We Need to Teach Boys to Feel
COVID-19 Has Shown Us the World’s Future Depends on it
It’s no coincidence that the countries with women leaders have been far more successful at fighting COVID-19.
Jacinda Ardern, Prime Minister of New Zealand, has been praised for her leadership during this tragic pandemic. With just 1,514 COVID-19 cases and 25 deaths, Ardern proved that her immediate lockdown to save lives worked. For a population of 5 million, those are impressive statistics.
Germany’s COVID-19 death rate has been far lower than many of its neighboring countries, like France. Germany’s leader, Angela Merkel, took a similar approach as Ardern. She approached her nation with the facts while showing compassion. Her calming message inspired confidence in the German people.
Another female leader, Tsai Ing-wen, the president of Taiwan, has been praised for her country’s success in managing the pandemic. Taiwan’s location alone could have made the country a COVID-19 disaster. Despite the odds, Taiwan has only had 7 COVID-19 deaths to date. The country’s contact tracing, testing, and advanced electronic health care records system all helped contribute to its success.
The facts confirm that women leaders have performed better than their male counterparts in dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. But the question is, why?
Perhaps it’s because women care more about others. During this tragedy, female leaders have been thoughtful and empathetic. Why? Because society taught them too.
What happened to our male leaders? Do male leaders, like President Trump and others, seriously not give a shit if people live or die? Perhaps, or maybe they’re modeling what they think a good leader does.
A traditional leader has typically been characterized as someone whose strong, aggressive, and powerful. They don’t bow down to their enemies because they could appear weak.
We taught them to be this way with society’s view of masculinity. Now that the enemy is not another country, but a sickness, where has that left us? You can’t scare “COVID-19” into submission by refusing to show fear and not wear a mask.
The only thing that traditional masculine leadership has proved during COVID-19 is choosing not to show fear leads to a higher death rate and increases suffering for all.
It’s become clear that COVID-19 isn’t going away anytime soon. What other enemies are lurking in our future? Climate change is another adversary that you can’t scare into submission by appearing powerful and aggressive.
The gendered messaging we’re still forcing upon the youth needs to stop. As a global society, we need to focus on helping our girls and our boys. Our future depends on a new kind of leadership, one based upon our shared humanity.
Glennon Doyle addresses this in her new New York Times bestseller, Untamed. In her book, Glennon recalls an “Ahah!” moment when she went into her children’s bathroom, and on one side was her son’s bathroom products marketed with bold words like “bigger, slam odor, drop-kick dirt,” all written in red, white and blue.
On the other side of the shower were her daughters’ bottles of shampoo and body washes, all pink and purple, and lacking any verbs. The bottles were plastered with adjectives like “gentle, alluring, and radiant.”
The author is disgusted that this is still the message we’re giving our sons and daughters in 2020. Glennon states, “There I was, in the twenty-first century, when boys are still being taught that real men are big, bold, violent, invulnerable, disgusted by femininity, and responsible for conquering women and the world.”
Many have started teaching their daughters how to survive and thrive in a male-dominated world. Glennon recalls all the intentional things she did for her daughter since birth to help her succeed in the patriarchal society in which we live. She played her audiobooks in utero about brave women. She taught her to be bold and to keep raising her hand.
But she realized that she didn’t reciprocate these intentional teaching moments to her son. Glennon Doyle is not alone. Boys are suffering too.
Why are we shocked when they turn out to be precisely how society taught them to be? In the words of Glennon Doyle, “…our minds are polluted by our training.”
We need to stop teaching boys to suppress their emotions. We need to stop treating things like kindness and empathy as feminine traits. As Glennon Doyle points out, these are HUMAN traits.
In the early stages of COVID-19, Jacinda Ardern tuned in live after putting her child to bed, and told her country they were going into lockdown. This choice wasn’t “feminine” or “masculine,” it was merciful, and it was kind. She chose saving lives as her priority. And in doing so, she saved much more than that. This is what a good leader looks like, a human.
Angela Merkel is praised for listening to advice from a diverse group of people. She listened, and she learned, and she used that knowledge to make decisions. Listening, like Angela Merkel, instead of talking over others to appear powerful, is what a good leader does.
It seems like we need a lot more mercy, kindness, and empathy. It’s these feelings and human traits that are what are going to carry us out of the mess we’ve gotten ourselves in.
COVID-19 and climate change are not going to respond to power, competitiveness, and rage. They are going to require that we learn, listen to each other, and care about others.
As parents, educators, or role models, we need to set our intentions to raise boys who know that it’s okay to have emotions. We need to feel our feelings.
It’s okay to show fear, and it’s okay to cry. Being quiet and tender are human traits, not feminine characteristics. Listening to others, not speaking over them, is what makes you powerful.
We need to teach both girls and boys to embrace their humanity before it’s too late.
With more feelings, our world’s future looks bright.
