Abstract- 20200201- 6

**“I Don’t Cry, EVER”: The Miseducation of the American Boy**

An EcoChi Vital Abstract

This article was published in the January/February 2020 Issue of The Atlantic, written by Peggy Orenstein.

I knew nothing about Cole before meeting him; he was just a name on a list of boys at a private school outside Boston who had volunteered to talk with me. As I rushed down a hallway at the school, I noticed a boy sitting outside, waiting—it had to be him. My first reaction was Oh no. It was totally unfair, a scarlet letter of personal bias. Cole would later describe himself to me as a “typical tall white athlete” guy, and that is exactly what I saw. At 18, he stood more than 6 feet tall, with broad shoulders and short-clipped hair. He was planning to enter a military academy the following fall. His friends were “the jock group…They’re what you’d expect, I guess. Let’s leave it at that.” If I had closed my eyes and described the boy I imagined would never open up to me, it would have been him. But Cole surprised me. He pulled up a picture on his phone of his girlfriend, whom he’d been dating for the past 18 months, describing her proudly as “way smarter than I am,” a feminist, and a bedrock of emotional support. He also confided how he’d worried, that he wouldn’t know how to act with other guys. “I could talk to girls platonically,” he said. “That was easy. But being around guys was different. I needed to be a ‘bro,’ and I didn’t know how to do that.” Cole eventually found his people on the crew team, but it wasn’t a smooth fit at first. He recalled an incident when a senior was bragging in the locker room about how he’d convinced—a young female sophomore—that they were an item, then started hooking up with other girls behind her back. And the guy wasn’t shy about sharing the details. Cole and a friend of his, told him to knock it off. “I started to explain why it wasn’t appropriate,” Cole said, “but he just laughed.” “I don’t know what to do,” he continued earnestly. “Once I’m in the military, and I’m a part of that culture, I don’t want to have to choose between my own dignity and my relationship with others I’m serving with. But …” He looked me in the eye. “How do I make it so I don’t have to choose?” When asked to describe the attributes of “the ideal guy,” these boys appear to be harking back to 1955. Dominance. Aggression. Rugged good looks. Sexual prowess. Stoicism. Athleticism. Wealth. Athletic teams promote bonding, preach honor, pride, and integrity, yet they tend to condition young men to treat anyone who is not “on the team” as the enemy (the only women who make the cut are blood relatives— bros before hos!), justifying any hostility toward them. Loyalty is paramount, and masculinity is habitually established through misogynist language and homophobia. “Maybe the best I can do is to just be a decent guy,” he continued. “The best I can do is lead by example, then Cole added, “I really hope that will make a difference.”