The following appeared on Apple News. “Thousands Are Agreeing with this High School Teacher Who Said That Young Boys Need to Experience More Shame. They feel emboldened, and right now, especially, they feel like no consequences are coming their way. That’s where we need to change.” The teacher expressed hopelessness when he hears young men make jokes about rape and male dominance and their dismissal of him when he attempts to remind them how their language and attitudes about women are completely misguided and offensive.
This was the sentiment made by a male teacher that went viral on Tik Tock. It supports the notion that many young men and boys who have no sense of positive masculinity are reverting to the world of toxic masculinity. However, I don’t agree that shaming is the answer. Shaming results in defensiveness and resentment. Instead, we need to educate teachers on how to better engage boys in the classroom and to add redefining masculinity into the curriculum at all grade levels.
On the female side I was discouraged by the apparent social media popularity of “heteropessimism” and the extreme antimale Korean 4B movement. The term heteropessimism first appeared in a 2019 New Inquiry article and is defined as “performative disaffiliations with heterosexuality usually expressed in the form of regret, embarrassment or hopelessness about the straight experience.” In other words, other than donating sperm, men are too aggravating to date and marry. To me, this hyper feminism is just as destructive as the young men who laugh at rape and embrace patriarchy.
As with most extreme movements there is a grain of truth embedded in the lack of shame by boys and the rejection of men by the heteropessimists. Boys are not being taught and reminded that there is a modern version of a real man that affirms non-violence towards women, equal rights and how to engage appropriately with girls and women. Some of the extreme positions that grew out of the “Me Too” movement left many men feeling stigmatized as sexual predators who must be neutralized. Women, especially those who were so disturbed by the end of Roe v Wade, found the vote of the conservative supreme court justices as the final straw that proved their idea that men are inherently patriarchal and there is nothing to gain by a romantic relationship with a man.
Can we find a common ground that recognizes the concerns of men and women and at the same time supports a conversation that stresses the value of both male and female energy? As I have often written, we do not have to be gender neutral to achieve gender equality.