'Fathers: If you want a story to tell your sons, tell that story, the time you did the wrong thing because you were scared. That’s the story we grown men must tell our sons.' Michael Kimmel writes
Being a real man isn’t something “internal,” but something performed — for other men. Masculinity is “homosocial” — meaning it’s other men who judge whether we’re doing it right. We want to be a “man’s man,” not a “ladies’ man.” A “man among men.”
If this is true — and every man reading these words knows exactly what I am talking about, because we have all had some experience in which we were asked to betray our own values to prove our masculinity to other guys — thenis the story we must tell our sons. That we have been there, that we know the pressures they face.
For me, it was in eighth grade, when some bigger, more athletic, and more popular guys were bullying the kid whose locker was next to mine. I knew what to do, what you areto do, when someone is being bullied. You’re supposed to stand up for him, to intervene. There’s good research that says that if a single person stands up against bullies, they often back down.
In short, I did the wrong thing. I turned away, betrayed the boy next to me — and betrayed myself. I was afraid that the other guys would come after me if I stood up for him. I may have been right, but I knew I was doing the wrong thing. I was too frightened to do anything else.Fathers: If you want a story to tell your sons, tellstory, the time you did the wrong thing because you were scared. That’s the story we grown men must tell our sons.
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