pub fl

My earliest memory it was my father bringing me down in my mother's basement putting up his hands and teach me how to throw jabs and punch and. Those are that he gave me those three words be a million stop with the two year stop with emotions can be a man in this world you will learn how to dominate to control people in circumstances. That was a source of tremendous shame I left their room with tears coming down my eyes just feeling I wasn't quite man enough. Football became a tremendous place to hide you can hide inside that how much you can hide behind the world the crown you get to project this facade this persona the appeal to me of what it means to be a man in this culture I thought if I could manifest as a hyper masculinity somehow that would validate who and what I was certainly my father would respect to see how palm for how strong how tough I was and give me the love and attention that I desperately wanted. I don't ask every man to think about what age they were what was the context when someone told you to be a man. That's one of the most destructive phrases in this culture a belief. Stuff don't cross right up with the emotion pick yourself up be show Don't be a person of my display keep cool and be kind of a **** always keep them all shy like the tattletale going to hang it's you want to run your life rose come before the hello good lady in manny a man wrote some balls Man man I am not a man out of are not a man a. Yet again another teen has taken his own life. Her being bullied for years the details of the gang rape that took place outside a high school homecoming dance are for a fright eans confessed to shooting an Australian man for quote the fun of a teen people were charged in the beating death of a Florida A and M. drum major the result of a band initiation ritual a student was found dead alcohol five times the legal limit in his system he killed his girlfriend and then shot himself over twenty little children dead he also shot his model the shooting was apparently a premeditated one gunman and he is among the dead. Now I don't know Ariana. If you really knew me you wouldn't know a feeling outside of school. And I mean that sometimes it's hard to talk to somebody. If you really knew me in another when I'm sad and I. Really don't say nothing about it. I used to hide emotions like when I'm sad and turn your body on the mat over to. For a long time I didn't have any friends so I did nobody would talk to. We don't really talk about they're not in our house. If you really knew me you know that sometimes I feel like I can't be myself. If you really knew me you know that I am I know my dad. If you really knew me you were known them or dad even to you and I don't think I ever seen him out of jail. Around fifth grade and none of us who are you most people don't know that about me. If you really knew me. We know that. My parents went through a little phase where they told us they're going to get a divorce I just needed someone to talk to about it. Now no good boyfriends. Views the photo just giving up on my. Belief sixteen I felt like an outcast I felt alone for. A long time. If you walk onto any playground in America where there's a bunch of boys happily playing you can start a fight by asking one question who's a sissy around here and two boys will go at it he is he is he and he can have a fight or all the boys go and that Boyle either have to fight them or run home crying that idea of being seen as weak as a sissy in the eyes of other guys starts in our earliest moments of boyhood and it follows us all the way through our lives proving to other guys that we're not girls that we're not women that we're not gay we've constructed an idea of masculinity in the United States that doesn't give young boys a way to feel secure in their masculinity so we make them go prove it all the time if **** men up by step down from. Masculinity is not organic it's reactive it's it's not something that just develops it's a rejection of everything that is feminine Sometimes my friends act like they're tough when they feel like they're now from the beginning with orders boys to lock down our emotions we can't talk about being afraid we can't talk about being hurt we could talk about being pissed off we could talk about being angry we can't talk about being say if you never cry you have all these feelings stuffed up inside of you and you can't get them out we put them on that trajectory through our popular culture through our parenting styles or educational styles and through assumptions about natural manhood and maleness that we pass along that are incredibly insulting and damaging and then there's a whole social system that polices them on through this low level of threat from other men if they're not man enough. To say when to get into how. Learned masculinity as children where we learn it from who taught it to us and I'm going to ask me you guys to shout out ideas that you had on it from your childhood in my house so we don't cry showing emotion it's like you're weak to be hard just hold it in no tattle telling fight back and every day in the surrounded around. Money money money money money money be the best go for the triple This is a Double it was OK to be a womanizer a man has to be dominant and in charge and has control you know a man does everything to the extreme and never back down from anything a man use violence to solve problems. The first why every boy learns in America is we associate masculinity with athletic ability side strength or some kind of skill set I've always felt the pressure of you need to be boss he needs you not you you have to have a six pack those boys that can catch a don out or hitting curve or elevator I want to play football Best Buy one sports have fun doing it makes money I want them T.V. type of rights they're set up for a tremendous value in frustration in life because being a man doesn't have a single thing to do with athletic ability you think about all the other boys on that playground they don't just want to play sports they want to do computers or music or drama or debate this past month I did took part my first. Feeder production Look I wish I had taken part in that throughout high school I don't know I had didn't because it was just it was something taboo years weren't supposed to do it. Second my every boy learns is that we associate masculinity with economic success. My name is Jordan Belfort the year I turned twenty six I mean forty nine million dollars which really pissed me off because it was three shy of a million a week you know it's been said that comparison is the thief of all happiness so if you're building your sense of masculinity based on power positions there's always going to be someone that has more that leads to an incredibly empty life of striving for things at the expense of for truly important life I've had eight year old kids sit on my couch eight year old boys and also somebody want to be when you grow up and they'll say a venture capitalist. There is so many things wrong with that that I hardly know where to start the extent to which he comes in and has already been programmed he is going to head there. He limited options in his life and they will never feel authentically like his own in the third good crowd Tiriel as a culture we associate sexual conquests what masculinity. Is made of a look at what the ladies can only imagine the top five hottest girlfriends of Derek Jeter been everywhere we all salute you associate in that would masculinity is so nice when you test. You know you said that is to put in a back seat Bam cold X. at me and I get what you got a day. You do have a dignity well those were the sign the cute boys silent to keep them conforming to the construct. My grandfather is very much that alpha male type He's a former military drill sergeant going to war from the South was able to go out in the world and sort of pull himself up by his bootstraps and very much for a Philistine of the American dream in that regard Granted he was a white male in a particular time which gave him