Psychologist Lyudmila Petranovskaya read for us the book by William Pollak “Real Boys”. About how our cultural upbringing of boys prevents them from being themselves.
This book takes up a topic so deeply taboo that even its taboo is not realized until you specifically think about it. This is the topic of discrimination against men and boys – no, not in rights and civil liberties, but in the opportunity to be alive.
William S. Pollack, American psychologist, assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, director of the Men, Boys, Boys Center System. The best-selling book Real Boys (1999) is based on his 20-year study “Listening to Boys’ Voices”.
“Real boys. How to save our sons from the myths of boyhood by William Pollack
Resource, 512 p.
Over the past century, discrimination against women and girls has been largely overcome (at least in the countries of European culture). Today, no one will consider it strange, indecent, a girl’s desire to be independent financially and psychologically, to wear anything, to get involved in football or computers. But let’s imagine a boy who wants to take up synchronized swimming or likes to mess around with small children. “Why would he?” people around will ask. “What are you, a girl?” peers will say. “Maybe it’s time to take it to a specialist?” parents think. It is still forbidden for boys to master “non-male” behavior patterns from the point of view of stereotypes by the strict Boyish Code, which Pollack formulates.
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The main requirement of the Code: do not show vulnerability. Strive to dominate so that others depend on you, not you on them. Devalue the relationship so you don’t suffer separation and rejection. Ignore feelings, if it hurts, sad, scary – smile and say: “Everything is fine.” This is great. With the vulnerability of others, too, there is nothing to stand on ceremony – you are not a girl! Don’t be close to your mother – that’s not what boys are supposed to do. Don’t ask your father for help – do it yourself, as you know. Don’t you dare feel. Don’t you dare get attached. It seems to adults that this is how they raise a real man. Pollak convincingly shows what actually results from such prohibitions: emotional coarseness, sometimes reaching cruelty, self-doubt, aggressiveness, feelings of loneliness, depression. Those who do not follow the Code are ostracized by peers, teachers, and often parents. Obediently to him, the following also do not expect an easy life. First, they get into a school that makes demands on them that are directly opposite to the Code – it expects dependence, compliance, cooperation, passivity from the student. But as soon as you leave the classroom on the street, all points of the Code remain in force.
In the future, the boy is waiting for another dizzying somersault: girls, on the one hand, want to see a “hard nut”, macho. But at the same time, they did not want to obey a man, give them heartfelt conversations, sympathy, a subtle inner world. And he, perhaps, spent all his childhood to eradicate this in himself, trying to become a “real man”.
The author does not confine himself to stating unhappy facts. The book is addressed primarily to parents – it is they who, with their acceptance and support, can give the boy permission to be a real man: not a superman with biceps and a steely look, but himself – alive, warm, different.