Let's Hear it For the BOY

Giving season is upon us and as I leaf through the list of nonprofit agencies I am always struck by how many agencies have popped up to single handedly help young women and girls. It appears to me that they far outnumber agencies that single out and offer significant help to our young men and boys. Yet, more boys are on meds, more boys in juvenile hall, more boys drop out of high school, more boys end up in jail as adults and more boys the way I see it, are obviously lost.
As the “Girls Rule” attitude seeps into every preschool I wonder if what comes
with that is a sense of entitlement and could this entitlement be creating some unconscious underpinning that is effecting our boys? In the campaigns to save our little girls from the biased world of men, have we forgotten our young boys?

Two summers ago I was invited to attend the premier of Eve Ensler’s new play Emotional Creature at the Berkeley Rep. As many of you are well aware Eve’s career soared into the spotlight when she wrote The Vagina Monologues. Emotional Creature is a theatrical platform that brings forth global, social, political, and emotional issues incurred by today’s young women to the forefront. She dives in, portraying a fluid and emotional world as being inherently female. OK. We are undoubtedly emotional creatures, but curiously I found much of the global and emotional sentiment to be equally male in behavior and dialogue. The longing to be heard and recognized, the suicide dance, the horrific kidnappings, etc to me, felt like issues facing all of today’s youth world-wide, not only young women.

I left the play feeling that if women are emotional creatures, then certainly men are the sensitive ones, albeit, with little support or comfort in which to place their sensitivities. Where are we as a culture matching the “Girls Rule” attitude for young males? Where do young men confront their confusion and bewilderment? (Hint: it’s not in eating quiche or wearing pink.) To a football coach, school counselor, parent, or aunt or uncle? Where is it acceptable and safe for young men to scream and shout I don’t know what the eff I am doing, someone help me please? Perhaps when “Girls Rule” takes notice. “Like wow, did you see how strong that dude was? Dude, like he was so sensitive, but he was so strong. Like strong enough to be sensitive. Yeah, dude that’s way cool.”

Stay true,
M