Do Boys ‘Swagger’? And What Does that Mean?
The first of the author’s 10 rules for boys is to “Lose the Swagger, Kid.” Apparently, boys are prone to bad messages that tell them to be “hyper-macho” and the author seems to think that gentle, compassionate reading boys are the answer. I understand that the “thug culture” that tells boys to act like gangsters is not a good message. However, I wonder if she gets that boys are not girls and that male traits are often positive and natural. And as far as telling boys not to swagger, I wonder if in her last book on girls, she told girls to “Lose the sense of entitlement, kid.” I doubt it.
She says that boys need to “learn humility” and has a chapter on teaching boys to respect women and girls. Why not suggest that girls need some humility and to learn how to treat men and boys? Most of what she is calling “swagger” is a way for boys to differentiate themselves from women and girls because the culture no longer allows boys to be boys. Frankly, I don’t see many guys swaggering these days; they often look dejected and withdrawn from the culture because it does not value who they are. If swaggering is a sign of rebellion, I say, “bring it on.” Not in a way that is thuglike, but in a way that says, “I will not apologize for who I am.”
Without addressing the societal and cultural sterotypes and issues that boys truly face today by the PC culture, nothing for boys will get resolved.
More from Dr. Helen:
You could make a good argument that the “thug culture” is a reaction against the pervasive attempts to feminize boys. It would have far less power if the traits of traditional American masculinity — reserve, self-control, responsibility, jealousy of your reputation and whatever else is properly yours, and willingness to fight for what’s right — were awarded their proper place among the virtues of Mankind.
I doubt that. The current thug culture is simply the logical development of the culture of criminality the the sixties nurtured, with unlimited welfare benefits and endless indoctrination in “if you’re a failure it’s due to racism, not your refusal to learn the skills that would make you employable.”
Where the “thug culture” thrives is the single parent female led household. If you want to stop “thug culture” then make fathers valuable. I do not know enough about Ms. Bloom if she ever said in the past women should wait for marriage before having kids.
From her Amazon bio, this might be all we need to know about Ms. Bloom: “Lisa Bloom is an award-winning journalist, legal analyst, trial attorney, and the daughter of renowned women’s rights attorney, Gloria Allred.”
That’s good detective work.
So it’s just more bullsh*t from a feminist lawyer.
No thanks, I’ll pass.
No matter how much the “intellectuals” try to turn boys into nothing more than girls with different genitalia, boys are boys, and always will be.
When you kill off the positive ways their maleness can be expressed, and remove any decent role models from their life, of course your going to see their maleness expressed in a highly negative manner.
The best way to fight against this is to be a positive role model. Be a gentleman and if/when you have kids, be the positive example of what a man is going to be.
This not only benefits boys, but girls as well. By being a positive male role model to girls, they will know what is and is not acceptable in men, and thus be more likely to avoid the thugs which seem to get all the girls nowadays.
This also benefits girls in another way. Men tend to be more physical in expressing themselves and interacting with others. By showing restraint, girls will learn restraint themselves. Girls who grow up without fathers tend to be thugs themselves, and are often far more vicious then the boys will be because they don’t have that innate sense of how to interact with others when it comes to physicality.
The war on boys is also a war on girls.
Cute how you made girls into victims of “the war on boys.” Your obedience to the feminist dogma no matter what, the female is always the victim is second to none.
Yecch!
What?!
How is pointing out the irony that the war on boys end up hurting girls too somehow “feminist dogma”?
Because you don’t actually care about boys at all.
Micha is right. You have been exposed.
To “Toads” and “Micha”:
The degeneration of masculinity into an evil, which results in boys turning into either a man-child or a thug, is nothing less than an assault on everyone with a Y chromosome. The insane feminists are wrecking our society.
Mentioning that the feminists are, ironically, also hurting girls and women by doing this, does not mean I don’t care about boys and the future of men in this society.
How is pointing out the irony that the war on boys end up hurting girls too
When was the last time you saw someone point out something that hurt girls was hurting boys too? Never? That’d be it for me.
I think he is right. Removing the male parent damages /both/ male and female children, and so does having only male bashing women as teachers or role models.
The problems the male children have do not leave the female children untouched. The damage done to the male children is just the more obvious and discussed.
It looks to me like The Political Hats comment was just pointing out that by helping boys be the men they should be you can end up helping girls as well. I see nothing wrong with that. The best solution is usually one that helps everybody, not just one side.
I agree with Political Hat. Teaching boys to be gentlemen, and girls to be ladies, used to be known as “manners”. It was a matter of mutual respect and courtesy, and it pains me to realize I might have to explain such seemingly archaic terms to this generation.
I’ve seen enough girls raised by single mothers to know that they need their fathers for their own sense of self-worth as much as boys do. Feminism lost the track when, as a philosophy, it started denigrating the worth of men, leading to a society whose members don’t even know how to treat each other with… oops, here we go again… mutual respect and simple courtesy.