access to that success even if he was poor to begin with. I grew up with my grandfather's voice hearing you need to be bigger stronger faster so I was always having to prove myself. And never succeeding it made me very insecure and not feeling like I was good enough. When I was a kid I had long wanted hair and a very high voice that I wasn't a cool kid I was this awkward little kid I was saying in choir I played clarinet in the band but I also played baseball and football and basketball and got to do all those different things and express myself in all sorts of different ways things changed around middle school I started to get bullied and made fun of you called a **** or a post. And that's when. The social pressures really kicked down I cut my long hair off change the way I dressed I dropped my voice I don't even know when my voice naturally broke I have no idea because they're forced and I played more sports and joined all the teams I dated the head cheerleader and distanced myself from people who were less masculine to me I have a friend who didn't play sports and was kind of feminine he was being picked on even more than I was. And instead of me sort of staying by his side and being his friend I remember to some degree. Making the decision that to decide to push myself to not be friends with him anymore it's not go to his house too. And I remember him asking me why are they bad and I couldn't tell them I didn't know what to tell me the time. School was a training ground for me to learn how to perform masculinity to perform to be one of the guys. Throughout most of history there's been this belief that men and women are fundamentally different creatures than I probably begins with the Bible sex is a biological term it refers to which chromosomes you have to X. is female X. and Y. is male gender is a a social construct these are expressions of masculinity or femininity and both of these are spectrums and they overlap boys and girls are far more human and far more of the same than they are different if you gave fifty thousand psychological tests to girls that would fall out of a bell shaped curve if you gave the same fifty thousand psychological test to boys it would fall out of the boy bell shaped curve if you superimposed them they'd be ninety percent overlapping you've got the shoulders which stick out on either side and those are very often the traits that feed into our stereotype people make the assumption that because the brain is biological that any sex difference in the in the brain must be hardwired but the brain is plastic the brain changes or as a result of experience you go through a process called proliferation and pruning which is that you make a whole bunch of brain connections and the ones that you use are strengthened and the ones that you don't use die back whether it's empathy or aggression or spatial ability or verbal ability things that a child spends their time on that's what they're going to be good at parents from even before a child is born start thinking about the child differently they decorate the room differently they buy different clothes. So this notion that there is such a thing as gender neutral or that parents are not responsible for gender differences is a psychological in possibility we are becoming much more bifurcated in terms of hyper masculinity and femininity girls products have become much Pinker and boys products have become much more cammo and much more violent and it's not just in the toys but it's also in television programming and movies this hypermasculine ization hyper feminize ation reflect a cultural tension and fear about the fact that gender is socially constructed and we respond in ways to try to organize and simplify the world that actually end up simplifying it to such a great extent that it puts pressure on young men and young women to fit into those boxes that are going to be got to be tough but you can't resist you know but a time a boy is five years old he's pretty much taught that is not OK to cry in public he may still do it but the expectation is by the time he's ten that he's perfected and if he's twelve and he's still crying in public there's a problem. Here guy are you one of those single people who are a worthless pansy **** who is now we bring him slobbering like I'm not on your all girl. Boys are not encouraged to talk about any kind of pain with anyone else and when they do talk about pain fathers particularly but mothers also tend to focus more on how to solve that or what they're going to do for their actions. The more time it's come out that. They're learning how is it possible for them as boys to be in the world and to engage in their relationships and to behave in ways that will be considered socially acceptable and in the learning to accommodate to those ideals they're learning to conceal or just downplay qualities that are traditionally associated with girls and women mothers are told that if they. Hold the boy too closely they're hurting his development you're making him a mama's boy you want to be a flying monkey momma's boy snitch or do you want to be a man. Now being a mama's girl or daddy's little girl that's wonderful but I'm mama's boy it means somehow he's soft we. Were concerned that our child is going to be ridiculed or concerned that that our son will be the target of violence and so we give him what we we think he needs in order to avoid that Mario ride but one player don't cry. The reason men are less likely to show empathy less likely to show vulnerability less likely to bring up children in that kind of way is that they've been socialized into this I was really very moved by the fathers who brought their little four year olds and five year old school in the morning and how tender these men were with their son's patient loving they were with these little boys so I asked them what do you see in your sons that leads you to say I hope he never loses that and the father spoke about their sons out their quality they were so emotionally open and their real joy and their friends and the men felt that on the Road to Manhood they themselves had lost touch with these qualities in themselves and the quandary for them was would they have to silence the very qualities that they most value in their sons was the most exclusive sense of do them. My father we don't really have a great relationship this night job was drinking he was an alcoholic I was afraid a film he was a mean man he was emotional this he didn't care about much and is going to school was in the power behind what we should have been doing you would get a good job get a lot of women in your mitt. My mother was more my striving for she told me that education was important so every year on Mother's Day Of course I was on our Mother's Day card but also I was in our crowd all Father's Day and I would just thank her for playing both roles in my life. The moment I found out I was going to be your father was a very scary for me I was an undergrad and my son's mother told me she was pregnant and we were no longer together that sold her if she wanted I would raise and I would take care of. My father didn't raise me and is very important for me to raise my son. Has been very hard to play ball. ROSE As a mother and father for Jackson albums told the minutes of their strong I spent a lot of lights crying because he did have their legs in I had to you know take care of that and they don't want to take it any click because Jackson said to me Daddy arm since it is and I was like OK. OK So then I started I started reading of doing google searches on how to be sensitive. I started to ask them how you felt like how do you feel why he said Are you OK He taught me how to be more in touch with my own emotions and in the end as well as he would proselytize I would cry when I'm and I would tell him dead he wasn't allowed to try to go no but it's OK you need to cry cry. It took some time for me to get there. Men are doing better meadow much more loving with this sons and speak about love and hugs think kisses you know meant a much more