Certainly America, and in large part the profession of psychology, advocates for fair treatment and equal opportunity for women in the Church and society. But even despite laws and efforts of many people of goodwill, inequities exist. The 20th century was replete with movements across the globe to ferret out injustices and create equal Human Rights for all. In dealing with glaring and chronic inequities, can we become desensitized to other injustices? Valerie Goswick Heywood, a mother of two, recently wrote: “Whether or not you agree with its principles (the Feminist Movement), I have, over the past few years, come to believe that not only did it disempower men on many levels, it has had a trickle effect on our young sons.”
At the beginning of the decade, Christian Hoff Sommers startled readers of Atlantic Magazine with her article, "The War Against Boys." “It is a bad time to be a boy in America,” said Summers. “Boys dominate drop-out lists, failure lists, and learning disability lists.” Boys are typically less likely to go to college. Girls read more books than boys and outperform boys on tests of artistic and musical abilities. Boys are three times as likely than girls to be labelled Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), and seven times more likely to commit suicide. (Sommers cites a year in which there were 701 female suicides between the ages of 5-24, while there were 3,782 male suicides.) The article by Sommers offers an extended discussion and rebuttal to Carol Gilligan’s book, In a Different Voice.
More recently and across the Pond, Libby Purves, in the Sunday London Times, wrote “Neeeoww! Let’s stick up for boisterous boys.” Purves stated: “Education should reflect a happy synthesis, but it hardly does. In reaction against the days when bigots argued that educating girls caused sterility, and more recent decades when girls were denied sciences other that domestic, the system has swung over into a bias against boys. As fewer and fewer primary teachers are men (rightly scared of demonising as child molesters), a feminine culture arises.” Last week Kerry Weber moderated a discussion on possible reasons for there being an imbalance in the female/male ratio of teachers in Catholic schools; this speculation was not listed. What do you think?
Mother and pediatrician Meg Meeker, M.D. has written a delightful book, Boys Should be Boys. Meeker believes that boyhood in the United States is under siege and she offers seven approaches to raising healthy boys; she emphasizes that boys need activity, appropriate opportunities to rough-house, unstructured contact with nature where risks such as tree-climbing can be tried, and even considers the relationship between testosterone and cars. The natural aggression of boys needs to be channeled--learning about hunting, the great battles of history, as well as how to make a bow-and-arrow are all appropriate topics. “I’ve learned that when it comes to raising sons,” Meeker said, “what is politically correct and what is true are often at opposite ends of the spectrum.”
Again, we need not reiterate here the many injustices to girls and women throughout history as well as the present--inequities that deserve our full and undivided attention. But there could be more going on. In logic, the presence of A (bias against woman) does not negate B (bias against boys). As Christians dedicated to social justice and fairness toward each of God’s children, considering this entire continuum might be worthwhile.
“We need yin and yang, male and female, buccaneers and consolidators, nurses and surgeons, stevedors and embroiderers of either sex,” said Purves. “We should celebrate both.”
William Van Ornum
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Plastic drink bottles leech a chemical that spurs estrogen and suppresses testosterone. That means feminized boys - and possibly gay boys if the exposure is in utero (if such exposure contributes - although it might have nothing to do with it).
The high suicide rate may be gay boys who take the message from traditionalist parents that they are objectively disordered (as if it were up to the Church to determine their own object - it clearly is not - that's God job and God ultimately made them gay, even if it is an artifact of uterine development).
Title IX has led universities to give equal funding to women's sports, but has the effect of crowding out small audience men's athletics. Until big time revenue producing sports are excluded from such calculations - as they should be - men's crew and other small sports will be on the short end of the stick - barring specific alumni donations (although golf seems to do well enough).1
Thanks for the post. Are you familiar with Leonard Sax's Why Gender Matters? He makes a profound and compelling case that there are clear, biologically based gender differences that ought to affect how we teach and parent boys and girls-he also notes that the science of these differencs has been largely ignored or obscured by political correctness.
