Breaking the Boy Code

“It is vital that parents and teachers not take boys at face value, even though they sometimes insist, furiously, that we do so.”

[breakingtheboycode]

Tryouts is a powerful and personal account of an awkward New Jersey boy living with pectus excavatum (a condition where the ribs and sternum of the chest grow incorrectly and instead cove inward creating a caved-in chest), overcoming the misfortunes of boyhood, while straddling masculinity, homosexuality, and athleticism.

Ryan James Caruthers, Tryouts

[breakingtheboycode]

“Some things mysterious boys do” perfectly illustrates Nana Yaw Oduro’s poetical images that showcase male characters in situations both quirky and graphical, underlining their bodies’ geometry.

Nana Yaw Oduro, Some things mysterious boys do

[a-trans-comic-by-me]

For Mental Illness Awareness Week, here’s a short story about my experience with depression and superheroes.

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Boys sustain their engagement in classroom business when they feel held in a positive, trusting relationship to their teacher. The establishment of this relationship precedes their engagement and subsequent achievement. The critical factor in establishing such relationships is the kind of presence boys perceive in their teachers. The boys who participated in our study readily acknowledged their responsiveness to teachers who appealed to them as welcoming, aware of them as individuals, personally distinctive—real—and in authoritative command of their subject matter. […] Deepening their capacity to listen, extending themselves in care, expressing delight or interest, exhibiting patience when their lessons are thwarted by a recalcitrant or otherwise struggling student: these are the stuff of presence.

Michael Reichert and Richard Hawley, Reaching Boys, Teaching Boys: Strategies That Work—and Why

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In the boys’ accounts of being emotionally and intellectually engaged by their teachers, they convey a sense of being transported, exploring new territory, and feeling newly effective, interested, and powerful. Experienced this way, school is not an institution or an imposition of any kind; it is instead the locus of a particular, often quite personal, learning relationship in which the boy is not so much a ‘student’ as he is fully himself, only incidentally at school.

Michael Reichert and Richard Hawley, Reaching Boys, Teaching Boys: Strategies That Work—and Why

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Policymakers in the United States calculate that if 5 percent more boys completed high school and matriculated to college, the nation would save $8 billion a year in welfare and criminal justice costs. Around the world, the costs of male underachievement—lost opportunity, dampened climate for innovation, increased poverty and joblessness—grow every day. We can—indeed we must—do better.

Michael Reichert and Richard Hawley, Reaching Boys, Teaching Boys: Strategies That Work—and Why

[breakingtheboycode]

In contrast to studies that have suggested much more distant and remote kinds of friendships, the young men [in this study] described a set of rich and emotionally honest relationships with certain male counterparts. Characterized by trust, sympathy, and intimacy, these friendships reveal alternative kinds of male-male relationships from those reported in past studies.

These young men revealed a broadening repertoire of ways of interacting among high school young men. They also suggest a new level of intimacy from that which was previously understood in the literature. [They] invited us to see that some boys are in fact able and willing to resist normative masculinity by transgressing friendship practices. This shift in how relationships develop between and among boys adds to a landscape of high school masculinities that are relatively under-explored at this level of intimacy.

The situations and reactions from among these young men and their peers reveal some of the ways, conditions, and spaces in which young men actively invest in non-hegemonic masculinities. It is worth noting that these transgressions of masculine codes are also occurring during a time when, as Nayak and Kehily pointed out, “young men are the most stringent guardians of heterosexuality and may perceive being gay as ‘wrong’ or ‘unnatural’ since it violates traditional masculinity.”

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A deep sense of openness, honesty, intimacy, and closeness characterizes both the male-male friendships these young men value and the forms of communication they have with their peers. These young men developed levels of physical and emotional intimacy culturally regarded as unmasculine. While they admit that many of their male peers feared “being ostracized from some community of friends” and were driven by “the need to be normal,” they nonetheless resisted long-standing codes of masculinity and developed deep personal relationships atypical of most high school men. Their friendships draw attention to complicated and richly dynamic relationships and the possibilities for supporting these relationships. Unlike many young men and boys, who are seemingly abandoning close friendships because of charges of homosexuality, these young men were actively involved in furthering male-male friendships at a crucial time in their school lives when the presumed link between manhood and heterosexuality are very much a part of how they make sense of the world around them.

