1. Masculinity Crisis: The social and cultural challenges and changes associated with traditional notions of masculinity, often related to men’s roles, identity, and behaviors in contemporary society.

2. Incel (Involuntary Celibate) Groups: Online communities or subcultures where men who struggle with relationships and dating discuss their frustrations, often characterized by resentment and hostility toward women.

3. Patriarchy: A social system in which men hold primary power, particularly in roles of leadership, moral authority, and privilege, and where societal norms and institutions are structured to favor men over women.

4. Zero-Sum Game: A situation in which one participant’s gain or loss is exactly balanced by the losses or gains of other participants, resulting in a constant total amount.

5. Structural and Institutional Support: Assistance and resources provided at the societal and organizational level to address specific needs or challenges faced by certain groups or individuals.

6. Gender Construct: The social and cultural framework that defines and enforces gender roles, behaviors, and expectations, often distinct from biological sex.

7. Toxic Masculinity: A set of cultural norms and expectations that promote harmful behaviors and attitudes associated with traditional masculinity, such as aggression, dominance, and emotional suppression.

8. Vocational (Votec) Programs: Educational programs that offer practical skills and training for specific trades or professions, such as carpentry, auto repair, or welding.

9. Blue-Collar Work: Manual or industrial labor that often involves physical skills and does not require a college degree, such as construction, manufacturing, or maintenance.

10. Red Shirting: The practice of delaying a child’s entry into kindergarten or school to provide them with additional time to mature and develop before starting their formal education.

11. Red-shirting: Holding a child back from starting school for a year, typically to give them an advantage in physical or academic development.

12. Affluent: Having a great deal of money; wealthy.

13. Disparities: Inequalities or differences, especially in age, rank, or degree.

14. Cognitively: Relating to the mental processes of perception, memory, judgment, and reasoning.

15. Maturation: The process of becoming mature or fully developed.

16. Gendered: Having characteristics or roles associated with a particular gender.

17. Patriarchy: A system of society or government in which men hold the power and women are largely excluded from it.

18. Emotional Intelligence: The ability to understand, manage, and effectively navigate one’s own emotions and empathize with the emotions of others.

19. Inherent: Existing in something as a permanent, essential, or characteristic attribute.

20. Conquer: Overcome and take control of (a place or people) by military force.

21. Proclivity: A tendency to choose or do something regularly; an inclination or predisposition toward a particular thing.

22. Parity: The state or condition of being equal, especially regarding status or pay.

23. Metacognition: Awareness and understanding of one’s own thought processes.

24. Stigma: A mark of disgrace associated with a particular circumstance, quality, or person.

25. Gen Z: The generation born in the late 1990s and early 2000s, following the Millennials.

26. Heel (in the context of careers): A term used by the author to refer to healthcare, education, administration, and literature—the helping professions.

27. Stereotype: A widely held but fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person or thing.

28. Narrative: A spoken or written account of connected events; a story.

29. Countercultural: Opposing or rejecting the prevailing social norms, values, or conventions.

30. Realm: A field or domain of activity or experience.

31. Opioids: A class of drugs that include the illegal drug heroin, synthetic opioids such as fentanyl, and pain relievers available legally by prescription.

32. Fentanyl: A powerful synthetic opioid analgesic that is similar to morphine but is 50 to 100 times more potent.

33. Despair: The complete loss or absence of hope.

34. Coded (as in gender-coded): Marked or identified with a code; in this context, associated with or assigned to a particular gender.

35. Hygiene: Conditions or practices conducive to maintaining health and preventing disease, especially through cleanliness.

36. Bumbling: Acting in a confused or ineffectual way; often used in the context of portraying men as clumsy or incompetent.

37. Introspective: Characterized by or given to introspection; examining one’s own thoughts, feelings, and sensations.

38. Metaphorically: In a way that involves metaphor; figuratively.

39. Authentic: Representing one’s true nature or beliefs; true to oneself.

40. Healed (in the context of being one’s healed self): Recovered or restored to a healthy condition, both physically and emotionally.

