Today’s Masculinity Is Stifling
Sarah
Rich, The Atlantic, Jun 11, 2018
As boys
grow up, the process of becoming men encourages them to shed the sort of
intimate connections and emotional intelligence that add meaning to life.
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Jessica
Love
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He was
seated on the couch in a gray cotton sundress covered in doe-eyed unicorns with
rainbow manes. He’d slept in it, and in his dreaming hours, I imagine, stood at
a podium giving inspirational speeches to an audience composed only of himself.
When he’d woken up, he was ready.
He walked
the half block to school with a bounce in his step, chest proud. “My friends
are going to say dresses aren’t for boys,” he told me casually over his
shoulder. “They might,” I agreed. “You can just tell them you are comfortable
with yourself and that’s all that matters.” I thought of all the other things
he could tell them. I began to list them, but he was off running across the
blacktop.
I scanned
the entrance to see whether any parents noticed us as they came and went. I
hadn’t expected my stomach to churn. I felt proud of him for his
self-assuredness, for the way he’d prepared for this quietly and at his own
pace, but I worried about what judgments and conclusions parents and teachers
might make. And of course I worried somebody would shame him.
When he
walked into his classroom, sure enough, one child immediately remarked, “Why
are you wearing a dress? Dresses are for girls.” A teacher swiftly and gently
shut down the child’s commentary and hugged my son tightly. He didn’t look
troubled, didn’t look back at me, so I headed home, tucking a backup T-shirt
into his cubby just in case his certainty flagged.
In the
afternoon, he was still wearing the unicorn dress. He skipped down the
sidewalk, reporting that some kids had protested his attire, but he’d assured
them that he was comfortable with himself.
With
that, the seal was broken. Most days since, he’s worn a dress from his small
collection, though he also favors a light-blue guayabera—the classic collared button-down
worn by men and boys in Cuba and the Philippines. Classmates’ objections
continued, but with less frequency and conviction. One day when my husband
dropped him off, he heard a little girl stand up to a naysayer and shout, “Boys
can like beautiful things, too!”
But they
can’t. Not without someone looking askance. To embrace anything feminine, if
you’re not biologically female, causes discomfort and confusion, because
throughout most of history and in most parts of the world, being a woman has
been a disadvantage. Why would a boy, born into all the power of maleness,
reach outside his privileged domain? It doesn’t compute.
As much
as feminism has worked to rebalance the power and privilege between the sexes,
the dominant approach to launching young women into positions that garner
greater respect, higher status, and better pay still mostly maintains the
association between those gains and masculine qualities. Girls’ empowerment
programs teach assertiveness, strength, and courage—and they must to equip
young women for a world that still overwhelmingly favors men.
Last
year, when the Boys Scouts of America announced
that they would begin admitting girls into their dens, young women saw a wall
come down around a territory that was now theirs to occupy. Parents across the
country had argued that girls should have equal access to the activities and
pursuits of boys’ scouting, saying that Girl Scouts is not a good fit for girls
who are “more rough
and tumble.” But the converse proposition was essentially
nonexistent: Not a single article that I could find mentioned the idea that
boys might not find Boy Scouts to be a good fit—or, even more unspeakable, that
they would want to join the Girl Scouts.
If it’s
difficult to imagine a boy aspiring to the Girl Scouts’ merit badges (oriented
far more than the boys’ toward friendship, caretaking, and community), what
does that say about how American culture regards these traditionally feminine
arenas? And what does it say to boys who think joining the Girl Scouts sounds
fun? Even preschool-age boys know they’d be teased or shamed for disclosing
such a dream.
While
society is chipping away at giving girls broader access to life’s
possibilities, it isn’t presenting boys with a full continuum of how they can
be in the world. To carve out a masculine identity requires whittling away
everything that falls outside the norms of boyhood. At the earliest ages, it’s
about external signifiers like favorite colors, TV shows, and clothes. But
later, the paring knife cuts away intimate friendships, emotional range, and
open communication.
