These conversations should have been an opportunity to throw out the old pressures and norms of manhood, and to help boys and men be more emotionally open and engaged. They even used subtly different vocabularies when talking with boys, with fewer feelings-centered words, and more competition and winning-focused language. Spend any time in the manosphere, and it’s easy to start to hate men and boys. But for boys, privilege and harm intertwine in complex ways — male socialization is a strangely destructive blend of indulgence and neglect. Under patriarchy, boys and men get everything, except the thing that’s most worth having: human connection.

Source: New York Times June 09, 2024 16:30 UTC