Raising Gentle-men
In Defense of Boyhood
“I really love you mama.”
These words from my 12-year-old son in their sincerity and heartfelt truth are like sugar to my soul. He says something like this at least a few times a day. And as the horrific abuses of men continue to mount in our news feeds, his professions of true love feel particularly sweet, tender and profound. How did he and I get here? Where our love is real and true. Where he knows that I am a safe place and that his tenderness, his empathy is a superpower. How can we share this knowing with other boys so they too become gentle men someday? He is not motherless. He is grounded in his mother’s love and his love of his mother Earth. This is his strength.
As I felt his words hit my ears, I sat and simmered in them with deep joy. And then that joy settled and unsettled within me as I imagined the crude worlds of male privilege and violence that my sweet son would inevitably be up against in his life. There is no going around it. And I cannot protect him forever.
How did we arrive at this place? Where being male in the dominant culture often means engaging in horrific acts of micro and macro violences against women and the Earth? What is the responsibility, the kuleana*, the blessed work we mothers have to do to raise boys in a society that trains them to harm women? Yes, our society trains them. From the earliest moments of life we train our boys to be toxic to women. Only a lucky few survive this gauntlet of socialization without permanent damage.
What are we doing to ourselves? To our boys?
It starts early. We teach girls in grade school that the boy who is bullying them must ‘have a crush on you.’ Excuse me? So the jerk who just pulled my braids is unable to express his affection for me in a healthy way. I’m supposed to think that’s normal? What kind of psychopath perpetuates violence on the woman he is attracted to? Oh yeah, a majority of men in the modern world. That’s right. Motherless.com. Epstein. The guy nextdoor who hits his wife. Not all men, but far too many men.
I remember when I first got to college at UCLA and learned about the bizarre institutions that we call fraternities and sororities. I somehow found myself ‘rushing’ – the term for interviewing to join a sorority or fraternity house – and then being part of that cultural conundrum for two years. “It’s a great way to make friends,” my mom told me. I did find friends there who have become lifelong. We all defected the sorority together after year two. I found the whole mess of it so confusing but now I can understand from the inside out this deeply problematic way of supporting young people who are tenderly emerging into adulthood. Maybe there was a time when these institutions served the greater common good. Maybe. But I’ll tell you for sure, that time was not the mid 1990’s.
Sororities were strange with an operating system programmed to homogenization, gossip and competition. But they were nowhere near as toxic as the fraternities. The stories I would hear from my friends and boyfriend were horrifying with some ‘houses’ being much more violent than others. Even then, I knew that they weren’t telling me the worst of it. We’ve built a world where boys get together to hurt and humiliate each other in a socializing practice called hazing. Hazing often so bad that the ‘brothers’ are sworn to secrecy. Racist and mysoginist worldviews are baked into these rites. In 2022, a University of Miami fraternity was shut down because members were recorded chanting about having sex with a dead woman. That was in public with women present and someone recording them. We can begin to imagine what happens in private.
What are we doing?
In the chaos and separation myths of modernity, we have lost the radical root of rites of passage. Rather than rites that secure a sense of belonging and responsibility to the collective body of a community that cares for one another, we have committed ourselves to empty, saccharine rites of passage that are most often unconscious. Rites that have no integration or cultural contextualization and that actually deepen an already prevalent sense of isolation and fear rather than building feelings of connection and care. Think Lord of the Flies versus vision quest. Boys walk into these lion dens with little to no preparation. So many mothers have no vocabulary to talk about these awkward, sensitive topics. We weren’t given any tools by our parents. It’s no wonder many of our boys get swallowed whole.
It’s true that rites of passage in more traditional and indigenous cultures can sometimes be violent and scary. But these rites of passage are held with a fierceness that is also deeply rooted in the love of a tightly knit community. A community that wants to strengthen and support their young ones to become powerful, kind and compassionate leaders in the future.
Francis Weller, author and psychotherapist focusing on grief and healing rituals, shares that the core difference between trauma and a rite of passage is whether or not the initiatory experience is held in a strong and safe container by community. When our boys show up to the fraternity party, they are food for the wolves of misogyny. Held by a culture that doesn’t even understand how toxic it’s become. Where elder-hood is exchanged for domination and fear. Where fitting in requires harming others and yourself.
What are we doing?
