Be a man ... by being human

Remember that old Pepsi ad featuring MC Hammer?  I still remember that commercial not because of any fondness of Pepsi over Coke, but because of "feelings" that the macho rapper starts to croon.  The ad did young boys a huge disservice by suggesting it was not hip to sing about, to talk about, feelings.

I was raised with phrases like "don't cry like a girl"--like almost all kids were back in those days in the old country.  Anger I could display. Fight I could.  Because boys will be boys.  But, crying was unmanly. I see that attitude even now, even in the adopted country.

We seem to forget that feelings bring people together.  Women cultivate their sisterhood through talking about their feelings, whether it is about their husbands or mothers or colleagues or kids or ... it is a long list of people about whom we have feelings and women seem to unreservedly talk about them.  Men, on the other hand, talk about sports and politics and the weather and everything else that is not about one's own feelings. 

All these despite plenty of men singing about feelings.  Like even that "feelings" song that MC Hammer sings because he drank the "wrong" soda.

Feelings, nothing more than feelings,
Trying to forget my feelings of love.
Teardrops rolling down on my face,
Trying to forget my feelings of love.

It is also the case that men who sang about feelings were immensely popular with women, from Frank Sinatra to Marvin Gaye to ... recall Rebecca's weak spot in Cheers?

Yet, we continue to brainwash boys and men that it is feminine to get in touch with their emotions!

In the narratives they consume, as well as the broader cultural landscape in which they operate, girls get a huge head start on relational skills, in the day-to-day thorniness and complexity of emotional life. Story by story, girls are getting the message that other people’s feelings are their concern and their responsibility. Boys are learning that these things have nothing to do with them.

We have barely even registered this lack of an emotional and relational education as a worrying loss for boys. We tend to dismiss and trivialize teenage girls’ preoccupation with the intricacies of relationships as “girl-drama.” But as Niobe Way, a professor of psychology at New York University and the author of “Deep Secrets, Boys’ Friendships and the Crisis of Connection,” says, “When we devalue things associated with femininity — such as emotions and relationships — boys miss out.”

It is strange, bizarre, and tragic that this is talked about even in 2021!  Am not at all surprised that of the students who come to my office, only female students ever are honest with their emotions and seek my assistance.  With a couple of male students, I have even mildly attempted to convey to them to sort out their issues, ... but, hey, I don't have too much time remaining at the university.

Some day, we will get past these false gender norms and become healthy.

Macho, macho man!

One of the long-running topics in this blog is about how girls, who have been discriminated against historically all through the world, are now rapidly redefining what it means to be woman, and about boys whose worlds appear to be shrinking.

Now, don't jump up and aim for my jugular immediately as a reflex.  Do it after you have had to think about it for a while.

I will start with a simple example first.  In the old country, in the old days, girls and women had to wear only the traditional female dresses.  Four decades ago, when my sister was a teenager, she was not allowed to wear jeans--because it was not an approved female attire. Now, wait a second, do not jump to any conclusion that India was all backward then.  Do you recall the fight that women had to fight in this country so that they could wear pants to work?  Do you recall the nasty jokes on Hillary Clinton because she wore pantsuits?  They made fun of that even when she was a presidential candidate!

In urban India, it is no longer news when a girl wears jeans, and when a woman wears trousers.  They wear tshirts and shirts, just like we men do.  Some even wear shorts in the old country.

So, to recap: Girls and women can wear whatever they want, even the outfits that used to exclusively men's.  Right?

So, if your five year old boy prefers to wear those colorful skirts that he finds some girls wearing, will you let him wear those skirts?  What if your nine-year old boy wants to wear skirts?

I use the example of outfits only because all of us can easily relate to them.  It is not an alien topic.

Girls and women are increasingly finding that they can do what ever they want to, and be whatever they want to, and wear whatever they want to.  I say, good for them.  And good for societies that actively encourage that.  We should pat ourselves on our backs for this.  They can be astronauts, neurosurgeons, programmers, CEOs, and more, even as they can also go after jobs that were once reserved for women--teachers, nurses, etc.  Their world has expanded.  Right?

How about for boys?

Aha, you are not so ready to aim for my jugular now, are you?

At this point, I want to provide you the link to a thoughtful NY Times story: Many Ways to Be a Girl, but One Way to Be a Boy.  That title seems to be all about what I have been ranting about, right?

Now, I don't want to be naive--biology plays a huge role.  When those hormones kick in, we begin to act in a certain way.  Especially boys, who are driven crazy by the testosterone that rushes through their system.  But, it is up us to teach boys and girls, and to guide young men and women, on why biology does not determine our fate.

As a middle-aged man, I am all the more convinced that we are messing up people's lives by not allowing boys to be children first.  Their male chromosome should not matter.  If, for instance, a boy wants to cry, let him; don't tell him that he cries like a girl.  If a boy wants to be nurse, encourage him.  Real men do all that, and more.

As a middle-aged man, I am also convinced that we are messing up people's lives by not allowing girls to be children first.  There should not be any discussion on how they look 24x7.  Girls should not be getting the message that they are getting that what they look like matters.

So, you still want to aim for my jugular?

What does it mean to be a male?

I had drafted a blog-post. And then I read the news.

Now, I want to think more about "save the males."  That other post will appear later.

In this #MeToo context, "save the males" might sound strange.  But, it is not. Not to me.  I have been saying this, and blogging about it, for a mighty long time.

I am not referring to the rapists and the gropers and the assholes.  Nope. Not at all.  I have no sympathy for those males, and I continue to be shocked and angry that 63 million voters elected one such scumbag to the Oval Office.

The "save the males" that I have been writing about has many aspects. For one, boys are getting lost all the way from middle school on.  They are falling behind.  We have not been able to articulate for them what it means to be a man in a changed and changing world.

