Cathy reads books: Boymom

source

Before I’d even read the book,

Ruth Whippman

’s NYT op-ed inspired me to write The New York Times is lowkey anti-gender. I wrote it (as I do many posts) in a fit of mild pique. I wanted Whippman to explicitly write “abolish gender.”

Having read the book, I’m actually grateful she didn’t.

I’ve long harped on many of the main points in Boymom: Reimagining Boyhood in the Age of Impossible Masculinity. I wrote about it most recently in Western masculinity as Chinese foot binding.

(This is not a brag. Spending a decade writing essentially the same message as a best-selling author with a NYT byline while accomplishing neither is an L.)

We’re both, essentially, saying:

1. The most important part of any person’s life is the number and quality of their relationships.

2. Men and boys have fewer and lower quality relationships than women and girls, on average.

3. Masculinity is probably the biggest reason for this gap.

4. We’ve decided, as a culture, that nearly every habit and trait that makes for close, high-quality relationships is feminine. This puts boys in an impossible bind. Either accept loneliness and atomization or “act like a girl” and still risk social rejection, with the possibility of physical violence as well.

5. Masculinity is, at the very least, certainly among the most important of reasons that are actually fixable. (Again, I blame gender as opposed to masculinity.)

If you read any of the above points and thought, “What are these betches on about?” then I really must insist you read Boymom. Even if you fully understand what we’re saying already, it’s still a great read.