Toxic Femininity

By Deacon Mike Manno

(The Wanderer) – I saw last week a news story reporting that adolescent boys as they near voting age are becoming conservative politically. Myself I’d like to see them become more Catholic and Christian, but I suppose I can live with conservative.

Girls, on the other hand, are trending liberal. Jean Twenger, a professor of psychology at San Diego State University was quoted as saying, “Among liberals, the future is female. And among conservatives, the future is male.”

My first reaction to the news was that it was no surprise to me. For some years I’ve been watching young boys pushed to the sidelines while schools, teachers, and society measured conduct by a girls’ standard. Let me give you an example:

When I was a school boy we played rough, much rougher than the girls did. The nun’s main job in babysitting us was to make sure we didn’t permanently harm one another. Now there were occasional fights, which usually never lasted very long since those wonderful black-veiled women were quick to pull the offenders apart before either received a black eye or bloody nose.

And for guys, once the fight was over (and thank you, Sister for breaking this thing up before I really got beat) that was it. We had shown our manhood by asserting ourselves with our fists, and that was all we needed to prove.

You see boys played hard. We didn’t skip rope or play Ring Around the Rosie. And, in fact, that hard playing was what kept us calm and our fights short: We simply wore ourselves out. But in recent years that is not what I hear happening. Boys who are a little too energized behave outside the norms set for them. And those norms have been patterned after how young girls play, quietly with no rough-housing. You see, the girls were setting the decorum rules for the boys.

And, of course, when boys began to act up — that is, like boys — the message was sent home and far too often they were put on drugs to keep them calm. Getting the picture?

Boys were not allowed to act like boys; their conduct was circumscribed by rules natural to girls. Girls were nice and sweet but the boys were ADHD.

I’ve known a lot of schoolteachers in my lifetime and I cannot think of one who has not told the story of a boy on Ritalin because he didn’t comport himself as the girls did. It simply made for a better classroom. And, of course, it was necessary to send the message to the girls that they could succeed just as a boy could.

After all, nowadays there is no real difference between the boys and the girls, they are interchangeable. And the disservice is that boys are not allowed to play, horse- play, and rough-house as boys are inclined to do. After all, a boy’s role model should be his dad, the support and protector of the family. Unfortunately, due to societal changes inspired by governmental programs, far too few boys have that father figure in the home to guide them into strong adults capable of negotiating the complex ways of today’s world.

Back in 2019 clinical psychologist Michael Alcee, Ph.D., wrote in Psychology Today:

“While it is wonderful that society has been focused on helping girls, empowering them not to feel like the ‘odd girl out’ and tackling issues surrounding ‘mean girls,’ boys’ experiences, unfortunately, have often been neglected. And by failing to zero in on this important aspect of a boy’s psychology, we not only do boys a disservice, but we also miss the boat in treating them with the kind of empathy that will truly help them become strong. Fortunately, this doesn’t need to be a zero-sum game: We can empower, support, and celebrate girls and boys at the same time.”

Years ago, I am told, some schools tried to tie a left-handed student’s left hand to his desk so he would learn to write with his right hand. It didn’t take long for the professional educators involved to realize that it wouldn’t work. You can’t force someone to be something he is not; you can’t turn a lefty into a righty and you can’t turn an energetic young boy into a hop-scotch fan. It’s as simple as that. Eventually you have to untie the left hand, just like you have to let boys act out their natural personhood.

But I don’t think that has been the experience for far too many boys in this critical period of their lives. They have been demoralized and demonized, warned to avoid all that toxic masculinity that is running the country and the world. Far too many grow up in either female-headed households, or whose only male role model is some transient companion picked up to take care of mom’s needs with little regard to the effect they will have on the adolescent boys in the home.

So, while the nation was warned about toxic masculinity, the boys were suffering from toxic femininity by being measured against girls’ social development, not their own.

This was illustrated to me by a cable-TV commentary on a fight at a major league baseball game. Those brawls happen and they oftentimes clear the benches as one team tries to stand up for one of their own. In this particular case there were four hosts, two women and two men.

They split on their view of the fight, with the women calling it unprofessional and unsportsmanlike, and the men took the position that while it may not be a very good part of the game, these things happen and, in effect, the guys will be guys.

Now you might ask: What about all the riots and gang violence we see on the news these days? Aren’t most of those people guys? That’s right, we do see them. If I might be permitted to make this observation: Most of those you see have not had the role models — male and female — needed to develop into true adulthood.

So now look at the boy-problem from the boys’ perspective. For all his life he has been told to play nice like his sister, his growth dynamic has been pooh-poohed by teachers and administrators, and many were raised by single moms who lack the skills to raise a boy without a male role model. And on top of that, society is now telling him that there is no difference between boys and girls, unless a girl accuses you of something, then she must be believed.

Is it any wonder they are becoming conservatives? They are growing into manhood and that tie on the left hand has to be broken. A boy is a man and a man should be a man.

Any wonder who these new conservatives will vote for? Someone they see as filling a very masculine role: leader, defender, national father.

 Sorry, Joe. It won’t be you.

(You can reach Mike at: DeaconMike@q.com and listen to him every weekend on Faith On Trial or podcast at https://iowacatholicradio.com/faith-on-trial/)