Please Talk to Your Sons

No one is missing the pattern in high school mass shootings, right?  Alienated white boys.

I'd be the first one to say - because I believe it to be true - that it truly is harder to be a teen today than when I was a teenager.  Not to say that we didn't all feel angst and pain - the sting of rejections, slights, bullying, etc. - that's teen life.  Kids can be thoughtless and hurtful to each other (and, of course, bullying is never acceptable).  But kids today are able to do all those things faster and get messages out to masses of more people than we did.  It's pretty horrible.


And, I think there is real worry for teens about what their working life will look like (if/when they find a job).  It's not "I'll just go work at the factory for 40 hours a week."

In sum, who will love me and what will I be when I grow up?

I'm not a mental health expert so I can't say if I believe that most of these boys have mental health issues.  One could say that anyone who wants to kill other people in a mass attack IS mentally ill.

But let's take the latest shooting.  The shooter - whose name we are NOT going to print - did this:

From Feminist News:

Among the first victims of the latest mass murder in a school was a girl who the shooter apparently targeted specifically.   

 He had been making overtures to her for months and she repeatedly rejected him.  Apparently, she finally got fed up and rejected him in class in front of others, which embarrassed him.

But some headlines read, "School shooting victim rejected shooter and embarrassed him in class."  What if, instead, the headline read:

"School shooting victim harassed by shooter for months before he killed her."

Words matter.  How we talk about things matters.  These are both basically accurate statements but one of them implies that the victim's behavior caused her death and perpetuates the idea that if women don't 'play nice' and give men what they want, they can expect to suffer violent consequences.  The other puts the blame squarely where it belongs.

Going deeper, there is this new movement - thankfully small - of men who think women HAVE to date them and, if they don't, they should be punished.

There's one group - MGTOW - Men Going Their Own Way.  

MGTOW (pronounced “MIG-tau,” at least per everyone I spoke with) is a worldwide social phenomenon and online community of heterosexual men who have chosen a lifestyle that avoids legal and romantic entanglements with women at all costs. A Man Going His Own Way values self-ownership above all else, believing that he — and only he — has the right to decide what his goals in life should be. He refuses to surrender his will to the social expectations of women and society since he believes both have become hostile toward him.

Then there's the Incel (Involuntary and Celibate) Movement.  From the LA Times:

Elliot Rodger turned the fury of his miserable virginity on the UC Santa Barbara student community of Isla Vista, murdering six people and killing himself in 2014. He wrote to other incels, “Start envisioning a world where WOMEN FEAR YOU.” Last autumn, the online site Reddit banned an incel discussion group for promoting violence. And in April, a Toronto man who allegedly ran down pedestrians in a van and killed 10 of them had declared online, “The Incel Rebellion has begun!”

These young men don’t feel entitled to sex. They're reaching out and they're not being responded to — they're being rejected.

But they're also usually not the ones that are successful in the world. They’re usually boys that grow up without fathers. They don't have good postponed gratification. They don't have good discipline. They haven't had boundary enforcement as they grow up. They don't know how to achieve their dreams. And they feel like losers, and girls and women see them as losers.

But they still have the same drive, but the drives get sublimated in porn, and they feel like the more they get into porn, the more they feel alienated from the very girls and women that they want, and the more the women feel objectified by them. So it's a vicious cycle.

These young men don’t feel entitled to sex. They're reaching out and they're not being responded to — they're being rejected.

But they're also usually not the ones that are successful in the world. They’re usually boys that grow up without fathers. They don't have good postponed gratification. They don't have good discipline. They haven't had boundary enforcement as they grow up. They don't know how to achieve their dreams. And they feel like losers, and girls and women see them as losers.

But they still have the same drive, but the drives get sublimated in porn, and they feel like the more they get into porn, the more they feel alienated from the very girls and women that they want, and the more the women feel objectified by them. So it's a vicious cycle.

That's another huge issue - the introduction of real porn (not Playboy magazine porn) to boys at younger and younger ages.  Ask your son if he has seen porn even if you think he's too young. His answer might surprise you. 

Tell your sons that NO girl has to date them.  That's life.  BUT, what I always tell teens (because I think it is true) is that somewhere in that high school, someone IS pining after you but you need to look around to find him or her.