Right from the mid-1990s, I was talking with people and cautiously writing in op-eds that we were not paying attention to the developing trends of boys being neglected.  I deleted all the blog posts from 2001 to 2007 because looking back I felt they were rather sophomoric. I wish I had not.  Thus, the earliest I can cite as evidence from this blog is this one from November 2008.

I don't mean neglected as in abused, but neglected as in we were systematically redefining what it meant to be a girl in the changing world, but were not doing the same with boys.  And boys were falling behind in schools.  Men were falling behind in colleges. Masculinity was being re-made and men were not readying themselves.

Thus, when I read this NY Times piece, I was not surprised one bit.

For parents, raising a girl can seem as if it’s about showing them all the things they can do, while raising a boy is telling them what not to do, researchers say.
“There’s been a much more complete gender revolution for women than for men,” said Dan Clawson, a sociology professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. “If I’m raising a daughter, I’m raising someone who can challenge conventions, and that’s an attraction. On the other hand, if I’m raising a boy, am I raising someone who’s going to get in trouble, who won’t do well in school and so on?”
The fading bias against girls should cheer all who desire a more egalitarian society. But there are risks to society if what replaces it is a bias against boys.

I don't understand what it will take for American society to start talking about this.  But then we are the same people who don't talk about guns, about racism, about ...

One of the earliest scholars whose works I found to be extremely valuable in this is Christina Sommers.  Which is the reason I spent a good chunk of a Sunday, four years ago, watching her on C-Span.

Even early on, Sommers was sharply attacked by her critics. Now, those attacks have become even more vicious because she is a feminist from the right side of the political spectrum.  So much so that her scheduled talk in Oregon--in Portland--was interrupted and had to be wrapped up early because of protesters.

Sommers was labeled a "fascist" and protesters wanted her talk to be canceled!

I don't always agree with Sommers. But, to call her a fascist? To not let her speak on a college campus?  It is one thing to protest against a Richard Spencer or a Stephen Bannon. They are thugs. Fascists. Neo-Nazis. But why shut down Sommers?

Lost in all this brouhaha: The much needed discussion on what it means to be a male, and what we ought to be teaching young boys about masculinity!

The end of men. Why can't it be the end of mice, instead!

For years, nearly two decades now, I have been worried about boys lagging right from middle school on, and young men beginning to fall behind.  I have even tagged many of those posts with "save the males," as I have done in this post too. But then neither mice nor humans care about Sriram's views!;)

The worry is because this is not any zero-sum game in which girls and women advancing means that boys and men have to lose.  Instead of a win-win-win-win, the Y chromosome is failing.  Sometimes failing badly.

Talking about males and females has become a political landmine as well.  It is a charged topic.  But then, come to think of it, which topic is not charged.  It is unfortunate that even as we have become more educated as a society, we have not developed the abilities to have constructive and productive discussions.

But then people will take notice when the issue becomes a cover story at the Economist, which has apparently woken up to this issue, finally!  Let me give you the magazine's bottom-line first:

The growing equality of the sexes is one of the biggest achievements of the post-war era: people have greater opportunities than ever before to achieve their ambitions regardless of their gender. But some men have failed to cope with this new world. It is time to give them a hand.

I tell ya, it does piss me off that nobody listens to me.  But, heck, it is such an awesome feeling within that I am doing a good job of connecting the dots.

The magazine notes:

Men cluster at the bottom as well as the top.

When trying to talk about boys and men clustering at the ends, Larry Summers missed a step or two and he was soon pushed out of the presidency at Harvard; remember that?  I cannot understand why this has to be such a political issue!

Anyway, back to save the males; what's the net result?

 Poorly educated men in rich countries have had difficulty coping with the enormous changes in the labour market and the home over the past half-century. As technology and trade have devalued brawn, less-educated men have struggled to find a role in the workplace. Women, on the other hand, are surging into expanding sectors such as health care and education, helped by their superior skills. As education has become more important, boys have also fallen behind girls in school (except at the very top). Men who lose jobs in manufacturing often never work again. And men without work find it hard to attract a permanent mate. The result, for low-skilled men, is a poisonous combination of no job, no family and no prospects.

Yep, all the issues that I have blogged about in plenty.

The economic marginalisation this brings erodes family life. Women who enjoy much greater economic autonomy than their grandmothers did can afford to be correspondingly pickier about spouses, and they are not thrilled by husbands who are just another mouth to feed.

Ouch!

Hanna Rosin talks of “plastic women”, who adapt deftly to economic and social change, and “cardboard men”, who fail to adapt and are left crumpled.

If boys and men aren't adapting, or at least fast enough, then shouldn't the rest of us think about what to do?

Oh, btw, here's a video clip from the wise Stephen Colbert talking about Rosin's article and interviewing her, which I blogged about five years ago--almost to the date ;)

The Colbert Report
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Mystery solved: why boys like sticks!

I have always been tempted to pick up a stick when I see one while walking/hiking.  Sometimes to fling them. Sometimes to simply carry.  And sometimes to simply poke the plants :)  If Will Rogers thought that there was never a dollar bill he didn't like, I suppose there are very few sticks that I have never liked!

And my non-random observation right from when I was young was that boys in general liked sticks, and girls did not.  I thought it was merely a gender thing.

Turns out that this was the number one question that intrigued Slate readers too, and am mighty glad that there is an answer as well :)

The question of the year (2010) that Slate's Explainer examines is:

I've always pondered why boys like having sticks. Whether it be walking down a hiking trail with a stick they picked up or running a stick across a white picket fence, boys (including me when I was small) seem to have a knack for having a stick. Is there some kind of explanation for this behavior?

What is the answer you ask?  Click here for the explanations, where you will also find out how porcupines use sticks.  Am not kidding ...