Re: boys and education: He notes that as a general matter young boys are not cognitively/developmentally as ready for school as early as girls are, and that if boys are pushed to sit still and do certain cognitive tasks too soon (even tasks which seem simple, like learning and writing the alphabet), their experience of school can be permanently scarred and can end up in all kinds of false diagnoses later on (ADD, etc.).
Any thoughts or reactions to this body of work?
About the phrase, "As fewer and fewer primary teachers are men" - Was there ever a time when there were a lot of male grade school teachers?
Also - Matt, you cited the opinion that "if boys are pushed to sit still and do certain cognitive tasks too soon (even tasks which seem simple, like learning and writing the alphabet), their experience of school can be permanently scarred and can end up in all kinds of false diagnoses later on" - I've heard similar statements before, to the effect that boys need a more active, less sedentary education, etc., but if people want to say that there's a NEW bias against boys, how can this be, since in the past, students were required to sit still and behave to an even greater degree than they are now?
In other words, it seems people want to say that in the past, education was more biased against girls, but that now it's more biased against boys, since it's making them sit still, learn certain things too early, etc. - but if schools in the past weren't any different in that regard and required students to sit still even more, how can we say that schools weren't biased against boys back then, or that schools back then privileged boys over girls? Is the idea that in the past, schools were "biased" against both boys and girls in different ways (and more "biased" against girls?), whereas now, the bias against girls has been reduced, leaving only the bias against boys?
Talking with another teacher who is a friend, she said that they often wonder about any young man who wants to teach elementary school. Most want to teach middle school and high school.
We are talking good salaries here where I live. After 20 years an average teacher with a masters and 30 additional credits make about a 100k with another 30k in benefits. And three months off each year. That should be attractive to a lot of people.
One final comment. My friends and I were all taught by nuns till high school when we saw nothing but men. Somehow these strict disciplinarians did not take any man hood out of me or my friends and believe me many were strict. It always appeared the girls got the breaks, mainly in retrospect because they were better behaved. Now was that socially or genetically based or because we were taught by women boys were more rebellious. I will go with genetics. So in the long run, socialization will never over come human nature and we should look how to channel those hormones as opposed to trying to suppress them.
1. I have serious reservations about Meeker's thesis (and it doesn't seem "delightful" at all!): when the "male & pale" still dominate the corridors of power it seems a little premature to hold them out as victims. BTW, many select colleges and universities have promoted a new affirmative action program in recent years-it's for men. Their test scores and GPAs are not as impressive as women applicants and administrators have lowered their standards to keep the campus population roughly equal.
2. This is not to say that there isn't a "masculinity crisis." Men don't know how to define themselves in the wake of second-wave feminism. I would offer Kindlon & Thompson's RAISING CAIN: EXPLORING THE INNER LIVES OF AMERICA'S BOYS as a useful-maybe even "delightful"-without resorting to the neo-"he-man" school of thought.
3. I found Michael's comments about Title IX intriguing but the fact is that "high profile" men's sports (i.e., basketball, football) on the vast majority of the nation's campuses are not making money for colleges & universities. It is true that colleges offer a raft of preferences for legacies, donors' kids, faculty brats, geographical outliers, and athletes, along with the more familiar race-and gender-sensitive programs. Plenty of suburban women who play sports like field hockey are getting into schools under these preferences.
I'd agree with Michael Kimmel, a sociologist who teaches at Stony Brook and who's written a lot about gender and masculinity, who thinks men and women are more alike than different. Here's the url for part of a lecture he gave on gender .....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-rpbihTvlY
I base my comments solely on Dr. Sax's Why Gender Matters. There, he writes: "Thirty years ago, when kindergarten was all about finger-painting and singing together and playing duck-duck-goose, sex differences in brain maturation didn't matter as much. . . . Thirty years ago, the primary mission of kindergarten was to acclimate the kid to school, not to get a jump start on academics. . . . No more. Today, educators throughout North America make no apologies for the academic character of the twenty-first century kindergarten. The curriculum of kindergarten today is essentially the first-grade curriculum of thirty years ago." (p. 94)
Why is this a problem? Dr. Sax writes: "Many five-year-old boys just don't have the fine motor skills necessary to write the letters of the alphabet . . . In the jargon of educational psychology, the objectives of today's academically oriented kindergarten are not developmentally appropriate for many kindergarten boys." (p. 95) (emphasis in original).
