"Boys Have Deep Emotional Lives"

"We have a very hard time seeing the signs of how and when boys want to talk to us. We also have a hard time--even though we think we don't--acknowledging that boys have deep emotional lives. We believe that because we can't see it, it's not there...

Great young men want to have rich emotional lives, but everywhere they turn, people are forcing them to live the stereotype of being a sexist, not-caring, emotionally disengaged, superficial guy. It's amazing because we turn around and get angry with them when they go over the line, without acknowledging what we do as adults that stifles and silences and shuts boys up from being emotionally engaged people...

After years of convincing themselves that everything's fine, it's really difficult for them to recognize when things are not fine, when things are over the line. It goes right from young boys unable to say, "What's happening is not fine" to boys at a party seeing a girl who's drunk with four guys around her, and the boys conditioned to not acknowledge the potential danger that's in front of them."
http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/09/boys-have-deep-emotional-lives/279359/?utm_source=SFFB