My incoate thoughts on this topic are perfectly expressed by Francis. Well said. Masculinity will express itself one way or another. If it isn’t allowed to in a civilized and constructive manner, it will be in a savage and destructive manner. We destroyed the former, and are experiencing the latter.
Either work with human nature or against human nature.
Well, I guess it depends on their goals. The first is more likely to result in a fairly peaceful culture, the second in a chaotic, cruel, hostile, and murderous culture.
I once rassled a volcano. The volcano lost.
That, is a few words describes teh ‘swagger’. Does anybody know what this actually is? It’s a sense of insouciant invulnerability and a badge of leadership. Swag replaces the word ‘cool’, but instead of detachment from the inanities of the world it is the sense that the self is the source of all that is happening in life. It is clannish, tribal and self-absorbed……
Moving on…….
So, your ‘maleness’ is not respected? That…… and a kick in the arse is what you can expect. Nobody is going to fix your education, nobody is going to land you in a stable two-parent household. You are going to have to face the world with no advantages and no respect and you are going to have to fight them on their own terms and take higher casualties in every regard than they will. We had the advantages of a developed nation but decided to go into the new global geo-political theatre like a third-world region, so we get to enjoy that for a change…….
It’s being male. It can be mostly harmless if guided by a male role model, or destructive if the only guidence is from women.
The idea of males paying for their lack of appropriate social guidence seems to make you happy. Well, women are being hurt by that as well. You appear to be denying human nature, male and female are different, and complementary if guided. No guidence means big problems FOR BOTH.
Your self satisfaction at making men pay, well, the old expression was “cut your nose off to spite your face”. Also “Pyric victory”.
Well, that’s because somebody already fluffed my skirt…….;>……..
I’m responding to the flavour of this review and of the book, which is seeking to place fault and to justify bad behaviour. I do agree; we will all pay for this, but it’s a deeper issue than the ‘feminisation’ of boys and the facile suggestion that if they were let to be free and run themselves butt-naked all over the place that somehow, things will be better……
I’m a volcano-whisperer. Women can’t do that – it’s a guy thing.
The thug culture flourishes because they get all the sex. Period. Women get the men they deserve. Problem is in a broke nation that’s rapidly going down the drain and a society of pissed off men, women don’t realize they are losing their status/protection because of it.
I will never help a woman out. I will never donate money to their causes or buy from their businesses. They are not only my competitor, but also the ones who vote to take away my freedoms and monies via the government. They tell men one thing but reward those that don’t listen with sex. They have become the enemy of the men who contribute and the concubines of the men who don’t.
You say” I will never help a woman out……….et etc. A gentleman does the right thing, because it’s the right thing. You don’t help women out because they are women, you help them out because you are a gentleman. It seems to me ,that you don’t see yourself as a gentleman. That isn’t attractive to anyone.
Why?
Functioning social contracts have to provide some form of reciprocity. Women walked away from their half of the social contract, and labeled the male half as evidence of male domination. I don’t understand why you are trying to shame men into enabling their behavior.
Why?…… because if K. doesn’t do it, someone else will?……..
Failed societies, like a vacuum, don’t usually self-sustain in nature. If we can’t sort out our social functions ourselves, someone else can step in from the outside and do it for us. It’s happened before (though some members of the self-described O.P. don’t see it that way……) and it can happen again………
Who is this “we” ? It is women that ripped apart their half of the social contract under the false pretense of “empowerment.” It is women that regard any attempts at repair as “patriarchal domination.”
Men owe you nothing. “We” will disengage from society and look after our own interests.
I sympathize with the Men Going Their Own Way trend, and I’m glad there are organizations to combat misandry. But – don’t cut off your nose to spite your face.
Women have been attracted to bad-boy types since the Stone Age – it’s self-punishing for them, so why get upset now? Lots of the new stuff is self-punishing, too – and the Cultural Marxists who’ve brought it on aren’t all women.
There are plenty of worth-while women. Just be careful whom you marry – as ever.
It’s ‘we’, or nothing……..
You don’t have any interests outside of society, seriously. And if you think women are castrating, wait ’til you deal with a chinese or indian section boss that will slap you upside the head because you didn’t put dirt in the hole before you put in the asphalt…….;p……….
Actually, I would be delighted to work for a foreign company that respects quality work and doesn’t put women on pedestals.
Bring on the Asian patriarchy.
Steve Martin said he believes in putting a woman on a pedestal — so high you can see up her dress.
Very true. Ronald Reagan, that great disrupter of moral sanity, pushed through the first no-fault divorce law while governor of CA. The carnage from this immoral experiment is visible everywhere. The risk taken in fathering a child is breathtaking. There is no defense from a wife who ventures into greener pasture equipped with child support and a culture that sees nothing wrong in the process. Hence, the brightest boys forego the risk. We all suffer as a result.
Where there was already agreement between the spouses that the union of husband and wife was no more, Ronald Reagan saw the pointlessness of requiring accusation of wrongdoing (battery, infidelity, whatever). Where’s the moral sanity in that?
