what we owe our boys

reflecting today on what is happening in our society and in our schools.  we absolutely have a gun problem in this country. i don't want to write about that today, i've written about that ad nauseam and i've argued it ad nauseam.  i want to talk about what we teach to our children (full disclosure - i don't have kids) specifically what we teach our boys.  

these schools shooters are almost always boys and almost always white.  why is that?  what are we teaching (or not teaching) our boys?  there seems to be a pattern in the past of these young men - they are almost always obsessed with guns and violent video games, they are almost always bullied in some way, they almost always exhibit violent behavior against women in their lives.  likely they seek fame and infamy in a culture where we glorify killers and give hours and days of 24 hour news coverage to these mass murderers.

what i believe is that we teach our boys (systematically and mostly unconsciously) that the world is theirs, that they can be anything and do anything, that girls are objects of their desire and for their pleasure, that they are special, that they are superior, that they are strong, that they are entitled.

what we don't teach them is that they are part of a community of "others," that the world is not solely theirs, that they WILL be disappointed, that they will be broken-hearted, that they will be scared. we call them "sissies" and "pussies" and "wusses" and "girls" when they show emotion or drop a ball or show vulnerability.  we tell them they "run like a girl" when they lose.  we instill in them that girls are weak and that they should be strong and therefore dominant. 

we don't let them be boys, we don't let them figure it out on their own, we don't let them grow, we don't teach them how to be in touch with their emotions.  we make them angry, we call them names, we tell them they have to "man up." we ply them with video games in which they earn points for the number of prostitutes they kill (grand theft auto) and then we give them easy and almost unfettered access to guns.  what in the world do we think they are going to do?  we've given them no coping mechanisms in which to deal with the hard world we all live in.  entitlement is a killer.  we've seen it 18 times this year alone.