purposeful and you know the experience of nurturing the children and sharing in those responsibilities so we are getting better the fact that we're having this conversation speaks to progress but it doesn't take away there's a lot of work still to do. Growing up and that helps hold on I grew up in there was a lot of physical abuse. My father used to beat my mother pretty pretty horrifically from my recollection my father sold drugs and that's how he made his living. He was in and out of prison my entire childhood. In fact I think he was gone the first two years that I was born so I didn't even really get to establish that connection that most young boys get to establish with their father. In middle school with six truly difficult to deal with because I didn't. Even know what it meant to be a man like I did not have. A father figure in my life i just that strong women. I was bullied a lot growing up because I'm not the most masculine of men never have been and why am I ostracized and treated different because I don't want to fight because I don't see the point in having rampant unprotected sex with uncountable women and then sitting on boasting about it over booze and smoking to a joint and yet that's what society deems as masculine I don't value that and I think it's because I still am so close to my mom and to my grandmother and they're both extremely strong and respectable not only women respectable people and so that's that's to me is what I wanted to emulate. One of the things that came up in my study has to do with the mean team which the was a team created by the boys for the boys for the purpose of acting against the girls this is a pre-kindergarten class in the beginning there was a little bit of intermixing. But then by December of that first year the boys versus girls dynamic had become clear and even the hierarchy among the boys had become clear it had these rules and these ways of being and these ways of engaging each other in behaving one of the rules was that they couldn't play with the girls and if you broke those rules you could be fired and technically not be a boy anymore when the boys told me I'm actually friends with all the girls I actually like the girls but if Mike the leader of the Mean team finds out then he'll fire me from his club and then I won't have a club they totally understand my kind of these are the rules and then these are the consequences for their status among the boys. When I was choosing schools for Roman to go to kindergarten I specifically chose one that was Christian based it seemed to that there was an emphasis on family values and kindness but by the end of kindergarten I started to see a change in my son's behavior and the kids around him and I would describe it as like just a hard edge that got progressively worse in first grade there were days where he would come home and just burst into tears and I would see what is going on and he he said will see how so and so push me out of line for the fourth time this week and the teacher really didn't do anything about it or you know they were making fun of me at recess or. You know I want to soccer practice and I said I was the worst person on the team so it started with things like that and by second grade there was one day where he came home saying that he was strangled and the hallway. By the middle of the school year I would pick him up from school and I could see in his face that he was doing everything he could to hold back the tears because he didn't want to be made fun of even more by the boys and the second tweeter of half a block away just the floodgates opened and he was so sad. I felt alone. I wasn't doing what everyone else was why I was different. There's a dominance hierarchy there are tough guys who are on the top and there are weaklings girls were the bottom of the heap Now this is the origin of sexism and homophobia and sexism it's that a girl isn't as strong as a boy with homosexuality he gave their big. Comes both stigmatised version of weakness and Sissy knows what happens in your relations with other kids is that you pick out someone who appears weak in that way you maybe bully him but maybe is just a more subtle kind of demeaning and you start hating that thing about him that you are afraid of in yourself. I was born in Salt Lake City after first grade we moved to Massachusetts I dealt with a lot of bullying. With a lot of time on seeing were I got picked on because I would is the smallest kid the skinniest kid the most non white kid and lastly the kid probably most suspected to be gay which you know is true ended up being true but yeah I remember these kind of big kids coming over and. Yelling out a **** or I want to go back to China. I would always fight back again my stomach punch stand. I just remember coming home from school with like bloody hands just from being pushed onto the concrete my hands kind of grazing against the concrete terrorizing for me I would always end up crying. I felt a lot of shame from not being able to defend myself my dad would start giving me advice about how to fight back I mean I love my mom you know and I love my dad. But I just got the same thing from the. Everybody's telling me to just deal with it. After a fight and I learned to just wash my own hands of the blood I learned to just not talk about it. I felt so down and depressed to the point of contemplating suicide many times. And I just feel like living anymore. I never really knew why I had such a difficult time talking about how I felt. Until I looked back to my history and I was like whoa obviously that's why you know because I was discouraged with physical force from from ever expressing emotions. Boys directly make the link between having friendships and mental health so they tell me if I didn't have someone to talk to about my secrets and about my personal life I would go crazy I would go wacko and sometimes I'm sad I could tell my friends this and they could try to help me out. Eleven twelve thirteen fourteen boys tell these very passionate stories about other boys and wanting to be friends with them and wanting to share secrets this one way described how he was having difficulties with his parents understanding him and the person who saved him on a daily basis with his best friend who he felt really loved him unconditionally starting when they were about fifteen sixteen seventeen the language chefs you hear boys actually talking about their struggles and their friendships being hurt by other boys feeling betrayed by other boys are wanting to have intimate friendships not knowing how to find those friendships from middle school or I have or really close friends and we did everything together like when in high school I struggle finding people I can talk to about things because I feel like I have to do with them so. I'm not spose to get help. They really buy into the culture that doesn't value what we feminized So we've made feminine relationships emotions all these critical things empathy and so boys begin to devalue their relational parts to themselves their relational needs the relational desires. In good times guys are like really close each other and they're really good friends in that other they interact a lot that would things get a little bit worse it's more like you're on your own. One of the adolescent boys described it as if you spill your guts the way that girls do if you tell somebody how you really feel then they can use that against you at any time. So the loss of the intimacy in their friendships feeling oftentimes for many of our boys very lonely very isolated and they really enter into a culture. Masculinity that makes these bizarre equations that male intimacy has to be about sexuality the start saying things like I feel close to him no homo he's cool no homo So this constant allusion any sign of intimacy is going to be perceived as potentially gay they understand that if you're straight you have no desire for male intimacy we don't do that with women we do that with men. Each of them is posturing based on how the other boys are posturing