Welcome to episode 285 ofAngela Watson’s Truth for Teachers.I’m your host, Angela Watson, and I’m here to speak encouragement into the hearts of educators and get you informed and energized for the week ahead.Today, I’m talking about the masculinity cris inAmerica, why boys are struggling in school, andwhat educators can do about it.Visit Truth for Teachers Years.com for an easy toread, easy to share version of this podcast episode.If you have a side hustle as a tutor, coach,or any other business that requires clients who need tobook appointments and pay for services, check out Practice Do.Practice do is the simplest platform I’vefound for streamlining everything from scheduling, reminder,messages, invoicing, and record keeping.It’s perfect for teachers who tutor and wantto keep all communication and payments in oneeasy professionallooking tool for themselves and their clients.Truth for Teachers listeners can try Practice freefor seven days and get 50% off theirfirst three months using the code.Teachers learn more at practice.Do So today’s topic may seem sort ofsurprising because I feel like it’s something thatmaybe isn’t being discussed enough yet. In education.There are certainly folks who are talking about thecris of masculinity and toxic masculinity, but how doesthat tie into what’s happening in schools?And I think it’s really important forus as educators to be aware of.I hope that this episode is like the start ofa conversation, because I’m very aware that in doing asolo episode here, I am a woman who is talkingabout the experience of boys and men, and I thinkit’s important to have representation, right?If I’m talking about a particular racial group, I’mcertainly going to have someone from that group, ifI’m talking, know folks who have a disability.I want to have someone therespeaking on their own behalf.So I attempted to get RichardReeves to speak in this episode.He is the author of a book called OfBoys and Men why the Modern Male is Struggling,why It matters and what to do about it.I read that recently and I foundit really a very important read. It was something that Iwould recommend really to anyone.I thought he did an excellent job.I was not able to get him as a gueston this episode, but I would definitely like to talkto him or other people who have done more researchin this area, as well as male teachers and malestudents who I think can certainly speak for themselves.But I’ll approach this episodeas basically a community stakeholder.I’m a part of our society that I’m sharingwith boys and men who are struggling, and Icare about that, and I think it’s important thatwe talk about and I feel like a lotof the conversations around masculinity center on toxic masculinity,at least among progressives and liberals Democrats.So quick content warning here.As I get started, I will mention suicide rates.So if that’s something that it’s not the righttime for you to listen to, feel free tocome back to this episode at another time.So here are some of the things that arehappening right now with boys and men statistically, justto lay a little bit of the groundwork aroundthings that are concerning to me.In 2020. The US.Decline in college enrollment was seven timesgreater for male than for female students.Among men with only a high school education, onein three is out of the labor force.And for those who have a job,typical earnings are $881 a week.This is down from $1,017 in 1979.So among the only two out of three menwho have a high school education who are actuallyin the labor force, they’re making less now, onaverage, than they were making in 1979.And mortality from drug overdoses, suicides, andalcohol related illnesses are almost three timeshigher among men than among women.So I think there’s a lot to unpack here.So we’re going to do a pretty deep dive, andwe’re going to touch on a bunch of stuff.We’re going to touch on some research space, factualstuff, some opinion, some patterns that I’m noticing, andof course, what to do about it.So I think that the role of menright now is rapidly changing in our society.So we no longer need men to hunt forme, to build a house from scratch, to protectus from war, at least here in the US.Right now, right?So many men are experiencing an identity crisisas women are succeeding in greater numbers.Women are young.Girls are getting the message they canbe anything they want to be.They can succeed in any role.But that’s leaving a lot of men feelinglike, okay, so what is my unique gift?What am I bringing to the table?And I think compounding this issue is theidea that the needs of boys and menare not a popular topic, particularly among progressives,liberals, Democrats, people on the left end ofthe spectrum, and I count myself among them.I think we often don’t address this issue because there’ssome fear that if we admit that men need structuraland institutional support, it will somehow undermine the support andresources that women do still need or that if wetalk about men, then somehow we’re going to erase theprogress we’ve made for women.However, just as we would say, blacklives matter, doesn’t mean other races don’tmatter, other lives don’t matter.I think we have to do the same thinghere and recognize that focusing on the needs ofmen and boys doesn’t mean that girls and womendon’t also have needs, doesn’t mean that girls andwomen don’t still need structural and institutional support, thatwe don’t have our own challenges.So I want to say that up front that I think we haveto be really careful not to play a zero sum game here.What we want is equity, right?We want everyone to have a chance tosucceed and to get the resources they need.And I think if we ignore that boys andmen have specific needs, then we’re missing something.The other piece that I want to say upfront is that I am not addressing trans issueshere, partly because that’s beyond my scope of expertise,but also because what we’re talking about here isreally more of a gender construct.So when I say boys and men, I’m referring toanyone who identifies as a boy or a man.And when I’m talking about people who have beenassigned that gender at birth, I’ll say that becausewe will talk about, for example, testosterone levels, right?So that will differ according to whateversex you were defined at birth.But know that when I say boys andmen, I mean anyone identifying as and Iwon’t speak specifically to trans issues, but certainlytrans folks could be included in that.So this is part of why I thinkprogressives are not talking about this, right?Because we’re worried that if we focus on boys, thenwe’re going to lose sight of what girls need inorder to have their supports and to experience their success.And I think what’s happening on the right isthat conservatives are pushing a traditional version of masculinityin which the value of a man comes frombeing a provider and a protector.That’s been the traditional role of menin most cultures throughout most time periods.And that version of masculinitythat conservatives in the US.Are pushing is really steeped in patriarchy.So it doesn’t work for everyone.Not everyone fits that.Not every boy and man wants to be the toughguy, wants to be the provider and the protector.And additionally, it’s much harder tobe a provider in this area.It’s extremely difficult to support awife and children on one income.Most people can’t do that, male or female.So we don’t want to erase women’s optionsor limit their education or their career orpush them back into the home.So therefore, the