There’s
research connecting this shedding process to the development, in some
adolescent boys, of depression, anxiety, and feelings of isolation. In her 2014
documentary The Mask You Live In, the filmmaker Jennifer Siebel Newsom features
the voices of dozens of teen boys describing their progression from childhoods
rich with friendships to teen years defined by posturing and pressure to prove
their manhood. Some of the boys, who present tough exteriors, admit to having
suicidal thoughts. The film flashes news clips from the most notable mass
shootings of that time—Virginia Tech, Aurora, Sandy Hook—each committed by a
young man.
“Whether
it’s homicidal violence or suicidal violence, people resort to such desperate
behavior only when they are feeling shamed and humiliated, or feel they would
be, if they didn’t prove that they were real men,” the psychiatrist James
Gilligan, who directed Harvard’s Center for the Study of Violence, says in the
film.
There are
so few positive variations on what a “real man” can look like, that when the
youngest generations show signs of reshaping masculinity, the only word that
exists for them is nonconforming. The term highlights that nobody knows what to
call these variations on maleness. Instead of understanding that children can
resist or challenge traditional masculinity from within the bounds of boyhood,
it’s assumed that they’re in a phase, that they need guidance, or that they
don’t want to be boys.
Numerous
parents of gender-nonconforming children report initially trying to stifle
their child’s tendencies out of a protective instinct, thinking they might
forestall bullying if only their child would fit more neatly into the box
that’s been set up for them. Ultimately, though, most realize that their child
is less happy when prevented from gravitating naturally toward their
preferences.
It’s
important to note that there are children who do feel they’ve been born in the
wrong body, who long for different anatomy, a different pronoun. Trans kids
need to be supported and accepted. And, at the same time, not every boy who
puts on a dress is communicating a wish to be a girl. Too often gender
dysphoria is conflated with the simple possibility that kids, when not steered
toward one toy or color, will just like what they like, traditional gender
expectations notwithstanding. There is little space given to experimentation
and exploration before a child’s community seeks to categorize them. Boyhood,
as it is popularly imagined, is so narrow and confining that to press against
its boundaries is to end up in a different identity altogether.
According
to the San Jose State University sociologist Elizabeth Sweet, who studies
gender in children’s toys throughout the 20th century, American gender
categories are more
rigid now than at any time in history, at least when it comes to
consumer culture. There may be greater recognition in the abstract that gender
exists along a spectrum, but for young children (and their parents), consumer
products have a huge influence over identity development and presentation.
“Toymakers are saying, well, we can sell each family one toy, or if we make
separate versions according to gender, we can sell more toys and make families
buy multiples for each gender,” Sweet told me. The same holds true for clothes,
baby gear, school supplies, even snack food. And parents begin gender-coding
their children’s worlds before those children are even born, sometimes kicked
off by “gender
reveal” parties, a sort of new version of the baby shower, in which
parents-to-be discover the sex of their baby alongside family and friends
through a dramatic, colorful display.
There is
so much parents can’t know when a baby hasn’t been born—they can’t know the
baby’s hair color or eye color or whether they’ll be colicky or peaceful,
healthy or sick. But they can know their child’s anatomy, and with that
information they can create a to-do list full of tasks that quell the angst of
knowing so little else. They can paint a nursery, buy onesies, pick names. A
baby’s sex creates a starting point on a cultural road map that the whole
family and community can use to direct the child towards defining who they are,
and who they are not.
Of course
today, among a certain set, there’s an active rejection of pink for baby girls,
whose parents don’t want them treated as delicate flowers. But again, the
reverse still has no purchase. Exceedingly few parents dress their baby boys in
a headband and a dress.
Somewhat
ironically, those pink-foresaking parents of infant girls often find
themselves, three years later, remarking that in spite of shielding their
daughters from overly feminized colors, toys, and media, they’ve still turned
out to be princess-obsessed preschoolers. The parents display lighthearted
self-consciousness that they couldn’t render their girl immune to sparkles.
It’s
unlikely, though, that they shame their girls for their “girliness.” They throw
up their hands and acquiesce to an Elsa costume. By contrast, boys’ parents
tend to double down on reinforcing masculinity.
