Tim Flinders wrote:
>
> Jen:
> As a "nontraditional" male (wish we had a better term for us) and as
> someone who has worked for gender equity for the past few years in my area
> (Sonoma County, Ca), I find your comments especially relevant. I'm often
> asked in equity workshops, What about the boys?, and have felt frustrated
> that there wasn't much in the way of research looking at the way boys are
> raised and socialized to which I could point parents or teachers.
> Certainly nothing of the magnitude of Meeting at theCrossroads or FAiling
> At Fairness. Raphaela Best's "We've All Got Scars" did a masterful job of
> detailing how primary aged boys are socialized in schools by essentially
> becoming everything that was "not girl," but it came out twenty years ago
> an few seemd to notice or care. Michael Messner at USC has has documented
> how masuclinity is grounded in misogyny and homophobia but has yet to reach
> the mainstream.
>
> However, it looks like this may soon change thanks (ironically)to all
> the
> interest given girls these past few years. An article in today's SF
> Examiner by Joan Ryan surveys a number of forthcoming books on boys that
> are finally bringing under scrutiny the narrow and harmful stereotypes
> under which boys are raised and educated --, including recent research from
> Gilligan herself. Here's the link:
> http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/1998/03/22
> /SC105168.DTL
>
> The next step will be to start examining our pedagogies, especially in
> early childhood, and looking at how they reinforce these stereotypes, and
> how they can be changed so that in time, perhaps, "becoming a man" no
> longer requires that we set aside so much of our humanity.
>
> Tim Flinders <flinders@wco.com>