Imagining a world without boys

Every morning, I get up early to make my younger son lunch: half an apple, sliced, of course, Chex Mix, some turkey lunchmeat, and a cookie. To me, it’s important to help shape his school day to be the best it can be. Food isn’t the only nourishment a boy needs, though, so I write him a note to go along with his lunch. It’s the same note every day, and I wish I could be there every day at 11:15 when he pulls it out of his blue, soft-sided, insulated lunch box and reads, “The future is female.”

I know what you are thinking: I am a great dad. Thank you, but I have to admit I sometimes have my doubts – not about the future, just the note. Girls do better than boys at every level of education. Women do better than men in every level of higher education. Young single women make more than young single men. The death by suicide rate for teen boys is four times higher than it is for girls. The highest death rate is older white men, but F those ol’ codgers, am I right? They are the past, not the future.

Anywho, as a father, I am becoming a bit befuddled about why my sons shouldn’t be a part of the future. You may think it’s simply an empowering slogan for women and girls, but that would be naïve. It would be like saying, “men made the past” and being surprised that some people think that this statement discredits every contribution women have made to society for the last 10,000 years (because it does). Maybe you’re highly educated and can see the sophistication of these simplifications (my 18-year-old son said the slogan means increased representation for females in the future), or maybe that’s just you being full of shit, arrogant, and ideologically driven? If the words we use matter, and they do, they matter to everyone: even males.

What is a boy supposed to think about this message? My fourteen-year-old admitted he didn’t understand what it meant; then he joked that it meant all the men will be killed in the future. I’ve heard many things in-between the death/uselessness of men and the fuller representation statements from teenage boys. Boys may do stupid things, but they are not stupid. They can look around and see that girls are doing better in school. They can see all the support girls get (think all the STEM initiatives for girls, for starters). Note: When I see all the support for girls in education, I say great! And how about we treat all the boys who are struggling with the same effort and enthusiasm?

Before I get back to our struggling boys, I need to address the level of cruelty in some of the responses when I bring up the issue of struggling boys. I have had educated women respond to the higher death rate of boys because of suicide by saying, “Well, they use guns.” You’re missing the point, Stephanie, the boys are dead. That should be the big takeaway from the statistics. Don’t get too mad at Stephanie, though, because as a culture we seem unable to see boys unless they are burning something down or committing crimes.  A typical example of this attitude toward boys dying is the NPR’s article, “Suicide Rate For Girls Has Been Rising Faster Than For Boys, Study Finds (source ). As you read the article highlighting the rising suicide rate for girls, you will always find this piece of information (I rarely use the word always because it is almost always incorrect, but not in this case) find: “Boys are still more likely to take their own lives.” For the most part, the media thinks we only care if girls are in danger of suicide. How true is this? My favorite line from the NPR piece is, “She stresses the need to learn more about what’s driving the trend (of rising suicide rate of girls).” Yes, my God, we should explore this before girls kill themselves at the same rate as boys! Wouldn’t that be a tragedy? Again, if you can help girls from committing suicide, please do. For god’s sake, they are children. So are boys (how many times do I have to say this before people start listening?).

Then there’s the social justice twist: yes, boys are killing themselves more than girls, but the numbers are even higher for boys of color. The conversation then ends because, apparently, if there wasn’t racism Black boys, Hispanic boys, Asian boys, American Indian boys, and White boys would kill themselves equally. Yeah!? Boys of all colors, including white, are killing themselves more than girls. The fact that white boys are killing themselves shows that there is a bigger issue than race when it comes to suicide. I understand why it is so easy to ignore, denigrate, and project power, privilege, and evil intent on all white men (this is dubious and lazy, considering the millions of white men in poverty, but that’s for a different article), but to ignore, denigrate, and project power and privilege on white boys about to kill themselves is…I don’t have the word to describe that. Evil? To be practical, if you’ll only help boys of color, I’ll take it. Help them! They deserve it. All boys deserve it.

Here's a simple solution often offered to the problem that I hate: If boys would only talk about their feelings, they would be fine. Yeah, those stupid boys and their toxic masculinity.  I’m not saying there isn’t room, lots of room, to increase emotional awareness and emotional literacy in boys and men; there is (and I’ve spent years sitting in circles doing just that), but it is not the panacea some people think it is. Men need to hide their emotions, and boys know this. Society needs men to hide their emotions. Take a look at the most dangerous jobs in America. Before you do that, guess which gender works those jobs at a rate of over 95%? If you guessed female, boy do you have a messed-up understanding of some of the gender differences at work. When the blizzard knocks down powerlines, we expect men (and a tiny percentage of brave women, I’m sure) to go out and fix it mid-storm. When the garbage is piling up, we expect men to get up early to pick up our stinking trash, without complaint. For the millions of boys who are going to grow up in working-class and some middle-class occupations, being tough isn’t toxic; it’s a necessity.     

