insulting people.
'What I’ve noticed is the facility lack traditional masculine philosophical teachings. Instead it tries to control their natural inherent teenage boy masculine hormonal tendencies and brainwashes them with feminize ideologies'
Can you expand on this? I'm a father of girls but I see the problems being discussed here and would like to know more. Cheers
I was walking to work some time ago when a woman stopped in front of me to tell me that I was making her nervous. I replied that I had been walking this exact route every day for twenty years. She replied “then you need to get a life.” I am an older gray-haired man who wears a suit and tie. It was 7:30 in the morning and I was carrying a leather shoulder bag with my books and files. I never saw this woman before, even though I lived on the same street using the same and only sidewalk since 1994. Yet, she was imperious, angry, and demanding.
My community used to make blacks step off of the sidewalk when whites passed under threat of arrest or worse. I now know firsthand how they felt.
That’s horrible. It’s like men and boys are now expected to manage the emotions and triggers of women and girls. Respect and consideration of others is a good thing but having to change normal behaviour like walking on the footpath to accomodate someone else’s anxiety shows where society is at. :-(
Golly, I wonder what social system or philosophy made her feel that way, to consider men as 24/7 threats? It’s on the tip of my tongue…
That’s shocking behaviour from a paranoid woman.
Completely agree, Its always been obvious to me, that the word inclusive means just that. You can't exclude people that don't fit the ideology, if you exclude overly masculine men, or straight people, or white people, etc, then by definition you are NOT being inclusive. I find it so bizarre that some people can call themselves progressive or well educated, while looking down on others that don't hold the same opinions as them, as it completely defies the definition of being inclusive. Inclusive means everyone! Let's be respectful of everyone, man, woman, child, race, colour, etc. Regardless of your masculinity or femininity, we are all entitled to be heard and included.
“Instead of being invited into the conversation, they feel pre-judged, like they’re being told what not to do rather than being asked how they feel or what they need”
🙄
What boys need includes paternal type positive male influences and to not be innundated with feminine perspectives. This includes female-free time and spaces.
My fondest memories of school as a lad were informal games of tackle football with other boys. No girls (they were happy playing amongst themselves, mostly) or women asking us about our feelings.
P.S. Didn’t mean to be rude; apology if my comment came across this way. But intra-feminine socialization patterns, even well intentioned, do not effectively translate to the males of the species. Just love us. If the feminization of society is in large part to blame for what society has done and continues to do to boys and men, it’s a bit disingenuous to think that women have to come up with the solution. Just don’t be the problem (e.g., be feminists).
Awesome comment, Stephen!
Thank you, Ole.
Agree. And I'm a mum and grandma to grand daughters
Loving mums and grandmas are such wonderful things in a boy’s life. Truly.
There's an inherent problem with women telling boys how to act towards women and girls, which is that in practice, those women and girls will often appear to respect or prefer men and boys who behave precisely how boys have been told NOT to. I don't just mean romantically (although definitely romantically) but more generally women will respond positively to dominant male patterns of behaviour, whether it's at work, socially or whatever.
This isn't a criticism of women for responding like this, by the way. Without wanting to sound like a Jordan-Peterson-evolutionary-psychology douchebag, I think a lot of men have grown up learning to take what women say they want from them with a pinch of salt, because they've seen how women often appear to actually respect them less for doing what they say they should. I'm not trying to excuse bad male behaviour towards women, but none of the men who behave badly towards women do so because they weren't told not to.
As for boys "retreating into boys' clubs": So what? Would anyone worry that girls were retreating into "girls' clubs" because they spend more time with other girls?
Women saying men should be certain way, while rewarding the opposite behavior is an important issue. But I think you undermine your point with your last paragraph. We should all be very concerned when people retreat into exclusionary groups, whether that's girls clubs, boys clubs, echo chambers, or anything else.
Spot on.
ALL Empires go through three phases;
1) Warrior Age
2) Golden Age
3) Flop
For the United States of America, My country, the Flop began on 11/22/1963.
Ever since that day, ALL has been in decline.
For ALL empires in the flop phase, interpersonal interactions ALL become dominance games.
For Men who seek dominance, They use violence, and the threat of violence. Terrorism is the organised application of this paradigm.
For Women who seek dominance, They tend to run Their mouth, and seek to destroy the inner balance of Their chosen victims. These Women do this to other Women, and to Men and Boys.
In any event, things for Boys and Men will improve when the current paradigm goes up in flames, and Females will be
FORCED
to be nice to a Man in order to NOT be eaten by cannibals.
