Patriarchy hurts boys, too

Yesterday I co-facilitated a gender awareness workshop for a group of secondary school students from an all-boys school as part of a PSA competition the organisation I work for – Penang Women’s Development Corporation (PWDC) – is sponsoring. We presented the concept of sex (biologically determined) vs. gender (social construct) and what is gender equality.

This was the first time we were working with a group of all boys (secondary school students, to be exact), thus the materials for the workshop were specifically tailored to relate to this particular demographic. Mainly, how are we going to make them grasp what gender equality is and how gender inequality also affects boys and men?

The reason behind wanting these boys to see that gender inequality affects them as much as girls and women is because often times when we talk about gender inequality, we talk about what men have and what women do not.

Although more needs to be done to level the playing field for women, society at large often looks at gender equality exclusively as a “women’s issue”, when in fact gender inequality affects every segment of society.

More so if the words patriarchy or patriarchal society is mentioned, the automatic reaction is “Oh, yet another feminist diatribe”, “what does this have to do with men” or “how is it equal, all you do is talk about women”?

What happens most of the time is people are not taking the time to analyse or reflect the impact gender inequality and patriarchy have on men and boys. In her book “Unspeakable Things”, Laurie Penny writes:

“Patriarchy, throughout most of human history, is what has oppressed and constrained men and boys as well as women. Patriarchy is a top-down system of male dominance that is established with violence or with the threat of violence. When feminists say ‘patriarchy hurts men too’, this is what we really mean. Patriarchy is painful, and violent, and hard for men to opt out of, and bound up with the economic and class system of capitalism’.”

So we dedicated a substantial chunk of the workshop to exploring the various expectations that are placed on boys in our patriarchal society. We asked them, as boys, what were the expectations placed on them from their families, the society they live in, their school and themselves.

Listening and interacting to them during this group discussion session was revealing. Of the group I facilitated, three out of four boys have sisters and they all said that their parents treated them much differently from their sisters. “They talk to my sister nicely and softly and they are more gentle to her. Not to me,” said one of them, his face betraying the hurt he felt.

When prodded why, they could not answer me. Clearly it was not a case of their parents showing preferential treatment of one over another.  Then I asked them, “What about your sister? What do you think your parents expect of her in the way she talks and behaves?”

“They expect her to be soft and caring,” said one, while another said “Not tough like boy.” That was the Ah-Ha moment for them. Boys are expected to be tough and girls are expected to be gentle; boys are expected to be leaders in their families and girls are expected to be the softer, more nurturing ones. “Be a man,” they said was something that is told to them constantly.

Because these expectations are placed on the boys, people around them interact with them differently. Instead of talking to their sons in the same manner as they talk to their daughters, parents can seem harsher to their sons, which could lead to them having residual anger towards their parents.

Interestingly, earlier in the workshop when we were going through gender characteristics, the boys had ALL indicated that anger was a trait that was masculine. We then screened the trailer for “The Mask You Live In”, a documentary on the impact of American masculinity on boys and young men, which also touched on the issue of anger that boys and men have.

Much to our delight, the boys in our workshop made the connection between anger and violence, that how boys are brought up in an environment that normalises aggression and violence as a means to an end.

In another group we talked about road rage – how if a woman was to display road rage she would be labelled “crazy” where else if it was a man, he would not be called crazy but instead be thought of as it being normal. This was also the group that put down “Failure is not an option” as one of the expectations placed on boys.

So when feminists say that patriarchy also hurts boys and men, this is what we mean: the constraints of masculinity through the expectations placed on boys do not create “strong” men, but men full of hurt, rejection and anger. – March 15, 2015.

* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insider.