Sylvie,

Thanks for the response.

However, I’m not sure why a post which essentially tried to explain why we have failed boys turns into a shot at me for supposedly not doing anything.

I did my best. I was the Head of Personal Counselling at a boy’s school for 13 years. I also taught Senior English for 25 in both the public coed and private secondary schools.

From 1997 on, but especially after Columbine, I gave talks entitled ‘Every Boy needs a Tribe’ to as many schools in my district as would listen. Trying to warn parents that shaming any child for his gender was wrong…feminism had taught us that much.

That we are risking generations of men to come if we don’t pay attention to what boys and young men are showing us…through suicide rates, accidental death, drug use, violence and other antisocial behaviors.

Renowned psychologists like Dr. Gabor Mate and Dr. Marty Shoemaker accepted my invitations and gave talks about anxiety among boys and how their brains are different than girls.

My talks followed the sagacity of Robert Bly’s ‘Iron John’, especially concerning the need for initiation into the mysteries of manhood by other older men.

IOW, If you leave it up to other young immature boys to initiate each other…well, from what you’ve written, you unfairly had more share of that potentially crippling misery from ignorant immature violent men than most could survive.

You must have some kind of courage to overcome that misery, the kind of courage and fortitude that many people can only imagine let alone find within themselves to muster.

But here’s an instance which perhaps better explains my position, other than the books I mentioned, all of which I have read. Although Katherine K. Young and Paul Nathanson’s books are academically really heavy reading, after all they were both bravely going against the feminist dogma of their university peers, so they had better have their annotations and footnotes in order.

Bly was giving a talk in 1998 in Vancouver to a packed audience.

His main focus was on the problems feminism had created when they proclaimed that women no longer needed men to raise their children, especially their sons.

In particular, he focused in on his work with Black women who, through no fault of their own, since many fathers were disproportionately incarcerated, were finding themselves unable to raise let alone control their sons.

Many of their sons ended up dead, victims of incredible levels of violence.

So, he said, if you tell men that they are not needed, of course they’ll disappear.

Bly continued that he was working with them to ask men to come back into the community and save their sons. Welcome them…we need you!

Your words?

“Dads are nowhere. Male teachers are hidden at doctoral level.”

Men are needed as fathers, as coaches, as mentors, as shamans and as holders of the sacred male energy.

Bly then said this:

“Women need to explore and define their dark side.”

There was an eruption from five or six women, one of whom stood up and shouted:

“Women don’t need another Sigmund Freud, no misogynistic man telling us what’s wrong with us!!!”

He waited until she sat down.

He replied, “Like many feminists, you didn’t listen. I said it was time that WOMEN need to explore and define their dark side.”

So, where are we again?

If you think feminism is doing a good job then of course you won’t need to read any of the books I suggested. You already know what’s working and I suppose what’s not.

Outside of the good job you’ve done with your son, you obviously still think that treating boys in the same way will continue to garner huge rewards, rewards such as the ones we recently reaped in Buffalo and Evalde.