Entry nº 20: Double entry notebook: Real Boys by William Pollack

“Boys who seem ok on the surface are suffering silently inside (…) “they feel detached from their own selves and often feel alienated from parents, siblings and peers” page 21. I think this statement is in many cases true. I have a 16 year-old brother who seems completely isolated from the rest of the family, and I think it is so hard for him to open up that he has serious problems to establish a friendship with other boys of his age.
“Boys get behind the mask of masculinity” page 22. through out my life I have experienced the absolutely truth of this statement. Anytime I stablish a relation of any sort with males, they tend to hide their inner feeling and show their thoughness and strength otherwise they are treated as weak “mumy’s boys”.
“We are at a disadvantage when talk about boys, because our view of boys is so influenced and distorted by society’s myths about them” “These stereotypes are false and limiting” page 22. I think that we will never get to know or understand men’s inner selves until we take out of our minds the society’s myths about them, as well as the sterotypes in which we, especially women, tend to place them.
“Yet if boys don’t conform to these ideas, society has ways of shaming them into compliance” page 24.
This statement resumes the sort of typical punishment that are given to men who do not fit in the “gender strait jacket”. They are usually humiliated for not being as “machos or as men” as they are expected to be. Instead of being listened and understood they are blamed for being weak.