Boys' Violence

[seabeyond]

Although boys on average are more prone to more rough-and-tumble play, they are not innately “tougher” than girls. They do not have fewer emotions or attachments, or feel less pain. It is obvious from the huge effort that most cultures make to mold “tough” boys that this is not an easy or natural task. When we raise boys within contemporary gender norms, especially when we push boys to toughen up, we pass along authorized forms of masculinity suited to the war system. I will focus mainly on how contemporary US culture does this, because it has received a wave of interest recently. As shown earlier (see pp. 264–65), various cultures use a range of methods to toughen up boys.

Attention to boys Boys, not girls, are the main issue in the reproduction of gendered war roles. They are the ones who must be made over, at a steep price in emotional capabilities, into something unnatural, a “man.” Boys are also the main enforcers of gender segregation in middle childhood. Boys are the recipients of most of the adult efforts to enforce appropriate gendered behaviors as well. Although US girls may now wear pants or dresses, and play with trucks or dolls, boys may not wear dresses or play with dolls. Teachers and parents “seem far less ambivalent about encouraging androgyny in their young daughters than in their sons.” In short, boys are the primary focus of gender-molding in children, presumably because boys are the ones who may need to fight wars some day.

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Psychologist William Pollack argues that many boys experience problems as a result of separating too early from their mothers’ care. Although infant boys are actually more fragile than girls, parents think of them as tougher, and pay less attention to them. Pollack also argues that psychologists may overlook boys’ depression because it differs from the feminine depression that clinicians focus on. The oppression of boys, in Pollack’s view, is the source of their desire to dominate, so “[r]ecognizing boys’ pain is the way to change society.” Shame is central to the “toughening-up process.” Little boys with anxiety about separating from their mothers “are made to feel ashamed of their feelings … [especially] of weakness, vulnerability, fear, and despair … The use of shame to ‘control’ boys is pervasive … Boys are made to feel shame over and over … to be disciplined, toughened up … be independent, keep the emotions in check. A boy is told that ‘big boys don’t cry.

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Kindlon and Thompson’s Raising Cain elaborates in detail the ways that contemporary US “culture conspires to limit and undermine [boys’] emotional life,” dooming them to “emotional ignorance and isolation.” Boys are “born with the potential for a full range of emotional experience,” but toughened up by harsh discipline, rigid expectations, and the threat of rejection. Emotionally illiterate, boys meet adolescence knowing only the “socially acceptable … ‘manly’ responses of anger, aggression, and emotional withdrawal.” These problems underlie young males’ violence (among various other negative outcomes): “boys who turn violent … lack sufficient psychological resources to control their emotional reactions.” Kindlon and Thompson ignore the role of war in society’s treatment of boys. In truth, the problems they describe extend far beyond contemporary US culture and connect with a need to produce potential warriors

http://www.warandgender.com/wgboys.htm

[redqueen]

1. The cult of masculinity, I saw this called recently.

Whataboutery removed.


It really would be good to pay more attention to the way we socialize boys. Bifurcating them from their emotions is so destructive. It's especially heartbreaking that its done to vulnerable children.

[seabeyond]

2. it just makes no sense to me what so ever. to not validate any emotion. i cannot imagine

anything more cruel.

[redqueen]

3. Well I can certainly remember and imagine things I'd find more cruel,

but I can't understand why so many parents don't see it as cruel to treat boys that way. It's barbaric really.

[seabeyond]

4. certainly remember and imagine things I'd find more cruel,

of course.

[BlueIris]

5. Yes, Patriarchy hurts male humans, too. nt

[seabeyond]

6. yes it does. as much as women/girls. takes away from our authentic self.

key factor for all of us to recognize.

[One_Life_To_Give]

7. Male to Female Transexuals might disagree

When they start to undergo Estrogen Therapy one of the common responses is about now feeling emotions at a whole new level. Where before emotions had been like looking at a painting thru frosted glass. They were now experiencing the full brilliance of the colors.

The Macho culture harms young boys. Particularly those who are less macho than their peers. But that doesn't mean they will be in all ways identical to girls. Separating nature from nurture seems more like peeling an Onion, there is always another layer.

[seabeyond]

8. or maybe it is an expectation thru societal conditioning. they will have to explain it to me

Last edited Thu Jun 7, 2012, 06:40 PM - Edit history (1)

cause i dont get it.

but, if a man is told forever that what makes us different is we are oh so emotional, and a person takes estrogen, dont you think there would be an expectation that emotion must now bloom. it is what being a woman is all about, so we are told.

[One_Life_To_Give]

10. Have you read Serano?

Julia Serano's book Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity.

I know Julia references the phenomena. It's corrolary is that many Transmen state they did not really know what Rage was till they started Testosterone therapy.

Serano argues that the culture takes minor differences and serves to put them on steroids and force them to become much bigger than would otherwise have naturally existed. And that is largely built upon the experiences of one who has experienced both sides of the cultural divide. Personally I would take it one step further and argue that putting a bunch of males together is like putting a bunch of conservatives together. They drive their shared view not to the center but further to the extreme.

