Letters to the Editor: Ideas of ‘manliness’ are doing real harm to boys and men
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To the editor: Thank you, guest contributor Michael A. Messner (“If tackle football isn’t safe for girls, why do we let boys play?,” Aug. 25). I, too, want to ask and have asked in the past, “What about the boys and men?”
Why do we humans not better weigh and prevent the unnecessary harms of our acculturated assumptions about “manliness” to boys and men?
In my own 1990s research, I too found powerful cultural effects limiting boys and men from developing and using many important human traits and skills, and forcing self-harm (both physical and mental) for the sake of being thought of, and feeling themselves, to be “manly men.”
Humans are far more than their anatomy and their hormones. When will we ever learn?
Barbara Sophia Eurich-Rascoe, Pasadena
This writer is the author of the 1997 book “Femininity and Shame: Women, Men, and Giving Voice to the Feminine.”
