For Crying Out Loud

I saw this book in a bookshop today. I have no idea who Jamie Laing is, but the title completely exasperated me.

I'm forty-eight years old. Reader, I have never (ever ever) been told that boys don't cry. Not by a parent. Not by a teacher. Not by a kid in the street. Never, by anyone.

I was never told that boys or men shouldn't have feelings.

I was never told that boys or men shouldn't be vulnerable.

I'm guessing very few boys have been told this in recent decades. If, indeed, they ever were.

But here is what boys have been told for decades now.

That they are somehow complicit (no matter what they do) in something called The Patriarchy which wields absolute power and crushes men, women, children, the environment, and probably dogs and cats under the weight of its iron fist.

That they are vicariously guilty for anything bad that a man has ever done. (It doesn't work the opposite way, strangely-- they don't get any reflected glory for the achievements of Shakespeare, Edison, Tolkien, etc.)

That there is something called toxic masculinity and that they are somehow a part of it.

That their natural desires are "the male gaze", which is something to be ashamed of.

That, no matter how bad their life is or how much they might feel they are at the bottom of the heap, they have something called "male privilege".

And so on. And so on.

Society ladles endless helpings of guilt on boys from their earliest days. But not for crying.