My Three Sons: Raising Boys and Telling Stories in the age of #MeToo
Stories and Power
One night last fall my partner and I packed up our three young sons, ages 12, 10, and 8 and drove from Brooklyn, NY to Washington D.C. in the middle of the night.
Like many people in the U.S. last October, we had decided that it was crucial to go to the capitol to show our support for Dr. Christine Blasey Ford who would be testifying before congress the next day — to show our support for all survivors of sexual assault. We had decided that it was necessary to get our bodies there, to protest, and especially to take our sons. We told them why we were going to D.C. and explained the accusations against Brett Kavanaugh and what was at stake with this supreme court appointment.
As Dr. Ford bravely told her story of being sexually assaulted at age 15, to a group of senators — mostly old, mostly white, and mostly male, many of us wondered how much had really changed in the 30 years since Professor Anita Hill had publicly told her own story of sexual harassment. Could Ford’s story be truly heard? Would anyone believe her? Would it matter?
Winding our way through D.C. early that morning we caught sight of several women wearing white t-shirts, “I stand with Brett” emblazoned across their chests. Outside the Hart Senate building there were more of them — white women, young and old, wearing t-shirts and carrying signs professing their support for Kavanaugh.
Everywhere we go, my family must be vigilantly aware of our surroundings: We are two cis-gendered women. Lesbians raising three boys. My partner is Latina, an immigrant from Colombia, and a naturalized U.S. citizen. Her biological sons with her ex-husband (my stepsons since we blended our families two years ago) are Afro-Latino-American; My biological son and I are white, U.S. citizens by birth. One of our sons is transgendered. It is our duty as parents to keep them safe and to help them feel as safe as possible in this often unfair and sometimes violent world.
Nervously entering the senate building we could see that many women and some men were standing with their fists raised in the air. But I relaxed a little to see that the messages they carried on the palms of their hands and in some cases written across duct tape placed over their mouths: “Believe Her.”
As a college composition instructor, it is literally my job to try to convince my students that stories matter, that their stories matter — and that telling stories can make a difference in the world. I am also trying to teach this to my sons.
As most people in the U.S. know now, the #metoo movement is based on the idea of people telling their stories. It’s based on the idea that stories matter; that women’s stories of what has happened to our bodies, our minds, our personhood — matters. I can’t think of anything more encouraging than that. And although I do not feel so hopeful about the state of women or Black lives or the daily realities of immigrants or queer folks or any oppressed group of people in the U.S. or around the globe at this particular moment, I do feel both personally and professionally thrilled by the idea of a political movement rooted in narrative — rooted in people telling their own stories
Our family broke away from the rally for lunch and ended up sitting in a cafeteria right next to none other than the founder of the #MeToo movement, the incredible Tarana Burke. Perhaps it was this that empowered us to answer truthfully when our sons sitting there, munching on French fries, asked us if we had ever experienced anything like what they were hearing from the protesters around us.
We looked at each other and decided to share a few of the (less harrowing) moments with them, mostly stories about being groped or harassed by men in public places, but one of my stories included a humiliating experience I had in the 5th grade when a male classmate of mine grabbed my breasts at school one day, pinched them and screamed, “titty twister!” This was 1985, the same year the movie “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” came out. If you were a fan of the movie like I was as a kid, you’ll remember the “Tune in Tokyo” scene in which something similar happens to one of the female side characters.
I’m not suggesting that a “Tune in Tokyo” moment amounts to a trauma at the level of other kinds of assaults. But it is still a violation — an inappropriate and humiliating touching of a part of our bodies that we commonly think of as private. And the idea that boys are entitled to touch or “grab” girls wherever they like has been commonplace throughout most of history. Scenes like the one from “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun,” have only served to normalize this kind of behavior from boys and men.
I am trying to change what’s considered “normal behavior” for boys by talking to my own sons about this stuff. It’s difficult. It was not easy to tell them about my fifth grade humiliation, or for my partner and me to tell them about the number of times men have exposed themselves to us in public, or rubbed up against us in crowded subways.
It wasn’t easy to stand in the rain with a crowd of women at the capital as several women around us cried listening to people tell their stories. It wasn’t easy when the 10 year old looked at me with confusion and asked what the sign meant that read “I was 7.” But I told him. He should know.
