Protecting Our Boys: Part 1 in a series.

There are few things that chill my bones, and send a lightning bolt of fear through me, as fast as the rapidly-growing fetishization of men’s incapability and brokenness to serve the agenda that women are, of course, far more suited to everything from political office, culture, and even changing the way sexual politics may occur.

Look around the cultural landscape. Tell me the last pro-male thing you saw. The last unabashedly pro-male book, film, or television series you saw that celebrated men for the good they do, and the good and decent men they are.

Contrast that with the common way in which men are portrayed on television, films, and in other forms of popular culture. Men have been told, time and again, that they need to be reformed, to be fixed to fit the new model of masculinity. Our greatest examples of fatherhood on television are Homer Simpson or Phil Dunphy, joking simpletons who rely on their long-suffering and intelligent wives to fix every mess they make. Advertising tells us that men can’t be trusted to handle the hard work, to do the things women do every day, and eventually it’s started to be believed.

So, on this edition of the Rationalist, we discuss it. We discuss, in clear painstaking detail, if men are actually broken. And if they are, what we can do to fix the problem.

Let us be clear: There are bad men out in the world, dangerous bullies who see every interaction through the lens of power and control. These are people you should avoid, at all costs, because these are damaged souls who will hurt you, or god forbid, hurt someone else severely. Finding these men, and rehabilitating them, is vital to creating the world we all want to live in.

But, and this part needs to be stated just as loudly, this is not the vast overarching majority of men. To imply it is would be just as dangerous as not doing anything about those among us who need more guidance.

Rather, the problems of men are less about the harms of toxic masculinity than about the simple, nuts-and-bolts, things we can do in our day to day lives to serve our sons with the same care and attention we give our daughters.

Here’s a list, in no way exhaustive but still worth following.

1: Show your sons the models of masculinity throughout history that were strong, capable, and lived their lives with honor and dignity.

For some reason, in our current culture, masculinity has increasingly had a word placed in front of it. Toxic. Everywhere you go, people will tell you about toxic masculinity. How we need to address it and fight against it, and how men need to be freed from the prison of living up to it. You could be forgiven for thinking there are some people who think the worst of masculinity, and its excesses, are the default position for men and boys.

But being masculine, and living up to those ideals, are only a problem when they are not properly cultivated, and understood. And it is the responsibility of all of us to do what we can to cultivate and create the best ideals of manhood we can in our sons, and ensure that they know what being a good man is.

Honor has never been bad. It never will be. Living an honorable existence is a good thing, and something people of all creeds should be willing to follow. But for men and boys, in this space and time, that need to hear about the good men do, and the good men have always done, is stronger.

Great historical archetypes like Hector from the Iliad would be a good place to start. Not Paris, whose inability to control his lusts and passions ended up setting the Trojan War into motion. And not Achilles either, whose skill as a warrior was only matched by his arrogance and selfishness. Hector, on the other hand, condemned his brother’s folly privately but stood with him publicly, clearly loved his family, and was a skilled warrior who went toe-to-toe with the legendary Achilles. Be not like Paris, a boy playing at being a man who could not keep his desires to himself. Be not like Achilles, a selfish and arrogant brute. Be like Hector.

Role models of strength and virtue like the great Muslim warrior Saladin, who in the mist of defending his territory during the Crusades was still honorable enough to offer the English king Richard the Lionheart usage of his personal physician when he was struck ill and offered safe passage through Muslim lands.

These are the men our boys should pattern themselves after. Men of strength and moral fortitude. Men of a distinct honor. MEN, in the capitalized sense of the word.

But masculinity cannot be shaped and cultivated merely by a book and historical readings. Practical usage of it must be promoted, which leads me rather seamlessly into item #2.

2: Male-only spaces where men can talk about their issues, in the language they use and understand best, must be promoted and protected.

You might not wish to believe it, but boys and men are struggling.

They commit suicide at a higher rate than women, are less-educated generally, and get sentenced to crimes at a longer rate than women.

These are real problems, and there need to be solutions. These solutions will not be cultivated, and I would argue cannot be, in mixed-sex spaces.

The reason for this is relatively simple. Invariably, when in a mixed-sex space, the 2^nd sex will become interested with how the 1^st sex interacts with the 2^nd sex and the important work that has to get done will be placed on the back burner.

This is, of course, not to say that male-only spaces need to be, or even should be, meetings of the He-Man Women’s Haters Club. Constant distraction on the problems brought to men by the female gender are equally distracting, and equally unwelcome when talking about how to close the male suicide gap, get boys better educated, and avoid the criminal justice system.

But believe me when I tell you that men talking to each other about their issues, and offering support and advice on their own time and their own pace, is going to sound, and function, drastically different than it would if it were a room full of women doing the same exact thing. It just will.

And that is vital. A person, whether man or woman, who does not feel like they can honestly assess their own troubles and struggles while by themselves or with a crew of trusted confederates, is far less likely to actually get better.

Being vulnerable around someone who gets it, who understands the struggles you carry and has been where you are, is crucial.

Knowing that someone wants to be a good man, and a paragon of the best virtues of masculinity, is vital to helping someone when they fall off of the track.

But what is a good man? We’ll find out in the next edition of the Rationalist.