traditional male role is going to have toshift in a lot of cases, we’re going to have tooffer a version of masculinity that isn’t centered just on beingthe provider and the protector, because that man may be witha woman who earns more money than him.And the role of protector is really notthat needed in our modern 2023 society.We’re just not facing the saber toothedtigers here on a daily basis. Right?Men need to be contributing different things inorder to add value to the household.I think the role of child rearing,for example, laundry, meal preparation, running errands. “ WWW.ARMINIC.COM “ Is far more in the front of awoman’s mind in this day and age than,like, being my protector, if that makes sense.So what is that going to look like for boys and men?That’s the thing that I think is really sort ofup in the air right now with our culture.And I think that when you are told that yourrole is to be the provider and the protector, andyou don’t see a path for it, and you don’tsee women asking for someone to provide for them orprotect them, which is, I think, another issue there.I’ll speak for me personally.I don’t want a provider, a protector.I would like to earn my own money, thank you very much.I would like to be independent, and Idon’t want to be protected from anything.I can defend myself.There have been very few occasions during my 16 yearmarriage in which I wanted my husband to protect me.That is like 0.1% of the value that he adds to my life.And if he derived his identity from being myprotector and my provider, he would feel useless.He would feel not wanted.And I think that’s in someways, what’s happening with men.If you don’t feel like you have a purpose foryour life, you don’t have a value to add thatmaybe if you’re straight and you want to marry awoman and have children and have these traditional families andyou don’t feel like the women actually want that back,you’re going to feel a little lost.Similarly, I think that if you feel likeyou can never get ahead and accomplish thingsfor yourself, then you’re going to feel lost. Right?And I think that’s the case in general with Gen.Z right now.They’re worried about climate change.Like, is there even going to be a planet?Why am I bothering to save money when I don’teven know if there’s going to be a future?Why am I bothering to work hard?Men I’m never going to be able tosave enough money to own a home.Like, home ownership is out of the question.I’m never going to be able tomove out of my parents house.So why even bother getting a good job?Why even bother going to college?So there’s a lot of that going on.And then when you layer on that the socialconstruct for men to be the provider, to havea good job, we’ve really complicated it more.If a woman were to choose to get married and havekids and not enter the workforce, she would be seen bymany people as successful, and I think rightfully so.But I don’t know that that’s anoption for a lot of boys.I think they would feel pressure to earn a living.Like, if they were the primary childcare provider andtheir wife was the breadwinner, they would feel like,oh, I’m living off of my wife.I’m mooching off of my wife.I’m not a real man.I think there’s still a lot ofthat kind of pressure in there.So that’s the kind of thingthat I’m talking about here.And when you feel like you are pushed into thisrole and there is actually no space for you inthis role, you have this very limited definition of whata man can do, and you don’t see the needfor that or the path to do it, it leavesyou very vulnerable to destructive forces.So a lack of healthy masculinity roles, I think,is really leaving our boys vulnerable to incel groups,which, if you’re not familiar with this, these aregroups in which men bond together over a sharedhatred or degradation of women.They feel like women owe them attention.And more than that, which I won’t say because thisis a G rated podcast, so they’re vulnerable to that.They’re vulnerable to white nationalist groups who intertwineracism with patriotism in very dangerous ways.They are vulnerable to suicide and what we’re nowcalling deaths of despair, which are rising, particularly amongwhite men with high school educations or less.They’re vulnerable to opioids and otherdrugs that numb the pain.So what I’m attempting to offer in this situation isan opportunity for you, as an educator, to reflect onthe boys that are in your life, in your classroom,in your school, in your community, maybe in your home,and think about what are the versions of healthy masculinityand the options that we’re presenting to them.Because we’ve spent so much focus, most ofus, I think, on showing girls that theycan do anything, they can be anything.We’ve shown girls how to lead, but who’s following?We haven’t shown the boys how to follow.And if they see that as being weak, right, aslike having a woman boss or having a woman incharge of you, then we haven’t done all the work.And I think there’s a lot of stuffhappening in schools that could change this.So here’s where we enter with Richard Reeves bookof Boys and Men, which is a 2022 release.Again, highly recommend.It extremely thought provoking.I don’t necessarily agree with everything he says.I’m not necessarily endorsing everything that he says.Although I will say, as a side, Ido agree with the vast majority of it.I disagree with him on he doesn’t thinkthat we should ever refer to toxic masculinity.I disagree with him on that.I have a few other little quibbles.For the most part, I think he’s dead on.And one of the stories that he tells in this bookis he’s taking his son to the doctor and they leavethe doctor’s office and he says to his dad, he saysto Richard Reeve, hey, dad, can men be doctors too?And he looks at his son and he’s like,oh, my son has only ever had women doctors.He’s never seen a male doctor, sohe was like, yes, son, yes.Men can be doctors.Men can be nurses as well.Men can do all kinds of roles in the profession.And I started thinking about myown experience in the medical field.And like, my dentist office is all female.Every single person working in that office, all women.My GYN is all women.My dermatologist office, all women, from the receptionists,like, all the way up to the actualdermatologists themselves, all have exclusively women’s staff.And I thought that was, like, a great thing, right?Like, being a woman myself, I think it’s wonderful.But how would I feel if I was aman walking into, let’s say let’s take the dentist’soffice and it’s all females working there?How would I feel as a young boy?Would I see myself represented?Would that maybe be a place where Idon’t feel totally comfortable, where I feel likeI’m the other, I’m the outsider?This is something that, as a Gen Xer,I truly had never thought about before.Because when I was younger, for example, in theearly 1980s, only 4% of attorneys were women.4%.Now it’s 43%.This is in my lifetime.When I was a little girl, all the lawyerswere men, and now it’s almost half women.And anytime I’ve had any kind ofdealings with legal systems, yeah, I seewomen represented all over the place.I certainly see men as well.That’s something where I feel likethere’s more gender parity and thatanyone can see themselves represented there. Right.In terms of gender, at least.So it’s hard for me to realize that boysmay be growing up in a time in whichthey’re not seeing themselves in some of these fields.That was certainly not something that we wereworried about in the 80s or the 90s.But it’s a newer problem now that