It might be too much for these kids. I don’t know. I’m not sure if they can understand the gravity, the weight of it all. But my hope is that if we keep trying, keep talking, keep telling stories, keep giving them movies and books and TV shows that celebrate and, more importantly, humanize girls and people of color, and queer people, and people who are disabled, on some level they will all get it.
The Men We Know: Fearing Masculinity
And yet. I am afraid of masculinity. This is hard for me to admit because I am raising three boys. All three of them are going to go through male puberty in the next few years. And if I’m honest, it scares me. Part of me wants them to stay sweet, little boys forever, and not grow into men.
I don’t hate men. But I fear them. And I don’t want to fear my sons.
Partly I fear men because I have been hurt by them and because I know so very many women who have suffered worse fates than I have at the hands of men.
For as much as famous, powerful men have recently been called out and held accountable for their abuse, there are so many non-famous men who are also abusers. I’m in an online group of smart, literary-minded women with over 24k members. It’s a very active group. I lost count of the number of stories women posted in October and November alone last year, as listening to Dr. Ford’s testimony had them triggered and reliving their own attempted or actual rapes. The number is mind-blowing.
But for as many women who have a story, there are just as many men who did these things. Who are these men? We all know that the abuser, the rapist, is rarely the stranger in the dark alley. Most women know their abusers. And you know them too. We all know them. And we walk around all day every day pretending like it’s all OK.
Can we just pause and think about this for a minute?
Of the dozen or so women I know personally who have been sexually assaulted, not one of them pressed charges or reported the rape to authorities. And that is largely because it was at the hands of a man they personally knew — someone who was in their lives, part of their community — sometimes a member of their own family.
At least three women I know who were raped by their husbands, continued to stay with those men and live life as a normal married couple for years. Those men are generally decent fathers, upstanding members of their community and not even necessarily, “bad” guys. But in much the same way that all white people have some degree of racism within us just from existing in our white privilege, men have sexism in them. They don’t even always realize when they’re being coercive.
Toxic masculinity is a fact. There are men I know who even claim to be feminists and yet have been abusive and coercive to their wives or girlfriends. Actions speak louder than words, as the old adage goes; and these men are not true feminists, no matter what they claim. One woman in my group talked about how her husband would be mortified if he knew she had considered that he had raped her. But as she really turned the events (which happened on more than one occasion) over and over in her memory, she felt she had to at least admit to herself (and eventually in this private online group) that “rape” was exactly what it was.
Isn’t this complicated? How does this happen? These are the stories that make me fearful of my own sons growing into manhood in a culture of toxic masculinity. How is the fact of men coercing and overpowering women or each other so completely normalized? And are we finally ready to wrestle with what this all means?
I do not believe that biology is destiny. I do not believe that all men are potential rapists or abusers. Our culture encourages toxic masculinity and we have to fight against it, to teach our sons to recognize it and to reject it. If we fail at this, the consequences are dire.
Actress and activist Jameela Jamil’s brilliant and funny speech at this year’s Maker’s Conference has gone viral since I started writing this essay. In it she tasks mothers, grandmothers, aunties, and all women who have young boys in our lives, with the job of changing the world by raising feminist sons. And one of the biggest ways we do that, she says, is to tell our sons the truth about our own experiences.
Boys to Men: Raising Allies
That day in D.C. we walked into the senate building and saw all those people with fists raised. And the kids looked over at us for reassurance. They asked: “what does that mean? Why are people holding up their fists?”
“The fist raised means they believe and support survivors,” we told them, “they believe the women who have been hurt.” Immediately all three boys put their hands in the air. I didn’t tell them to or ask them to. My partner and I hadn’t even yet raised our own fists, but instinctively these three boys raised theirs. These kids didn’t ask how we knew the women were telling the truth. They didn’t say that because they were boys they couldn’t participate. They recognized that the moment called for solidarity, for everyone to show a sign of fairness, and they raised their fists.
I’d like to say here that for a tiny moment I had some hope that if we all keep talking, if we all keep telling our stories and raising our sons to recognize the full humanity of girls and women then we will change the world. But my hope was not as great as that.
What I actually felt in that moment was a more micro hope, and a selfish one, I suppose. I felt hopeful only for my own three sons. That through parenting them with our values clearly laid out and at the center of conversation — through ongoing conversation, and especially through the power of individual people telling their stories. . . (there but for the grace of stories), these boys, these three. . . they can grow up to be true allies, they can grow up to be good men.