Let Boys Embrace Their Feminine Side

This is an insightful piece on how narrow the definition of manhood is, and how little space is allowed for boys to fluctuate from their category on the gender spectrum. While our society has evolved enough to find normal and encourage the masculinization of girls (we call them “brave” and “strong”), whenever boys show a tendency toward the feminine, they are, in the best case scenario, thought of as going through a phase, but more frequently they are seriously bullied.

“But they can’t [like nice things]. 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.”

A few examples of how this double standard plays out in the real world: it’s ok to reject pink for baby girls, but you don’t see any baby boys wearing headbands; Boy Scouts of America started admitting girls who are “more rough and tumble” into their dens, meanwhile nobody asked the boys if they want to join the Girl Scouts (oriented more towards friendship, caretaking, community) and so on.

“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.”

And also:

"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."