There is a gap between males and females that is not genetic but strictly cultural and which concerns emotional education. To fill it, it will be important to move away from the classic model of “virile” man and rather approach a culture made of emotions
It is known that, in the past, education and access to studies were precluded, and that still today, in many parts of the world, their right to equal school education is not respected. But there is an area of education in which the boys remain “back”: emotional education. Let’s see in detail what it is.
Cry “like a female”
Some time ago a forty -year -old patient of mine told me about the hatred that he felt as a child towards football: he did not like playing at all, but the father had however forced him to undertake that “male sport”. From then on my patient had changed several teams, because – according to him – he did not know how to play well and was always left on the bench. “In the end, however, I became very good, a very strong striker,” he said, with shiny eyes. Then he added: “Excuse me, get excited and cry like a female.” Behind his “shame” in showing me his emotion, I immediately saw the difficulties of many children, future men, who avoid saying what they want, what they need, how they feel they feeland that one day they will put aside sensitivity and compassion, as if they were heavy burdens to wear, close clothes to wear.
The “scepter” of virility
The space of psychotherapy gives me back, through the stories of adults, the images of children who deal with a sort of conquest of their “scepter” of virilitysomething that leaves no room for sweetness and sensitivity, erroneously interpreted by society as female attributes (therefore signs of weakness?). Those who pay the consequences are not only women, but also men, who in this way risk losing contact with their experiences: unwanted emotions, difficult words, tenderness not shared. In short, while children grow up, becoming boys and then adults, it seems to decrease their possibility of expressing what they feel, as if at some point they lost the key to access to the emotional world.
But when does this start? Is the male children throw the key away or are we adults who no longer share the access code anymore? The answer is that both happen. In this regard, it is good to underline that The way we educate our children and the culture that is given to them can be “aggressive” and “disabled”especially for those who cannot keep up: the most sensitive child and the kindest and most empathetic boy risk becoming a ridicule, precisely because their values are not recognized by the pack and are, on the contrary, considered foreign, to be condemned.
Men also cry
Difference education arises from children: the colors we choose for the rooms of the children and for their clothes; The cartoons that we let him watch, where there is a clear distinction between what belongs to the female world (the tricks, the pink clothes …) and what belongs to the male one (weapons, muscles …). Nevertheless Men cry, they are sad or are afraid, but these emotional experiences are suffocated With phrases like “crying is by girl” or “don’t be afraid. Being the man! ».
To cite the American sociologist Michael Kimmel, we must change the perspective of the matter, answering a double question: what does it mean to be a “true man”? And what does it mean to be a “good man”? The idea is to abandon the stereotyped – and incomplete – “true man” image linked to the idea of power, safety, protection, and approaching the “good man”, in the sense of human being at 360 degrees, endowed with strength and weakness, of safety and insecurity, of sense of protection but also of need to feel protected.
Gender equality is a gift not only for women, but also for mensince he teaches the latter to change and replace old forms of masculinity – who block their relationships and their emotional well -being – with new forms of identity that include the freedom to be themselves. To date, the children have lived their masculinity as a process “to remove” (do not cry, not to be fragile etc.) and, since early childhood, with fear of being perceived by others as weak. It is an incorrect equation, given by gender stereotypes, which does not allow males to develop the emotional skills that their peers have (skills, however, universal, based on the fact that we are social animals). And here the relationships, empathy and emotions are put, over time, under control because you consider female, therefore to be diminished.
The idea of the Alfa male
Some time ago, a small 11 -year -old patient told me that poetry doesn’t like poetry “because it is from females”. He wants to be a banker to become rich, and therefore he added: “What does a banker of poetry do it?”.
I asked myself: how many growth opportunities is this child losing? How strong is the external education that influenced it in this way?
Educating children to a type of masculinity based on power and force does nothing but create insecure teenagers and adultsin need of having to “act” their masculinity to demonstrate outside to be true men. This is because if the emotional characteristics of a male are considered linked to the area of behavior and not of feeling, to demonstrate to others and to themselves “to be men”, males will tend to intervene with actions consistent with their own social status. We could summarize everything in the concept “weak no, angry yes”, with the result that the refusal of certain emotions risks coinciding with the refusal of the female (in this regard, it should be added that bullying and gender violence derive from this type of gender education).
The additional risk is that when these kids will have difficulties or moments of despair, they will not be able to communicate it (showing one’s “weakness” does not fall into their masculinity code); A type of attitude that makes adolescent males at risk of psychological problems, precisely because it is not possible to identify immediately and early of these hidden suffering.
The “plastic” brain
Neuroscience tell us that the brain has its own plasticity, and that the skills most used are also reinforced in the neuronal level, while, on the contrary, the neurological connections of what we do not exercise will fall. We therefore help the new generations to fill a gap – that between males and females – which is not genetic but strictly cultural. Anger or empathy are both relational possibilities coded neurobiologically as innate predispositions. It is up to us parents and to society to guide children to strengthen the right path. In short, Switching from the feeling of power to power of feeling is a positive challengea good road that girls and boys, men and women must travel together.
