To Be A Boy In America Essay, Research Paper

Being a male in America, the center of Western culture, is not by any means easy.

We’re plagued by stereotypes and we fight among ourselves. We grow up programmed to act a

certain way, talk a certain way, and to do certain things. Unfortunately, this mental

conditioning is not productive, nor is it healthy. And one of the major contributors to this

problem is our ‘scientific’ system of education. As C. S. Lewis stated in one of his books called

The Abolition of Man, the motives of scientific education are questionable because it appears

that “…the ‘trousered ape’ and the ‘urban blockhead’ may be precisely the kind of man they

really wish to produce.” It this ‘trousered ape’ that we are seeing now in our schools. But, it is

more than that. Scientific education allows all types of bullying and brutality (physical and

verbal) to go on, simply because it refuses to wield the weapons that will crush them. The

reader may wish to know what these magical weapons are, so I will attempt to explain. The

weapons with to combat this epidemic of abuse are morals. Scientific education teaches it’s

pupils that “Truth is relative; everyone has there own truth.” and “Right is whatever is right for

you.” When you teach people this from the crib, is it then really so difficult to see why there

are wars on crime and drugs?

Additionally, the male mind is conditioned to think that a man cannot feel emotion, that

men should not be thoughtful or caring, and that a man cannot express a feeling of agape love

for another man, because if he does he is by default homosexual. Western culture promotes

the idea that a man must lust after women, and any man who doesn’t must be gay. What ever

happened to the apostle Paul who said that, “…It is good to remain as I [unmarried], but if they

cannot contain themselves, let them marry, for it is better to marry than to burn.” (1Corithians

7:8,9) And again, the Western man is expected to revel in all things that are violent, brutally

physical, and competitive, and yet he is to shun all things that require a gentler spirit, such as

drama, art, poetry, and literature.

Another plague to the male in America is the sever homophobia that runs deep in our

society. Anything that a boy might do that doesn’t fit into the strict and rigid ‘boy-code’ leaves

him to be branded as a ‘fag’ by his peers. And, over time, the emotional abuse to the sensitive

boy leads one of two ways. The Type A product represses his anger and humiliation and

dreams of revenge upon those that tortured him (there are even a couple of these in our class);

whereas, the Type B product copes by retreating into a world of fantasy, and he will attempt to

lose himself in tales of ancient civilizations and future times. (Coincidentally, I am a Type B

person.)

To be a boy in America is hard, and boys only make it harder on each other. If only every guy

in our culture could be made to understand that, then perhaps boys in our society could

actually grow up to be the kind of men that are able to understand why their wives get upset

when they forget things like anniversaries, or the kind of fathers that can actually be a father

figure to their children.