and what they end up missing is what they each really want which is just that closeness. Drinking and drug taking are very often only the boys relax those tight rules which say they always have to be silent and strong and when you get drunk you know your friends and you can tell them how much you love them you can have sex with a girl and not feel afraid in a way that all people feel when they start having sex because it's intermittent turned it on for milieu. It's incredibly exposing. It's not just acceptable that teens are drinking doing drugs than having sex it's expected and sometimes looked down on if you're not doing that you feel out of place if you're the only sober one there. So boys take drugs and alcohol but they're often doing it to treat lonely yes when they're lonely or in a lot of psychic pain and they don't have the words to put it into language. They take to drink and drugs to blot it out. And well. My mom and father met when they were about seventeen years old and they decided to leave Mexico for a better future for my mom to mean them go to school and get a career scene where you don't have to be like me. Give. Me as. This up but I mustn't just need to see it the. Way he. Knows All my book when the dumbest miss it will go to. My dad actually. Here's kind of wired kid back here let's party over and I like to go out with his friends one night he just made a bad move in to say drink and drive and you know he got pulled over and they found out later it he was a U.S. citizen so they deported him back to Mexico and he's been there since I was in South Korea I miss my dad very much and you know there's nothing I can do but facing them in Mexico there's a game and best and on the last problem us going with. You insane around when we need it I'm with the one thing but yeah and see if they had a compliment the cumbia don't. Notice a bunch of different faces there's a lot of pretty girls and then there was like the gay members and then the skaters and then kids this move on either server joining a gang it was because it was a school I was eventually jumped in and you know I claim. A cold or they gave me a nickname to just affiliate. I would describe at four and I ran away from home I just found myself a lot of trouble mentioned in a character. Illegal releases does me N C But I am Mrs Gilson book in my study and. You know all giddy. Days from one moment the. Mrs Mason deal more this is but I was. Around my freshman year is when I felt really depressed and alone. Or just wake up in a bad mood sometimes I would cry myself to sleep I have no one to Tazza like no one could really listen to me and some I was going to be OK. I got your anything. I really felt like everyone gave up on me or my mom. There's been a time where I almost there Komisar. Going to put more pressure on my family. My mom remember. When Basically I had it was better when I was smoking every day. I would always be hot I was smoking I want to think about the trolls. I remember July sixth we went to the cannabis quote We kept T.H.C. where X. boy we smoked a joint and then next thing I know I saw a cop flashing his lights he wrote his ticket he came back to the car and he searched me he found there my shoe and he put the CO saw me and he told me you have the right to mean family and you know me take him in jail. Me going to say gave it all. To quickly monoplane their. Email you know mucho the media is the UN I met. Gala. We need million more. We recognise more and more that adolescents are more likely to be depressed and suicidal but we imagine that that will be female adolescents because of the way we define depression more removed more quiet not responding what boys tend to do when they are getting depressed is actually the opposite boys are more likely to act out more likely to become aggressive using curse words and screaming at people but most people see it as a conduct disorder or just a bad kid and what happens before they see the other signs of depression which will calm and Alessa mouse just as females that young male may become suicidal but no one has noticed it's. Exactly at the age that we began to hear the language the most a language disappear from boys narratives in the national data that's exactly the age the boys begin to have five times the rate of suicides girls. The way boys are brought up makes them hide all of their natural vulnerable and Catholic feelings behind a mask of masculinity. And also when they're most in pain they can't reach out and ask for help Kristen are loud too or they won't be a real boy they're shamed into this and they're very ashamed to break out of it. So they live behind that emotional mask that keeps boys from expressing their true feelings. Now. There are. People like. Mike and. Craig speak out. Like. This is my high school I graduate from this high school I never want to be a teacher I was going to be an engineer and make a lot of money. I became a teacher because I saw that my community was hurting. Good teachers and I think one of the biggest challenges was that I've been through it right and so I want them to be able to know that they can move forward and they can succeed and they can do whatever they choose to do in life but I don't think our work. If you go two blocks away you'll find prostitution there's a lot of gang activity in the area like a war zone right there kids get up every morning they have to prepare their mask for how they're going to walk to get to school so the mask requires me not to. Let people see any of my vulnerabilities I mean I have to put on a very tough mask and when I get here hopefully I can take the mask off so I can focus on learning rather than continually wearing this already. I refuse don't not take the mask off. So you take all of the masks mask you're going to do on this mask you're going to draw what represents you wear something that you hold up every day when you walk to school that you let people see. And then on the bag. I want you to write what is it you don't let people see. I was behind a mask. So she's always you take a mass. Eligible that. I want you to hit someone across the circle with your mat don't don't leave your seat don't leave the scene you can leave you see. Over. There. So more so reveal what's on the mass they opened the read out loud that just a front Bonnie Cary can happen OK what's behind the mask. Sadness and fear this goofy kindness happy. Smile fun. In the back anger anger. I read mine the front says entertainment that's what I show the mass on the back says pain. Energy frustration happiness friendly far smile outgoing and on the back to say sadness scared tears missing my They're trying to take care my brothers and. Bank. Why do you think we hold back our pain. People don't want to know everything. Yet keep the poker face on that note. How hard is that to walk around every day with a poker face on. It's not just an activity on paper it. Is about real stuff that we are dealing with the young men that we hide behind because. You don't feel safe. Almost ninety percent of you have pain and anger on the back of that paper and that's not a coincidence. That is real. And we're only eight here and there are hundreds of young men out there that are having the same experience but they don't have anybody to talk to about it. They're holding back sadness holding back pain to hold anger because they have nobody who's even asking them what's up with you know what's happening was going on how can I support you. I want each of you to be able to say what you need to say because if we're ever going to deep down to the deep some Bahrain young man we're ever going to dig down to the anger that will hold him behind. So we don't end up another man in jail because we just exploded on the wrong person for the wrong thing we've got to have a safe place to do it and. That's Brotherhood. For many of our boys who are trying to find what it means to be a man and far too many without a man guiding them they begin to define their own sense of what it means to be a man our boys a yearning for help