Where ‘Dem Boys At?

This has been on my mind for a while. Male empowerment. Today the words “female empowerment” have almost become a compound word. I don’t think that is a bad thing. I think women are oppressed in many ways and should be empowered, but every time I hear about it I wonder how it makes guys feel. Males may often be the source of female oppression but how often are guys uplifted and encouraged to raise the standards that society has put on them?

Author Ayaan Hirsi Ali talks about male oppression. She says, “boys are victimized too: they are taught that the male individual is not to be soft but be hard…his honour is between my legs.”

I was listening to a speaker a while back when they made a joke about women… it was received with silence. A few minutes later that same joke was put on men and there was a low snicker across the audience. If I were a male I think this would bother me slightly more than it already does.

There’s a new app called the broapp. It “automatically message[s] your girlfriend sweet things so you can spend more time with the Bros.”

I think you guys can do better than that, really I do. Firstly, if you don’t care about your girl enough to remember to send her a text (a fureaking TEXT!), why are you in that relationship? Secondly, does it not bother you that society is expecting such apathetic behaviour from you?

During my 5-month volunteer service in Botswana all of the international volunteers were girls. When a guy would come, on a short term trip the children would flock to them like no one else. They lacked a positive male figure in their life. There was no shortage of males. In fact, 90% of the friends I made in Botswana were males, because they were outside a lot more than the girls. They lacked a positive male figure in their life because those guys that fathered them were too busy avoiding their responsibilities.

Ladies, you have responsibility here too. Expect more. Expect them to remember to text you on their own (are our standards really that low?), to treat you as an equal based not on how you look or what you know but on who you are. Expect them to be real.

Maybe he enjoys chocolate and soaking in the bathtub more than you do (I do know a stereotypically manly guy like this and I think it’s awesome). Great. And maybe he is making the same mistakes as his father. Don’t berate him about it. Encourage him to do better because he can do better.

I leave you with a video of one of my favourite rappers…