So try again.
Reagan was simply going along with what Progressive reformers wanted. The old system which required valid reasons for a divorce had many flaws. No fault was supposed to fix them. The problem isn’t with no fault, but how it has been implemented by the man hating Feminists who hijacked the system.
A true, no fault, gender neutral system would be great. That is not what we have.
Wrong. Good luck with the surfing, bub, because history isn’t your strength.
California wasn’t the first state with a “no-fault divorce law.” Look it up.
Lastly, it’s not the “no-fault” part that’s the socially fatal flaw in so-called “no-fault divorce law” but that such laws are really unilateral divorce laws.
Knowledge is power. Stupid should hurt – thanks for surfing.
And at this point in history, “the right thing” is to show the females some tough love.
Jim is correct. What I’m hearing from more and more men is that Ms. Roadside-Breakdown better have a cell phone and a debit card to pay the tow truck driver (or a paid-up auto club membership) because she’s not getting anything for free anymore. With all the feminist gloating over the mancession and the “You Go Girl!” propaganda about females scaling the commanding heights of the economy, getting paid more than men, etc., the females can afford to pay their way. And with all their attitude, they should!
Yes, but women don’t understand cause and effect very well.
Try to get a woman to connect various cause and effect scenarios under simple Socratic questioning. They can’t.
“thug culture flourishes because they get all the sex. Period. Women get the men they deserve.”
Women get the men their mothers decided to let impregnate them. A fraction of the men father most babies and always have. Women shape the man herd with their choices. If bad boys, jocks, and players get all the action, stand by for a generation fun loving narcissistic, high testosterone males. They are more fun for a one night stand, but generally make bad fathers and nation builders.
So it goes.
We’re discriminated against in schools. We get the short end of the stick on scholarships and hiring quotas. We are assumed to be violent and sexually aggressive. And we’re told from the day we are born that we are cursed with the original sin of being a male. Often this is even instilled into us by Feminist mothers (as it was in me.)
Boys and men are driven to compete and achieve. They are naturally attracted to patterns of behavior that make them feel strong, confident, and a master of their domain. The positive outlets for this are taken away. And as one comment said above, feral females who are told they can do no wrong by society reward thug culture with their goodies.
Also, the rise in single motherhood is directly correlated with the rise in thug males and feral females. Which sets up a cycle that multiplies itself with each generation.
I don’t mind – we have reality on our side. That’s plenty. Everything in fact.
Reality operates slowly, doesn’t usually bring results in ones own lifetime, and its collateral damage is widespread and painful (most especially to the innocent and undeserving of punishment).
Ovid is supposed to have written “Love is a kind of warfare, and no place for cowards.” I would say we should tell boys life is a kind of warfare, and know place for cowards. And we should tell them early and often.
And I am a coward.
Cicero wrote his son to ” Marry, because people always suspected the morals of the young man who wasn’t married, then divorce as quickly as possible, for no woman can be trusted.
After that, slake your desires with your female slaves. When the time comes, adopt a worthwhile young man, so you at least know what you are getting.”
The schools are the real issue. For almost all of human history, “adolescents” were regarded as junior adults. They spent their time with adults, and they learned how to behave from adults. Those few who received education were tutored, by adults.
When schools were still controlled by adults, they were inefficient but relatively benign. While the student was surrounded by other children, he was still in an environment largely determined by adults. But the adults have lost control. Schools are now a separate society, controlled by the inmates, and they have become a breeding and transmission grounds for thug culture. Not much different from prisons. When you live among thugs, in an environment controlled by thugs, the roles open to you are Thug or Victim.
Home-schoolers have chosen to protect our children from this toxic morass. This does not solve the problem of a culture circling the drain, but at least we are blazing a path. The resources available for home-schooling are amazing, and are constantly increasing as more and more people opt out of the thug schools. It is my hope that in the near future, it will become commonplace for parents to put together a school for their kids, by assembling parts chosen from online courses and real-world activities. I like to say that public education is like public transportation; better than nothing, but nowhere near as good as having your own.
And today a lot of the “Educators” in public schools want to be seen as cool or hip, hence they do not act very adult-like. Some even encourage thuggishness, not only passively but actively. I saw that happen when I was in a public high school in the 70′s, with idiotic teachers, having graduated from “colleges of education,” who idealized the thugs. It seems to have gotten much worse since then.
Sixty years ago this wouldn’t need to be said, but if you’re around kids a lot, its best to act like an adult. They’ll thank you for it later on.
Just like “All the Presidents Men” was the fantasy of reporters; “To Sir With Love” and “Blackboard Jungle” made teaching seem exciting and “meaningful”.
Oh for the day of “Goodby Mr. Chips”.
For crying out loud the parents are the ones who have literally handcuffed teachers for trying to expect some semblance of discipline and morality from their children. A function of a society of entitled groups and individuals claiming that they are not to blame and all too willing to point a finger at an institution instead of right back in their own faces. I feel sorry for educators.
