Real Boys

by William Pollack

  What would it take to repair the relationship?

  “I don’t care if Zachary is into theater or wears purple pants. No one does, really. What matters is that he has to find a way to be himself and deal with everybody else, too,” Matt says. “I feel bad about it. I still say ‘hi’ to him in the hall and everything. But I just can’t be his friend right now. If I do, people will definitely get on my case.”

  SOME BOYS RESIST PEER PRESSURE AND FIGHT BACK

  One of the most heartening findings of my “Listening to Boys’ Voices” study is that many of the boys I interviewed revealed an eagerness to resist the kind of peer pressure that caused Matt and Zachary to split—to come out from behind the mask and to challenge the shame-inducing Boy Code. For some boys, this means creating a safe space where they can all feel free to be themselves. For instance, in Chapter 4, we talked about Jason, who set up a “guy’s place” at school where boys with differing personalities and interests could come together to talk about feelings and issues and form new friendships.

  Isaiah, a savvy sixteen-year-old, offered this advice to younger boys: “Just be yourselves and don’t do anything you don’t want to. Because in the long run if you’re acting false—hanging out with kids that you don’t really like—it’s not really worth it. You’re only young once. You should do what you want and have fun because that’s the way you’re going to be happy. You have to be yourself!”

  John, another teenaged boy in the study, explained: “There are certain things that boys are supposed to be good at. Boys are supposed to play sports. Boys are supposed to want to make it with girls. Boys are supposed to drink beer. But lots of guys aren’t that way. Lots of guys are into computers, some guys like to draw, a lot of guys are into music, many guys do volunteer stuff, or like to hike and camp. I think the stereotypes are wrong.

  Whatever a person does should be respected. I don’t think a boy should have to play sports at all if he doesn’t want to. I think he should do what he wants.”

  In a similar vein, sixteen-year-old Aaron had an impressively sophisticated understanding of gender straitjacketing and the problem of boys calling one another names like fag or wimp.

  “A few of my friends act like you have to be homophobic to prove that you’re not gay. You have to say you hate gay people so that everyone will know you’re definitely not gay and think you are OK.”

  At first, Aaron confessed, he and others of his friends participated in the taunting. But then one of his buddies, Bobby, introduced him to a different perspective. “Bobby is the best athlete and a great kid. Everyone loves him and respects him. Bobby isn’t gay, but he told me it was wrong to trash gay people. He said being gay is normal. Why should we make fun of them? It got me thinking: he is exactly right.”

  Aaron concluded, “Now I try to pass the message along. I tell people that gay bashing is stupid. The more people who say that, the more people will get the message and cut it out.”

  Indeed, boys like Isaiah, John, Aaron, and Bobby sense that there’s something wrong with being forced to act in one stereotypical “masculine” way and show that they are willing to take a stand to change how society pushes them to accept a gender straitjacket. But resisting society’s code of masculinity is not easy. The boys in my study reported that they have to be cautious about how they go about it.

  “I pick my battles,” Aaron explained, meaning that he was careful to take on issues that he felt wouldn’t risk putting him in a bad place with his peers. Keeping up good relations with one’s peers matters a lot to adolescent boys. Many boys report that having close friends—boys and girls—who will support them and their good name, and who will stand up for them if they take a risk by challenging the Boy Code, makes all the difference in the world. In dealing with peer ridicule and mustering the courage to take on the code, boys emphasize that what helps them most is knowing that their friends—and their families—will stand by them.

  THE PUBLIC AND PRIVATE SELVES: A BOY SPLIT IN TWO

  The disparity between how a boy privately wishes to behave and how he feels he must behave when he is in public may surprise and confuse him. He feels confused that the way he can act at home, when he’s among his family and closest friends, is often different from how his peers expect him to behave. What works in the privacy of his home may not fly in public peer settings. As the boy quoted earlier said, “You can’t be the same person at school as you are at home.” The schoolyard culture of cool or tough and the family-room culture of openness and authenticity often clash.

  The private self—the self that the boy genuinely is within, the self that is reinforced by female peers and often at home by mothers and fathers—may wish to act friendly, be playful and loving, and show a broad range of emotions. But then there is also the pull from society in general, from peers, and especially from other boys, to act strong, athletic, taciturn. Boys are called upon to avoid showing even a trace of vulnerability.

  When the pressure becomes too much, some boys will take extreme measures—teasing others, spray-painting graffiti on school lockers, even assaulting another student—to acquire a reputation for being cool and win the kinship and respect of their compatriots. Navigating between the Scylla of “Respect others’ needs—stay in connection” and the Charybdis of “Chill out—be your own man,” our modern-day Odysseus is likely to falter at the shoals of one extreme or another, striving to master his confusion, frustration, and longing.

