Boys 4 Real | Crommunist

1 Boys 4 Real – Reflection Week 5

I will readily confess that Week 5 is the one I was most looking forward to. Our fifth module looks explicitly at societally-defined and reinforced images/definitions of masculinity. For someone with my particular set of interests, this module was a big part of the reason I wanted to get involved in the program in the first place. I think that, short of protecting and encouraging women, recognizing the arbitrariness of the boundaries around ‘manliness’ is a practicable and meaningful step toward reducing gender inequality. Because the most common contemporary version of masculinity is also tied up in femmephobia, homophobia, and manifest destiny ideation, tearing down that particular edifice helps open a path to a number of other pro-equality ideas.

The first activity associated with the module asked the guys to critique some images: a UFC trailer, a scene from Casino Royale, and two pictures of infants. For the infants, they were asked to identify the gender of the child pictured, and it was funny to watch them scrutinize every detail of the photos for hints about gender, and instead of immediately concluding ‘you can’t tell’, finding and sticking to arbitrary justifications: “look at the hair”, “you can tell by the eyes”, “the way the diaper is fitting…” We talked a bit about how gendered expectations get put on us at a young age, and what kinds of things are “for boys” vs. “for girls”.

During this discussion and the ones that followed, I felt torn between the usefulness of the binary gender model and the fact that I don’t agree with it. Even the program itself is set up in terms of binary gender, and the discussion that is required to tear down the idea of binary gender would take much longer than the allotted time, and would bring the central function of the program itself into question. I think it must be questioned, but I didn’t think we could do a good enough job in the little time we had, and I didn’t want to do it half-assed. … Continue Reading

0 Boys 4 Real Reflection: Week 4

Yesterday was my fourth inning as a Wisdom Champion with the YWCA’s Boys 4 Real program. As I have done in previous weeks, I will try to summarize some of my thoughts and feelings as I go through the process.

My anxiety about working with kids has faded to a cautious wariness. I know that the second I completely stop being worried about how I’m doing is when I start to make mistakes. The consequences of mistakes are somewhat magnified, I think, because of who I’m working with. At the same time, these aren’t infants I’m working with – they’re young adults who have families and home lives and lots of adult figures in their lives other than me, a guy who hangs out with them for 2.5 hours a week.

Listening to Tobold Rollo has changed a lot of my thinking about young people, specifically children. I had long embraced a sort of benevolent paternalism when it came to kids. Born out of a reaction to former practices that treated children as small-statured adults, possessing the same mental and emotional capabilities as a fully-grown person, I went to the other extreme. Children were in need of protection, for their own good, and needed to be sheltered until such time as they were mentally mature enough to assert their autonomy. This model treats children as proto-human; figures that will some day become people. It is, by definition, a dehumanizing doctrine.

I have instead tried to treat the participants in this program with the same deference and respect that I had previously reserved for adults. They have my trust until they demonstrate they are not worthy of it, they are peers rather than subordinates, and I don’t make decisions on their behalf. I catch myself periodically dipping into my previous patterns of adult/child dichotomy, but for the most part as long as I remain mindful of it, I think I’m doing okay.

The thing that keeps catching me off guard is how compliant and non-defiant the guys in the program are. If they are asked to do something they do it, and while they are energetic and easily distracted, they’re engaging earnestly and thoughtfully with me and the other leaders. I expected to have to deal with a lot more snickering and misbehaving, but instead we’ve been able to spend time discussing and planning and conversing, which is definitely my preference.

One thing I am still struggling with is the sheer amount that we are expected to cover in an hour-long session. There has not been one week where we have done every activity in the book, regardless of how scrupulously we try to stay on time. I also question how much of the material is being absorbed as opposed to merely being ‘worked through’. My brief stint as a violin teacher has taught me a bit about how to distinguish the two processes. The things we’re talking about are large topics, but we’re spending maybe 20 minutes on them. I know there’s an issue of boredom to factor in if we don’t keep the days moving, but most of the time I feel very rushed. We’re not spending as much time as I’d like on the specific topic of high school either, and I think that’s the biggest source of anxiety for them right now.

We’ll see how it develops as the term moves towards its end.

