Little Boys Shouldn’t Be Anything Else

I would like to thank Mary Ann Hogan for “He-Men in Training” (April 28). While it is wrong to excuse harassment and destructive behavior on the grounds that “boys will be boys,” it is equally wrong to suppress competitiveness and self-affirming behavior on the grounds that boys should be something else.

If Hogan is worried that her son will never appreciate poetry, she might recall the line from Whitman’s “Song of Myself” which speaks for little boys of all ages: “I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.”

FRED WEHLING

Santa Monica

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