“The story about boys has yet to be told, and I think it’s a really important story,” Blum explained to me. “Our data suggest that the myth that boys are advantaged and girls are disadvantaged simply isn’t true.”
The movement for gender equality has often focused on empowering girls. They too need to know they are not circumscribed by ideas about who and how they should be.īoys are more likely than girls to die in their second decade of life, and they use more alcohol and tobacco, habits that erode their health as they age, Blum said.īut as Blum sees it, achieving gender equality also requires attention for boys. But even more troubling, Blum’s team found that boys suffered higher levels of physical violence, neglect and sexual abuse by adults than girls. And the more a boy was victimized, the more likely he was to do violence to others. Those findings should serve as a gut punch. We can’t solve the problem of violence against girls and women without also addressing violence against men and boys.
And we won’t succeed in teaching our sons to care for other people’s bodies until we learn to care for theirs.