I’d say it’s been a team effort. For anybody on one side who tries to impose some discipline on the process, there are enough people both on their own side and on the other side to defeat them. Every now and then an individual succeeds in creating a pocket of progress for a while, but the educational vandals always win in the end.
The man haters are part of the “multi generational warfare” I was taught about back in the 60′s while considering joining the student rebellion (mostly to try to get laid, but that’s another story).
The education system has been taken over by man haters, the pre college teachers are shaped by the man haters, the main sewage media and the legal system is strongly influenced by the man haters in the education system…
What else? Oh, yeah. The parents: how many of them single mothers who are influenced and guided by man haters? The mothers used to be able to go to their own mothers for advice instead have to rely on social services man haters. How can they know what is wrong with the way their sons are being treated?
Isn’t ift funny how the answer to a failed government program is always more of the same at greater expense?
“swag·ger/ˈswagər/Verb Walk or behave in a very confident and typically arrogant or aggressive way: “he swaggered along the corridor”.
Noun: A very confident and typically arrogant or aggressive gait or manner.”
Is it really only boys that swagger?
Let’s allow boys to be boys, but let’s not promote swaggering. Boys, like girls, need boundaries and standards to live up to. Today, along with our feminist-dominated culture, we’ve also got a growing extreme macho/thug culture that others have already mentioned, which is also awful. Something else is badly needed.
If you watch a lot of old westerns, which often reflected cultural values of their day, you’ll notice that the hero often did not swagger. The strong, silent type tended to be the ideal, not the braggart. The roles that Gary Cooper, John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart played were manly, but when they portrayed someone admirable they usually didn’t do it with swagger. John Wayne in “True Grit” could be seen as an exception, but he was a character badly need of redemption. Alan Ladd in “Shane” allowed himself to twirl his guns after killing the bad guy, but he still did it quietly, and then he went back to remaining the quiet hero. And if you watch a lot of World War II movies from the 40′s and 50′s, you’ll see that the strong, silent type was also highly valued, as it was in real life during those decades.
The Victorians get pilloried by all sides these days, but the Victorians got a lot of things right. One of those things was the manly gentleman, who played by the rules, put others first, and was brave. We could do a lot worse than bringing that ideal back.
I think younger Post-Boomer generations have a growing appreciation of the Victorians or more expansive the Regency, Victorian and Edwardians. People are looking for alternatives to the destruction wrought by the Boomers. You see this in the popularity of Jane Austen, period pieces like Downton Abbey, and the Steam Punk movement.
You don’t know who “Boomers” are, do you?
Yes, he does.
Women…I have come to observe, those in America, are all under the spell of being a victim class. Now, before I continue, this generally doesn’t apply to the devoutly Christian and married women. Generally. But there are exceptions to everything.
On the whole, women seem to be seeking men who have been neutered. Men who are “in touch with their feminine side”. But, for the record, every beautiful-looking machine I have ever operated or wanted to own (aircraft, sports cars, boats, etc) have been designed by MEN. When pencil was put to paper, form followed function.
It also brings to mind the statement that surfaces from female sit-com starlets who say to the male, about-to-be-castrated-publicly, “Hey…I’m up here!” When the male character is reminded to not look at her boobs, but her face. Well, my response has always been, “Well, then wear a potato-sack if you don’t want me to look.” I mean, seriously. In this day-and-age anyway, most men instinctively look at the person they’re talking to in an appropriate manner anyhow. To do otherwise is generally just considered in-exact. By that I mean, to be an effective communicator, one has to employ effective communication skills. But even Cooter and Gomer look at the girl at the car-parts counter in the face when ordering a brake rotor.
Largely, the “war on women” is a myth. It was a myth in the 60′s and the 70′s and on into today. It was spun from whole cloth based on the anger of certain unhappy people who have been a subset of the human population for centuries. Sure, some of the complaints were valid but they didn’t require such vitriol and “activism” which really only gave TV show writers something to do.
As to the subject of being male. Parents notice their kids traits from the day they are born. The parents job is to nurture the good traits and encourage them while working to control the bad ones and also to mold and shape the young man into becoming a good man.
Posters here have addressed the reasons why teens become thugs and criminals but not how to avoid it. My father set examples. He paid his bills. He treated others with respect. He spoke clearly, wore his clothes properly, washed his hands and kept his life neat. He hated loose-ends and made sure things were in order. A better example I could not have asked for.
But he also played psychological games against his sons. Perhaps he thought he was doing a good thing but certain ways of scolding and punishment were lost on me as to the desired result. Sometimes I think he had forgotten how a kid thinks. Standing in the corner ALL DAY is a bit heavy for a nine-year-old. Other punishments were appropriate like helping to repair and repaint the trim on the house that I had ruined through carelessness.
Point is, parents are people and people are naturally flawed. Most of us suffer but survive the mistakes our own parents committed against us but when we know they love us, as we become adults ourselves we also learn to understand.
