How Not To Be a Boy

by Robert Webb

Suddenly we’re surrounded by well-meaning people encouraging us to talk about our feelings. The problem is, talking about our feelings is something we’ve been specifically trained not to do.

when we tell a boy to ‘act like a man’, we’re effectively saying, ‘Stop expressing those feelings.’ And if the boy hears that often enough, it actually starts to sound uncannily like, ‘Stop feeling those feelings.’

it. I express anger when what I’m actually feeling is shame. Or I get angry when I’m afraid; angry when I’m feeling uncertain or anxious; angry when I’m in grief. I bet you can think of men who even get angry when they fall in love. And probably have angry sex.

But mothers underestimated girls and overestimated boys – both in crawling ability and crawling attempts.

Privilege is just a posh word for luck.

I don’t mean I suddenly had miraculous powers of empathy; I just mean that empathy had a chance.

Fiction fertilizes empathy

‘He can’t even butter a slice of bread’ is the opening line in a show that will run and run. It’s called ‘Clever Boys Don’t Have Any Common Sense’.

You might think I had a massive advantage when it came to acquiring confidence because, as a white boy in a rich, free western country, I was under the heavy impression that this was my world and I was the default human. But that’s not confidence, that’s just a wrong-headed sense of entitlement.

A good summation of why some people are confused about privilege

Man. We are at risk of suicide because the alternative is to ask for help,

Once in a long-term relationship, men are worse than women at maintaining same-sex friendships. I don’t mean talking bollocks with Gary in the pub, enjoyable as it is. I mean being able to tell Gary you’ve got cancer and expecting Gary to be able to listen.

Feminists are not out to get us. They’re out to get the patriarchy. They don’t hate men, they hate The Man. They’re our mates. The patriarchy was created for the convenience of men, but it comes at a heavy cost to ourselves and to everyone else.

What I’m after is extending that awareness to the half of the population who might still be under the impression that gender conditioning didn’t happen to them because they’ve got a Y chromosome. Gentlemen, it did happen to you.

There are several steps to male enlightenment if he aims for equality of unpaid domestic labour.

‘He needs to be a friend to himself.’ Men will struggle to treat women as equals if we haven’t learned to look after ourselves; to recognise our feelings and take responsibility for our actions. We should remember what we knew all along: that we are allowed to be fully human, fully compassionate, fully alive in the moment and fully committed to friendship and love.