we haveto think about the youngest millennials and Gen Zhave not seen women underrepresented in some of thesecareer paths like we did growing up.So today girls see themselves in almost every field.But we should consider that boys do.Not necessarily.And this is especially true for teaching now.This is something that Richard Reeves talks a lot aboutin his book, about how many kids go their entireK twelve career without ever having had a male teacher.And we know how much representation matters.There’s tons of research and data to back this up.For example, the benefits to black students forhaving a black teacher are tremendous, with nodetriment to the kids of other races.And the same is true in the research for male teachers.All students, particularly boys, benefitfrom having male teachers.So one of the solutions here thatRichard Reeves poses is recruiting more maleteachers, particularly teachers of color.But definitely we need to have more men inthere because I think there are actually a decliningnumber of men entering the profession in many states.And this means that fewer boys are seeingeducation as a possible field for them.Meanwhile, we have a teacher shortage.We need more folks going into education, andif only one gender sees a place forthem there, we’ve got a problem.So that’s one of the things to reallythink about, is getting how can we getmore men into schools, more representation?Another suggestion that Richard Reeves makes isto bring back the votec programs.So these are vocational things.We used to have, like wood.Working was one car repair.This was actually before my time.By the time I was in high school, these kindsof programs were no longer really taking place either.But there used to be woodworking, stuff like that.So the boys would go I’m talking about,like, in the 50s, something like that. “ WWW.ARMINIC.COM “ God, I think I have about the right time frame.Fifty s and sixty s.The boys would go do those things.The girls would take home EC.Learn about how to create a budget foryour household, how to sew, how to cook.Also, the old stereotypes, if you think about, like, when kidshad to high school, kids had to carry around like, anegg or a potato sack or a pretend baby doll andtry to keep it alive for a week.These were the kinds of things that weused to include in high school education, andthis is life and career skills, right?But in our push to make sure that weare not excluding kids from a college path, nowwe are trying to push them all toward college.So we’ve got civil rights activists noticing that more blackboys and boys of color are being taken off thecollege track as seen as not appropriate candidates for APand advanced courses, and pushed to go into things likeauto repair or something like that.And we have the feminist movement who’s saying, wait asecond, why are girls being pushed into home EC?Maybe she doesn’t want to be a homemaker.Maybe she wants to be a career woman.So there were a lot of social changes happening,and then, of course, budget cuts as well.You’re not going to cut a math class ora science class, but you can cut woodworking. Right?At the same time, we’re cutting art,music, all these other types of things.So there were social changes, and there were changes inschools in which we, for many reasons, beyond even whatI articulated here, we got rid of votec.And now in a lot of situations, we’re trying topush kids, even in elementary school, to attend college.I mean, I’ve coached in schools where they refer toall of their students as scholars, and they encourage themto pick a college early, and they start prepping forcollege from five, six, seven years old.They want them to see that assomething possible for them, which is greatin some ways, but also not realistic.And just as a little side note here, I don’t knowabout you, but anytime I need any kind of repair workdone, it is impossible to find someone to do it.I feel like we have such a shortage of plumbers,of house painters, of electricians, of people who know howto do work with their hands, car repair.These things are essential to making our lives run.These are valuable professions that wecannot live without in this country.And I think part of the reason that we have a declinein people doing it is because we’ve gotten rid of OTEC.They’re not learning how to do that.And so I think boys in particular, but studentsin general, are seeing college as their only option.That’s the only way to be successful.If you’re not going into college,then what are you doing?And they graduate from high school and they don’t havea path, they don’t have skills, and they feel lessthan the students who are going to college.And so I think we reallyhave to do something about that.Richard Rees recommends bringing back votec programs.But in terms of what you can do asthe listener to this is think about how youare valuing votec skills, life skills, non college skills,blue collar work, work with your hands, work infields that were traditionally male.Are we showing that the levelof respect that it deserves?Are we showing kids that we value it andthat those are important professions and that if theywant to be a plumber when they grow upor they decide to get an apprenticeship painting housesor something over the summer, that we’re impressed bythat, that that’s an important skill.If you wanted to open like a landscaping business, that’sanother business that I feel like is very easy toget into, requires a lot less training, just like cuttinggrass and weed whacking and stuff like that.You could make a good living owningyour own business doing something like that.If we value it, if we don’t make kids feel like theyare less than for doing that instead of going to college.So I think we’ve done a decent job showinggirls that they can do this kind of work.I think we need to continue that to keepthese kinds of professions from being coded as male.But we also need to show menwe value this kind of work.Not everyone is going to go be the next Steve Jobs.You can do so many other things.And if you were the type of person who likesto work with your hands, our world needs that.So be thinking about how you’revaluing votec with your students.Think about how you’re exposing students to male teachersand just men in general in schools so thatit’s not this all sort of like female spacewhere everyone in charge is a woman.And then also a third recommendation that I havefrom reading Richard Reeves’book that may be helpful toyou is the idea of red shirting.So this is where we hold students backan extra year before they start kindergarten.And there is extensive research that he points outshowing that boys would benefit from being red shirted.And Richard Reeves recommends actually that that beour policy, that girls start kindergarten at fiveand boys start kindergarten at that.You know, parents would ultimately have the right to decideif they want to hold a girl back, fine.If they want to have a boy startat five, absolutely, they can do that.However, as a general rule, we would expectboys to not start kindergarten until age sixbecause they will do so much better.They will not only not have to worry about beingthe smallest or the weakest in their class, which isunfortunately still an issue for boys, but also they willhave the maturity, the developmental readiness for things that girlstend to be ready for earlier.So I thought that was a really interesting suggestion.And being someone who has taught pre K before,the difference between a September birthday