“Most
nonconforming adult men, when they talk about their upbringing, say their first
bully was their dad,” reports Matt Duron, whose wife, Lori Duron, wrote the
book Raising My Rainbow, about their gender-creative son. Matt, who had a
20-year career as a police officer in Orange County, California, has been a
vocal supporter of his son, though in their conservative region, his stance has
been attacked. The Durons’ son, now 11, gave up dresses years ago, but he still
loves makeup and wears his hair long. Classmates bully him, but he finds
support from his family, and lately at Sephora in his local mall, where male
employees demonstrate a different way to be grown men in the world.
The idea
of Sephora as a haven for gender-creative suburban American boys is touching
and wonderful in its way, but it’s bittersweet that alternate models of
masculinity are so scarce and relatively unvaried. There are now quite a few
books featuring boys who like dresses, but almost all of them follow the same
arc: Boy dons dress among friends; boy gets shamed and bullied; boy becomes
despondent and hides at home; then, finally, boy returns to friend group and
they see his value and embrace him (usually after one last-ditch attempt to
reform him through shame). Each time I pick up one of these to read to my son,
I find myself wanting to change the narrative or skip the portions where
rejection and suffering show up as inevitable.
“But
little kids live in the real world,” Ian Hoffman argued when I questioned the
trope. Hoffman co-authored the children’s book Jacob’s New Dress with his wife,
Sarah. “Would it be nice to have a book with a boy in a dress with no conflict?
Yes. Are we there? I don’t think so,” Hoffman told me. He says when the book
was published in 2014, he and Sarah dreamed that someday it would seem quaint
that a boy in a dress was a big deal. Then, just a year ago, their book was
banned in North Carolina, cut from a public-school unit on bullying and
harassment. “The initial first-grade book selection, which focuses on valuing
uniqueness and difference, has been replaced due to some concerns about the
book,” the superintendent of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools system told
The New York Times. One can imagine that if it had been about a girl who
dressed as a firefighter, such extreme measures would not have been taken.
There’s a
word for what’s happening here: misogyny. When school officials and parents
send a message to children that “boyish” girls are badass but “girlish” boys
are embarrassing, they are telling kids that society values and rewards
masculinity, but not femininity. They are not just keeping individual boys from
free self-expression, but they are keeping women down too.
It is
lopsided to approach gender equality by focusing only on girls’ empowerment. If
society is to find its way to a post-#MeToo future, parents, teachers, and
community members need to build a culture of boyhood that fosters empathy,
communication, caretaking, and cooperation. But how? Could there be a space or
an organization for boys where they’re encouraged to challenge what’s expected
of them socially, emotionally, and physically? What would the activities be?
What would the corresponding catchwords be to the girls’ “brave” and “strong”
other than “cowardly” and “weak”?
It’s a
societal loss that so many men grow up believing that showing aggression and
stifling emotion are the ways to signal manhood. And it’s a personal loss to
countless little boys who, at best, develop mechanisms for compartmentalizing
certain aspects of who they are and, at worst, deny those aspects out of
existence.
This
fall, our son will start kindergarten, and with kindergarten comes a school
uniform. This means pale blue collared shirts for all the kids, paired with
navy blue pants, jumpers, or skirts. Currently there don’t seem to be any boys
at the school who choose the jumper or skirt, and it remains to be seen whether
our son will maintain his penchant for dresses even when the sartorial binary
becomes starker—and the dresses more plain.
Whatever
he decides is fine with us. My only hope is that if he chooses to stop wearing
dresses, it won’t be due to feeling that his fullest self-expression no longer
has a place. What I want for him, and for all boys, is for the process of
becoming men to be expansive, not reductive. I know I’m not alone. More than a
century ago, in the October 1902 edition of London’s Cornhill Magazine, the
writer and poet May Byron wrote a piece called “The Little Boy,” in which she
talked, among other things, about boys’ evolving mode of dress as they move through
childhood. She tied it then, as I do now, to a mildly tragic departure from a
boy’s richest relationship with himself:
“Petticoated
or kilted, in little sailor suits, and linen smocks, and velvet coats, and
miniature reefers, he marches blindly on his destiny,” Byron writes. “Soon he
will run his dear little head against that blank wall of foregone conclusions
which shuts out fairyland from a workaday world.”
