Translator: Zeddi Lee Reviewer: Peter van de Ven
Boys will be boys, right?
That's what they say.
It's kind of like a get-out-of-jail-free card
for any given situation.
When you're in the supermarket and you see a toddler kicking off -
they're throwing a tantrum -
you look awkwardly at the parents and smile and say, "Boys will be boys."
When two boys get into a fight in the playground
and one of them punches the other one in the face and gives him a black eye,
we tell him off, but you know - boys will be boys.
When university students
come home really late on a drunken bender and wake everyone up,
it's annoying, but it's to be expected because boys will be boys.
But what is it that we mean when we say that?
When I found out I was going to be giving this talk,
I decided that one of the most important things I could do
would be to go home and do some research.
So I spoke to my dad. This is my dad.
I asked him what he thought about masculinity,
I asked him about his experience of being a man,
I asked him what it was like to raise a son,
and I asked him if there were any issues
that he thought men needed to talk about today.
And what my dad said will probably stick with me for the rest of my life.
He told me ...
to go and ask my uncle.
(Laughter)
So I went and I asked my uncle,
and my uncle actually gave me some really good advice.
He told me to go and ask my cousin.
So I went and asked my cousin,
and he pawned me off to his little brother.
I say all of this to say that men in general are not great at talking,
particularly when it comes to the topic of masculinity.
The work that I do
with the Good Lad Initiative is basically that -
talking about masculinity.
We work in schools with boys between the ages of 11 and 18,
talking about masculinity and gender equality
and involving them in the conversations.
One of my favorite activities that I run in these workshops
is called a "word race."
So the way that this activity works is we split the boys into two teams
and we give them a word association game
where they have to run to a whiteboard
and write down words that they associate to a topic that we give them.
We usually start with a practice round that lasts for about a minute;
we'll give them something like "breakfast" or "music."
And then we give them a round with the topic of "men,"
and then we give them a round with the topic of "women."
And as you can imagine,
the boys come up with a whole host of words
to describe genitalia and body parts,
so they say things like "dick," "pussy," "cock," "cunt" -
anything you can imagine,
it will be on those sheets of paper or on those whiteboards.
And then they come up with some characteristics,
so usually things like "strong" or "dominant" for men
and things like "kind" or "mother" or "kitchen" for women.
The most interesting time I ran this activity
was actually with a group of youth workers in a training session,
and we gave them the topic of "boys and girls"
to surface their stereotypes they hold about people of different genders.
What they came up with was slightly disturbing.
So for boys,
they said that they are smelly, dirty, porn addicts, violent, lazy,
all kinds of horrible adjectives.
Bearing in mind
that these are the people that we pay to work with our young people,
it leads me to ask the question:
What is it that we actually expect of boys?
And I think that we're setting the bar very low.
In his TED Talk back in 2010,
Tony Porter spoke about the idea of the collective socialization of men,
or what he calls the man box.
The man box is this idea which sets out all of the expectations that we have
about what boys and men should be.
It has things like "don't cry," "be powerful," "be dominant,"
"be a protector," "don't show any weakness,"
"don't be like a woman."
When we do this activity with boys, it's like something clicks for them,
and they realize that they've been tricked for their whole lives.
They sometimes want to keep some of the things that are in the man box,
and that's fine.
Some things are not bad,
things like being athletic or strong or courageous -
those things are fine -
but they sometimes say that it feels like they're trapped in a prison
and like it's a lot of pressure.
We talk about where these ideas come from.
We talk about things like movies and James Bond
and how he never says no to sex unless he's trying to kill someone.
We talk about consent
and how boys never feel like they have agency to actually give consent
in any given situation.
We talk about how we view women as the gatekeepers of sex.
And we talk about why it's more appropriate
to punch someone in the face than it is to cry when they embarrass you.
We talk about films and TV
and where all of these influences come from.
And we talk about how if the boys had the choice,
they probably wouldn't choose to be what society expects them to be.
So how do we solve these issues?
Well, based on my work, I would say what we need to do
is have conversations,
which sounds easier than it is sometimes.
Boys need spaces to work through these issues
based on a conversation
around what they think is really important.
We created one of these man boxes
with a group of boys the other day in a session,
and they said that they feel pressure to be a pussy destroyer,
they said they needed to get girls - don't laugh, it's not funny -
they said they need to get girls,
they said they need to be genetically superior.
All of that stuff sounds like a lot of pressure,
and I'm not sure it's things that we can really control.
So we need to talk about masculinity,
we need to talk about these things free of judgement
and give boys safe spaces to explore these topics,
we need to talk about where it comes from, how it's learned and inherited,
and why we are rewarded for behaving in ways that are inherently negative.
The reality is that boys won't just be boys;
boys will be what we teach them to be.
(Applause) (Cheers)
So what we need to do is have the tough conversations;
we need to talk about masculinity in all of its forms.
The men in my life never told me that the patriarchy was shit for everyone.
(Audience) Yes.
That might be because they didn't have the words to articulate it,
or it could have been because they didn't understand.
But as a man, I feel like we all have this understanding
that the ways that we're expected to behave and to treat other people
are not the best ways to live our lives
and they don't lead to us being happy and whole human beings.
Boys won't just be boys;
what boys will be is men,
and that is when we will all have an issue.
In the UK,
suicide is the lead killer of men between the ages of 15 and 55.
Not all men are violent,
but the majority of violent acts are carried out by men.
Women all around the world
feel more safe around other women than they do around men.
In our schools, in our universities, in our places of work,
and even in our households,
women suffer on a daily basis;
they experience abuse by the hands of men.
This stuff is not happening because of women,
and so it's men's job to resolve these issues.
Men need spaces to explore and express their emotions.
They know that this man box is limiting and it's scary.
They need to be able to opt out of things that are damaging,
not just for women but for themselves.
And we can't just have the same conversation
that we've been having about masculinity,
where we talk about how it's toxic and how bad it is.
The way we talk to men and boys about masculinity
tends to be using a minimum-standards approach.
We tend to talk to them and say
this is what you have to do to not get in trouble,
this is how you don't break the law,
this is how you don't rape someone
or how you're not labeled as a sexual abuser or a harasser.
But what we need to do
is move to a discussion around positive masculinity.
We need to talk about
how men can have healthy and fruitful friendships and relationships,
sexual or not sexual, romantic or not romantic.
We need to move towards a new version of masculinity,
one where we celebrate being a man
and celebrate all of the good parts of being a man,
but also one where we give men spaces to unpack all of the problematic messages
that they have learned about what it means to be a man
and we give them space to relearn what it means to be a man.
Most importantly, we need to have the conversations.
We need to give men space to "do the work."
It's a cliche phrase, we say it all the time,
but in reality, men need time and help
to unpack and unlearn all of those things that they have learned
that are harmful and damaging to themselves and to others,
and we need to have the conversations.
Thank you.
(Applause) (Cheers)