  My research shows that during adolescence boys voice their desire to remain true to their inner values—to refuse to numb or hollow out their inner voice—while still saving face at school and on the basketball court. For instance, seventeen-year-old Scott Adams told me about the pressure at school to fight with other boys and how he dealt with it in light of what his parents taught him about fighting:

  “The worst time I ever had,” he started, “was when I was fighting over Sharon with Doug Santos. Sharon was dating Doug, but decided to go out with me, too. Doug, who’s really popular, got very mad. One day Doug and a bunch of other guys from his neighborhood surrounded me at school in the parking lot, with Sharon right there. His pals started shouting, ‘Come on, Doug, hit Scott. Hit him! He can’t fight anyway!’ ”

  “So, what did you do?”

  “I try to never get involved in physical stuff. My mother always told me to use my words but not my hands. So, I told Doug I didn’t want to fight. I told him I thought we could talk the problem out.”

  “That was a great response,” I volunteered.

  Scott rolled his eyes. “No, it wasn’t. Doug started shoving me around, saying ‘You fucking creep, you little fag, come on, let’s see you fight.”

  “So then what?”

  “Well, there was no teacher around and I’ve never really learned how to box or anything, but I just took the hardest swing I could and hit Doug. I guess I got him in just the right spot, because he let out a cry and doubled over, then kind of limped away. His friends started saying, ‘Wo, Adams, all right! You got him pretty good.”

  “Did you tell your parents?”

  “Yeah, they found out. My mother started lecturing me, but my father just sort of smiled. I feel confused about it, though. I don’t think I did the right thing. Mom doesn’t think I did the right thing. But Dad thinks it was kind of funny. And Doug never bothered me again.”

  This conflict between public and private behavior can lead to far more serious results than a minor skirmish in a school parking lot. Research shows that boys who are “split in two” are more at risk developing learning disabilities, severe depression, and impulsive and compulsive behaviors that range from substance abuse to unsafe sex, from acting out in the classroom to committing suicide.

  My own study demonstrates that although boys actually work hard to become whole, to resist betraying the inner boy, and to experience vulnerable and painful feelings, they do so under terrible strain to “look good” in front of their peers—to wear their mask.

  YOU’RE MISUND
ERSTOOD IF YOU ACT TOUGH

  It seems that whatever model a boy chooses to follow at any given time—the macho man or the sensitive one—is likely to get him into trouble with somebody. When boys display the kinds of cool, tough behavior they thought society expected of them as young men, adults (especially their parents) reprimand them for seeming distant, rough, or unfeeling. In other words, just when they manage to adopt the behaviors they thought were required of them, many boys find that—far from being admired for their manly comportment—they are actually rebuffed or rebuked. As a result, adolescent boys often feel on the defensive, sensing that others see them as insensitive, violent, uncaring. They don’t understand why adults seem so disappointed in them when they’re trying so hard to behave in the ways they thought everyone was telling them they should.

  Sixteen-year-old Ross relates it this way: “Being a guy today, wow. You don’t know when you are going to offend someone. You’ve always got to be watching yourself. Is this going to get this person upset and is that going to get that person upset? So being a guy, it seems like I’m the enemy to society.”

  The double standard puzzles and angers thoughtful young men like Craig, a graduating high school senior. On the one hand, his peers expect him to be unflinching. “It’s basically what this whole school’s about. You try to act like the tough guy. In a sports game, or if someone takes you down, you don’t back down, you step toward him,” Craig observes.

  In other contexts, Craig feels targeted for being a male teenager who may appear too tough:

  “People act like guys my age are up to no good half the time,” Craig contends.

  Craig related two recent examples. “I went to the bank this past weekend, and because I didn’t have my bankbook with me, they doubted my identity. Would they have done that if I was a girl? I don’t think so. They went through a whole list of questions of who my parents were, what street I lived on, and how old I was. After a while, I was like, ‘Why are you still doubting me? Have I done something wrong?’ They figure that a guy who’s a teenager is probably up to no good somehow or other.

  “Another time I was about to pull out of a parking lot by Fenway Park after a Red Sox game, and a police officer waved me to stop. I pulled over, and I think just because I was a guy and I’m a kid, he went through a whole list of questions. He asked if I had any warrants out for my arrest or anything like that, and I thought that was kind of unusual that he would do that for no reason. I don’t think that would happen to a girl either.”

  YOU’RE MISUNDERSTOOD IF YOU ACT NICE

  Boys can also run into trouble when they try to act empathic, gentle, and connected—to behave, in other words, in the ways that feminist teachings have advocated as healthy and important.

  “With all the feminist ideas in the country and the equality, I think guys sometimes get put on the spot,” sixteen-year-old Toby said. “Guys might do something that I think or they think may not be wrong at all, but they still get shot down for it.

  “If you’re not nice to a girl, she thinks you don’t care. But if you are nice, she thinks you’re treating her too much like a lady. Girls don’t understand guys, and guys don’t understand girls very well.”

  I asked Toby to give me an example from his own experience. “For instance, my ex-girlfriend came to one of our basketball games the other day. After the game I went and said ‘hi’ to her and some other friends. Someone told me later that, just as I was turning to say ‘hi’ to somebody else, she started to give me a hug. I didn’t even know she did it, but she thought I was ignoring her and being a jerk.