But I am a firm believer in having two, heterosexual parents. All this “normalization” of everything is straight off the BS delivery truck. My own problems began when my dad moved out when I was thirteen. Not having him around when I needed him, instead of during scheduled visits, hurt me in a lot of ways as concerns how to deal with others, my conflicting emotions as a teen and my anger with people and things.
Without a father who could sit down and explain and help re-direct my issues positively, I was at an extreme disadvantage. My grades suffered, my ability to maintain friendships have never been very good and my tolerance for others is low. No, I’m not saying, “It’s all HIS fault”, for I am an adult and responsible for my own actions and inactions. I am saying that I might have been more well-adjusted had I been able to have those opportunities for frank discussions with my dad instead of avoiding them when scheduled visits happened because he just wanted to focus on having fun.
I guess what I’m saying is that like the old sit-coms portray so well, if imperfectly and over-simplified, is that PARENTS…two, real functioning people who care about their kids are better suited for guiding their kids into adulthood. There are many surrogates such as teachers and coaches and club organizers, church leaders, etc but the parents are the center.
Many parents today think they are supposed to be their kids’ friend. No. Ally, yes. Advocate, surely. But friend? No. Not until they become an adult unless the meaning of being a friend is to enforce boundaries upon the child for safety and setting an example. But being their pal by “lighting up a doobie” with them is pretty lame and cowardly for a parent. I have met many a misguided parent like that. Had neighbors across the street years ago who were like that. Last I knew, their three oldest kids were in jail. And the parents shook their heads and couldn’t figure it out.
Drug bust, stealing and assault. Hmmmm. Nice going, parents who are “friends”.
And, finally, kids will seek out leader figures. It cannot be helped. They naturally gravitate to the ones who have persuasive personalities. Kids are impressionable. God programed them that way. Or, if you like, humans are designed that way. As we get older, our ability to learn diminishes significantly. Thus, teaching kids good life-survival tools is essential. But kids nowadays learn a different set of “survival” skills than I got. This goes without saying.
They seem to learn deception, slyness and double-talk as a matter of course. I think it’s shameful.
Great comment. Thanks for sharing. We appear to have similar father experiences.
Also, I’d like to add how much I love your name. Very witty, friend!
tl;dr
If I recall correctly, Bruno Bettelheim said that if you wish to control a culture, you must first take control of its stories and myths. When I was growing up the family man portrayed in sit-coms which I fondly remember were men such as Fred MacMurray in “My Three Sons”, Robert Young in “Father Knows Best”, and Andy Griffith in “The Andy Griffith Show”. Although this was the 1950s and 1960s, these characters were not mean, oppressive, sexist men. In fact, their characters treated women kindly and with respect. Carroll O’Connor in “All in the Family” changed all that. Even worse, today, we have the degraded losers of “Two and a Half Men”.
Hollywood knows that if it portrays men and fathers as losers, given the isolated nature of men, no protests will arise and no boycott of sponsors will be launched. On the other hand, if women were portrayed as losers, God help the show, its ratings, and, as for sponsors—-forgettaboutit. For that matter, if Hollywood portrays any officially sanctioned liberal “victim” class in a negative light, the appropriate “victim” spokesmen (sorry–spokesperson) and interest group will rise up and demand to be heard, and be apologized to.
Faced with these cultural and economic realities, men are portrayed as uncultured, crass idiots. And we laugh, or rather the laugh track laughs for us. (In a similar propagandic vein, businessmen are portrayed as evil swindlers and murderers. But, that is the subject of a separate post in itself.)
The fact that boys exhibit swagger and girls exhibit coquettishness while they are young and attempting to establish their identities is hardly a national tragedy. The national tragedy is that we have a President who is cool, thin, metrosexual, and looks good on TV—-but, each day proves he is actually one of the most ruthless men we have ever seen in American political history.
We would all be better served if Hollywood returned to portraying men and women as decent, kind, upright men and women such as Jim and Margaret Anderson of “Father Knows Best”, whomever happens to be the bread-winner of the family.
I just watched “Brave” and left disappointed and offended. It did not measure up to Pixar’s usual high standard, but descended to Disney’s grrl-power stereotypical storyline.
There were only three characters in the movie who were smart, well-spoken, and resourceful: the heroine, her mother, and the witch (!). These were, as you might imagine, the only female characters. EVERY. SINGLE. MALE in the movie was portrayed as an unthinking doofus, impulsive and incapable of reason.
Shame on you, Disney/Pixar.
I don’t think I’d call the witch ‘well-spoken’ and ‘resourceful’. A few arrows short of a quiver, actually. And the lady-in-waiting was a shrieking flibbertigibbet.
Merida’s dad was more impulsive than his wife, but there was no question the two were a powerful partnership when it counted- he had the physical strength that counted for so much in that society, but she had steel in her backbone and wasn’t afraid to show it when needed. (hang on, isn’t part of all this quibbling about how men are being made _less_ alpha? But the clan chiefs are being derided by some critics for *not* being beta. Huh….)
