Quick and so very dirty book review

Boys Will Be Boys: Breaking the Link Between Masculinity and Violence by Myriam Miedz – This book took me forever to get through. I was totally down for the first couple chapters concerning how boys are conditioned to be violent. It’s interesting and from what I understand pretty ground breaking work for when it was published.

Still, Miedz is very repetitive and covers the same topics in similar words several different times. This makes an otherwise interesting work drag, but it wasn’t this repetition that bothered me most.

Miedz is very adamant that making the changes to US society that would allow us to raise less violent boys must be mandated by government legislation. She continually states that the power of legislation trumps personal responsibility. I believe that she is only partly right. If, as she proposes, school districts are required to have classes thaT teach parenting and/or conflict resolution skills they’re essentially teaching personal responsibility. The two go hand-in-hand and are not mutually exclusive. By having legislation trump responsibility, she creates an unreal expectation that the government would actually work to ban certain types of television shows, toys and sports like she suggests. Anyone with an iota of common sense realizes that a government raised on the free market tit is going to have none of that. They might however agree to fund a conflict resolution class for high school freshmen.

Lastly, Miedz viciously attacks any sport that involves physical contact. She vilifies these sports while totally ignoring any of their positive aspects. Yes, she does lay some of the blame on coaches and a society that champions winning at any cost but instead of focusing on changing that mentality she again asks for legislation.

Her hatred for sports and her focus on legislation often undermine her whole argument because they’re totally unrealistic to our society. Members of our government would be laughed out of office if they suggested banning high school football or toy guns. Skip this and read Susan Faludi’s Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man. It’s much more timely, better written and will allow you to come up with your own ideas on how we can raise less violent boys.