Surviving Men and Boys will organise, Warlord Style, in order to kill Their way out of problems presented by other groups of Men and Boys.
The Universe tends torward balance, and justice.
Things WILL improve in the future, but first, the lies that are lived by many People-not-Me will have to be destroyed.
Interesting theory! I agree that there is a tendency to shift toward balance with inevitable overcorrection.
This is a really important and well written essay. Increasingly for decades boys have been told that they are inherently dangerous and suspicious. As traditional masculinity has increasingly been shown to be "toxic", and feminism has increasingly shown girls they can do and be anything, the idea of what boys and men can be has been dismantled. There is now no clear and positive idea of what it means to be a man, only what being a man shouldn't be. This is an incredibly dangerous and uncomfortable place for boys who are reaching the age when trying to figure out who they are and should be, but are only getting negative reinforcement. This article does a great job of describing why this purely negative reinforcement is so dangerous.
But the author also reinforces the idea that the "feminization" of boys is the problem, and that accepting some form of masculinity is the solution. However, I think it has become clear that this is not true.
“what aspect of cultural masculinity is good for men to embody, and not good for women to embody?”
The problem is and has always been that traditional masculinity is a fundamentally broken and harmful way to live. Rather than treating boys and girls as some (bio-)essentially different types of creatures that need different ways of life, we need to recognize everyone's shared humanity, and teach boys and girls how to be *good people*.
https://maxhniebergall.substack.com/p/masculinity-is-just-an-aesthetic
I sent that Ron Swanson quote, so adding this from today, 7/12 a month later:
https://substack.com/@workingman/note/c-134747413
What would boys be like, or what is male camaraderie or loneliness? Might be different than you think and clearly different from women.
I appreciate the article immensely, and the spirit is good. But there was a line in there I feel the need to address.
The quote in question: "It looks like boys defaulting to humour, sarcasm, or withdrawal because vulnerability doesn’t feel safe."
Vulnerability doesn't feel safe, because it isn't safe. Not emotionally, not physically. Full stop. It's the literal definition of the word.
Nobody who wants to make you systematically more vulnerable has your best interests at heart. This is a fairly basic idea most people grasp immediately and intuitively.
Exhorting anyone to be more vulnerable, especially young men who already have a clear sense that the system they are living in is hostile to their existence, will result in further mistrust and rejection.
It doesn't help that every young man, at some point, witnesses another young man display emotional vulnerability to a young woman, and take a emotional crowbar to their metaphorical crotch so hard their overseas relations feel it.
I strongly recommend a hard reexamination of the language and concepts behind the "men need to be more vulnerable" line.
Thanks for your contribution. You make a valid point. Sometimes it's the mistakes or not getting it perfect that allows the opportunity to see multiple perspectives, eg, you making this point. In saying that, didn't write it for that purpose but it has now allowed me to see where I got it wrong and can improve. Thank you.
I have had conversations with several women about the expectation that men/bosys should be vulnerable when it’s a feminized approach to making them express their pain in a more palatable way. Brene Brown’s work on the importance of vulnerability sure did a number on everyone as it’s been adopted by the managerial class and implemented everywhere as a priority. Vulnerability isn’t safe by definition is exactly right.
Sounds like you're fully aware of that issue! On a related note, something I've always found amusing is the insistence on young men "expressing their emotions".
There is a core contradiction in that idea. Speaking as someone who was once a young man, back in the mists of time: when a young man is making the acquaintance of large amounts of testosterone for the first time, the predominantly experienced emotions consist of (in no particular order): angry, and horny.
Two emotions that society at large has always frowned upon public displays of for obvious reasons (doubly so for the feminized expectations of modern society).
The message to young men ending up effectively being to either express your authentic (and entirely normal) emotions, which will then be condemned as disgusting and degenerate, not express your emotions to anyone, or create an elaborate farce of expressing emotions you are not actually experiencing, to manage the anxieties of the adults around you (taking a young man with enough problems managing the transition to adulthood already, and parentifying them).
It's been said that modern western society treats boys as defective girls, and this seems to be one of the places that is writ large.
"to manage the anxieties of the adults around you" There's so much in this sentence. I won't elaborate here but I am going to ponder this one and who knows, maybe write about it.
Regulating and banning internet pornography would show boys we give a shit about them. Instead of mocking them, as they get chewed up by a psychological meat grinder under the noses of their clueless parents. Speaking of consent, can a 14 year old boy consent to what happens when he Googles "sex" ? Obviously not. He's confronted with primal male rage-bait wrapped in a massive dopamine hit. So maybe stop making their first sexual experiences non-consensual and then lecturing them about consent. No wonder they're angry. We are gaslighting our boys into oblivion.
