9 Solution 8: The Future: Raising Better Men
I'm glad we've begun to raise our daughters more like our sons, but it will never work until we raise our sons more like our daughters.
—Gloria Steinem
Not having a father early on, I've spent much of my life thinking about conventional notions of manhood and what it means to fit into that. I would imagine that all men think about this at some stage in their lives. For me it started young when I didn't feel comfortable joining other boys in the teasing of a socially awkward or unpopular classmate. When I returned to the United States at the age of 9 from living abroad in Hong Kong, the ire of the masses briefly turned on me when the bigger, “cooler” American kids teased me for my hair, my clothes, or just simply being Asian. Those tough times galvanized me into someone who figured out how to stand his ground—to learn that “might is right” on the playground (at least back in the 1970s); and when you smack a bully in the jaw, they stop bothering you.
I also learned that boys and girls were supposed to hate one another. “Girls germs no returns!” was a constant refrain among my new elementary school friends. “Throwing like a girl” was a new type of insult, unfamiliar to me as there was no equivalent phrase in Hong Kong. I liked playing with the girls at recess on occasion. They adopted me into their circle, and I never once heard a racist slur hurled at me from any of them. I liked being around their noncombative play style, ...