and a Januarybirthday, it’s hard to overstate at that age.The difference between what a, say, 4.5 year old anda 5.2 year old can do is it’s worlds away.Absolutely worlds away.And then you add in the gender disparities as well.Red shirting basically is being proposedas a very easy solution.And he says, unfortunately, the families who are most likelyto keep their boys back are affluent, affluent white familieswho could also afford tutoring and all these other kindsof things as needed for their boys.The vast majority of them are happy withtheir decisions and their boys do very well.But he says the ones who would benefit themost are actually boys from low income families.And he has an entire chapter specifically about boys ofcolor and particularly black boys and the risks that theyface and how red shirting could be one of themost powerful things that we do for low income andfor low income boys and boys of color to helpthem have a chance to compete on the same levelas the girls who are, in general, more mature thanthem and more developmentally ready for these skills.So I thought that was kind of interesting too.And maybe that could be something thatwe as educators could start to normalizethese conversations about just because your kidis eligible for kindergarten, are they ready?Like, are they going to be successful?Because the thing is, if you’re always the youngestand you are not quite where your peers areat, you’re going to struggle through your entire career.This is not just kindergarten, it’s allthe way up through high school.So it’s definitely something that we can think aboutand maybe normalize those kinds of conversations with familieswhere if you have a child in your classand they have a younger sibling, do you wantthem to start kindergarten in the fall?Do you think this is the right year or the next year?And I think this is especially possible now that wehave universal pre K offered in so many states.Because a big motivation to get your kid off tokindergarten is the fact that you need childcare, right?You don’t want to pay for daycare anymoreor stay home with them or whatever.But if we have pre K options and youcan just send them to another year of preschoolto get them extra ready before they begin kindergarten,I mean, that’s just a win win.So I really like that idea, too, of giving boysthis extra year to kind of get themselves together.So I want to posit my owntheory and my own solution here.So this one is not from Richard Reed’s books.This is not coming from any kindof expert who has done research.I’m not an expert in this, butI am an expert in education.And a theory that I have about why more girlsare thriving in school and boys are not is becauseI think in many ways, girls are less lonely.There there’s definitely an issue amongst manygirls for bullying, misuse of social mediaand that sort of thing around girls.There’s all kinds of body image issues thatcome up with girls on social media and. “ WWW.ARMINIC.COM “ And social isolation is a leading factorin suicide among girls and young women.But overall, girls are much more likely to havefriends or a friend that they can confide in.And girls are also more likely to formstrong social bonds in which they share theirdeepest feelings and their deepest fears, right?I mean, that’s a core activity of what girls do, right?If you think about the trope of middleschool girls, they’re whispering to each other, right,like they’re sharing things with each other.Whereas boys social networks tend to revolve aroundsports or gaming or other activities in whichyou’re doing something together, you’re bonding, but you’renot really having those deep conversations.You’re not talking about how youfeel, you’re not processing trauma together.You’re not connecting on that deeper level.And when you couple this with gendered expectationsaround emotions, that’s when we have a problem.So I interviewed Samaya Chumley about this in aprevious episode about her book called Rage Becomes Her.It’s about the power of women’s anger.And she explained how women, especially white women, arenot socially allowed to feel or express anger.That is something that is sort of off limits to us.So we can be frustrated or sad or fearful,but like to be angry and to openly embracethat anger is something that is sort of offlimits in traditional white femininity, whereas men are onlyallowed to feel and express anger.So that’s the only emotion that is coded as masculine.And when men there’s been research that she’s foundthat shows that when women feel angry, they feelpowerless and makes us feel like, out of control.We don’t know what to do with the anger.And when men feel angry, they feel powerful.The anger imbues them with this sense of powerand entitlement and rage that they’re able to useand express in ways that it may or maynot be constructive, but it is permissible.You are not less of a man for feeling anger.It’s not unmasculine.That is the primary emotion thatmen are allowed to feel.So in modern American society, it is much more sociallyacceptable for women to cry, for women to laugh outloud, for women to dance, for women to be afraid,for women to express a wide range of emotions muchmore acceptable for us than for men.Anger is the only emotion that we code as male.And in fact, men have somehowrebranded anger as not an emotion.When we talk about the trope of men sayingwomen are too emotional and then they smash theirfist through a wall because they’re angry, their firstinstinct is to inflict physical violence when they feelthreatened, but they’re saying they’re not emotional, right?But anger is indeed an emotion.It’s a natural one.It can be a healthy one.So Chumley argues that both women and men shouldbe allowed to express anger in healthy ways.But we also want boys tobe able to express other emotions.Everything can’t just be bottled upinside and then explode in rage.And we know where that leadswith boys in our society, right?Like how that can manifest in some of the worst ways.So what I’m getting at here is that men oftennot always, often do not have relationships with each otherin which they can regularly confess their deepest, darkest secretsin which they can just laugh genuinely and lighten upand not just be sarcastic or make fun of someone,but share in genuine joy together.Men don’t often have relationships in which theycan grieve losses with another male friend.Relationships in which they can cry openly, in whichthey can express fear, in which they can talkabout their mental health issues and so on.All of these kinds of things are thingsthat are acceptable for women to do.Whether or not a girl or a woman has someone in herlife that she feels safe enough with is a different story.But it would be acceptable if I were tostart crying in front of one of my friends.They would know exactly what to doand they would be comfortable with that.And not all men have that kind of relationship.They would have to worry about.Am I being perceived as weak?So when women hit a low point, inmany cases we’re able to be more resilientnot only because we have stronger social networksin general to support us, but because wehave developed a fuller range of emotional intelligence.And this is a skill that is so, so neededin this day and age that we are not fosteringthe same way in boys as we are in girls.Emotional intelligence is everything.When we as women feel wronged or we feelrejected, we have the societal permission to cry, tofeel upset, and to talk about the situation.But for men