yearning for guidance and mentors ship and leadership. What is there about being a boy in America that places boys equate a risk with. Which. We're seeing clearly that boys who come from low income families and I say boys I mean white boys as well are less likely to go to college more likely drop out of school. In most schools we start with humiliation to as a way to punish kids write the name on the board put them in the back of our own send them out we rarely stop and ask what's behind the behavior why is this show them going out to deny those kids learning time actually has the effect of pushing made them right out of school they would kick a kid out of school knowing that a kid who isn't reading by the fourth grade is going to be in a prison system when you kick them out twice in a third grade because he did this to his teacher a nobody in a child's life never heard. Go into a kind of aren't place you know my boys Weston doing this ask him a question he can't shut up and jump it over now we're going to. Go to the same class when a six in the sixth grade. Ask him a question what do you think no. Whatever is cool. In nose fagged years the academic Atlanta started to go out because they have decided a school is not the place for them. Is number one predictor of student achievement is the expectations of the stem school system just now that they didn't believe in it kids and fact because they were black and brown kids they don't think they could do well everybody has potential if they're provided with the right support and the right stimulation. Out was always told like an elementary school you really smart when I got the middle school you know cool be a smart having agrees didn't mean a whole lot to me not on the playground and so I had to figure out how going to fit in so I just barely slipped by as cool to be like. Take my points call my mama I can i have feelings of that strap right it was until my last year of new school is when I got my act together and I was a teacher who kind of say she saw enough in me to say I know there is something going on with you know that your father died before you were born are you using that as an excuse you too smart to act like you're not sad we don't always get to choose what happens to us but we have a responsibility to make the most of it and I was manager I was mad this teacher I was there was speaking to her again and you can't talk to me like that but I heard it and I remember it and it changed the very next day and my grades transformed right and it was really like this idea that my mom to raise me the best she could there would need to be other voices that would help me to find my way. By the time my wrestling coach came into my life I was really really searching for a man I wanted to go resemble I guess that's the type of love and admiration that you're supposed to have for your father right up from my coach right off the bat and I think it was because of that yearning I had. To figure out what it means to be a man. With a family man he loved and cherished his daughter that I saw this man that would depend on all reliable and not abusive. My coach kind of stepped in and showed me that good men do exist. Coaches in this country have so much power such a belief in no wise of young people that they do attain. This father like status I think you've got all these young boys trying to seek the approval of the coach. I'll never forget showing up in Catholic school just right away just hearing out you know on the field you know hurry up you know faggots and you're just like whoa I heard it and I thought about it and then one second later I adopted it coaches can do an awful lot of good an awful lot of bad i was talking to a twelve year old football player. And I asked him the question what if your coach told you a plane like a girl in front of the rest of the play is reported told me it would destroy him and it would destroy him to be told he's playing like a girl. Would are we teaching this boy about girls and actually when I say play like a girl I'm using real soft lighting which we have much more aggressive demeaning to monstrous the human eyes in ways of making that point and making it stick. Of crap. Take yes or no like I'm a. Sports that's gotten way confused in terms of power dominance control lack of moral clarity to Sterling new details about what happened inside the locker room and several high school they held for fellow teammates against their will and improperly touch them in a sexual manner racial slurs homophobic name calling those are just a few of the findings on the atmosphere inside the Miami Dolphins already started the week players beating up women we ended the week with players baby you got chills we're in a very serious stage here in the National Football League. And no one at all costs culture it's strictly about the win at the expense of. Character development. What. I think a great myth in America today is that sports builds character sports is not build character unless a coach intentionally teaches it and model so that. When I did Star coach Ian I didn't want to be a transactional coach using kids for my own identity so I just started with a very simple philosophy if you can be a transformational coach you've got to know what you're transforming. I coach to help boys become men of empathy and integrity who will be responsible and change the wall for good that's what sports ought to be about and we've got all lot of work to do in this country. Many of. Those of American masculinity be in sports military law enforcement need to tame an industry the men that men look up to a lot of what they're teaching is domination aggression there are these hyper masculine figures that we try to and he had to. The average boy spends forty hours a week watching television sports movies fifteen hours a week playing video games and now what's new is two hours in between those other things watching porn the predominant male archetypes that we see in film and television and other forms of popular culture are the strong silent guy who is always in control and is not emotional and then we have the superhero character the hero character engaging in high levels of violence in order to maintain that control in order to achieve whatever goal he has in front of him we also have the archetype of the thug and this is predominately men of color who are pigeonholed into much more violent roles and then we have the man child or the movie which is the male who's in perpetual adolescence his body doesn't typically have a lot of muscle but he tends to project masculinity in other ways through the degradation of women engaging in high risk activities all they want to do is get laid and of course at the end nobody gets anything because they get drunk they take drugs and they're bid up whole rash of these movies recently that are funny and so you're laughing at what you could become. Of course we know that media images have an effect on people's behavior if there was no effect the advertising industry would collapse because the advertising industry is based on the idea that media images will have an effect on people's behavior the same kind of hyper masculine that we see in Hollywood movies on television that the same kind of one is that we see in revenues in a pop culture the stereotype of being violent and dangerous selling drugs oversexed it's all about money power respect a lot of rappers are imitating what they see as successful masculinity. Violent video games the stereotypical structure and should the typical game character tend to be white males it gets the specific. When an emotion. Or any sort of grief is very very never actually discussed or process kids end up really looking up to the character and what they. Cannot express themselves emotionally you cannot be honest with any one of them. When you play videogames these see the same kind of. Loses its impact on you because you have been to the same this video game company this. And this for a ride a new category a new challenge your movie. And they are creating this