Boys, Boys, Boys

We were talking about how boys need feminism as immediately and needily as girls do, and the list of what the patriarchal society does to boys got longer and longer on the board (all in my Modern Novel class).

The list seems so frightening (which, also isn't allowed to be felt by boys), and I witness so many close and beloved ones acting according to these. One of my friends once thanked me for being a safe place and letting him be childish, because it was unacceptable of him to be so in his daily life. It breaks my heart to be able to provide such spaces but change nothing for them in the daily lives. Boys can cry, and they should too. Crying has never been a sign of weakness, and the fact that man cannot be weak is a whole other problem; men are humans, after all, and humans are imperfect by nature. Emotions are valid, human, and necessary. Not all men must be thought-oriented engineers who belong to reddit and never to tumblr. Not all men must be hardcore, muscular, whatever. Ignoring and suppressing your emotions will suffocate you one day. Women aren't emotionally more intelligent than men, it's just that we were taught to embrace our emotions and live them fully (or advertised to do so, because it's always women who have mood swings and jealousy crises and emotional breakdowns...) and boys were expected to suppress them, which of course results with girls understanding and figuring out more about emotions and boys not having an idea about how they work, because they were told not to cry and understand mechanics of a truck or something.

It's not that boys can't cook, it's just that our moms call the girls for help when they're baking (note the "moms" are baking, again). It's not that girls can't calculate, it's that everybody expects you to fall in love with some guy and run after him. When a man is ambitious, we call him a disciplined, strong and ambitious man; when a woman is ambitious, we call her a cut-throat bitch. I can go on with this list forever but there's no point. I'll be focusing on finding ways to explain boys why they don't have to be boys in the upcoming days, because if I figured this much out, they must know.

There is a moment when you notice just how dramatically patriarchy dominates your life, interests and the person you are, and I had the moment and I hated it. I noticed how maternal I've become, protective, care-giving, emotionally supportive and intellectually insufficient. Maybe it's the bitterness from my breakup too, but I'm almost sure that there is a significant amount of gender roles right there. When I look at this list, I also see "girls can't" and "girls must". So, here is a statement.
I can. I will.

I can change, and I will. I can learn to be faster, and I will. I can build muscle, I can grow stronger, I can laugh louder, I can be ruder, and I will. There is no end to what I can become just because some conservative person is going to disapprove – my whole life so far is a huge mistake and embarrassment from a conservative point of view.

I will experiment.
If they tell me I can't, then I must.
And this might sound like "girl power!" but boys and men, you're just as oppressed as I am in certain aspects of your lives. There is no way out of this unless you decide: is your self-acception and happiness is more important, or the approval of the society and people around you (who, in my biased opinion, won't even care much about you while you try to please them).

Let go of your need to please others.
Being a classical, patriarchal man is not and can't be as important as being an independent and strong human being.
If they tell you you can't, you must.