who need to be seen as tough andmasculine they end up staying in that space of anger.And I absolutely believe this factors intowhy the vast, vast, vast majority ofmass shootings are committed by men.They’re turning that rage outward because theydon’t have another outlet for it.Men who don’t have confidants, who are not in touch withtheir feelings and who don’t know how to communicate seem farmore likely to be the one to pick up the onething that is guaranteed to make them feel like a manthe one thing that is guaranteed to command respect.And that’s a weapon, a gun in particular.So I think we need the structural andinstitutional supports for men and boys that researcherslike Richard Reese recommend such as more maleteachers, more representation of men in schools.So men are influencing the way that lessons are taught.They’re influencing the school culture.If you have an all female environment or anall male environment there’s going to be some differentenergies and different norms in there, right?And right now, a lot of schools arealmost all female in terms of the staff.So getting more men in there, red shirting,having these boys start kindergarten a year later,as well as bringing back votec programs andlife skills training and not pushing every studenttowards college, these are some of his recommendations.These are all things that will help boysbe more cognitively and emotionally mature when theyenter kindergarten and help them perform at thesame level of girls in their classes.The male representation is particularly important.But what I’m getting at here, in addition to thosethings, is that I think we as a society needto care about what healthy masculinity looks like and openup more pathways to boys who are currently much morelimited in what is socially acceptable to do.So part of this isdecoupling gender from everyday preferences.So let’s just take, for example, clothing, right?Girls can wear any colors they want.You can wear pink, you canwear brown, you can wear gray.All of those things are generallysocially acceptable for girls to wear.Boys, on the other hand, may feel limitedto what is perceived as a masculine color.If they’re wearing pink or purple ora floral print or something, they maybe perceived as feminine and therefore weak.I mean, that’s the root of it here, right, isthat if you are more masculine, including if you’re agirl and you’re doing things that are intended for boys,that makes you stronger and more powerful.But if you’re a boy who’s doing things thatare coded more for girls or wearing things thatare coded more for girls, then you’re weaker.Similarly, girls can pursuetraditionally male dominated professions.When we do that, we are seen as strong, we’re seenas powerful, and when we succeed, we’re applauded for it.But boys who enter female dominatedprofessions are often looked down upon.They’re seen as not havingreached their full potential.I mean, most female dominated professions alsopay less, so that also doesn’t helpthings because they’re making less money.So it sort of seemed as settling, like, why wouldyou want to be a nurse or a teacher whenyou could be a doctor or you could be somethingelse, run a tech company or something more lucrative, moremasculine and that sort of thing.So we’ve created a situation as a society inwhich girls have more options, but boys don’t necessarily.And the cost that boys pay for doingthings, wearing things, behaving in ways that arecoded as feminine, is extremely risky.If a girl wants to play football, she’ll be applauded.If a boy wants to dance in ballet,he may have some things questioned, right?He may be made fun of.And not to say that the girlwon’t experience and push back too.But again, because things coded as masculine areinherently and subtly this is not outright statedto children, but things that are coded asmasculine are seen as better, they’re seen assuperior, they’re seen as more powerful, stronger.It’s the better choice.And girls are sort of leveling up whenthey enter male dominated fields and boys aresettling or lowering their standards or doing something. “ WWW.ARMINIC.COM “ That is less than what they couldbe doing or should be doing.And that’s some of the pressurethat I think they’re feeling.So another aspect of this that I find reallyinteresting, and here we’ll get a little bit moreinto actual genetic differences between boys and girls.And this is also a very controversial thing, right?And I want to say up front that justbecause there are biological difference between boys and girls,that does not mean that trans people don’t exist.They absolutely do exist, and theyhave every right to exist.But at the same time, we can’t denythe fact that there are biological differences, andwe need to factor that in whenever we’retalking about expectations for students.So Richard Reeves talks specificallyabout the levels of testosterone.So those who are biologically born male generallyhave higher levels of testosterone than girls do,and testosterone leads to risk taking behavior.And teenage boys are infamously full of testosterone.The prefrontal frontal cortex of the brain is alsonot fully developed, but the testosterone is really whatcreates more risk taking behaviors in boys than girls.And it can also lead to a desire to conquer, right?Like, testosterone makes you more aggressive, it makesyou more violent, and it makes you riskyour life, risk your money, risk relationships.You will risk things and not understandwhat it is that you’re risking.And throughout most of human history, there was aneed for this kind of risk taking behavior.Every time you go out and hunt,for example, that’s a risk taking behavior.And you may need to be violent and aggressive.Those may be important skills in your society.In our modern American culture, you’reexpected to use your words, right?Like, we’re not solving problems with violence anymore.If you want to have a happy, healthy, stable life, wewant to try to avoid that as much as possible. Right?So the testosterone fuel behaviors don’treally have a good outlet.A lot of times, it manifestsas the need to conquer, right?So this is why we had so many explorers.If you think about that, you think about, like,the Gold Rush and those kinds of things.A lot of that was possiblyat least partially testosterone fueled, right?It’s this desire within some men and certainly somewomen as well, to go out and conquer anew land, have this new experience, and we don’thave much of an outlet for that anymore.And I think that’s how teenage boys get into videogames, because in video games, you can still conquer.You can conquer and achieve, and you can build things.In Minecraft, you can shoot people in othergames and take people down with violence.You can get that sort of aggressiveness outthrough that and also mastering a game.There is that chance to conquer, to beatthe game, to reach the end level.Technology is another area of that, and we hear alot of these sort of like tech bros, right?Like no one’s ever done thisbefore and this is brand new.And this chasing of a new frontier issomething that has historically been very much amale trait that can manifest through technology.If you’re the type of boy whose brain worksin that way, right, not everyone is into techlike that, or not everyone has the types ofintelligence that are valued in that profession or wantsto be a technology entrepreneur and have a startup.But that’s one way that we seethis testosterone fueled desire for conquering newlands, conquering new ideas, like