Fast-forward to young adult Aubrey being exposed to the equally bizarre world of bachelor party culture. Even as a young woman I knew it was absurd that a man who was about to get married was supposed to celebrate that divine, precious connection with his life partner by going out with a bunch of guys to a strip club, sometimes having sex with a stranger. Excuse me, what?! Ridiculous didn’t even cut it. The whole thing was absurd to me, and I let my boyfriend (now husband) know my opinions very clearly. One particular night my boyfriend and I were having a huge fight about whether he would go to the strip club with ‘the boys’ to celebrate a friend’s upcoming wedding. I was directly confronted by another young woman, a few years older than me, drunk as a skunk, telling me to chill out and stop ruining the boys’ fun. Seriously. That’s how programmed we women have become.
What are we doing?
Strip clubs, pornography, sexist jokes, leering, cat calls all the way to rape culture and pedophilia. Growing up as a boy is a confusing, intense mine field, especially if you truly love your mother, your sister, your grandma, the girls and the women in your life. And isn’t that the point? Our mother is our life force. She literally birthed us. Women are life givers. The ones who bring souls earth-side. In the same ways that we have abandoned our boys to dis-eased cultures of violence, we have abandoned our mothers to dis-eased cultures of neglect, violence and overwhelm. Motherless.
We mothers have to take back the reins. We are the first line of defense for our boys, their example, their safe space. The ones who show them how a woman should be treated and what a healthy femininity feels like. We need to get comfortable with the uncomfortable and taboo topics of masculinity, sexual and gender based violence, positive sexuality and eros. To show our boys what it truly means to be a gentle man who is a safe place for women, children and all the creatures of the Earth.
We mothers need to model a natural beauty that embraces all stages of life. One that doesn’t chase its worth in plastic surgery and the impossible quest for forever youth. If we don’t love ourselves enough to be authentic, to age with grace, to love our body, then we teach our boys that being a woman is a performative act rather than a sacred role in the social fabric of humanity.
What are we doing?
Our society is committed to centering, supporting and perpetrating a sick form of sexuality that has become normalized. A recent study confirmed that the worst forms of sexual content are easily accessible in one or two clicks on a computer. The worst forms. Ones I can’t even bring myself to say here lest they be made more real. That’s how bad it is.
I started talking to my kids about pornography when they were still in elementary school. Most of the other mothers I spoke to were horrified at the prospect. But the facts are clear - the chances of a child seeing pornography before they are 13 are astronomical. Motherless demonstrated yet again that porn sites proliferate. Days after they were shut down, they were up online again. Somehow, despite our very clear ability to censor and shut down anything we want to, porn sites are immune. We have to come to terms with the harsh reality that we live in a society that glorifies violence against women.
What are we doing?
The hard truth is your child is going to see porn at some point. It’s imperative that you talk with them about it. In a way that is calm and comfortable, with no charge and no shame attached. If you’ve already warned them about porn and let them know that you know what it is and that they can talk to you about it, the chance that they will come to you for support increases exponentially. We can’t be afraid to talk about these things. The porn industry is not afraid at all. It’s coming for all our innocents. It’s our job to protect them.
The deep sickness that proliferates this harm is our disconnect from our first mother, Earth. This disconnection from Earth is then mirrored in normalization of a systematized disconnect from our human mother. Women in America get on average 10 weeks of maternity leave. 10 weeks! And close to 25% return to work after 2 weeks. What? A 10-week-old baby should be with their mother. A 2-week old baby should definitely be with their mother. We are disconnecting children from their primary source of love and safety. It is time to face the truth that we are awash in an entanglement of systems that devalue mothers and women and teach boys to become abusive men.
What are we doing?
My son is 12. A tender age of growth and change. He is a sweet, loving, kind boy. I teach him that kindness is a superpower. That he is always safe with his mother. I show him that I see and honor his unique gifts even if I don’t understand them. I let him know that I don’t expect him to be anyone other than himself.
He knows that violence is never the best answer. That protection of Life is his kuleana, his blessed right and responsibility, as a protector in this lifetime. I teach him that we are peace makers. That he is part of a wider, magnificent web of life. That he is safe to cry and feel and have empathy for others. That empathy is powerful and strong and wise. It is a gift to be his mother.
May his small acts of bravery and kindness be a drop in the waves of change coursing through our dis-eased cultures of violence. May every mother everywhere feel supported in raising her son(s) to be honorable men who love and protect the women, children and more than human beings in their lives. May we remember the holy sacredness of our precious mother Earth. May all these things be true in our lifetimes.
This is my potent prayer. Please hold it with me.
Lexicon
Kuleana: In Hawaiian culture, a relational sense of responsibility, privilege, and stewardship. It refers to what is rightfully yours to care for within a web of relationships – land, family, community, or role. It implies reciprocal belonging. What you are entrusted with, and how you show up to tend it with integrity.