[seabeyond]

11. no, i havent read. Testosterone Does Not Induce Aggression

New scientific evidence refutes the preconception that testosterone causes aggressive, egocentric, and risky behavior. A study at the Universities of Zurich and Royal Holloway London with more than 120 experimental subjects has shown that the sexual hormone with the poor reputation can encourage fair behaviors if this serves to ensure one's own status.

Popular scientific literature, art, and the media have been attributing the roll of aggression to the arguably best known sexual hormone for decades. Research appeared to confirm this -- the castration of male rodents evidently led to a reduction in combativeness among the animals. The prejudice thus grew over decades that testosterone causes aggressive, risky, and egocentric behavior. The inference from these experiments with animals that testosterone produces the same effects in humans has proven to be false, however, as a combined study by neuroscientist Christoph Eisenegger and economist Ernst Fehr, both of the University of Zurich, and economist Michael Naef of Royal Holloway in London demonstrates. "We wanted to verify how the hormone affects social behavior," Dr. Christoph Eisenegger explains, adding, "we were interested in the question: what is truth, and what is myth?"

The study's results, however, contradict this view sharply. Test subjects with an artificially enhanced testosterone level generally made better, fairer offers than those who received placebos, thus reducing the risk of a rejection of their offer to a minimum. "The preconception that testosterone only causes aggressive or egoistic behavior in humans is thus clearly refuted," sums up Eisenegger. Instead, the findings suggest that the hormone increases the sensitivity for status. For animal species with relatively simple social systems, an increased awareness for status may express itself in aggressiveness. "In the socially complex human environment, pro-social behavior secures status, and not aggression," surmises study co-author Michael Naef from Royal Holloway London. "The interplay between testosterone and the socially differentiated environment of humans, and not testosterone itself, probably causes fair or aggressive behavior."

Moreover the study shows that the popular wisdom that the hormone causes aggression is apparently deeply entrenched: those test subjects who believed they had received the testosterone compound and not the placebo stood out with their conspicuously unfair offers. It is possible that these persons exploited the popular wisdom to legitimate their unfair actions. Economist Michael Naef states: "It appears that it is not testosterone itself that induces aggressiveness, but rather the myth surrounding the hormone. In a society where qualities and manners of behavior are increasingly traced to biological causes and thereby partly legitimated, this should make us sit up and take notice." The study clearly demonstrates the influence of both social as well as biological factors on human behavior.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/12/091208132241.htm

______________________________

when we are able to get beyond our conditioned behavior, then i will put more validity in it. i was told by a man that i have an emotional connection to sex. i dont. i never have. i dont now. i cannot see i will in the future. but he got damn pissed at me cause i would nto own it. insisted i HAD to have an emtional connection with sex cause ALL women do. they tell us it is so.

not buying it.

[One_Life_To_Give]

14. Low dose and short time

5. Testosterone can negatively affect mental health.
There are often positive emotional changes from reduced gender
dysphoria. However, in some FTMs testosterone can cause increased
irritability, frustration, and anger. There are reports of testosterone
destabilizing FTMs with bipolar disorder, schizoaffective disorder, and
schizophrenia. Changing to a daily dose of transdermal testosterone
can be helpful if mood swings are linked to the highs and lows of an
injection cycle.

http://transhealth.vch.ca/resources/library/tcpdocs/consumer/hormones-FTM.pdf

Note: This is at doses of 50-100mg/week.


Never understood why we are all supposed to respond like the average of our age, gender etc. But when it comes to a mortgage the bank doesn't ask what the average household income is.

[seabeyond]

15. i will give you that. that is what i fight. i am more aggressive than most

my husband and oldest son anti aggressive. my youngest son more like me.

huge as meh.... to me.

[redqueen]

9. The problem is there is no way to even begin to peel those layers,

until we end the patriarchal practice of forcing boys and girls into stereotyped, meaningless gender boxes, as is currently done from the moment an infant is born. It's reflexive, the different ways people act towards people of either sex. Any attempt to spare a child this brainwashing conditioning is met with virulent overreactions from just about anyone and everyone who is confronted with the practice of attempting to raise a child free from the brainwashing.

We all grow up in it. There is no way to tell how much of this is nature as long as this primitive custom is so widespread. At this point it is still pretty much universal

[One_Life_To_Give]

12. It's very dynamic across the globe

Parts of Africa where only males are allowed to wear Pink tells us something. Or the pride of two men from Tonga in the Lava-lava's.

Then there are factors we can't fix. The average woman walking out into the mall parking lot is still going to be physically smaller than some 67% of society while the average male would be larger than some 67%. And how many things about our lives are altered because of such a basic difference in viewpoint?

[redqueen]

13. The first thing to do is smash the patriarchy.

Once we've ended the traditional gender brainwashing then we will be in a much better position to deal with any remaining issues.