Michael Kehler, Hallway Fears and High School Friendships: The complications of young men (re)negotiating heterosexualized identities,” Discourse: Studies in the cultural politics of education

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For the most part the gender work many young men do among men is primarily aimed at affirming, reinforcing, and stabilizing an identity that, for all its constructed strengths, is nonetheless an identity of uncertainty and fragility.

Understandably, then, many high school young men are not willing to publicly admit their vulnerabilities, weaknesses, fears, and anxieties, but this should not overshadow the clear and unequivocal message that young men do have them and yearn to share them. The difficulty, it appears, is in finding a context in schools that is safe and valuing of alternative versions of masculinities.

Michael Kehler, Hallway Fears and High School Friendships: The complications of young men (re)negotiating heterosexualized identities,” Discourse: Studies in the cultural politics of education

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Emotionally illiterate and physically bound by traditional masculine codes, young men negotiate the hidden and unspoken words of personal feelings in exchange for the safety of a heteronormative masculinity.

They veer away from close male-male friendships not because they would not like to have them, but because of a climate of fear and misunderstanding driving the ways young men understand masculinity and their relationships with and to other young men.

Michael Kehler, Hallway Fears and High School Friendships: The complications of young men (re)negotiating heterosexualized identities,” Discourse: Studies in the cultural politics of education

[breakingtheboycode]

We describe research and theory that collectively illustrate that the processes through which gender and sexual inequalities are maintained have shifted in ways that make them less easily recognizable, but effective in preserving enduring systemic, institutionalized and structural mechanisms involved in the reproduction of inequality.

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Some of the earliest meta-analyses showed that while sexual prejudice has declined over time, the gender gap in sexual prejudice has grown. […] Thus, while surveys of opinions suggest Americans are more supportive of gender and sexual minorities, representative surveys of the actual lived experiences of gender and sexual minorities in the USA are inconsistent with this shift. [Research has found] that heterosexual Americans are far more supportive of formal rights for sexual minorities (like marriage and partnership benefits) than they are of informal privileges for same-sex couples (like support for public displays of affection, for instance).

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Among the evidence relied upon to support a decline in the relationship between masculinity and homophobia is Anderson’s body of data documenting physical, quasi-sexual, and emotional closeness among heterosexual men. This kind of ‘heteroflexibility’ among men, some suggest, belies a deeper erosion of the relationship between masculinity and homophobia. Others, however, have been critical of the meanings of this behavior and of whether these shifts are actually as historically novel as they are sometimes presented. For instance, Ward documents a long history of heterosexual men touching, kissing, and sometimes having sex before and throughout the 20th century. But, beyond this, Ward is interested in better understanding the meanings associated with the sexual fluidity of some straight white men. Among her discoveries, Ward summarizes a collection of logics she collectively refers to as ‘hetero-exceptionalism’ that work as discursive alibis, situating white heterosexual men’s same-sex sexual interactions and encounters as consistent with both masculinity and heterosexuality.

This should prompt a consideration of how homophobia and sexual prejudice and discrimination ought to be measured as well as whether shifts in gender and sexual inequality necessitate new measurements. For instance, Anderson and McCormack’s work considers the relationship between masculinity and homophobia largely attitudinally and interpersonally. But interactional and interpersonal enactments of homophobia can operate in two different ways. For example, the interpersonal can be a site in which one works to demonstrate that they are not homophobic, which is the focus of much of Anderson and McCormack’s work. However, the interpersonal is also a level of social life at which inequalities are reproduced, and often in somewhat hidden or surprising ways.

It is premature to suggest that the relationship between masculinity and homophobia be confined to the waste bin of history. But scholars need to be more explicit about how practices are connected with structural forms of sexual inequality. Emergent configurations of masculinity that appear to have new relationships with sexual prejudice should be critically examined to understand both what individuals make of these relationships, as well as whether and how they offer any real challenges to structural or institutional forms of sexual inequality. Appreciating the endurance of this relationship requires recognizing homophobias as multi-dimensional and capable of dramatic shifts. And this appreciation will require more research and a diversity of theories asking how sexual inequality is connected with masculinity structurally and interactionally in distinct ways with distinct consequences. The tasks moving forward are not only to ask if and how masculinities continue to be related to homophobia, but to also consider what forms of homophobia are being perpetuated and how. This will require the recognition that gender and sexuality inequality are often simultaneously being challenged and reproduced.

