For over two years, I talked to boysâdozens of boysâfrom cities and towns across America. Nearly all of them held relatively egalitarian views about girls, at least in the public sphere: they considered their female classmates to be smart and competent, entitled to their place on the sports field and in school leadership; deserving of their admissions to college and of professional opportunities. They all had platonic female friends. That was a huge shift from what you might have seen fifty, forty, maybe even twenty years ago. Yet, when I asked them to describe the ideal guy, those same boys, who were coming of age in the 2000s, appeared to be channeling 1955; their definition of masculinity had barely budged. Emotional detachment. Rugged good looks. Sexual prowess. Athleticism. Wealth. Dominance. Aggression. They were in a constant state of negotiation, trying to live out more modern ideas about gender yet unwilling or unable to let go of the old ones.
[âŚ]
Feminism may have afforded girls an escape from teh constraints of conventional feminity, offered them alternative identities as women and a language with which to express the myriad problems-that-have-no-name, but it has made few in-roads with boys. Whether you label it the âmask of masculinity,â âtoxic masculinity,â or âthe man box,â the traditional conception of manhood still holds sway, dictating how boys think, feel, and behave. Young men who most internalize masculine norms are six times more likely than others both to report having sexually harassed girls and to have bullied other guys. They are more likely to have themselves been victims of verbal or physical violence. They are more prone to binge-drinking and risky sexual behaviour, and more likely than other boys to be in car accidents. They are also painfully lonely: less happy than other guys, with fewer close friends; more prone to depression and suicide. Whatever comfort, status, or privilege is conferred by the âreal manâ mantle, thenâand clearly those existâcomes at tremendous potential cost to boysâ physical and mental health, as well as that of the young women around them.
At its core, what psychologist William Pollack calls âthe boy codeâ trains guys to see masculinity in opposition to, and adversarial toward, feminity: a tenuous, ever-shifting position that must be continuously policed. Anything that smacks of âgirlienessââin oneself, in other boys, and, of course, as embodied by actual girlsâmust be concealed; ridiculed, or rejected. Love, connection, and vulnerability are signs of weakness; aggression is celebrated and eroticized; conquest is everything.
Peggy Orenstein, Boys & Sex: Young Men on Hookups, Love, Porn, Consent, and Navigating the New Masculinity
