In a
previous piece for Acculturated, I wrote about an Upworthy video
produced by The Representation Project, which aims to “expose injustices
created by gender stereotypes.” It asserts that gender stereotyping begins with
the joyful announcement of the baby’s gender and goes downhill from there,
condemning boys to violent machismo and girls to sexual objectification. Last
time I wrote about its perspective on girls; this time let’s deal with its take
on boys.
The video claims that a male child is burdened from birth by
expectations that he must be strong and athletic, and can’t “act like a girl”
or cry. I don’t see a problem with promoting athleticism for boys or girls, but certainly boys should be
encouraged to access, understand, and express their emotions (when appropriate)
rather than deny them; no quarrel there.
But then the video specifically targets the notion of physical
strength, framing it as violence and rage. It shows pop culture images that it
suggests wreak a damaging influence on boys: Marvel superheroes Hulk and Thor,
pro wrestling, violent video games, action flick stars Vin Diesel and Jason
Statham, muscular men (athletes?) snarling, and – inexplicably – Leonardo DiCaprio
as the Wolf of Wall Street. These are “the limiting narratives we feed our
children,” the video proclaims.
One speaker in the video says that boys are “led to believe
that power is associated with domination”; another argues that “we need to
redefine strength in men not as the power over other people but as forces for justice.”
Beware when people on a mission insist that we need to redefine words or
concepts to align with their agenda. A memorable passage from Orwell’s 1984 is enough to warn where that leads:
“War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength.” We don’t need to
redefine anything; properly chosen, the words we have now already do a great
job of signifying meaning, so let’s stick with those.
Strength already is, or can be, a “force for justice.” The video
itself ironically proves my point: it shows Statham and Thor wielding a shotgun
and hammer, respectively, against movie bad guys. These fictional characters are using strength, dominating power,
and violence as forces for justice – a valuable lesson for boys to absorb. In
the real world, cops and our military assert these characteristics in the
service of justice every day.
That same speaker goes on to say that “justice means
equality and fairness and working against poverty and working against
inequality and violence – that’s strength.” His earnest delivery can’t obscure
the fact that: 1) equality is not always justice; 2) working against poverty
and working against inequality are not the same thing; 3) fairness is in the
eye of the beholder; and 4) violence is not always a bad thing. Let’s stay on
topic and address item #4, the only one relevant to the video’s message about
boys.
It’s easy for insulated celebrities like Sting to sing that
“nothing
comes from violence, and nothing ever could,” but in fact violence is
sometimes the only or the best way to end conflict, from confronting a schoolyard
bully to ending Nazism, and in such instances overwhelming strength is pretty
damn valuable. In the real world, violent evil has always been an everyday
reality and always will be. Men – yes, men
–must be prepared to counter that with dominating power, because the violently
evil don’t respect dialogue.
Teaching our boys that violence is always wrong leads to
such ludicrous, zero-tolerance extremes as suspending
them from school for pointing index fingers like gun barrels (at the same
time, in the politically correct name of “fairness” and “equality,” we are putting
women into combat positions in the military, which will have horrible
consequences). It does no good to teach our boys that strength means social
justice (it doesn’t) and that power and violence are wrong, if evil men aren’t teaching
their sons the same (and they’re not). Our boys will simply grow up to be beaten
or enslaved or killed by those who define strength the old-fashioned way and
who are perfectly happy to dominate others with it. If you want peace, as the
ancient Roman saying goes, prepare for war.
Boys don’t need to be
discouraged from seeing physical strength as a virtue. They simply need the
moral guidance to understand when and where to direct it.
(This article originally appeared here on Acculturated, 3/14/14)
