WHAT ABOUT THE BOYS?
The feminist movement is alive and vocal these days. Hardly a day passes without some tome being published about lack of equality; but what about the boys? Who is taking up the battle for them?
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When your ancient scribe was a lad, my role in life was quite clear. It was a man’s role to “provide for and protect his wife and children and to protect women and children in general”.
It wasn’t written down anywhere, but it was talked about and generally accepted. Indeed, when I married a lovely young lady back in the 1950s, had anyone told me then that, one day, she would be back in the full-time workforce, it would have been an indication that I, the breadwinner, was incapable of caring and providing for her and our children. Women had a full-time job looking after the children and running the home.
The big difference came with the creation of the contraceptive pill. Before the pill, females, married or single, had but one sure system of birth control – no sex whatsoever. Yet none of today’s vocal feminists is promoting some sort of annual celebration to mark the discovery of that now common contraceptive pill, the greatest development in the history of women’s freedom. They are now able to decide when or if they will have children, for the first time in history.
So, in my lifetime, girls have become free to travel the world, free to take on careers rather than just jobs until they married. Why no recognition of this amazing development?
As father of a tribe, including three daughters, six granddaughters and four great-granddaughters (they outnumber the males), your scribe has witnessed how this remarkable development has opened the door for all women, but why no international celebrations to mark the creation of the pill that has given women that freedom? It was the pill that made the change, not an outbreak of feminism.
BUT WHAT ABOUT THE BOYS?
At the same time, we need to reassess the boys’ place in life when, as men, they are no longer seen as the head of the family, its protector and provider.
In primitive tribes there was some sort of initiation ceremony to mark the boys’ arrival into manhood and the start of lessons in defence and hunting skills.
In my days the boys simply entered the workforce where they were taught to accept responsibility for their actions and to ‘grow up’ and ‘be tough’.
So, what is the place of the young male in this changing society? We do know that the incidence of suicide in young males is worrying. Life for all teenagers can be very confusing, including for the boys.
COUNTERING SEXUAL HARRASSMENT
Not many weeks pass without some claim of sexual harassment at universities, the military or some workplace. Maybe there is a solution, or at least, part-solution.
The problem is that society today seems to have forgotten that ‘man’ is still a part of the animal kingdom, complete with all those animal instincts for survival and, most important, ‘survival of the species’.
A bowerbird has established a bower in the backyard at one of my daughter’s homes and he has stolen every blue peg from her clothesline in an attempt to attract a suitable mate.
But there is no book of rules for the human male in his hope of doing the same thing – to attract a mate. He can’t follow his instincts. He learns very early in life that if he ‘says that’ or ‘touches that’ he could be in serious trouble – but no-one explains what he is allowed to do. One thing is certain, he must never trust his instincts, unlike the other animal species. Very simply, if human males are not allowed to follow their animal instincts, someone should at least make some modern but much clearer rules, rules that everyone understands.
- Ray Williams has been a Post columnist since retiring from the newsroom in 1993.