picture. To this technology which is. The most addictive. Is to destroy the enemy to dominate you don't have social connection you don't have a lot of. Games and you don't have to worry because you're saving the galaxy. If your kid sits in front of a screen for four hours a day. Hundreds of people. Can buy that. There's a reason the US Army trains people for combat by using video games it's because it gets them used to some of the experience it well put your ten or eleven or twelve year old son in that context but they're not going into Iraq or Afghanistan and of paper happen to live in a more dangerous neighborhood or neighbor. Hood where they're exposed to violence more routinely than they might be in some fancy part of town and that's going to be a bigger issue Sheriff Joe my kid's garbage in garbage out wake up in the morning this Friday we're going to a party an actor looking for today's possibly a school work of late but the first thing they turn on is the radio order CD and Osiris. Kill a **** to get. Kill him of the book and twice now while they plan a video game. Kill him of the N.. They drink in or use a some type of substance before the party or Thomas can be fifty guys at the party Arlen who listen to the same song you did Arlen who played the same video games you did in took a point to same drugs that you did all and who had the same armament that you have and then soon as I walk in a party and accidentally step on your foot at the same time a D.J. puts on a turntable kill a **** was going to happen at a party somebody's going die. The surgeon general put together a task force to study this three major findings which have been replicated hundreds of times sense that exposure to violence often leads little boys to be less sensitive to the pain and suffering of others it leads him to be more fearful of the world and it leads him to engage in behaviors that are more aggressive towards others and towards themselves they're not the only things that cause violence with with young people and with adult men but they're pretty potent predictors. Childhood is a sequence of revealed secrets today there is no sequence of revealed secret kids are exposed to porn and age five or six because they're in the middle of a video game and something pops up where they click on the wrong website. I started seeing it more and more sort of seeing it and other places like music pictures magazines. With my group of friends it's more taboo to talk about this kind of like something like like OK Everyone knows I like I watch it but let's just like not talk about it because it's extremely awkward. Ya and. Then you mad. A lot of this it was. Because of abstinence only sex education because of the unbelievable same that our culture has around sexuality pornography is sex education for most people. At the touch of but anybody at any age anywhere in the world can have a panoply of sexual experiences visual sexual experience your brain is being affected don't mean Receptus are being over activated and you get addicted to this visual stimulation and the problem is the excess and it's in social isolation Jimmy is in his room alone doing this he's cutting himself off from friends Amalie and knowing how to relate to girls and women if you are a teenager who's had no sexual experience this becomes the social norm and the assumption is this is what is right to do this is what women want and. This is how men are supposed to perform and all of those are. Wrong the way that boys and men have been trained to think about and objectify women's bodies and purchase women's bodies whether it's directly in prostitution or indirectly in pornography and somehow that's has no relation to how they think about themselves as sexual beings and women sexuality to me it's naive to think that there's no connection it seems like they were attacking her and in make any sense to me as to is this the actual thing like does this actually happen. I think we have to be honest with our sons that our culture is sending mixed messages all over the place boys might be going to pornography because they have the sexual impulse but what they get when they get there is not just sex it's like incredible levels of normalized brutality and sex is a that's associated with the sexual act somehow those boys was to develop healthy sexual relations with girls and with women. We have a rape culture when it what that means is that individual rapists aren't just crawling out of the swamp they're being produced by our culture to star high school football players at them found guilty of raping a West Virginia teenager freshman at Stanford University and a member of the central nervous it hears of raping a drunk unconscious woman to thank us wouldn't have a great show system down and hopefully former Vanderbilt football players are convicted of raping an unconscious classmate in the family built dorm room on campus and then taking video with their folks. As a young man your tour Amana s'posed of always be on the prowl a menace both always be needed. Gresson they say things like who's that I like to hit that. I like peace with that. I like to tear that **** up so think about it his violence tear violence it object that object will actually teaching them consciously and subconsciously on purpose or not not to see the humanity in groups. We live in the were right here in our country. Where men's violence against women is that epidemic proportion my first year in high school I was going to a dance with a woman and was standing next to a guy and she was walking walking away after talking to me and she was wearing a fairly tight pants and he said I now understand why someone would rape someone. The way in which. I've experienced men talk oftentimes it involves doing things to women that don't seem like they're particularly consensual. When I went to college there was this pressure to engage and crack up culture aka hall was this tool for me to be assertive and aggressive and predatory to find women to have sex with. So that I could go back and impress other men with it. It securely around just other guys you're always one upping the other person talking about a woman's **** or her breasts there's an implied sense that women exist for us to have sex with them they exist for us and I don't think that. We think about the implications of that. I call what we do our little boys and men the great set up we raise boys to become men whose very identity is based on rejecting the feminine and then we are surprised when they don't see women as being fully human so we set them up we set boys up to grow into men who disrespect women at a fundamental level and then we wonder why we have the culture that we have. Basically what you have on college campuses is young men desperate to prove their masculinity so you have eighteen year olds trying to prevent. To nineteen year olds that's a recipe for failure. Looking up the initiations the Hazel What do they get in return they get two things these are the bonds that are the most interminable the ones that will last you a lifetime and you also get the feeling that girls can't do this so you get both horizontal solidarity with your bros and hierarchy men are superior to women. The most important dicta of the broke owed is you never rat out the Brotherhood you never ever betrayed that brotherhood So this leads to the notion that surrounding bad things there's a code of silence what happens is their heads and their hearts actually come into conflict because their hearts may be saying this is wrong I know this is wrong my ethical compass tells me this is wrong I should do something about it a man would act and on the other hand but these are my bros I can't betray them if I do they'll marginalize me. This is the fear that so many men have that keeps them from acting ethically a girl was repeatedly attacked for two and a half hours and as many as twenty people either are or stood by and watched that he did not step up to help but nearly all got out their cell phones and started snapping pictures and tweeting three top