He was eight, and he’d already been taught that there was nearly nothing as shameful or disgusting, or whisper-quiet-inappropriate, as liking something feminine. And it broke my heart—for him, and for all the boys I know as adults who were softer, more sensitive, more expressive, more open when they were little and then were told to shut all that down. And we wonder why we have grown men at odds with their female partners who are begging them to be more open, to share their feelings, to be softer, to be sweeter, to be gentler, and they just can’t do it. They’d spent their childhoods having
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