This may or may not be news to you, but boys know this, and teenagers of both sexes are excellent bullshit detectors. When we tell them being tough is bad or sharing their emotions is good, they know we only mean it for a certain set of men. We don’t mean it for men with tough jobs, and we don’t mean it when boys or men express emotions society doesn’t want to hear. I was at a conference for helping boys when a 15-year-old said he didn’t feel his male privilege and was confused. He was then verbally jumped on by men, explaining why his feelings were wrong. Yes, they said his feelings were wrong. I do not need to be a counselor to know that denying what people are feeling is both unhealthy and counterproductive to creating a trusting relationship. I like some counselors, though, and a good counselor would say, “When participants described experiencing their therapist as communicating genuine curiosity, active listening, understanding and being nonjudgmental, they described sessions as tailored to their needs” (Marotti, Thackeray, and Midgley) How many of us are curious about finding out what boys think as opposed to telling them what to think? How many of us are listening to what boys are saying? Without judgment? Without labeling them or their behavior? Hell, I find that hard to do, and I am writing in support of these unheard, judged less-than, boys.

We are hardwired to see males as the problem, the perpetrators. If I brought up victims of domestic abuse, most of us would imagine a woman. Few will think of men, who are 40% of the victims. This goes on and on in just about any situation. Research shows we generally think men = perpetrators. We need to continue to remind ourselves of that bias when we think of boys. We need to think about the jobs we expect them to take on when they become men. We need to think of them as complex individuals who would benefit greatly from adults who listen to what they have to say and validate how they feel while challenging their thinking when it is working against who they are and who they want to be.

We need to think about the future and ask a few questions, like Who decided we have to gender the future? And pick the winning gender? Is that even possible, a winning gender? Around 17 million men live in poverty (for women it’s higher, around 20 million). The past, present, and future were never meant for these men (or women). It’s a shame they missed their chance. Oh well. Does anyone think the female future envisioned in t-shirts and stickers is going to lift those 20 million women out of poverty? Or, is it more likely that a small percentage of the best and brightest of the lower classes, mostly female, will be elevated for the benefit of the upper classes who will happily leave the rest behind, while a smaller percentage of amazing men and women do it on their own despite the barriers?

It’s no cure, but to start a better conversation that might lead to fewer boys killing themselves, let’s stop segregating the future. I know how to sell this. As we know from the media coverage, boys and men are the problem. I get it. I don’t like it, I will speak against it, but I have to work with the current state of affairs, not what I wish them to be. We need to help boys – opps, We can help girls and women by helping boys and men. Girls deserve safe schools. When boys’ mental health is strong, school violence goes down. By treating boys with respect and helping them in ways that celebrate their masculinity instead of denigrating it, our girls win!

We can’t leave out women, either: If colleges and universities continue to graduate more women than men, then the future looks like a lot of educated women unable to find equally educated men to date and or marry. Women rarely marry or date down the social or educational ladder. No judgment, just a statistical fact. This future is going to be a lonely one for straight, educated women and awesome for the ever-shrinking set of eligible, i.e. educated men. If dating app research has proven anything, the small percentage of attractive men that 80+ percent of women swipe right on will be in a power position that rarely brings out people’s best behavior. Strong, successful women, if they choose, should have men of quality to date and/or marry, to partner with them in raising strong, beautiful girls and healthy, emotionally connected boys. Girls and women can do anything without men, but furniture is heavy, boys can be funny, men can be useful, and being alone is not everyone’s first preference.

I need a different note to put in my son’s lunch box, and I can’t do it alone. Remember, and remind others, the cost to girls when we ignore boys. Stand tall and demand society talks about the cost to women when we disregard men. If we all do that, the future just might be better for all our children because no matter what realistic angle you take to look at it, a future without boys isn’t a dream: It’s a nightmare.

Non-linked references:

Teenage Boys in Therapy: A Qualitative Study of Male Adolescents’ Experience of Short-Term Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy by Marotti, Thackeray, and Midgley