0 Boys 4 Real – Reflection Weeks 2/3

I was negligent and didn’t post a reflection last week, so this one will encompass two weeks of the program.

My level of anxiety about the program has dropped precipitously over the past couple of weeks. I’ve been able to lean on the active participation of the two Facilitators I have in my group to do a lot of the programmatic stuff, and I have been able to work mostly behind the scenes rather than trying to drive things forward. Martin and Michael, my co-volunteers, are both highly motivated to do well and highly capable, which is a relief. I think it would be a bigger problem if I had a lackadaisical team than if I had a few unruly students.

Week 2 was largely uneventful, and I don’t really have too much to say about it except that I am disappointed that our group chose to do a cancer fundraiser. Obviously I respect their choices, but I would have liked to see them choose something that involved more than raising funds “for cancer”. Community service should, I think, involve actually interacting with the community. Of course, considering the multitude of ways I have failed to live up to that over my own 29 years, maybe that is an unreasonable thing to expect from a group of 12 year-olds.

One of the things I have noted with interest is that when our group combined with the ‘WTML’ group, some of the strongest personalities in the room belong to the young women. They clearly have no biological programming to make them more demure and soft-spoken, and it looks like they haven’t internalized the talking points about “women’s roles” in scial interactions yet. I am as challenged by the most outspoken young women as I am by the outspoken guys in my own group, but that is not something that is ‘their fault’ as much as it is something for me to learn to deal with effectively.

I did pull one of my more rambunctious guys aside at the beginning of our Week 2 session because someone had mentioned that he had been a bit disruptive the previous week. I think I managed this conversation well. I told him first that he wasn’t in trouble and I wasn’t upset with him. I said that I was really glad he was in the program because he’s got a great sense of humour and pumps everyone up, but that some people have a hard time dealing with that level of energy. I told him I struggled with it a lot, and that I had to learn to keep my eyes and ears open for the reactions of others to figure out how not to bowl them over. He seemed receptive, and I’m willing to bet he’s heard something along these lines before. I’m not holding out a lot of hope for the magic of one conversation, but we’ll see how it goes.

The last thing I want to reflect on here is the ’empathy’ session we did in Week 3. The topics we’re discussing in these sessions are really broad and important, and we have to cram them into 20-minute chunks which is really frustrating. I understand that we are time constrained, but I think we do ourselves a disservice by presenting these things as ‘soundbyte’ topics. This was particularly evident to me this week when we did 20 minutes on ’empathy’ that required us to first define it and then act it out. A lot of the guys hadn’t really been exposed to the concept before, and asking them to act it out resulted in some sketches that were not only completely unrealistic but also (in some cases) missed the point entirely.

I am glad that I was able to inject something I think is important into the discussion though: the idea that it is not enough to simply not participate in harmful behaviours. We ought to, when we can, speak up in opposition to them. This wasn’t mentioned in the syllabus materials, but it’s an important lesson I’ve learned in discussions of misogyny and bullying. Part of the problem is that the victims feel like they’re ‘crazy’ for feeling victimized. The presence of a few supportive voices saying “you’re not wrong, and I’m angry too” makes a huge difference, and I wanted to get the guys thinking about that a bit.

I remain optimistic and excited about the next 5 weeks.

3 Boys 4 Real – Reflection Week 1

This past Tuesday I begun what will be an 8-week after-school mentorship program sponsored and organized by the YWCA of Vancouver. The program, called “Boys 4 Real”, is targeted at grade 7 students who are preparing to make the transition to high school. I heard about the program through a friend, and immediately leapt at the opportunity.

I am near-absolutely sure that I don’t want to have children, but I still believe deeply that adults should be involved in the raising of children – or, more accurately, that children are a part of our society and should be integrated rather than segregated. My father grew up with multiple ‘parents’ – people who were not his biological relations but who nevertheless took responsibility for his upbringing and well-being. I spent my middle childhood on a street with lots of children my age, meaning that their parents were often acting as my surrogate parents. I think it makes more sense than a ‘nuclear’ and closed-off model where children are essentially the property of their two guardians rather than participants in the world as adults are. I think kids do better when they have rich social networks with lots of points of contact and perspectives on life, and I think it’s better for all of us, regardless of age to remain connected to our most vulnerable selves. … Continue Reading