taking charge.This is one way we see it manifest.It could be sort of healthy.And I believe video games can be ahealthy outlet for that too, in some cases.When you’re full of testosterone, fixing thingsisn’t as fun as breaking things.And we see that sometimes with boys too, right?And same thing really could be said forpornography because pornography is really about conquest, it’sabout power, it’s about control, it’s about domination.And so that may be another outlet forboys as well as their in person relationships.So we have a lot of ways that things cankind of not go well if we’re not acknowledging thefact that it is normal and healthy for boys tohave a lot of testosterone, that fuels their decision making.And I think this is one point that RichardReeves makes very well in know, we’re teaching girlsthat their hormones are natural and healthy.It’s nothing to be ashamed of.You shouldn’t be ashamed of your period,you shouldn’t be ashamed of menopause.You shouldn’t be ashamed of the things that yourbody goes through during pregnancy, which is all true.But we’re telling boys that their hormones are wrong,that their hormone is testosterone and it makes themdo all of these terrible bad things.And I found that really thought provoking.I don’t have answers for thatand neither does he necessarily.But it was definitely thought provoking because it’s important tome that I want a world in which people canbe themselves and I feel very comfortable embracing my femalebody and my identity as a woman.And I want men to feel the same way.I want men to feel secure in thatI don’t want teenage boys to feel likethey are toxic just by virtue of beinga man and having testosterone, higher testosterone levelsthan girls, that there’s something wrong with them.And that’s a message that I thinkcomes across very subtly to boys sometimes.But we need to be aware of.We want to have a healthy version of Masculinity, justlike we want to have a healthy version of femininity.And all of these things, I think,are moving in the right direction.All of these things are changing slowly.It’s no surprise to me that Gen Z is rejectingthe older generation’s gender norms and it makes me sohappy to see boys stepping out of these very narrowboxes that the patriarchy has constructed for them.This is the thing aboutwhite supremacy doesn’t only harm.It mostly harms on a greater level, people ofcolor, but it also holds white people back.And it’s the same thing with the patriarchy.Women, I think, experience the most harm orsome greater levels of harm because they arethe intended recipients of that harm.But it also restricts boys choices, and it keeps them inthese positions where they are not free to be everything andall that they are and embrace all of them.So I do see change coming, and I do seethings moving in a positive direction, but the change isjust not coming fast enough for some of them.This is why we have the deaths of despair.This is why we have the opioids, the Fentanyl use.One in three men without the collegeeducation are not in the labor force.This is why we have boys who are staying homein the stereotype of playing video games all day intheir parents basement, no desire to partner up, to havekids, to have a career, or seemingly no desire.And I wonder how much of that stemsfrom them not seeing a place for themselves.And I want everyone to see aplace for themselves in our world.The truth is, we need everyone.Every single one of us has a valuable role to play.And I think my challenge for you as aneducator, and for myself as an educator, is toexpose our male and male identifying students to justas many countercultural narratives as we do for ourfemale and female identifying students.So as educators, it’s been ingrained in us tomake sure that girls are receiving the message thatthey can be whatever they want to be, studywhatever they want to study, that all career fieldsare open to them, including Stem.I mean, there have been tons of dollarspushed towards getting girls into Stem programs.We need to also not instead of also open our boys upto know that they can be anything they want to be.We need our boys to grow up to be teachers.We need them in our schools.Half of our student body is males.We need male teachers badly.And we need our boys to grow upto want to do this work in education.We need them to be nurses and doctors.We need them to grow up and do that bluecollar work that men have done for generations, but thathas become inaccessible to so many boys due to thelack of votec programs and this push to send everystudent to college richard Reeves talks about we need to.It opened up opportunities for girls inStem and for boys in Heal.Heal, meaning health, education,administration, and literature.It’s the helping professions.We need male therapists do you know how many men. “ WWW.ARMINIC.COM “ Really, really need a therapist and can only findfemale therapists because men receive this idea that womenare the ones who talk about their feelings, that’slike this weak feminine trait, it’s not masculine enough.We need to reframe that men absolutely have feelings and theyneed to talk about them and they need to be ableto talk about them with other men who understand them.The same way that I as awoman would rather have a female therapist.That’s my personal preference.A boy should be able to get the same thing.And particularly black male therapists, Hispanicmale therapists and so on, allthose kinds of things really matter.So getting them into healthcare, into education, theseare two of the major fields that aregoing to need to be hiring tremendous numbersof people in the coming years.Any male student graduating and going to healthcareor education is not going to have aproblem finding a job, supporting a family, supportingthemselves and really making a difference in theworld, contributing good work in society.But these things are not thingsthat boys are necessarily attuned to.And I will say also as a side note, oneother thing that Richard Reeves points out in his bookof Boys and Men is that we should not expecttotal gender parity in professions, that there is some sortof biological difference in which we will probably have moremen in Stem and more women in heel.And he points to Scandinavian countries which have bettergender parity and more equality between the sexes thanprobably any other part of our modern world.And he says still in education, the vastmajority of teachers are not the vast majority,but the majority of teachers are female.And when you look at car repairand automotive type of work, construction work,it’s still more men than women.And this is in a place where you are muchmore likely to be able to break gender roles andgender stereotypes and you have a better social safety netand much higher incomes across the board.So you don’t necessarily just have to pick the jobthat is going to make you a lot of money.They also have good paternity leave.So you also don’t have to pick a jobbased on can I care for my child?Because in some of these countries, for example, mencan take an entire year off with the baby.So they’ve put all the social structures in placefor men and women to be able to doany kind of job they want to do.And they still found that there is aproclivity for men towards certain types of joband women towards some type of jobs.Whether that’s all nature andmaybe there’s still some nurture.I mean, certainly larger cultural values stilltype some of these professions as eithermale or female, it’s hard to say.And