He goes on to explain that boys, very early on, are thus singled out for behavioral disorders or problems (or are considered intellectually slow) when they want to run around instead of sit still. But Dr. Sax's point is that a lot of these young boys are not ready to sit still, and that by forcing them to do so, teachers and parents impose behavior for which the boys are biologically unready. Nature wins: the boys' negative impression of school, and any inferiority complexes they develop for being labeled slow, stay with them the rest of their lives.
I am no psychologist so I'm not aware of any literature that challenges Dr. Sax's conclusions. But his book is eye-opening and compelling reading about the biologically based differences between men and women, the ignorance of which is causing all sorts of problems in the classroom and in homes.
In the 1970's, an American feminist, Dorothy Dennerstein wrote a book that was quite contraversial: "Mermaid and Minotaur: Sexual Arrangements and Human Malaise". On of her ideas was: "Sexism and aggression are both inevitable consequences of child rearing being left more or less exclusively to women" (Wikipedia) Over 3 decades later, there is much evidence about the very negative effects on boys of being raised in fatherless homes. I think that a reasonable goal in social justice would be to find ways to address the needs of these boys. Also, instead of competitiveness for resources between boys and girls, adults should be able to formulate programs that meet the needs of both, based on what seems to be a monumental amount of empirical studies.
I saw something similar when I taught at Greenhaven Prison. Not everyone is cut out for office work, computers, etc. amdg, bill
I am blessed to teach at a school in which our female basketball team made the sweet sixteen several years ago at NCAA; last year we beat Fairfield for the MAAC (sorry).
All of the women's teams together had the highest combined GPA in the entire MAAC.
GO MARIST LADY RED FOXES!
I will have to read the book by Sax. When doing assessment of young boys and girls, the immaturity of boys, to me, is sometimes quite striking. tx, bill
I like the idea that there are ongoing biases against both sexes. May I dare say this might even includes the Church????? amdg,bill
Yes, I only had one male teacher K-8, and think I turned out all right. amdg, bill
"Over 3 decades later, there is much evidence about the very negative effects on boys of being raised in fatherless homes."
Actually, there was just a study mentioned in the news about a 20 year study showing that kids raised by lesbian parents had fewer social problems and less aggressive behavior than their peers .....
http://health.usnews.com/health-news/family-health/brain-and-behavior/articles/2010/06/07/kids-with-lesbian-parents-do-just-fine.html
If you think that aggressive behavior is a plus because it's natural, I'd disagree. As Keith Ward, former Regius professor of Divinity at Oxford, wrote in one of his lectures ....
"As G.E. Moore argued, one cannot assume that a way in which I naturally tend to behave is desirable, either for myself or for others .... the tendency to hate foreigners, and for men to subjegate and rape women, are tendencies that have proved quite conductive to human survival as a species. But they could hardly be called good, or in accord with the purposes of God ..."
http://www.gresham.ac.uk/event.asp?PageId=45&EventId=496
It is true about male and pale in politics and business. Much more opportunity and mentoring for women needed in these fields.
It seems a great many of our fellow Americans are supporting a particular woman for entry into the halls of power. However, she's not getting good press here this week:
http://americamagazine.org/blog/entry.cfm?blog_id=2&entry_id=3110
Well, no one can say anymore that the Church favors rich Republicans.
Please excuse my irony and thanks for writing, bill
Please excuse me but I don't know what a "complementarist" is. I know I can ggogle this but perhaps you can explain sometime.