I have mixed feelings when I read this type of article, and its resulting comments. Most of them seem to think that letting men be men means that women are, invariably, emasculating and stupid and need to be slapped into place (verbally, at least).
I do agree that the gender archetypes held up by popular culture are, mainly, unhealthy. Men and women both deserve better- no one is well served by portraying men as whiny betas or dumb thugs, and women as hateful, dominating harridans. Show me a man who wants to do what’s right, and I don’t care what color or age he is. Bookworm, factory worker or executive, that’s a true man. Women, also, no matter who they be, will be a lot healthier when they realize that doing the right thing has nothing to do with a parasitic lifestyle or with beating others down.
A better example might be “Private Benjamin”. The only male who was not a slime was the DI, and he had to be one because that was his job. The reasonable people were all female.
What you reward, you’ll get more of.
Turn on the TV, radio, Internet.
What do you see and hear?
Ghetto criminals.
It is they who seem to be revered and who are rewarded.
So, whom do you suppose your boys will admire and imitate?
Are you surprised?
Interesting time as I am reading the book now. While just on chapter two she has interesting information in the first charter related to bigger problems in the world and some very stupid things the US and others have done that could have helped. On the topic at hand…the pendulum in government schools swung in favor of girls decades ago as girls were not getting involved in math and science. Well, decades later the pendulum is stuck out in ya-ya land with the girls.
Today boys are not tolerated for being well…boys. They do not sit still as well as girls. They are many times more likely to be diagnosed as ADHA (yeah right) than girls, they are suspended in and out of school multiple times more than girls. The data is even worse for the black and hispanic male but it is not that good for the white male.
Based on my knowledge of studying the data for years, boys are (and have been) getting the short end of the stick in government education. The pendulum needs, at best, to come back to the middle. We definitely teachers who understand how boys mature and learn to interact and relate to them.
With the high rate of poverty, in particular in the black family, more and more the boys are viewed as the “men of the house” by their mom’s (not helpful) and this creates additional challenges for the teachers.
It truly cannot be that hard to learn how to relate to the kids but the government schools are not set up to educate many boys today…the system needs to change, to be more flexible and, well…educate the kids.
I will keep reading the book…but thank you for your review.
How about a urgent rule for Ms Bloom and her ilk? Shut up about what you know nothing about. Being female does not make you an expert on raising boys. Most women do it poorly these days. Reading her bio, Ms. Bloom would be expected to do it worse than most.
Males with “swagger” are cartoons. They’re not men, or even young men.
You think we chuckle about old ’70s polyester fashions? Wait ’til you see the laughs that history has in store for today’s swaggering male. Such a demeanor is so goofy, pathetic and transparently self-conscious.
Feminist-backed single motherhood is beautifully self-defeated, except that it takes a generation.
When husbandless old ladies (former single mothers) are robbed and mugged by young male thugs who were raised by single mothers, the loop is complete…
Kickstarter has a Brian Banks documentary (Brian Banks being the man falsely accused of rape, which cost him an NFL career and much more):
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1681576010/the-brian-banks-story?ref=home_popular
The minimum of $40,000 had already been raised, but they are still accepting donations for 4 more days.
If you were wondering about new ways to have an impact, this is where you can.
A few people have donated $1000 or more, but even donations of $2 or $5 can be accepted.
Come on! You can do it!
All this talk of how we don’t “value” our schools leaves me utterly cold… Our country spends three times as much per pupil in inflation adjusted dollars as we did when I was a kid, and I am not an old man.
When does the grasping for tax dollars stop? At what point will the teacher’s unions agree that we do “value” our schools?
Most of the increased spending on the schools has gone for administrative bloat and Progressive feel good BS like diversity programs and inclusion. When you consider their level of education, teachers are not over paid in most districts. The big money is in administration where salaries are way more than what teachers make and they have a lot of administrators these days. My 800 kid grade school in the 50s & 60s had a principal, a secretary, a school nurse, two janitors, and all the rest of the staff were teachers. These days you could add at least a half dozen extra administrators to that roster, and they all earn at least twice what a teacher makes.
If schools were important, men would be the schoolteachers.
If women valued schoolteaching, they’d marry schoolteachers.
Neither is true. Think about it.
As a former high school math teacher, there’s no way you’d get me back in a classroom. All it takes is one false claim and your life is ruined. Even when the kid recants, nothing happens so it’s practically a game to them. No thanks, I have to much to lose.
Kickstarter has a Brian Banks documentary (Brian Banks being the man falsely accused of rape, which cost him an NFL career and much more).
For those of you who don’t know how Kickstarter works, they seek crowdsourced donations to fund projects (a documentary, in this case). The goal of $40,000 is already met, but they are still accepting donations for 4 more days.
If you were wondering about new ways to have an impact, this is where you can.
A few people have donated $1000 or more, but even donations of $5 or $10 can be accepted.
Come on! You can do it!