Sarah Diefendorf and Tristan Bridges, “On the enduring relationship between masculinity and homophobia,” Sexualities

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I argue that these improving cultural conditions have been the result of decreasing homophobia among adolescent males, which results in further softening of masculinity—something McCormack calls a ‘virtuous circle of decreasing homophobia and expanded gendered behaviours.’ Collectively, I call the various forms of masculinities embodied by these boys ‘inclusive masculinities.’

Whether it be running with high school boys in California, fishing with 16-year-olds in Bristol, or hanging out with ‘the group’ in Southampton, one characteristic remains constant: support. In each of these ethnographies emotionally supporting one another is fundamental to their friendships. Uniquely, this support does not permit a ‘suck it up’ mentality. Boys are generally interested in hearing the feelings of their friends, even when those feelings are an admission of fear or weakness.

Eric Anderson, “Adolescent Masculinity in an Age of Decreased Homohysteria,” THYMOS: Journal of Boyhood Studies

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In order for gross, crude, sexual, or even slapstick humor to be funny to its audience, researchers have found, it has to succeed in two contradictory things: violating morals while seeming harmless and detached from any true reality; certainly you can’t feel concern or identification with its subject. In order for boys to believe any of these antics were amusing, they had to systematically ignore the humanity of the girls involved—and that is not harmless at all.

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At the furthest, most disturbing end of that continuum, ‘funny’ and ‘hilarious’ become a defense against charges of sexual harassment, misconduct, or assault. Consider the boy from Steubenville, Ohio, who was captured on video joking about the repeated violation of an unconscious girl at a party by a group of his friends. “She is so raped,” he said, laughing. “They raped her quicker than Mike Tyson.” When someone off camera suggested that rape wasn’t funny, he retorted, “Rape isn’t funny—it’s hilarious!”

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‘Hilarious’ is another way, under pretext of horseplay or group bonding, that boys learn to disregard others’ feelings as well as their own. ‘Hilarious’ is a safe haven, a default position when something is inappropriate, confusing, upsetting, depressing, unnerving, or horrifying; when something is simultaneously sexually explicit and dehumanizing; when it defies their ethics; when it evokes any of the emotions meant to stay safely behind that wall. ‘Hilarious’ offers distance, allowing them to subvert a more compassionate response that could be read as weak, overly sensitive, or otherwise unmasculine. ‘Hilarious’ is particularly troubling as a defense among bystanders—if assault is ‘hilarious,’ they don’t have to take it seriously, they don’t have to respond: there is no problem.

‘Hilarious’ makes sexism and misogyny feel transgressive, rebellious rather than supportive of an age-old status quo. It also puts boys’ hearts and heads into conflict, silencing conscience: they may know when something is wrong: they may even know that true manhood—or maybe just common decency—should compel them to speak up. At the same time, they fear that if they do, they’ll be marginalized or, worse, themselves become the target of other boys’ derision. Masculinity, then, becomes not only about what boys do say, but about what they don’t—or won’t, or can’t—say, even when they wish they could. It blocks them from considering women’s points of view, hardens them against compassion. Psychologist Michael Thompson has pointed out that pointed out that silence in the face of cruelty or sexism is how too many boys become men.

Peggy Orenstein, Boys & Sex: Young Men on Hookups, Love, Porn, Consent, and Navigating the New Masculinity

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Growing up in a modern plot which might seem foreign to older generations, he is an entrepreneur of the future, manoeuvring new landscapes. The mouldings of a young man etch into his conversations. Boyish giggles still line his lips. A bursting kid in one moment, whilst next, a serious teenager speeding toward manhood.

