Do you fit the Man-Box?

         This one is for the men. Trust me I promise this video is worth the watch, even if you do not agree, it is a good clip to think about.Tony addresses the relationship between him and his son and how the father plays a big role in fitting the man box. He tells a story about his five year old son coming to him in tears because of hurt feelings, and he told his son to go to his room and "act like a man." Especially, within intact families, father–son relationship provides children with more male gender-role identification (Odenweller et al. 2013). What does that even actually mean? "Act like a man?" Does it mean you have to be 6'4 and have big arms to protect yourself? Does it mean you can't cry in front of people you trust because you will seem weak? Why has the simple identification of being a man brought so much weight on actually being one? People are supposed to cry and feel thousands of emotions, and I believe it is a father's duty to raise their sons to be sentimental people that are not emotionally constipated. Forcing young men to fight tears so they can keep their man card will only put them at a disadvantge at the chance to truly explore the person they are supposed to become.   Feminism has always focused on the the rights for women, but what if men feel like they are supressed into a man box and can't side with feminist rights because of the pressure of not being manly enough? Tony Porter speaks in a Ted Talk for "A Call to Men." "It's okay to not feel like you have to be dominating, that it's okay to have feelings and emotions, that it's okay to promote equality, that it's okay to have women who are just friends and that's it, that it's okay to be whole, that my liberation as a man is tied to your liberation as a woman (Tony Porter)." Men should not feel like they have to be superior, whoever that superiority is a manly quality is wrong. A manly quality is whatever quality you want it be. Unfortanutely the phrase "be a man" has brought on statements such as "you  run like a "girl" or in football practice "stop catching like a girl." At the time those little words can sound harmless, but those "insults" can put the wrong idea in a young man's mind. The idea that being compared to a girl is a bad thing.  I'm not saying that this is the case for all men, because I know that not everyone feels like being compared to a girl is an awful thing. However I'am saying that the more negatively people emphasize small differences between men and women, the easier it becomes to seperate the two genders in crucial issues such as: politics, education, family structures, relationships, and capabilities. So how can parents or role models to young men change the course this pattern has taken over the years? If parents started to look at their sons emotions the same way they addressed their daughters, then a social change may occur. Young men will not feel like they have to hide or supress their emotions because they were never forced to as kids.

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Odenweller, K. G., Rittenour, C. E., Myers, S. A., & Brann, M. (2013). Father–son family communication patterns and gender ideologies: A modeling and compensation analysis. Journal of Family Communication, 13(4), 340–357.