Tag Archives: males

Boys and Men, Personal Reflections, Writing

Robb Elementary School, Highland Park, and Other Mass Shootings: Let’s Talk about Young Males and Semi-Automatic Weapons

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Nearly every mass shooting in the U.S. includes three main factors, the first two of which no one seems to want to talk about.

  1. The shooter is male.
  2. The shooter is under 25-years-old
  3. The weapon is a semi-automatic.

Why don’t we talk about the fact that the Highland Park shooter, along with so many others before him, was a male under age 25?

Last week, in an article on The Good Men Project website, I proposed banning sales of semi-automatic weapons to males under 25-years-old. Obviously, this guidance still holds.

Below I’ve pasted a couple excerpts from The Good Men Project article. For the whole thing, go to: https://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/age-to-own-guns-should-be-25-not-21-heres-why-kpkn/

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Why target age 25? Because brain and developmental research indicates that male brains have greater variability in structure and development and may not be completely mature until age 25. After age 25, males become less impulsive and more capable of moral decision-making. Automobile insurance companies recognize this truth with hefty rate reductions after males turn 25. In addition, due to American socialization pressures around masculinity, older boys and young men are especially reactive to threats to their perceived manhood. These reactions often include acts of violence designed to restore a sense of masculine honor.

Anyone paying attention knows young American males are not doing well. They’re lost. They’re angry. They’re confused. They have few constructive rituals to help them become men. Manhood may be overrated and outdated, but boys need to strive for something. Becoming a man is a tried and true tradition that’s hard to escape—if only because the media pushes it so hard. Boys need to man-up, but what does that even mean? Join the military? Smoke cigars? Take stupid risks? Watch American football? Hunt? Fish? Play violent video games? Retreat to a “man cave,” Join the Proud Boys? Grow beards? Deny COVID? Fight? Have sex? Get revenge? Never apologize or show weakness? Demean women and gays? Buy an AR-15?

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We need to address the emotional and psychological well-being of boys and young men. We also need to stop allowing them access to semi-automatic weapons.

To access the full article, click here: https://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/age-to-own-guns-should-be-25-not-21-heres-why-kpkn/

Boys and Men, Personal Reflections, Writing

New Article on Firearms, Young Males, and Mass Shootings

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Here’s a link to an article published today on the Good Men Project site. In the article, I make the case for (a) restricting semi-automatic weapon sales to males over 25, (b) focusing on healthier psychosocial-emotional development for boys and young males, and (c) how it’s reasonable to ask people to make sacrifices for their country.

If you have interest in this area, check it out.

Age to Own Guns Should Be 25, Not 21– Here’s Why
Boys and Men, Personal Reflections

What I Learned About Male Sexuality Today

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Learning is cool. As Rylee and I work on our boys and sexual development project, we get to do lots of reading. Even better, lots of the reading is about sex.

As you may recall, last week Rylee and fell in love with Cordelia Fine’s Myths of Gender. Today, I had a different experience reading a 2007 book titled “7 Things He’ll Never Tell You {but you need to know}” written by Kevin Leman, a psychologist and “New York Times best-selling author.”

Here are a few of “Dr.” Leman’s comments and tips . . . combined with some clearly spiteful commentary from Rita and Rylee.

“The wise woman realizes that a man is wired to want things now. [Rita stops me here and says, “Wait. That’s me! I’m the one who wants things now!] And she will realize that a man who is constantly thwarted in his desires will begin to look for gratification elsewhere.” (Leman, p. 35)

Right now I’m thinking about raspberry pie. If Rita doesn’t get it for me NOW, I’ll be looking elsewhere . . . I hope she recognizes that. This is pretty good stuff. No more thwarting . . . or else! [Rylee says, “Or else you’ll get it yourself.”]

Then he says:
“. . . men . . . are not relationally centered. They identify more with things. They are visually stimulated by looking. That means whatever your guy sees is imprinted on his mind. So if he sees a sexy woman in a red dress on the subway, he may see that same woman in his thoughts again later that night, a week later, even a month later. . . . Men, on the average, have 33 sexual thoughts a day” (p. 104)

Oh my, 33 sexual thoughts a day. And how many sexual thoughts a day does a woman have. He doesn’t really address this directly, but at the end of the book he has a little quiz and one of the items goes like this: “How much does a man think about sex? . . . 33 times as much as you” (p. 177).

This is a serious math problem. And so if Rita has 5 sexual thoughts in a day, it means I’ll have 165? Now we’re talking!

On p. 106, Leman writes: “It’s been said that women need a reason for sex. Men only need a place. Men really need sex and are designed to need sex, to think about it, and to pursue it. A physically healthy married man cannot be fulfilled without it.” (p. 106) [Rylee says: Only for married men? What about all those monks? No fulfillment for them?]

Hmmm . . . sounds like sex is pretty important for guys. No fulfillment . . . period? Nothing else is fulfilling? Well, I guess if I’ve got 165 sexual thoughts in a day, maybe there’s no time to think of anything else fulfilling. Even though this isn’t really all that consistent with any other psychological theories, especially existentialism, I guess if Dr. Leman says it, it must be true.

And here’s the coup de gras . . .

“Sex is the great equalizer in a man’s life. If he meets with the accountant and is short on funds for his income tax or he got a bad job review, coming home to a willing wife makes it all better. It’s amazing what things great sex can cure for men—everything from viruses, bacterial infections, impetigo, chicken pox, the flu, and most importantly, any problem in marriage. For example if he has a fight with his wife and later that day they have sex, all of his issues are gone. They’ve resolved themselves. The problem is that for the other half of the relationship—the female—the issues aren’t resolved until they’re talked about!” (p. 107)

So sex cures the chicken pox. [Rita says: “But only for men?”] I say I wish I’d known that last summer when I had the coxsackie virus. [Rita says, “Like that was gonna happen.”] [Rylee says: “So women can cure men by sacrificing themselves to whatever disease a man has.”] [Rita says, “Women are true healers.”]

See, you learn something new every day. And sometimes it’s actually useful . . . or true.