Men and women....both made in the image of a loving Creator, both possessing a soul, both seeking love and security, both trying to exercise their talents....they are more alike than anything else in this universe...each endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among them the pursuit of happiness...
This discussion could proceed further, but would another time be okay, maybe even pm? (ornum@earthlink.net). Sometimes I put my foot in my mouth on this one (and this is probably a difference between men and women?). bill
President Omama has recently remarked that he is interested in developing social policy based on science. I'm going to follow this and see which scientists and their works are selected. As many know, the social sciences don't have the precision and rigor of some of the other sciences, and at the present time in the USA research that advances certain agendas may be more likely to obtain grant funds.
Who was that eloquent and mellifluous Senator from NY...he had wavy white hair...ah....Daniel Patrick Moynihan....didn't he come to the conclusion that fatherless homes, especially in the inner city, were to blame for many urban ills?
Just drove through the inner city where I used to work....hardly any of the kids had fathers in their lives...wish they had....I said to a friend when we were driving, "There have been about ten murders within a couple of blocks where we are right now, in the past few years." Suspect many of the perpetrators grew up fatherless.
Of course, probably better to be fatherless than tutored in crime or alcohol or drugs by your Dad.... amdg, bill
p.s. Dorothy Dennerstein, I am afraid, could not get tenure today anywhere in the USA if she espoused that viewpoint. I doubt a civil discussion could occur with that as an theory.
You picked a good study, one that is coming out in a blue-ribbon, peer-reviewed journal. Kudos and my hat is off. There are tens of millions of heterosexual couples just in the USA who would probably learn some good things from the 86 lesbian couples who participated in this important study.
I think many things can be true at once. The 86 couples in the study you mentioned sound like wonderful parents. Many fathers are good parents. Many are not. Some are especially bad. Same for mothers. (Suspect, though, that majority of grandmothers who raise their son's or daughter's kids are saints who are going to get to heaven, maybe even before JP II. LOL)
As mentioned in our first interchange-men, women, lesbians, gay men, the children, families, friends, etc. etc. of each-share the same dignity of personhood before God. So the study you mentioned may help many keep many from profiling or prejudice toward other children in that situation, encourage kindness and love, and I am confident that falls under the rubric WWJD. Thanks for reading everything so carefully and brining in other resources. Hope you are having a good summer. bill
So, Dorothy, I apologize and hope I did better this time!!
I can attest to the sanctity of grandparents raising their grandchildren. I know many of them.
So, Dorothy, I apologize and hope I did better this time!!
I can attest to the sanctity of grandparents raising their grandchildren. I know many of them.
Mea culpa for my judging without looking at a primary source, and I criticize others for this same hasty short-cut.. So easy to do when blogging. I ran a scholar.google.com search on Dorothy Dinnerstein. All told she there were about 1500 other scholars who cited her book. This is a HUGE number as Jung comes in at about 1900 and Freud at 4500-6000. (I know people who become prideful with 2 or 3).
More reading for me to do. We are having a Fall Conference on Feminism at Marist College in the Fall, and perhaps someone involved in the Conference can teach me more. Perhaps Women's Study courses are looking at this more now than Psychology, with its emphasis on cognitive behaviorism?
Thanks for introducing me to this line of important thinking. bill
p.s. for info on conference, contact joanne.myers@marist.edu tx
Oh, it was just that when I read this psrt of the post by Meg Meeker, M.D. ...
"The natural aggression of boys needs to be channeled-learning about hunting, the great battles of history, as well as how to make a bow-and-arrow are all appropriate topics. “I’ve learned that when it comes to raising sons,” Meeker said, “what is politically correct and what is true are often at opposite ends of the spectrum.”"
... it seemed to be saying that males and females are significantly different in steriotypical and compeimentary ways. But I think (and I could be wrong) that people fall somwhere along a contnuum between the two extremes of hunting and embroidery :) whether they're boys or girls, and that doesn't have anuthing to do with being PC. I just wonder if her sons like to hunt because all boys like to hunt or if they do so because she has communicated to them her belief that boys like to hunt.