This is pretty damned easy. Three basic models: Sonny, Fredo, Michael/Vito. She is saying pop culture is producing too many Sonnys. Not sure I disagree. Her solution is more Fredos. She ignores that there is another model for masculinity. (I will ignore for the moment that Michel (and by extension Vito) lost his soul. Both were unquestionably men.) I don’t believe that we need more Fredos.
Boys and Men who are overly concerned with their looks to add colors, hair gel and other decorations are the first casualties. Men don’t become hairy women to be agreeable to others.
Swagger is a sign of weakness. Men don’t swagger. A man proves himself by his actions and his fidelity. When a man finds himself surrounded by bossy women in power, he goes along and is polite – and does everything he can to get the hell out of there.
At least once a month a single mother will ask me to be a mentor for her son. I will not do it. The chances of being perceived a’s a pedo or worse,accused of something( the Sandusky trial has now increased this male-creeper phobia) is too great. Plus,I take offence to the idea that woman can get rid of the father and replace him with a “mentor”.
According to IMDB,Lisa Bloom sued the boy scouts to allow a girl to join.
There is yet another reason not to do it, in addition to those you mention.
Child Support law is expanding so that any man who has a ‘mentor’ role to a kid can be hit with a support order, where they garnish your wages for a child that is not even yours.
Do some Google searches for things like ‘Can I get my male neighbor to pay child support if he has babysat my kid a couple of times’?
Also, remember that police departments are given grants by the Feds based on how much child support they collect. So they have a huge financial incentive to trap more men into the system, even for kids that are not theirs.
Don’t ever, ever allow yourself to even be photographed with a kid of a single mom.
Ideally, the fewer single mothers who even know you exist, the better.
The use of the word swagger started as a PC thing to avoid using thug… since thug was already in use in the African American community to describe thug / gang culture… and you know we can’t say what we really mean if we are PC and the problem is mostly with one of our client groups…
but yeah, swagger has too much overlap with normal and even admirable male behavior. Then again the left wants a bunch of weaklings who rely on government for everything (including protection) so it’s probably a twofer (and/or they’ll keep using it for this second reason).
Re: 6. Jerome, “When schools were still controlled by adults, they were inefficient but relatively benign. While the student was surrounded by other children, he was still in an environment largely determined by adults. But the adults have lost control. Schools are now a separate society, controlled by the inmates, and they have become a breeding and transmission grounds for thug culture. Not much different from prisons.” Very well-said. I know firsthand whereof you speak, because years ago – as a young man – I once taught in a ghetto high school. Survived is a better word, because – among other things – I was threatened with physical violence on a number of occasions; I escaped only through luck and the fact that I was young, physically tough and looked it. Every social pathology one can imagine was found in that place. No “solution” for what ails our schools, esp. secondary and middle-schools, can happen without first restoring order and discipline to them. If you want my advice, it would be to hire ex-drill sergeants for the job and then give them the authority to do it.
YayMe, re: “For crying out loud the parents are the ones who have literally handcuffed teachers for trying to expect some semblance of discipline and morality from their children.” Precisely correct, but don’t forget the lawyers, too. Teachers have very little real authority over what happens in their classrooms anymore, and the kids – including the punks and thugs – know it.
Re: “Feminist-backed single motherhood is beautifully self-defeated, except that it takes a generation. When husbandless old ladies (former single mothers) are robbed and mugged by young male thugs who were raised by single mothers, the loop is complete…” Toads, the dynamic you describe is very real. Almost all of the teens with whom I had trouble in my classes were from broken and/or single-parent homes. This was especially true of young males, but it affected females, too.
Re: 14. Denton, “How about a urgent rule for Ms Bloom and her ilk? Shut up about what you know nothing about. Being female does not make you an expert on raising boys” Couldn’t agree more. Feminist blowhards like Bloom are the very people who all-but-destroyed traditional masculine culture with their irresponsible social and cultural engineering schemes over the last several decades… and yet now she and her kind expect to be taken seriously concerning “solutions.” The only people who can fix this problem are men, the genuine article, aka the kind Bloom et al. have done so much to discredit over the years.
My 10 year old son has been sent to the office at recess a half dozen times because he was wrestling with his friends, they were throwing berries at each other and for making too much noise. Usually it was the male principal who sent them.
This was in Canada. They also had regular sessions in class where they sat in a circle and were asked to talk about their feelings. I have told my son it’s none of their business and if he has something important to say about his feelings, it should be told to mom and dad.
We moved recently and he now attends an international school in Bali. Happily, they have lots of sports, kids can shout at recess and they even handed out ribbons to kids who finished first on sports day.
Did I mention that our Canadian school’s sports day involved hours of cooperation rather than competition? It was the quietest, most sullen sports day I have ever had the displeasure of seeing.
Boys don’t swagger. AMERICANS swagger. And we’re d@mn proud of it!