Agreed
There's a fundamental misunderstanding about what teenage boys need and want, and what's good for them. This isn't surprising: we're mostly listening to women, and they now have most of the power in organizations which deal with these issues. Just as delegating the job of shaping and instructing teenage girls to almost exclusively men would produce some absurdities and misunderstandings, so it is when the sexes are reversed.
https://jmpolemic.substack.com/p/stoic-reserve-and-its-detractors
Thanks for your feedback and your contribution to this conversation. I read your essay and you make some really great points.
Great article! Thanks! One issue that's really critical is we must have the courage to stand up to the small number of loud, neurotic, radical feminists who insist on erasing all men's spaces. Our leaders need to find a backbone. Until that happens nothing will change.
Thanks and yes I agree.
You keep saying they "Feel" this way, but it's an objective fact. They will DEFINITELY be punished. 100% lead-pipe certainty, for being anything at all. Go ahead: run a test anywhere, with anyone, in any school, with any group and tell me what your results are. Therefore nobody cares what they feel or don't feel. If objectively you put your finger out and get a bear trap every time, your feelings about it are entirely immaterial. Only the bear trap, which is a physical, provable, testable, repeatable reality. Therefore their response is not only logical, it's incredibly, supernaturally forbearing and generous. Even the suicides: they're doing that to serve you. So say thanks!
Also, I know you have to do this to get anybody to even possibly listen, but how many paragraphs did you spend caveat and defending girls/women while this top cause of daily death for men is going on for 25 years? 10% of the article on men is still about defending women? What were those paragraphs saying? They're saying everything you've done for girls/women is perfect, wouldn't change a thing, totally unrelated to the man issue. (Nods.) Are you sure? There seems a strong correlation about the same time. For example, when you can afford 100 scholarships and because woman's programs focus, 99 of them now go to women, this has no effect on men? Or if we have women's focus to have methods and phys ed games girls prefer better, this never causes a change that boys prefer less? Precisely as your very example? C'mon. Neither boys, men, nor even women will trust you if you prevaricate like this. At some point somebody's going to have to say, "Intentionally killing all young human males in Australia is wrong." We're not at that point yet, I guess.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVJxLb12c6w
Thank you for taking the time to read and respond. I appreciate your honesty. You’ve raised some really valid points that.
I can see how it might feel like I kept circling back to girls and women, even when the piece was meant to highlight what boys are going through. That wasn’t intentional, but I get how it reads that way.
As a women who has been on the receiving end of disrespectful male behaviour, it's not easy for me to be calling this narrative out. I've wanted to write about this as well as critiques on modern feminism for a while and probably been putting it off in concern for how it will land. So after the conversation with my son on the way to school the other day, I came home and wrote the article. Is it perfect, no, does it highlight how we got here, no, should it mention my work with female empowerment, maybe/maybe not. Regardless is was my first attempt to start a conversation on a topic I felt was necessary to talk about.
What’s been really interesting is how many teen boys have actually responded. My son read it and said, “This is good as. Can I share it with the boys?” And he did...to the whole boys footy chat. The feedback from his mates was powerful and they felt seen. Responses like "its elite", " i love it", and the captain of the footy firsts said " it's the best article I've ever read" Apart from being wrapped that 17 year old boys were reading a 7 minute article, it felt so good that they felt seen. My son even said to me that people would appreciate it coming from a women. It really highlighted that fact that these boys are craving to be seen and heard, even if it’s not in the perfect as you highlight.
And I watched the YouTube video link you attached and it’s true that boys and men need men and that they are feed up with the feminist message being projected on them.
Thanks again for your contribution to an important conversation.
I was very apprehensive of your response because I'm being overly sharp, but after decades of taking the soft approach and everyone being unheard, with millions dead, that's where the dialogue has come to.
1) As you can see, men are constantly, almost ceaselessly on the receiving end of female disrespectful behavior. We just don't say anything because: men; and nobody cares. No biggie but it wears after a while, like pointing at the sun and people denying it's there. So you're not alone in that.
2) I'm aware that every friend and peer you have is willing to disown you forever, in 6 seconds, after reading you wrote this. Your peril is real, in my estimation, yet you bravely wrote it anyway. (I'm American, no comment on better or worse than your nation) So writing it does mean something, but perhaps if you write in defense of your own children and people don't like it, further considerations are in order.
3) I'm amazed they were so chuffed, that's pleasant, shows how inured to the abuse they are and how unaffected, as boys and men generally are. It makes it easier to fix when there's motion and not depression.
