Important Note: This was not my finest article, and my subscribers all got an email of this post with lots of errors. I’ve since made some edits to clarify my points. I also want to emphasize that nowhere in this article did I use anyone’s real name. Those who received the emailed version of this post probably noticed that I accidentally referred to one particular person as “Allen”, then called him “Mark” later on. Neither name was this person’s real name, and so his identity has not been revealed. I hadn’t decided on an altered name in my drafts and clearly didn’t proofread thoroughly enough to convert every instance of Mark to Allen.
Thank you all for your patience, and apologies for the sub-standard quality of this post. I will do better on the next one.
Introduction
I'm preceding my new series of posts with a disclosure: as a woman, and the mother of one daughter, I recognize I really don't have much ground to stand on when I try to dissect why our current society fails boys. For this series of posts, I will merely share the observations I've made at several points in my life on how and why boys and men are being wronged at every single turn in America today. Girls still have ways to express their frustration that are deemed socially acceptable. Boys, however, are denied every chance to be boys. And unlike girls, no one actually seems to care.
What follows is one account of how I have seen men and boys being failed by our gynocratic society, and my reflections on the outcomes of these failings.
Jade And Allen
I was in an inpatient ward. I had admitted myself after getting sober. I couldn't live without alcohol and pills, so I called a facility specializing in behavioral health.
They admitted me into their facility within three hours--a privilege, I've since learned, that is enjoyed almost exclusively by women. Male patients are often considered a lower priority for mental health services. Indeed, most of the men I met during my total month and a half of treatment had waited anywhere from two weeks to a month to get in.
There were two young men in the inpatient ward that drew my attention more than the rest of the patients. One was perhaps 19, and the other was slightly older, early 20s. I will refer to the 19 year old as Allen, and the 20-something as Jade.
Allen and Jade spent almost every day together, and part of why they drew my attention is they were excellent at drawing attention in general. They'd erupt in fits of barking, echoing laughter, jostle each other in the hallways, yell and banter with one another. Initially, when I first arrived, I found them abrasive, frightening, and overwhelming--but at the time, the sight of sunlight between my curtains brought on a sensation of unspeakable dread, so I don't lend any credibility to these early impressions.
As the week wore on and I rapidly progressed in my condition, I noticed more and more the wrongness about Allen and Jade being in this ward with the rest of us. Not because they were, in the end, actually frightening, but because it was possibly the worst place for two struggling young men to be in.
Who knows why these men were admitted--unlike the other patients around me, I never asked anyone why they were there, nor did I care to know. I also knew one of my greatest flaws was to hyper-focus on the issues of others when I had a problem with myself to fix, so I worked hard to distance myself from everyone. It was my second time in an inpatient ward, and I was determined to make it my last. But I still couldn't help observing Allen and Jade sometimes, because out of all of us on the floor, they were suffering the most. I knew the treatments being administered were not going to help them at all.
Every day, anywhere in the ward, I could hear staff members hollering at them.
"Allen, no jumping!"
"Jade, lower your voice!"
Occasionally we even heard the age-old litany, "No running!"
When I saw these two young men in times of compliance, when they were not jumping, running, or yelling, they looked like frenzied, caged animals, pacing in tight circles as they conversed, gesturing in sharp little movements, trying hard to make themselves smaller and calmer. When I make the comparison to caged animals, I don't mean that these men were feral beasts who would snap and attack at a moment's provocation. I refer instead to videos of dolphins in small pools who bite bars to pass the time, dogs in shelters gnawing chain link fences till they bleed, even my own experiences as a child, feeling smothered and trapped under an overbearing and punitive maternal force. I saw suffering.
On days when we were allowed time in the gymnasium, Allen and Jade went wild. The other patients around me muttered and shook their heads.
"Those boys are terrifying,” they said. “They're out of control. I wish they'd leave."
I watched as Jade slammed a basketball against the floor with enough force that it brushed the rafters of the distant ceiling on the rebound, nearly fifty feet up. He then caught the ball and handed it to Allen, who did the same. I didn't respond to the grumbling of the other patients, but I did draw some of my own conclusions.
"Those men," I thought, "Are in a place where they are not allowed to be men."
One day I sat down in the common area to draw. I spotted Allen seated at a desk in front of the nurse's station. He remained there for a long time, and every time he started to stand, or turned his chair, he'd say to himself, "Shit!" and sit back down. Later another patient invited him to play a card game.
"I can't," Allen said. "I have to stay here until I can sit still for 12 minutes." I couldn't help but feel a little angry at that.
In a group work session later, I arrived late, having had to meet with a therapist beforehand. As I entered, Jade was shouting at the counselor who sat resolute and calm at the front of the room.
"If someone does something to hurt her," he was saying, "I don't fucking see why I can't hurt them back."
"We all have different triggers for these reactions," the counselor said evenly. "It's up to us to decide when to engage in the reactions, and how."
The counselor then tried to redirect the conversation, asking other patients what triggers them.
"Difficult bosses," one said.
"People shouting," mumbled another, staring right at Jade. Jade snapped his head around to return the glare.
