Recommended Reading: Feminists Raising Boys

I found a wonderful article about feminists raising boys. It squelches all of those stereotypes about feminists supposedly being respondible for the "war on boys" that ostensibly exists in this country.

Contrary to what some critics are saying, boys raised by feminists are growing up just fine.
Written by Patsi Bale Cox / Arrington, Tennessee
Published Monday, October 4, 2004
[via comments by the article's author, Patsi, at Feministing]

Here's an excerpt:

In the past several years we’ve seen a glut of magazine articles, talk shows and books like The War on Boys: How Misguided Feminism is Harming Our Boys and The Decline of Males demonizing a simple term: feminism. How silly. Feminists are people who believe women deserve the same opportunities and compensation as men.

The anti-feminist deluge seemed to fall even harder in the wake of the Littleton High School tragedy, where on April 20, 1999, two teenagers committed the largest mass school killing in U.S. history. Everyone agreed that something was going wrong with today’s society, and many pundits placed blame squarely at feminists’ doors. Time after time I watched, listened or read that we activists were to blame for a breakdown in family values in general, and for the dehumanization of American boys in particular. Nevermind that none of the young men involved in school shootings, so-called “wildings” or other violent acts so widely publicized seemed to have been raised by feminists.

I contend it is just the opposite, that feminists gave their children strong values. My parents not only encouraged but also expected their daughters to see themselves as equal with men, to work to their potential and to facilitate others to do the same. And I believe the great majority of women’s rights activists of my generation, the meat and potatoes feminists, single or married, have done a spectacular job of raising their sons, sons who view the world far differently than those raised in strictly patriarchal households.

There are lessons I believe we imparted both in word and action that will affect great change in society as our sons take their places in today’s workforce. We taught our daughters the same values, but we always knew that any significant change required males also working against prejudice and intolerance.

I believe feminists by their very nature imparted questioning minds to their sons, encouraging them to question stereotypes including those existing within our school system: jocks, nerds, freaks and snobs. They learned from us that name-calling is a critical part of alienation. We taught them to appreciate differences, not disdain them, to neither be nor seek victims.

We taught them to be discerning, to carefully evaluate influences, ranging from peer pressure to media input.

For feminists active in the business and political community, sons learned to interact with a myriad of individuals, from the powerful to the disenfranchised. They carried those experiences with them, and, I believe, profited as adults. I also think we imparted a sense of purpose in our sons, the knowledge that every life is part of something bigger and does make a difference.

Children of feminists know that every stand they take may not be popular. They may be subjected to ridicule or contempt as a result of their beliefs. But through the examples of their mothers, they know a worthy stand is worth the price.

I can’t even imagine what my feminist grandmother would have thought had she lived to see a picture of a urinal shaped like a woman’s open mouth. But she wouldn’t have been surprised that it was feminists who got the project flushed.