honestly, it doesn’t really matter. Not to me.I don’t really care if it’s morebiology than it is social conditioning.The point is that we don’t have to have exactgender parity in every single profession, but we want tomake sure that boys are going into these fields thathave been coded as female and they see that asa choice for them if they want to do it.And that’s really my larger picture here, is thinkingabout ways that we as educators can show boysa wider version of masculinity beyond just the stereotypes.We’ve shown girls that you don’t haveto be, quote, just a mom, right?You don’t have to wear high heels and be intomakeup and like girly things or whatever those kinds ofstereotypes are that if you want to do more malecoded things, we accept you, we love you, we wantyou to be able to do that.And we just haven’t done the same in reverse to quitethe same extent because there is still such a stigma sociallyfor boys to be into things that are girls.Girls can play with cars, boys cannot play with dolls.The pushback is just going to be very different.So I think we need to just examine thatand be aware of that and think about whatwe can do to show boys their inherent value.I think we need boys to see fatherhood as animportant and something that is worthy of respect for thosewho choose to have children, that that can be animportant part of their identity if they want kids.As women, we’ve always gotten the message that there’sso much value on us being mothers, boys notquite to the same extent, but I think that’sa great healthy way to root in your masculinityis providing and protecting for children.I think we can dispel myths that men just aren’tgood at that kind of stuff, that women are thenatural childbearers and that it’s harder for men.Not necessarily.It comes easy to some men andit doesn’t come easy to some women.So can we open up fatherhood as something important?A guy in the Gen Z generation who wantsto have a female partner is probably going tohave to contribute equally in household tasks and parentingin order to attract a partner.That’s what most young women want, right?They want an equal partner.They don’t want to be expected to doall of the laundry, all of the childrearing, all of the cooking and cleaning.But if we’re sending boys messages that this iswomen’s work, then they’re going to feel useless.And even if we as the educatorsor we as their family members aren’tsending them this message, they’re getting it.They’re getting it from popular culture.And I’m telling you, there’s some really deeplydisturbing stuff happening on social media that isclearly sending these messages to boys.If they end up on the wrong side ofTikTok, YouTube, et cetera, they’re hearing these messages.So we have to actively offer a differentnarrative that we’re not just marrying a woman.So you have a servant, right?You’re not just trying to find a womanwho can cook and clean and bury yourchildren, but that you’re finding an equal partnerbecause that’s what the girls are wanting.And that’s what the girls arebeing told that they should want.They’re being told that you’re not justthe man’s servant, that you should berespected and listened to and valued.But we’re not showing the boys that it ismasculine to respect and love and value a woman.So I think we’ve got toretire this bumbling, idiot husband stereotype.Remember the sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond wherethe husband is just this idiot?There’s so much of that that is just, like,steeped in the popular culture, and the uselessness ofmen is almost a stereotype at this point.And I think we have to stop making excusesfor boys being messy and disorganized, as if hygieneand cleanliness and organization are traits that come naturallyto all girls and only girls.These are teachable skills that all humansshould learn coding, organization, and cleanliness assomething that only girls care about.Boys can color code things too, andsome of them want to do that.Boys can organize a desk or their bedroom or ashelf, and some of them really like to do that,but they don’t have the male role models for it.And I think we need to thinkof these as, like, human skills.This is not gender coded.Everybody needs to learn how to keep track of theirbelongings and keep them clean and keep them safe.Like, this is something that shouldn’tbe limited to just one gender.And I think just as importantly, and maybe evenmore so, we need to send the message toour boys that they can and should be emotionallyavailable, that healthy men, healthy masculinity involves emotional availability.We need them to understandthemselves and their feelings.We need them to be able tocommunicate about themselves and their feelings effectively.We need them to know their own needs, to havethose introspective skills, those metacognition skills as well, and beable to talk about them, to tell other people whatthey need and make sure that they can get theirway and get their needs met in appropriate manners withoutresorting to aggression or violence or other behaviors that arecoded as more masculine.It’s unfortunate that even in this modern age,things that are coded as exclusively the domainof women are seen as inferior.And that’s where this whole realmof feelings and emotions is.It’s still coded as something for women.If we want boys to have an interestin talking, in reading, in writing and formsof effective communication, they need to see themselvesin those tasks and in those careers.They need healthy representations ofmen doing these things well.They need to know that not only arethese essential life skills, but that these areskills that people of any gender can acquire.So those are my thoughts on Richard Reeve’s book calledOf Boys and Men why the Modern Male is Struggling,why it matters and what to do about it.And it’s a few of my ownsort of opinions mixed in there, too.And my own ideas I would love. “ WWW.ARMINIC.COM “ To hear from you on your thoughts and experiences.What are you seeing in your boys?Maybe your personal children or your students?What are you seeing in your community?If you are single and you are datingmen, what are you seeing in that?And of course, if you’re a man yourself, I would loveto hear what do you think I got right here?What did I get wrong? What am I missing?What’s your experience again?I want this to be the start of a conversation.This is not my final once and for all,I’ve got it all figured out episode in whichI’m sharing with you the plan forward.I just want to open the conversation.I want to get us thinking about these thingsand I want to think about it together.So please feel free to use the contact methods inthe show notes to let me know what you thinkand what your ideas are so we can keep talkingabout how we can support boys and girls.Your Takeaway Truth for the week ahead is this let’s show boysa broader definition of masculinity in which there’s so many healthy waysto be a boy, to be a man, to contribute to societyand to be of value in use to let our boys know,just like we try to let our girls know.You have inherent worth as a human.You can be anything you want to be.Get to know yourself, get to know your needs,get to know your own strengths and weaknesses.And then you can make yourbest contribution to the world.You can show up fully as your whole authentic, healedself, ready to participate fully in our society and makethe world the place that we want it to be.Have a great week.You can do this.It’s not going to be easy.It’s going to be worth it.