There are some young men who overplay the swagger to look “tough” or “street.” Those are called “petty thugs,” and we should all keep our unthuggish boys as far away from them as possible. And to be fair, there are plenty of young women who do the exact same thing. Just because you’ve got hips that make you sway when you walk doesn’t mean you can’t swagger.
“Lord of the Flies” is now the most popular play in history. But, it’s not on Broadway, it’s in EveryTown USA. Heterosexual men are no longer welcome in normal society so they’re developing a subculture based on dominance, just like every other primitive society. Women and gay men will go forward living in a “nation of laws, not men” because there won’t be any men in that nation, while heterosexual men will live in a “nation of men, not laws” because the legal system excludes heterosexual men. Illegal immigrants now have more rights and respect under the law than do heterosexual men.
Heterosexual men may now be under-educated but they’re not stupid. They recognize the severe penalties for joining normal society and the rich rewards for joining the primitive society and an increasing number are opting for the primitive society. Incentives work, you get what you reward.
Read it before you pan it, Helen. I haven’t read it so I can’t counter you or her.
Maybe you’re right. Maybe you’re applying your own preconceived notions, much to the detriment of the author and your own reputation.
I think the best thing schools could do for boys is to run them ragged. Give them loads of exercise and when they’ve burned off energy, start the learning process.
Our feminized schools (when I go to vote at my local middle school, I see nothing but women teachers) treat natural boyish boisterousness as a medical condition, when all that’s needed is to exercise them until they slow down, and then start the teaching.
You folks keep complaining and fussing. But we in the male underground are doing our part: I am currently spending the week with a large group of Webelos camping in the woods. The women present are mothers who are aghast as how we let the boys fight with water guns, hit each other with inflatable toy hammers, wrestle in the dirt and run riot, screaming and hollering.
It is absolute bedlam from dawn to after sunset. The boys are near hysterical with joy at being able to finally express themselves without some teacher clucking at them or a mother, grandmother, aunt, whatever scolding them to behave.
And the fathers present? We just look at each other, nod, and smirk. We are raising men, to take the project forward and keep the flame alive.
No need to thank us, folks. We are having the time of our lives too.
Keep your damn feminist studies and surverys. Me, I prefer a son who knows how to make his way in the world.
Inflatable toy hammers?
You’re coddling them.
There are some tears, to be sure. But nothing that keeps the combatants from the fray more than a few seconds.
There was one mother who kept trying to tell the boys to stop hitting so *hard*.
We good-naturedly mocked her, until she realized she was alone in her concerns. She has given up, and retreated to a sullen silence. Her son is among the ones most eager to engage in rough physical play. I suspect she is working through her motherly anxieties that her “little boy” is about to start the process of becoming a man. Mothers don’t handle that well, from what I can tell. While fathers revel in it.
“Keep your damn feminist studies and surverys. Me, I prefer a son who knows how to make his way in the world.”
—-
Yes, I will retain my damn feminist studies and serverys, as you wish. If I can find any that are around.
I will probably have to report in the future – after initially claiming that my retention actions are preferable to your actions and laughing about it – that your alternative of having a son who knows how to make his way in the world is vastly preferable to my action of having retained my damn feminist studies and serverys.
On four legs or two, wild animals live according to instinct. To maintain any level of civilization, males must suppress their innate desire to be thugs, and females must suppress their innate desire to mate with thugs. If the females give in to their urges, lecturing the males isn’t going to have much effect.
In “The Closing of the American Mind” Allen Bloom notes that traditional Western culture took the natural masculine passions, which it accepted and respected, and tried to shape and moderate them into the mature masculine virtues. Tried, in other words, to make men into good men.
Liberal culture, utterly infected by feminism and its sisterly progressive cancers, tries to stamp out the masculine, pathologize and marginalize and shame it so that some odd kind of “good person” can be made out of the unacceptable rough timber of males.
Nothing good can come from attacking human nature.
So what am I to make of the curious Obama Shuffle that the Legacy Media likes to swoon over? Is it just a habit he picked up while playing basketball or is it boyish swagger? Just in case, POTUS might want to take Bloom’s Rule #1 to heart, “Lose the Swagger, Kid.”
Heartiste has done a superb job in exposing the flawed logic and absurd dogma present in Lisa Bloom’s writings :
http://heartiste.wordpress.com/2012/06/25/never-listen-to-a-feminists-opinion-about-helping-boys/
The funny thing is, feminism, far from helping women, has actually exposed the full extent of female inferiority far more visibly than was ever possible in the old days.
In the old days, women were taught to keep quiet and act ladylike for a reason – it was to make them presentable so that men would agree to marry them. If men were to see the true nature of women (as we see in modern times), the marriage rate would plummet.
I have two son (and two daughters). I want my sons to have swagger, and they do. As Helen says, not the thuggish swagger, but the “I’m confident and feel good about myself swagger.” Bloom seems mostly interested in raising boys to fit into the feminist dogma.
BTW – I teach my kids to respect everyone, not just girls and women. I see a much larger proportion of females not respecting boys and men than males not respecting girls and women.