"People doing bullshit!" Jade bellowed back.
The counselor again tried to intervene, but Jade stood up.
"I don't know man, I hear what you're saying but if someone tries to fucking hit my mom I'm gonna fucking hit them back." He left the room and slammed the door so hard I thought the safety glass would break.
I looked around at everyone else. They exchanged looks of disgust and disdain. A few scowls appeared.
For my part, I felt disappointed. I felt the counselor had failed Jade, somehow, that there had been an opportunity there and the counselor didn't understand how to use it. Jade was being open, was expressing his anger, his distress at seeing his mother in harm's way, the unspoken question, "If I'm not allowed to fight for her, who will?" The anger of being put in that situation. Jade was being vulnerable. No one seemed to see it that way though, because he expressed it in a way that was loud and angry. People always seem to forget about the "fight" in "fight or flight mode." Jade had just revealed that his default reaction to distress was "fight," and instead of trying to help him channel that "fight" instinct--a very natural and normal instinct for a man--it was brushed off, dismissed as childish and not worth anyone's time.
One night, I woke up at 3:00 am and couldn't fall back asleep. I left my room and asked the nurse at the nurse's station if I could stay in the lounge for a bit.
"Oh, of course Leia!" The nurse said with a warm smile. "We trust you, you're totally fine."
I sat for a while, doodling in my journal, when I heard the nurse speak up again.
"Jade." Harsh, accusing. "What're you doing?"
Jade was coming down the hall. He raised a hand and said softly, "I can't sleep."
"Okay," the nurse said. "You can stay up a bit."
Jade noticed me and smiled. I'd never seen him smile at anyone. He came and sat down in the chair opposite me. I watched him warily--my observations aside, I knew none of us in the ward was our best selves or, contrary to the nurse's compliment to me, trustworthy.
"Hi, Leia," Jade said. "How are you?"
Jade spoke softly and calmly. We talked for nearly an hour. Jade asked me many fascinating, deep questions. Ironically, he brought up many topics about masculinity and men, and his concern about how boys today are being forced into femininity.
As we talked, I stayed open and honest with him, and even though I didn't trust him, even though I did fear his temper just like everyone else, I still didn't sense that he was a bad person. Whenever I said something that he didn't agree with, he'd pause, breathe deeply, then look me in the eyes and say, "Let's change the subject." I saw a man who wanted to control his anger, his "fight," and not use it indiscriminately. I saw a man who wanted to get better, and who was really trying. There in our interaction away from constant surveillance and reprimands from staff members, the crush and clamor of other people around him all the time, Jade was calm, self-aware, and clear-headed. Again, I felt sad, like he was being failed somehow.
A few days later, Jade was discharged from the ward. Nurses had hinted to me it was a deliberate decision to get him out because of his adversarial nature. Why this information was shared with me, I don't know. I guess I was trustworthy. I never got angry, never wanted to run in the halls, never slammed basketballs around the gym. I was the patient the program was made for.
As Jade said goodbye to everyone, he was as calm as that night we talked alone. He shook hands with the other patient who had provoked him to shouting in the group work session.
"I know you and I don't see eye to eye," Jade said, "But I want you to know, I respect you. I wish you well, man."
Jade then said bye to Allen. They shared a long, rough embrace. He smacked Allen on the back.
“Take care of yourself," Jade said.
Allen said nothing, just gave a half-smile with dead eyes. That half-smile frightened me more than any of Jade's outbursts. I wondered who in the entire ward could guide this young man in this harrowing place and time--the nurses who scolded him endlessly, the haughty counselor in the group sessions, the elderly men fresh from detox, trembling so badly they couldn't even use a spoon? To my eyes, Allen had one true support system in the inpatient ward, Jade, and he was leaving.
Allen drifted around the rest of the afternoon, the half smile on his face, idle and listless. No one else wanted to talk to him, and he didn't seem keen on reaching out. I pushed away my concern for him, knowing I had to keep focusing on myself, why I was there.
The next day, Allen self-harmed. He'd managed to get a single screw loose from a piece of furniture in the common area and tried to drill a hole right through the top of his hand.
A couple days later I got discharged to residential. As I walked out the door, I passed Allen sitting at that miserable little desk again, staring at a wall. He wasn't trying to stand up anymore. Wasn't laughing. He was there for his safety, in view of the nurses.
"Allen," I said as I left. "Take care of yourself."
He smiled back at me, only with his teeth. "Oh, I'll try," he said.
The door shut behind me.
I was told by the staff that I'd gotten better because I put in the work. What if I hadn't been suited to the work given to me? What if I'd been a carpenter, told the only way to progress in life was to take up watercolors, or embroidery? What if I had been Allen or Jade?
Not Uncontrollable—Just Can’t Be Controlled
"Men get better by doing, not by talking."