4) It's indescribable, but using the modern lingo, "Feeling Seen" is incredibly female-coded, practically incomprehensible. That's okay and fine, but as a man, I could totally care less if I'm seen. In fact, please DON'T see me if you want. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tch4v0L0GHA Means absolutely nothing to me, it's practically an insult because A) it presumes I'm weak, without any structure or self of my own, b) and that you are very very important and have all the leverage and value. Nevertheless, this is constantly used (And insults men with a glove to the face) while is meant totally as an affirmation and positive. Not trying to take offense, but when we're on the subject it stands out. It says, "Yeah, but we women still have all the power and you're nobody, actually." And again, when that totally isn't what's meant. For women, being seen is a deep, solid affirmation.
So taken the next step, (as a man) I could care less what anybody thinks, and especially do not care even a little bit what they feel. That's your private business, politeness demands you keep it to yourself. What I/we men care about is what are you going to DO about it. I can check what you do, I can't prove what you FEEL. Your FEELING bad, or sympathetic, or whatever, doesn't fix a thing, doesn't stop suicides, doesn't pay the rent, save your energy and breath, might as well not bother. --That's the man's response, if I'm speaking for them, which I wouldn't, which is why we mostly shut up about it. It shouldn't be this way, but at present, saying you're sorry, saying you feel, saying you see, is all for psychopaths as a way to keep abusing others without actually having to change. That's not for you of course, but we've reached a point where it's the default expectation.
And that's while boys like your son are being essentially murdered by the ten-thousands and laugh so you can see why I'm stern. There's kind of a clock ticking on to move rapidly. But what to do in each of our lives? That's a bit complicated, realizing it's true is first.
This is the perfect response. Chef's kiss.
Important topic. Thanks for covering it. Sadly, like most things the modern movement gets a hold of to correct past wrongs, thay will push the "boys are bad" narrative until it breaks. Power is what is toxic, not gender. As more governments, boards of directors, companies and religion institutions are led by women, we have seen zero evidence that corruption, harassment and evil intent have decreased. I agree that the goal should be to make space for both males and females and not to simply to swap one gender for the other.
Exhausting to read this same type of story again and again and again. I have seen this play out so many times it is infuriating. Yet another women who fully supports the very things that caused these issues, and believes that it was "the right thing" and "necessary", until she gets one of those disgusting men herself. And now all of a sudden, big boo-hoo. Because the same backwards and destructive things she supported now no longer work in her favor and are hurting one of her own. The fact that these women don't see any connection between having supported feminism and all of these pro-women policies, and hurting men is truly something exclusively reserved for the feminine. Feminism is just trying to revert the roles, they want to create a matriarchy and base themselves on lies and perverted fantasies of how women were "oppressed" in the past and "return the favor" ten fold. You created this, and until you wake up you, and even worse, your and everyone else's sons, will have to live with the consequences. It is too late already for men in certain countries. They have been completely stripped off of any ability to resist and speak out about this, let alone work to resolve it. Women are not going to stop with their gynocentric thinking and thus this problem will never be resolved until the social infrastructure that oppressed and silences men is no longer present. Which will be when society has collapsed. Boys and men will need to relocate to another country and abandon this ship, it will not ever get better until everything is destroyed. And I don't want to wait around to see it, or pay the price for it. Nor would I recommend other men to continue putting up with this. It will only stop when men have removed themselves from these women. Until then, the decay and destruction will continue and accelerate.
I’m not here to defend every aspect of feminism or deny the harm some boys and men are experiencing right now. I’ve seen it up close, and I’m not blind to the damage. These are big, complex issues and they’re not being handled well in a lot of spaces. You’ve made a lot of assumptions about me, who I am, what I’ve supported, and why I wrote this piece. Writing me off as “yet another woman” who only cares when it affects her son isn’t accurate. I’ve been working in wellbeing for decades, and I’ve always believed in fairness, empathy, and the importance of listening to people’s lived experience, including boys.
This article wasn’t written to excuse anything, or to attack anyone. It was to open up space for honest reflection about the boys I’ve been speaking with directly, including my own. I’m not trying to score points in some gender war. I just want better outcomes for the next generation, all of them.
If the article doesn’t land for you, that’s fine. I'm open to real dialogue and varying perspectives, but I'm not to being used as a punching bag for wider cultural rage. That just adds more of the same noise that keeps us stuck.
It is exhausting to read these stories and deal with the backlash of toxic feminists and disgruntled men who want to remain in perpetual victimhood and revenge. Everyone has to own their part in how we got here and how we need to work together to get through it.