  “But you know that if I had hugged her first, she would have been mad at me for doing something she didn’t want. Instead she ended up mad at me for not hugging her, even though I didn’t know what was going on.

  “It’s a confusing subject because it’s just that everyone is different and everyone perceives things differently. Sometimes they want us to be manly or something, but sometimes they don’t want us to be manly. You can’t really tell how one girl is going to react to certain things. It may be completely different than another girl’s reaction.

  “Girls want you to be sensitive and everything, but guys call you a fag or a wimp if you act certain ways. Like in my case, I respect all my teachers, I respect adults, and I am always polite, because that is the way I have been brought up. But a lot of the times my friends say I’m kissing ass or being a brownnose, just because I’m being polite and I talk to adults. I say I’m just being polite and they say, ‘Oh no, you’re a wuss.’ It bothers me.”

  So, WHAT SHOULD I BE? HOW SHOULD I BEHAVE?

  Much of my recent research project consisted of extensive interviews with boys from which many of these comments were taken. But I also gave a series of psychological tests to 150 boys from the ages of twelve to eighteen. The survey included two tests that enabled me to ascertain boys’ conscious and unconscious attitudes about the way a boy should go about becoming a man and the ways in which they believed a healthy man should act in our society. The first group of boys I surveyed was composed of urban kids from a mid-sized city on the Eastern seaboard, so I suspected that they would convey a fair amount of sophistication about equality for men and women, boys and girls. Indeed, my suspicions were correct.

  On a test called the Sex Role Egalitarianism Scale, created by King and King, these boys scored well within the range of men and women who embrace the “new masculinity.” This means that they endorsed such statements as “Men and women should be given an equal chance for professional training” and “Courses in home management should be as acceptable for male students as for female students,” and strongly rejected such notions as “The husband should be the head of the family” or “It is more appropriate for a mother rather than a father to change a baby’s diapers.”

  Here there were no surprises, only confirmation that boys appear to be breaking out of gender rigidities into a new model of manhood, a model that is more open to men doing things and behaving in ways traditionally thought of as more feminine than masculine.

  But then I did something a bit unusual. In the past, most research has been either/or—either it has focused on the progress boys have made toward gender equality (by using the Sex Role Egalitarianism Scale or a similar test) or it has analyzed how boys support or reject the characteristics associated with traditional masculinity. In other words, most studies have tested their subjects on just one attribute—where they fall on the scale as regards gender equality (are they egalitarian or nonegalitarian?) or how much they adhere to traditional ideals of masculinity.

  But my own theory—that boys are being pushed to be both egalitarian and traditional—led me to take a different approach. I wondered what we would discover if we tested them on both characteristics. So, in addition to testing the boys on the Sex Role Egalitarianism Scale, we also tested the same group of boys on Pleck’s Traditional Male Role Attitude Scale. By giving the same boys both tests, my research approach allowed for parallel measures, rather than an either/or choice.

  The results of this approach showed that the same boys who endorsed the egalitarian values were equally strong when they took the Traditional Male Role Attitude Scale. They supported the following statements: “I admire a guy who is totally sure of himself,” “It is essential for a guy to get respect from others,” “A man always deserves the respect of his wife and children,” “It bothers me when a guy acts like a girl,” and “Men are always ready for sex.”

  So when given the opportunity to bare their souls, these adolescent boys, without knowing it, revealed an inner fissure, a split in their sense of what it means to become a man. On a test that measures their openness to egalitarian ideas, they embraced being egalitarian. On a test that measures how traditional they are about masculinity, they held on to a number of traditional traits. These results point directly to boys’ inner unconscious confusion about what society expects of them as males. Because society requires boys to be both traditional and egalitarian, boys ar
e unable to internally consolidate their feelings of masculinity. If they felt consistent and clear about their masculinity, boys would tend to test high on the traditional scale and low on the egalitarian, or high on the egalitarian scale and low on the traditional. But by scoring high on both of these diametrically opposed traits, boys revealed profound inner turmoil.

  As we will see in Chapter 10, where I will discuss my research on these boys’ self-image and how it relates to how well they do at school, this turmoil manifests itself in a growing need to mask their insecurities and an increasingly fragile sense of self-esteem. Specifically, as boys move through adolescence, my research shows that they are more and more prone to distort the extent to which they truly feel confident about their masculinity. More and more they feel they need to say they conform to society’s ideal of “masculine” self-confidence even though inside themselves they may not feel confident at all.

  THE PAINFUL PROSPECTS OF MANHOOD

  Perhaps largely because of this festering internal confusion, many adolescent boys appear to feel deeply ambivalent about growing up to be men. If they’re not sure what it means to be a man, I wonder, how could they possibly look forward to adulthood? As part of my research, I decided to explore what boys are really feeling about becoming grown men. Discovering this is not easy, of course, because as we’ve seen, boys tend to bury their deepest, most painful feelings.