It's a phrase my husband and I say every time we see a news article or social media post ridiculing men for not looking inward, or for refusing therapy. My time in that inpatient ward worked for me because it was perfectly attuned to the needs and behavioral health of women. Granted, plenty of other men I met at the ward recovered in the same time that I did, doing the same program, practicing the same CBT and DBT techniques as me. It's not that men are incapable of getting better in most mental health institutions, but rather, that it is much harder for them, especially younger men like Allen and Jade. The men I met who transitioned successfully into residential or partial hospitalization treatments were much, much older, age 45 and above. They were calmer, mellow, and had half or more of a lifetime of experiences to fall back on. More importantly, they had their life experiences in an older America where men were encouraged to engage with other men, to act as men, and to think as men.
The younger men in the ward, like Allen and Jade, struggled much more. There were two things that usually connected them all: anger, as Jade experienced, or a lack of direction and purpose, as Allen displayed. In my experience, when these two kinds of young men come together, the directionless ones gravitate to the ones who are angry for guidance and support, the young men who are full of "fight" from their "fight or flight" response. The reason for their "fight" responses vary widely. Either their frustration with a stagnant, corporate career where they are passed over for promotion for being white and male, working in all-female teams under all-female leadership; or, as I suspect Jade experienced, a childhood raised in a single-mother household, acting as the de facto father and husband of the household, fending off abusive boyfriends and working jobs to pay the bills. Usually, i see a lot more "fight" in young men in the latter situation than the former. How could they not? They were raised to do nothing but fight--for their lives, for their families, and to stay strong for their mothers.
Men will always find a way to satisfy their masculinity, even in a society like ours that penalizes masculine men at every turn. This is a trait I find admirable in the male sex, their innate drive to resist confinement and control. However in a society where every field, school, and career is dominated and dictated by women, there are very few socially sanctioned outlets for men and boys, and with so many single mother households, many young men grow up with no true father figure or male role model. Typical male interests and behaviors are penalized and scolded every second of their lives, just as Allen and Jade were penalized in the ward: "No running, no jumping."
In that kind of culture, the outlets young men find for their masculinity can become desperate and dysfunctional. Look at gang recruitment in inner cities. It is the dynamic that drew Allen to Jade, but on a larger scale. Boys and young men without direction, seeking male guidance and mentorship, cannot find any in the places their fathers did: not at school, their extracurricular activities, their workplaces. So they turn to things like gangs, where men learn from one another, guide each other, shape and direct their strength, energy, and ambition, and most importantly, do things.
Granted, the things that gangs do are horrible. Murder, rape, larsony, endless lists of crimes that cause lasting harm to the communities that house them. However men in gangs have hands-on life experiences. They've been able to satisfy their need to use their hands, to use their bodies, to think on their feet in fast-paced, stressful situations, to defend people they care about with everything they have. Women in gangs serve an important role in sexually satisfying the men, willingly or not--men in gangs have regular opportunities for physical and emotional intimacy, even if in twisted and sadistic ways.
Gangs do not appeal to frustrated young men because men are inherently violent and bloodthirsty. Allen was not drawn to Jade because he was an aggressive creature by nature. Indeed, his actions of self-harm and listlessness in my final days in the ward proved the opposite was true of Allen’s nature. Young men are drawn to gangs because sometimes there is nowhere else for men to go if they want to be men. No other place in polite society welcomes and values masculine traits in men. So, because men are full of "fight" for what they and their families need to survive, they go to the one place those traits are still welcome.
How sad, that these valuable and essential male skillsets are being wasted in such meaningless ways, that some young men have no outlet for their tenacity and quick problem solving than exploding in fits of shouting in response to niggling irritations, or wiggling a screw free in an inpatient ward, in full view of a dozen watchful staff, and driving it through their hands. I'm reminded of the scene in Blade Runner, when Roy Batty impaled his hand with a nail to remind his body via pain that it was not time to die yet, to trigger more "fight" in him, to see things through to the end.
Unlike Roy Batty, doomed to a four year life span, Allen and Jade were young men with many, many decades ahead of them. They should've been able to find some hope and opportunity for fulfillment in their time in that inpatient ward, like I did, some semblance of validation that they were, as a certain psychiatrist once said to me, "whole and complete," even with their wild energy and need to jump and shout. Maybe Allen was able to find some of that after I'd departed--I can only pray that he did. Yet it's hard to see how they could ever have thrived in that ward. What I saw there encapsulated everything I feel is wrong with how men and boys are treated in America. Put simply, boys and men just aren't allowed here anymore.
J.R.R. Tolkien said it best: "Oft evil will shall evil mar." Suppressing men's drive to be productive is in itself destructive to those very efforts to suppress. Attempting to constrain men's behaviors only encourages more extreme and bizarre forms of resistance. The way men resist this control is not always bad, but sometimes the only avenues a man can find around control is to do something destructive, like joining a gang or self-harming. If we want a useful, functional civilization, we need to let men encourage one another, to engage in their natural ways of thinking and doing, because men are best at creating just that: Civilization.
Next week I'll cover my thoughts on ceasing the suppression of men's natural abilities. Like my previous series on girls, I don't believe we have a "boy problem" because boys are boys. We have a boy problem because boys are forbidden from being boys.