Penn State officials are likely to stand trial on charges they covered up years of Sandusky's another adult man has now resigned amid accusations he knew there was a problem and did nothing traditionally or by neglect the Baltimore Ravens the National Football League commissioner Roger Goodell have conducted a cover up of rain Rice's brutal assault on his that Fiance you were the severity of rice attack was clear almost immediately after the assault did the evidence that the police department did believe was the most fun. There are forces at work in male. Peer culture that keep men silent even men who know that something is wrong they don't say anything or do anything because they make a calculation that if they say or do something it'll lose them status within their peer culture is a choice and many times the choices is rooted in our privilege so while we as good men don't perpetrate the violence we are part of the collect the socialization the fertile ground that's required for the violence to exist. I worked for ten years in the jails of San Francisco in a program that included a project to deconstruct and reconstruct what we call the male role belief system to which I think virtually all matter in our society are exposed men are defined as superior and women as inferior and to be a real man you also dominate other men so now there is this is a recipe for violence. My mom gave birth to me four days before her seventeenth birthday so she was a young girl and she projected a lot of of that trauma onto me. My mother had like those just a rage towards minister and I know her kicking me down the hallway and choking me and slapping me. And the worst part about this was not the physical part of it because that was normal for me at that time it was afterwards she took a Polaroid picture of me. Crying. And I don't remember her exact words but I remember her shaming me and I couldn't figure out what it was that was so wrong with me that. Why especially That is why I deserved. I was. Molested by one of my siblings father he took me in just bedroom closed the door and I remember a question in my mind like why did you close the door. Has been pulled out my pants and. Americal down my pants and in my underwear and he just looked at me for a while. And. And then he touched me. I eventually told my mom and she didn't believe me which made it worse I felt guilt around it. That I should somehow a show I should have known better I knew that I was suicidal. I was a cutter. Once I was hospitalized for small an entire bottle of my. Anse prescription pills I didn't feel that there was any worth to my life and you know who would care whether I was here are not. The best way that I've been able to understand. My capacity to murder another human being as that I didn't value my own life at the time so I kind of value the life of another human being. A human child knows that's not what he or she if there be or if they're just simply neglected ignored abandoned the men that I worked with in the present had suffered all of these forms of child abuse and totally agree I've never seen any other side and to say they were dominated by shame is to say they didn't have pride or self-love. Whether it's homicidal violence or suicidal violence people resort to such desperate behavior only when they are feeling overwhelmed by shame and humiliation. I grew up with three brothers and a father drank a lot and I was probably bullied the most by my dad he wrote with. Intimidation fear I was always scared when mom said you're in trouble I would tell your dad I knew I had **** whipping coming and that man who's going to hit me with water react to there was a fang chord he ripped out of wallers belly I was shy I was quiet I was always in my head I just felt. Terribly alone. Only a. Culture I felt like I belonged a little bit was in the drug culture when I found it was twelve years old I started smoking weed and first because of peer pressure but I soon liked it because I have to feel the way I always felt. And I moved on to harder drugs my world changed my pick up again became a whole lot more violent people around me started dying. Guy killed we had conflict I had been accepted in this drug cultures when he didn't pay me I thought my homeboys know if I don't do something to this guy everybody said take my right have. They me for pot that's the story I was telling my head and I just felt all the fear exactly and everything else had bottled up in me just burst. And shot six times. And I ran. I think that's the first time I ever felt. Like I would have power for so I felt so powerless my life. I was there was a moment I finally stood up for myself. But it came a city huge price. If you're told from day one I disrespect you and this is the way you handle it as a man respect is linked to violence always are trying to extort allies our pain when something bad has happened to us we need to do something bad to somebody else avenging the humiliation that we've suffered the shame that we've experienced to me that's such a basic and and incredibly important part of what is going on in the violence pandemic in our society. Plenty of girls who live in a culture where there is easy access to guns while girls and women do the shootings. The national conversation that happens almost never mentions gender as a factor when in fact it's the single most important factor but it's unspoken And so part of our challenge is to make visible what has been rendered invisible. I've been forced to endure an existence of loneliness rejection and unfulfilled desires tomorrow. Is the day in which I will have my revenge against humanity against all of you. Were one of the things I serve Oaks so much anger in American society today is this notion of aggrieved entitled. And men feel entitled to positions of power and all that but they don't feel like they're getting them as much anymore that's the injury not that I will was in power but that I was entitle to be the boys that have committed these crimes the men who commit crimes of violence every day in the streets of the United States in the homes the United States are our sons they're saying something about us as a culture but we ignore them at our peril and I think the first reaction of so many people who are threatened by introspection by self awareness and self going to college is to push them aside as if they're somehow others they're somehow aberrational and again that this idea of mental illness is one way to push them aside that's why we don't have to think about our culture we don't think what we're teaching our sons we don't have to think about it the role of the them the media culture and helping to shape certain norms around masculinity we have to think about about the mixed message we're sending to boys and men about violence which we send all the time cultures define manhood in different ways and there are healthy ways to define manhood there are unhealthy ways so the question is can we do better than we're doing in our society the answer is yes we can do better. My sophomore year in college I was and my first real long term committed relationship and I had learned that she had been raped. And I found out later that my mom had been raped when she was younger. It was painful for me to think about that happened someone that I really cared about and that it happened to all sorts of people. It gave me the opportunity to start thinking about masculinity in a critical way trying to become more of a full human being and less constrained by who I thought I had to be I stopped playing sports in terms of collegiate competition and I went back to doing theatre. But one of the characters that I played was a transgender character. I remember. My parents came to the show. And my dad was really uncomfortable he was not comfortable with his son who was more of a prototypical man's man changing into this very and man's man like person even in the context of the other it wasn't really me. And sort of began a point of friction I think between my father night his response was Why wouldn't