The listening part is so important, and I see this when working with college students. Working "along with" them rather than being a font of facts (they have Wikipedia) is so important. I wish I had all of their energy! bill
I'm sure the activities of the family and the culture of the neighborhood make a big difference. When I lived in Chicago, I don't think I knew anyone who went hunting, but if you just go into Wisconsin it seems like lots and lots of people do this as they have been doing it for many years. So this is something kids learn.
Is embroidery becoming a lost art? Not many people doing it that I know of, at least in NY. Might be a good thing to teach restless boys.....and to show them the beautiful things that can be made. Or to sew? at least, buttons...
That idea of continuum is so important and each person we meet is going to be different than anyone else we've met before.
have a good day, bill
It is not the sort of stuff we were exposed to as a kid and a lot of it is more crass but being competitive and winning is everywhere. What has changed is that the girls are definitely participating in this culture much more than they did when I was growing up. I love ice hockey and the few occasions when I go to a pro game there will be lots of young women in the home team's jersey with their favorite player on the back.
Good you are bringing this up with the college students.
1. Prison Ministry is an important way, not only to help prisoners, but to bring more transparency to prisons. It's also among our marching orders in the Beatitudes. Good article here: http://americamagazine.org/content/article.cfm?article_id=12369
2. Yes
3. Perhaps a but off topic, but important:
Satel and Sommers represent viewpoints that might be characterized as being to the Right on the political spectrum.
One prominent national association, in an article in one of its own journals, discovered that 95% of the values and policy recommendations in its peer-reviewed articles had a strong Left bias.
This seems peculiar for many reasons, one among them being that the country at this time is fairly evenly divided politically. Further, many with an opinion toward the Right believed their views got short shrift. Interesting for a profession that emphasizes diversity...
The reaction to "One Country Under therapy" seemed to validate the feelings of marginalization for one corpus of respectable thinking. The NYT had a vituperative review of this book.
Yes, we can go back and forth on how these authors evaluate research, but in doing so perhaps an equally intensive examination of research on the other side is warranted.
Sommers and Satel offer one example in their book of a funeral home emphasizing the need for grief counseling to families. I have heard of the same.
Some see a need for certain professions to allow a diversity of viewpoints among their discussions and policies. We seem to do this much more in the Church; this magazine, Commonweal, First Things, NCR, and The Tablet all do a good job of commenting on what the powers that be in the "heirarchy" are doing. Is there this same transparency in the helping professions?
Another good question for students. There are often representatives of both political sides in college classrooms; faculty beliefs are often skewed.
Thanks for the thoughtful reading here and the highly intelligent discussion points. best, bill
DA' FRIDGE, as we yelled in Chicago in 1985-86.
The Super Bowl Shuffle. God bless the memories of Gayle Sayers and Walter Peyton.
One of the most moving examples of "sensitivity" and "gentleness" occurred around 1966 during the midst of great racial unrest. A pitcher hit a Dodger catcher in the head three times with a bat, opening a severe wound. All hell broke lose, and a major riot was averted when a player FROM THE OTHER TEAM pulled the angry catcher away and into the dugout.
There, he lay the catcher's head in his lap, cleared some of the blood and hair away from the wounds, and started crying.
Who was the peacemaker? Willie Mays, the Say Hey kid.
Later, the catcher forgave his assailant and helped him get into the Hall of Fame.
bill
I'm blessed to have many varsity female athlete in my classes, as many go on to become teachers or psychologists.
Each-yes each, in 20 years-has been disciplined, respectful, and a great representative of the school.
I have learned, on good authority and from more than one source, that women lacrosse players have been known to hit someone from the other team on the lower calf when the refs aren't looking.
Probably learned this from the guys...or dare we imply that sometimes "girls will be girls.."
again, GO MARIST LADY RED FOXES!!! amdg, bill