Daniel Paddock

I am getting profoundly sick of women (many of whom possess advanced degrees in subjects that require several years of graduate study) who hate stwelve-year-old boys, explaining to the rest of civilization how we need to relate to them. Now, before anyone gets carried away, I am also a woman. I have been one for more than fifty years. I was never a boy. I am a tomboy, which means I spent a fair amount of my childhood doing things that would cause a modern Gender Studies department to call an emergency faculty meeting. The difference is that I don't have a PhD in anything, (worthless or otherwise) so I haven't developed the intellectual confidence necessary to believe I know absolutely everything. I'm kind of dumb that way. For example, I have this radical theory that boys should be encouraged to read whatever the hell interests them. For a great many boys, this will be... (Please sit down. This may be upsetting.) BOY STUFF. Sports! Soldiers! Hunting! Explosions! Airplanes! Tanks! Dinosaurs eating other dinosaurs! Some boys will prefer chemistry or astronomy. Some will love cooking. Some will be fascinated by fashion. Some will want to read about ballet, and some will want to read about a Sherman tank driving through a ballet recitle while firing its main gun at a home ec class. THIS IS FINE. Nobody is proposing that we issue every male child a football, a rifle, and a copy of The Art of War at birth, then arrest him if he expresses an interest in soufflés. We're suggesting that if you want boys to read, it might help to give them books about things they actually want to read about. They probably know what interests them better than the woman who spent 8 yearas at university, and written tons of papers about how awful men and boys are. I realize this is a controversial educational theory, requiring another $400 million in federal research grants. But here's something else I've noticed. Whenever the subject of boys comes up, an astonishing number of women immediately begin explaining how boys need to be understood, engaged, reimagined, reconstructed, and possibly returned to the manufacturer for a firmware update. You know who might have some useful insight into what it's like to be a boy? MEN. Yes! MEN! Those strange, hairy creatures who were (in most cases) ACTUALLY BOYS at one point! I know. It's an outrageous suggestion. Now, being a woman, I don't have firsthand experience with boyhood. But I've discovered this remarkable intellectual technique called LISTENING TO PEOPLE WHO DO. It's fascinating. You ask someone about their experiences, and then (and this is the really important part) you SHUT UP long enough to hear the answer. Sometimes you even learn something. One thing I've learned is that a great many boys enjoy traditionally masculine things. Not all boys. Not every boy. Not every minute of every day. But enough boys that pretending otherwise requires a level of deliberate obtuseness normally associated with government procurement. Thank you for attending my TED Talk. That'll be $650. I'm kidding. It's free. I haven't figured out how to get a university to pay me for stating the obvious. I'm not a Democrat anymore. But seriously. We've spent two generations "rethinking how we engage with boys." Judging by the educational and social problems facing young men, I think we're entitled to ask whether some of that rethinking has been an enormous, expensive failure. Maybe it's time to stop treating ordinary boyhood like a defective social construct requiring professional intervention. Maybe it's time to let Grandpa, who was once a boy himself, take the kids fishing. Or shooting. Or teach them how to rebuild a carburetor, throw a football, or make something useful with their hands. And if one of those boys wants to learn ballet or bake a cake instead? LET HIM. MAYBE THEN we can find someone (most likely a woman) to help him otu. That's the entire point! Give boys opportunities. Give them books. Give them good male role models. Let them discover their interests without turning every preference into an ideological emergency. And for the love of everything holy, STOP ACTING LIKE ACKNOWLEDGING THAT BOYS AND GIRLS OFTEN HAVE DIFFERENT INTERESTS IS SOME KIND OF CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY. I'm not suggesting women have nothing useful to contribute to raising or educating boys. I'm suggesting that perhaps, just perhaps, we should spend a little less time lecturing men about what boys need, and a little more time asking men what being a boy was actually like. It's a crazy idea, I know. But after fifty years on this planet, I'm beginning to suspect that the people who insist they know the most about boys are frequently the people least interested in listening to them.