How to raise boys in the time of Trump and rising feminism
An interview with Boymom author Ruth Whippman
When my sister-in-law—the mother of a 3-year-old boy, my nephew—mentioned she was reading the book Boymom: Reimagining Boyhood in the Age of Impossible Masculinity, I first thought it wasn’t for me.
Sure, I write about masculinity for this newsletter. But I’m not a mom—or a parent at all, let alone of a boy. But something about those words “impossible masculinity” caught my attention, and I downloaded the audiobook for a long drive through Vermont this past June.
Sure enough, the author—
, a journalist and mother of three boys—found a way to cut through the typical “culture war” stalemate about masculinity. She’s refreshingly honest and transparent about her conflicted feelings. Here’s what she writes in the first few pages of Boymom:“In the fevered, absolutist climate of #MeToo, it was hard not to start to see men as the enemy. The sheer volume of evidence of male bad behavior was impossible to deny. I was angry with men and boys, horrified at the harm they had caused. But [as the mother of boys] ... Did my feminist principles require me to condemn the entire gender that included my own children? I feared what it would do to my sons and other boys psychologically, to grow up hearing that who they were was inherently toxic, their sexuality so potently harmful.”
As a man who believes in the power and necessity of feminism in improving society, I can relate. How do men hold ourselves and other men accountable while acknowledging that patriarchy hurts us too? How can we be feminists and support women without spiraling into shame and self-hatred? How do we speak up without dominating conversations?
I asked Whippman about this and what she learned about raising boys while writing the book. Here’s what she said:
Me: What did you learn while writing this book about how patriarchy harms boys and men?
Whippman: Before writing this book, and as a feminist, I think I was very focused on how patriarchy benefits boys and men. Although I would pay lip service to the idea that it harms them too, I don’t think I really internalized that message in a deep way. But my research talking to teenage boys and young adult men of a wide range of backgrounds and circumstances really hammered it home.
I think the headline was really just the extent to which systems of masculinity and our failure to teach boys the skills of relationships and emotional labor is harming their ability to connect with their own emotions and those of other people, and to form the kinds of deep intimate vulnerable friendships that tend to come much more naturally and easily to girls and women.
There was a lot more too, but this was probably the biggest shock to me. As I wrote in Boymom, “Under patriarchy, boys and men get everything, except the thing that is most worth having: human connection.”
Me: One of the things that stood out to me in Boymom was your honesty about the dilemma of being a progressive feminist while acknowledging boys’ and mens’ pain and suffering. How do you think about that dilemma after writing the book?
Whippman: I think in this particular cultural moment we are being encouraged to see this all as a zero-sum game, and in a strange way the right and left are buying into the same basic logic.
On the right, you have women’s gains from feminism mean that men have lost out. Feminism is to blame for men’s problems. And on the left, you have a more subtle but still very real sense of: We can’t focus on men and boys because it would be taking attention and resources away from advocacy for women and girls.
Boymom opens in 2017 when the #MeToo movement was exploding online, and I was pregnant with a third son. The discourse was so vitriolic and tribal. Even advocating for boys in that moment felt like a betrayal of feminism.
What I found as I wrote Boymom is that there really is no inherent dilemma. Patriarchy harms all of us in different and complicated ways. But broadly speaking, in this system girls and women lose out in access to power, and men and boys lose out in access to emotionality and connection. But creating a generation of healthier, more emotionally aware men will ultimately benefit all of us.
Me: How have men reacted to the book?
Whippman: I really assumed that no men would read this book at all, given the title. But I’ve been so touched that this actually has not been the case at all.
Some of the loveliest responses I have received about the book have been from men who are in their forties, fifties, and sixties, who can chart the way that many of these masculine expectations have limited their lives and who feel very “seen” by it in their own upbringings and want to do better by their own kids. It has been a really special part of the whole journey for me.
Me: I generally agree with your New York Times op-ed about the limits of “positive masculinity.” However, I see merit to the argument that someone like Tim Walz offers a valuable entry point for men feeling lost, especially the millions of working-class white men who are being targeted and influenced by the far-right. Why should we ditch the masculinity rhetoric altogether?
I was so surprised by the response to that piece. I got a lot of positive response but also some really extreme pushback, including abusive emails.
It was really just a pretty minor semantic detail, and I’m definitely not saying there is anything wrong with being masculine, or that we need to abolish masculinity or anything like that. All I meant was that rather than “gendering” traits such as bravery or strength on the one hand, or empathy or nurture on the other, as masculine of feminine, I would rather we just see all of these qualities and attributes as simply human.
I think this is especially important when we are talking about programs and initiatives aimed at boys. Rather than talking about “positive masculinity,” which can end up reinforcing stereotypes, I would rather we just allowed all children to have access to all of these qualities.
You can buy Boymom: Reimagining Boyhood in the Age of Impossible Masculinity on Bookshop.org and support local, independent bookstores. Find more of Whippman’s writing in her newsletter I Blame Society.
Now, a question for the comments below (or email me at jeremy@mohler.coach): What do you think about raising boys in these times?
(P.S. If you become a paid subscriber for $5/month, you’ll get my weekly Friday Q&A posts with tips for a healthier, more fulfilling relationship, plus the warm feeling of supporting my writing!)
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Thank you so much for putting this book on my radar. The question of how to encourage heroic, kind, and emotionally integrated masculinity has become one of my primary preoccupations.
Key line, here, "...rather than “gendering” traits such as bravery or strength on the one hand, or empathy or nurture on the other, as masculine of feminine, I would rather we just see all of these qualities and attributes as simply human"
When we allow our humanness to shine through the conversation, we can create the healing spaces for men who WANT to step (let's remember some really don't) and additionally, protect women, raise our sons differently and so on. It's creating a base-space for empathy, collective softness of human emotion. I wrote in a piece, "Man up is destroying our sons," (link to alt. platform writes: https://medium.com/@ashgallagher83/list/raising-boys-2-men-91c431de13cc) identifying the aspects of above mentioned masculinity behind harmful b/c they separate, rather than include. Our aim, I think then, is a back to basics, which includes 1) conversations about emotional humanness, 2) hold accountable where necessary and making sure 3) men are part of this b/c there are inherent mixed issues which also over lap (is the definition for masculinity in America inherently white and dominant? I suspect so. (more to this here: https://ashgallagher.substack.com/p/coffee-scented-misogyny ))