Can women raise boys to be men?

1 comment:

• natalien posted at 6:01 pm on Fri, Apr 6, 2012.

  Posts: 0

  This demands a much more nuanced discussion of the issue than the same talking points we have been hitting for 50 years with little change. In fact the conditions have gotten progressively worse. Im tired, I really am.In 2007, my nephew (19 at the time) committed suicide after a woman 7 years his senior admitted to pregnancy entrapment (contraception tampering) He was to attend college in the Fall but instead was served with CS orders. Absent the ability to prove in public what this woman admitted to in private my nephew was told to simply "man up" by the courts. After two years of depression his suicide note read... "I cannot believe this has happened. Some days are better than others, but I have decided that I would rather die than to continue to support - - - - . My entire life has been turned upside down and I pray that God recives me with understanding".This has made it very personal for me. What I find most intriguing about the "war on women" is that I keep finding myself as twenty year choice advocate being perplexed by this dicussion. I work in community health. It is hard to ignore the statistics that 70% of our children are born to unwed mothers. Many of the very women for whom I have advocated for years do not even value or exercise the responsibility (use of birth control) that comes with complete control over reproduction pre and post conception. I am personally insulted by the suggestion of a war on women while we as black women continue to enjoy the right to complete control over reproductive decsions while abdicating ourselves of complete resonsibility that comes with it. With 20+ options for preventing pregnancy there is no reason for this statistic to be so high. What is disturbing is that we are marching in the streets regarding the assault on black men while I am (right now!) watching the police escort an unemployed neighbor to jail...not for robbery or assault but for his inability to pay child support! Listen I am a choice advocate but I am evolving in my belief that the very men that have stood in the trenches alongside me in defense of a womans right to choose would not even have their reproductive rights taken into consideration. Here is the hypocrisy as best illustrated in this cartoon=http://www.tastymojo.com/LouisvilleMojo/photos_pgp/093/PG7432020080109062112593093.jpgMotherhood is a CHOICE in 2012 and we have alienated many potential male allies that do not desire to take that choice away but desire to simply have equal treatment under the law.You see by focusing on condom use and post-conception responsibility it focuses on male responsibility or lack of and absolves us of any responsibility for the personal choices that we made. When men “walk away” we refer to them as deadbeats but the top three reasons that they walk away are the very same reasons that women put their children up for adoption or abort. We dont refer to women as deadbeats for “abandoning” the responsibility that comes with conception but we extend compassion to our girls and women about the options they have should they not be in an ideal financial situation, relationship or the potential impact on career. Do we not believe that men experience the same anxieties and fears and can be impacted in a such a way as well? As one that has worked in community mental health and in private practice with men whose pain has often been dismissed and/or completely invisible to society I think its time we begin exploring these issues. I fought as have other women, too hard for a womans right to choose, while most simply enjoy the rights without responsibility.There has been a war on our men and I will simply say that a community that despises its men run the risk of creating a community of despicable men. I watched coverage of the crisis in Syria a couple of days ago. As is common practice in western journalism it was reported "20 killed including women and children" I thought little of it until my nephew of 21 years of age stated "Theres the problem right there, we get the message loud and clear; our lives are assigned different value than everyone elses." I must admit that it is hard to argue that the value we have placed on our mens lives has been reduced to their "doings" instead of value in their being. As our roles began to evolve in society, we maintained the expectation that men's should remain the same. So while we aggressively asserted ourselves as “independent” women with complete control over our reproductive decisions and an ability to STAND ON OUR OWN we maintained the idea that men should remain the chivalrous, protectors and providers that we believed they should be. The problem with the idea that we “should raise our boys to be men” is that while we focused on empowering and nurturing our girls towards a re-defining of traditional expectations of womanhood, we as women maintained a traditional defining of manhood for men. The problem is that women should not engage in defining manhood for men as our expectation is rooted in a definition that is most beneficial to those doing the defining, WOMEN! The emasculating use of the term man up is rooted in our idea of a man falling short of our idea of “what a man is” without any regard for the idea that men define what manhood is for them. Should the way a man defines manhood for himself not be good fit for us then it is not meant for us to define it but rather to move on until we find a better fit for our ideals about manhood. I would never say that another woman is less of a woman because of a,b or c I would simply say that I am not that type of woman. I always hear the argument that we wouldnt have to define manhood for men if fathers would step up, but the idea that ones choice to engage in recreational sex that led to an unwanted pregnancy and the womans unilateral decision to go to term with the idea that a consent to sex is a consent to fatherhood and non-compliance with our “expectation of what a man SHOULD do” because men are no longer manning up, as opposed to accepting responsibility for our role in the current fatherlessness crisis is beginning to be challenged by many in our community that have had enough! It is a very interesting dichotomy where we are vocal about our strenngth and independence while maintaining the idea of ourselves as victims of mens ill intent. The very concept of focusing our attention on condoms (male symbol of sexual (ir) responsibility) and mens behavior post conception is a blatant attempt to shift focus away from the 20+ options we have available to us to prevent unwanted pregnancies and the lack of responsibility we demonstrated pre-conception. We cannot continue to ignore the voices of our men in this discussion. We also cannot keep saying "he should keep it in his pants if he doesnt want to pay" as it undermines our efforts to protect choice. We would never support a woman being told that we'd call it a "war on women.We began emphasizing accountability for men while extending them very little compassion. This was ruthless of course and it is respecting men but not necessarily loving them. On the other hand society began to emphasize compassion for women while extending them very little accountability.. it is infantilizing and it is loving women but not necessarily respecting them. (Goldich, 2011) There are a number of byproducts of this but perhaps one of the most dmaging to my community has been the pivot away from referring to unwed mothers in our community as such to being lumped in with divorced mothers and widows for the now all encompassing term “single mother”. With this for example came the unintended consequence of empowering generations of women towards acceptance of the current “babymama” phenomena. You see referring to an unwed mother as a single mother is empowering in that it createss the narrative of a “strong black woman that made it in spite of…”. So if a child attends college it is the testatment of the strength of a single mother..if the same child were to become incarcerated it is an indictment of the colossal failure of men/fathers. Unbelieveable! Another uninteneded consequence is the current “boy crisis” where the education disparity is growing, male suicide is increasing and the anti-male bias and bashing in society continues to become common practice. WE CANNOT CONTINUE TO REDUCE THESE ISSUE TO SIMPLY MEN NEEDING TO MAN UP IN 2012 WHILE WE CREEP TOWARDS 8IN 10 UNWED CHILDBIRTH! Im not excusing men but it is our turn to stop standing with our backs to the mirror. Our condition is getting progressively worse. I write to you as you have a voice that at the very least can invite more objective analysis of the problem to the mainstream. I beg of you as a mother of sons that you gein an egalitarian humanist discussion that truly considers the men and boys in our community. I may not have effectively articulated my thoughts but I pray you get the general conversation I ma trying to engage you in ..http://whitehouseboysmen.org/blog/ and tell me why our president wont move on this council?Natalie Jackson Ramirez, EdD., LMFTConcerned citizen, mother of sons, humanist activist and mental health counseling professional

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