There's Something Absolutely Wrong with what we do to Boys...

[Colon™]

Poetry used to be a perfectly respectable thing for young men.

Was that in the days most people were illiterate?

[Lorizael]

Poetry used to be a perfectly respectable thing for young men. Now? It's likely to get a young man stuffed in a trash basket.

In a thread filled with statistics, you shouldn't throw the word "likely" around so lightly.

[Guynemer]

Poetry used to be a perfectly respectable thing for young men. Now? It's likely to get a young man stuffed in a trash basket.

Expression, empathy, feelings never were an exclusively feminine thing, until recently. Now to suggest that young men should experience these things is making them girls and is somehow anti-masculine.

Citations mother****ing needed.

You really think attitudes towards emotions are worse than they were in 1950? That it is less okay now for a man to expression emotions than it was 60 years ago? Really?

[Dr Strangelove]

Poetry used to be a perfectly respectable thing for young men. Now? It's likely to get a young man stuffed in a trash basket.

Expression, empathy, feelings never were an exclusively feminine thing, until recently. Now to suggest that young men should experience these things is making them girls and is somehow anti-masculine.

I'd encourage you to go watch a bunch of movies from the 1930's, 1940's and 1950's just to see what was expected of young men in the good old days. Maybe you're thinking of the Middle Ages when the chivalrous class would read poetry before riding off to slaughter some peasents who had the audacity to think they ought to own their own land.

[Kidlicious]

They make boys and girls write poetry. The schools do everything possible to feminize boys, but god forbid they shoot an imaginary arrow. Feminization is not the answer for boys.

[Kidlicious]

Why Boys are Failing in an education System Stacked Against Themhttp://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/884262

"... boys get the majority of D's and F's.."

"...children are forced to use literacy skills much earlier than in the past... subsequently increasing the number of boys who turn off and eventually drop out."

[Imran Siddiqui]

Oh no! Boys have to learn to read and stuff earlier than they used to! Reading is women work

[Imran Siddiqui]

They make boys and girls write poetry. The schools do everything possible to feminize boys, but god forbid they shoot an imaginary arrow. Feminization is not the answer for boys.

Walt Whitman was really a woman

[Guynemer]

Please don't quote him either.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Citations mother****ing needed.

You really think attitudes towards emotions are worse than they were in 1950? That it is less okay now for a man to expression emotions than it was 60 years ago? Really?

I think the 1950s would be considered "recently". On the other hand, in the Iliad, Achillies, the biggest badass ever (arguably), openly weeped when his friend died.

[Guynemer]

Well, he's talking about how things have gotten worse for boys recently, hence the elevation in the suicide rate, and his comparison is the 50s, so we're talking 50s here, bub.

[Elok]

Yeaaahhh, attitudes towards what constitutes "masculinity" varied widely from time to time and place to place, as BFB pointed out. In ancient Greece men were expected to weep to show their humanity. Likewise for most of China's history, it was perfectly acceptable and Confucian for a gentleman to shed tears at a stirring sight, a beautiful poem, or thoughts of his country's troubles. Check out Romance of the Three Kingdoms; male characters cry all the time. And the ones who cry most are the most admirable, because they cry to show their deep patriotic sentiment and crap. Lui Bei cries basically every other chapter.

[Kidlicious]

Oh no! Boys have to learn to read and stuff earlier than they used to! Reading is women work

Earlier than their brains develope to do so which sets them up for failure. Apathy is misandry.

[Kidlicious]

Please don't quote him either.

My posts don't require replies. Most replies to my posts aren't worth anything.

[Ban Kenobi]

Earlier than their brains develope to do so which sets them up for failure. Apathy is misandry.

Whereas uncritically accepting the notion that boys are dumber than girls of the same age isn't...?