Brogan Anderson and Doreen Kilfeather, Mouldings of a Young Man

[breakingtheboycode]

Guys will often go to great lengths to convince themselves they don’t need to intervene in a troubling situation, whether it’s some version of so-called locker room talk, sexual harassment, or potential assault. They rationalize. They minimize. They become passive. They convince themselves they can’t actually make a difference. They laugh. They join in to avoid becoming victims themselves. Stepping up is hard and risky, especially if you are less socially powerful: strength of character can paradoxically be mocked as weak. Boys are just trying to survive, according to educator Charis Denison, to feel ‘safe, seen, and significant. And, if they can do that through displays of dominance and aggression, then of course that’s what they’re going to do.

Coaches can shatter the complicity of silence, making it clear that objectifying women is not a masculine rite of passage. Consider a yearlong study of two thousand high school athletes that foudn considerably reduced rates of dating violence and support for other boys’ abusive behaviour among those who participated in short, weekly coach-led discussions about personal responsibility, respectful behaviour, relationship abuse, insulting language, and consent. That’s encouraging: all-male enclaves may be notorious as crucibles of sexism, but they could also become crucibles of change.

Over the last several years, the #MeToo movement has laid bare sexual misconduct, male privilege, and ‘toxic masculinity’ across every sector of society. That has sparked a much-needed reckoning. It should also provide parents of boys, and boys themselves, unpredecedented motivation to transform the rules of male psychological development and sexuality. That is not an easy task but it is an exciting one: raising boys to be compassionate and egalitarian; respectful of others’ boundaries; capable of connection, vulnerability, honest communication, emotional expression and love; able to develop and sustain authentic relationships; able to be happier and more fulfilled; able to see women as true peers in the classroom, boardroom, and bedroom. Raising our boys to be the men we know they can become.

Peggy Orenstein, Boys & Sex: Young Men on Hookups, Love, Porn, Consent, and Navigating the New Masculinity

[breakingtheboycode]

Adults in a guy’s life need to challenge the unwritten rules of male socialization, the forging of masculinity through unexamined entitlement, emotional suppression, aggression, and hostility toward the feminine. Boys wouldn’t stay in that ‘man box’ if they did not reap some reward, but it is ultimately a trap: sabotaging authenticity, increasing isolation, encouraging depression, stoking rage, and promoting violence (against both others and themselves). Close relationships, whether platonic or romantic, have been found to be the number one key to personal well-being, and emotional literacy—the ability to understand and express feelings—is the key to those close relationships. Yet male conditioning renders boys numb.

Peggy Orenstein, Boys & Sex: Young Men on Hookups, Love, Porn, Consent, and Navigating the New Masculinity

[breakingtheboycode]

There is no perfect system, but restorative justice does offer an important alternative to current campus adjudications that so often leave survivors retraumatized and offenders hostile. Ideally, its attention to victims’ needs, to education, and to strengthening communities would increase willingness to report assault, expand the proportion of offenders who are held accountable for their actions, and inspire authentic cultural change. ‘My mantra,’ said David Karp, a sociologist and director of the University of San Diego Center for Restorative Justice, ‘is ‘What are the conditions in which it’s possible for students to admit responsibility for the harm they’ve caused?’ The systems we’ve put in place do the opposite. They put these guys in a position where it’s only rational for them to deny responsibility, or to minimize or displace it. They hear from their parents, from their lawyers, from Brett Kavanaugh, from everywhere that that’s the only thing they can do to protect themselves from this terrible accusation of being a sex offender. We’re creating a pathway to acknowledging and hearing the harm they’ve caused. That is absolutely the goal of the process.

Peggy Orenstein, Boys & Sex: Young Men on Hookups, Love, Porn, Consent, and Navigating the New Masculinity

[breakingtheboycode]

Our culturally dictated ideas about gender, sex, and desire shape our vision of what assault looks like and who experiences it, sometimes dangerously so: as many as one in six boys will be sexually abused or assaulted before turning eighteen, yet parental concern focuses largely on girls.

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Certainly the label of ‘victim’ conflicts with notions of conventional masculinity, including perpetual sexual readiness, but the inability to recognize or process negative experiences ultimately robs boys of choice and, potentially, of empathy.

Peggy Orenstein, Boys & Sex: Young Men on Hookups, Love, Porn, Consent, and Navigating the New Masculinity