you want to be what you really are. The very last time that I spoke to my father was a senior in high school I told him that I hated him and I never wanted to talk to him again. And kind of the heat of that moment I decided that I should write down everything that I was mad at him for since my first memory of him beating my mom. And so I sat down and I wrote a letter and I had intended to send it to him in the mail I was taking an A.P. English class and the teacher resembled my wrestling coach and a lot of his characteristics came into his classroom and I said something inside me needs to have you read this before I can send it and I don't know why and he got. I think three quarters to the first page and he. Like fell into tears like tears is running down his face he was like I I understand you so much better now that's why you push yourself so hard in everything you do why you have to be the best why you have to be perfect why you stress out about every single little thing he looked at I mean he just said you're good enough. To parent that's a little bit here. From a man. About four or five years ago Jackson said how about we make a box and we put notes in there every week tweets that if I met it out put a note in there I'm happy often though in there that's how we'll communicate about overfilling for the weekend so Jackson found one of my shoe boxes cut a hole in the tub and he made the mailbox and we do it once a week and we open it and then he Sunday which is such. That I would have to sit on. A good tack I. Pulled together every Sunday it's a really huge. Find if you can't not cash. And my father has never been there be somebody years of life tell me he loved me. And I tell myself I love him every day. Before other women do so many I'm going psychological emotional deficit or injury I would have been men in that healthy relationship as a father won't do so the probably one of the most serious issues in this country. Wounding boys become the men apart from some kind of intervention and in my own healing process I took my kids so far as an adult man I myself as a five year old boy I want both of them back down my mother's basement steps and there are confronted my father. Five year old boys are supposed to be in love they're supposed to be tucked in the. Amazing thing when I did that work because the first time I ever had empathy for my own father I started to think about you know her to him in a way that he would be so angry and he was. To give me means journeys how do you reconnect that heart to the. Start living out of the authentic you. Today is really about self reflection about your story OK your narrative why that's point a selfie flecked and to share out and I came out of journey I knew that I had it up make some changes so I quit smoking and decided peace for Barry and see what I can do to change my life around. First day of school I came in here. You know I was very excited and these past two months have been amazing I can share anything with these guys anything. And. You know they've they've been absolutely more than a family to me and that's that. I transform for apps to for ages I was very proud of myself for most of all I made my mom Brown. Going to make you going to see gangsters I see my little brothers were trying to do is to connect with them to create a space where they could be humanize themselves because they've been so dehumanised they feel safe in here we can talk to anybody in here and so that. Another family pretty much. So the lessons that were being taught early on is that being a woman or being feminine are being anything that's not within the man box within the confines of this construct is bad. So what I'm going to do next is I raise the labels man dogs not man the box. And we take away these barriers that society places on us our parents our peers our teachers media never maybe when we strip those away we get to be where we choose to be and we find that we are some of the very things that we were taught that are not manly. I want to share this closer now to. You know. Before when I was stuck in that man's box I felt a sense of incomplete. Felt that I always never was the person I was meant to be are the Percival family visit meant to be. Once I got out of that man box to this process and the work. I feel like I stand ten feet tall if that were the. Average right to be loved. A sense of belonging with the peers that I have built and made a community where you can hear and I feel whole. Many of us are operating from a place of tradition just the way things always have been we need to get men into their hearts and out of their heads this freedom outside of these rigid definitions of men. We need to be to find strength in men not as the power over other people but as the forces for justice and justice means equality and fairness and working against poverty working against you know any quality in violence that's strength and we need more men who have the courage to stand up and speak out even when it means taking a risk to go into male culture and say some things that are going to make other men uncomfortable because this is about leadership we're asking men to use their privilege to develop a voice to speak out to stand comported a solution it's absolutely not about teaching boys something new it's not about turning boys into girls or something that they're not already but it's actually helping them to stay with a return to what they already now empathy caring for other people and. Being so. Pathetic toward people these are not just feminine traits or behavior patterns these are human pattern we have a responsibility to our sons to break down the systems of emotional constriction that lead so many men to have lives of quiet desperation and depression and alcohol and substance abuse and all the other ways that men self medicate so if we ever gave boys permission the process grief a boy's permission a cry to develop all those emotions you do away with not knowing the word to go with their own pity for mothers if in your Groene feel you want to stay close to your son don't be dissuaded from one study we have of boys being close to their mothers in a healthy way shows that those boys are less likely to engage in violence more likely to succeed in life and live five years longer whatever a father does with a son is mascot if you like cooking cook with your son if you like fly fishing fly fish with your son but do something with your son because every boy measures his masculinity at the deepest level against his dad we have lots of kids that have no father figures at home or who just don't even have intact families those kids need mentors who are a regular part of their lives with checking in with spending quality time with them and who provide the kind of moral support and example and guidance that they need to grow up. To have this one parallel power platform position other held up in most communities in most schools is kind of the epitome of what it means to be a man or if we ever got the heart of a coach pointed out into the hearts of young boys with an understanding that the I'm really not just a coach but I want to be a mentor when you start making huge changes in society media and technology today has an enormous impact on the social and emotional health of boys and we want that to be a good impact so we need to encourage good media good tech. Knology and we need to limit the downside of the bad stuff we need to challenge boys and men to rise to the better angels of their nature to rise to the best aspirations they have for themselves as human beings and as Matt I think that that's a positive challenge and I think a lot of men can rise to that challenge everyone and boys lives to help they stay true to who we are so that we don't have to wear a mask. At the end of each other. In terms of some time. And I'm some time. In enough some times. You know they're shut up and keep it myself in the limelight keep them myself try. Being in. The stock she. Says I can't. Believe. What he had to feel. Some. Jam. Cold. Blood. Comes comes.