Sometimes it's what you don't do that makes you a man

Dear Henry | Volume 4

Dear Henry,

There are so many things happening in the world right now that I’m glad you aren’t old enough to comprehend. It won’t always be this way (well, the world will, but you won’t), and I expect you to ask tough questions that I’ll do my best to answer openly and honestly.

Because of the information overload, I almost missed this one. Not the event — it had plenty of airtime — but the realization that this was an important conversation to have with you. To be honest, it’s more about what didn’t happen than what did so to be as concise as possible, a few weeks ago both the women’s and men’s olympic hockey teams won gold medals and when the president of the United States called the men’s team to congratulate them, he slighted the women’s team and pretty much all of the men chuckled like, well, boys.

And I guess that’s why it felt important to share with you. Because I want you to know that boys make mistakes and that’s OK. You will make mistakes and that’s OK. You’ll say things you don’t mean and laugh at things that aren’t funny and you’ll learn and grow from these occasions.

What’s not OK is to make a mistake and believe you’re above apologizing for it. What’s not OK is to minimize the accomplishments of someone else because of their gender or race or any way they’re different from you. But that’s what these guys did, and I’m mad at them.

I’m mad at them because one day you’ll be watching these games and spending the commercial breaks trying to skate or shoot just like them and come away thinking that to be successful and popular and manly is to be strong and fast and athletic but also to be superior and arrogant and dismissive of women.

And it’s not. It’s not cool. It’s not manly. It’s not OK.

It’s easy. It’s cheap. It’s tempting when boys get together and the testosterone flows. But if that is what’s happening in a group you’re part of — even if some of your best friends are doing it — I expect you to call it out for the bullshit that it is. It’s so easy to let it go unchecked and spread like a flame, but if you want to feel real power and influence, do the hard thing and be the first to step out of that circle, to tell those guys that you don’t feel that way and you don’t think they should either.

They’ll be embarrassed and they might lump you in with the group they’re deriding to try to save face. You won’t win that conversation, but you’ll probably win one other guy’s heart. And he’ll go home and think about how cool and brave and manly it was for you to dissent. And the next time he’s in a similar situation, he’ll remember you. He’ll remember that you don’t have to go along with something if you don’t believe it. He’ll go home early and his parents will ask him what happened to his plans. And he’ll tell them what he learned from you.

That’s how we win. By changing one heart and mind who will then change one heart and one mind. We unfortunately have a long way to go as a gender. Our track record is not great. But I’m working on it, and I’m excited to have you on my team.

Love,

Dad