Breaking the Boy Code - In That Moment You’re Scared： Boys and Hazing

00:00:00.000 When I think of hazing, I think of, like, a toxic environment where

00:00:04.280 generally someone who's older or been in that group, I guess, for a while

00:00:13.960 is trying to show their dominance and really

00:00:19.080 I don't know how to come up with a word for it.

00:00:22.960 really make the person who they are hazing weak or seem weak or embarrassed, trying to

00:00:32.440 kind of be like, I'm up here and you're down low.

00:00:39.660 That's kind of what happens in my mind.

00:00:43.240 It's like an embarrassment kind of tactic to show your dominance.

00:00:47.760 This is Chad.

00:00:49.040 You're listening to Breaking the Boy Code.

00:00:52.960 This past November, there was a national,

00:01:12.520 I guess it's sort of weird to say a national discussion,

00:01:15.220 but there's a real focus on hazing, bullying, and quote-unquote toxic masculinity

00:01:20.760 that followed the news coverage of a scandal

00:01:25.280 at St. Michael's College School in Toronto.

00:01:27.520 St. Michael's is a private all-boys Catholic school.

00:01:30.040 It's got a focus on sports.

00:01:32.200 And the initial story revolved around two videos of locker room hazing

00:01:36.280 within the basketball and football teams.

00:01:39.380 And then, like in the news, there was eight boys expelled.

00:01:42.060 Six of them were charged with assault and sexual assault offenses.

00:01:45.660 The president and the principal resigned.

00:01:47.180 And at this point, the police are investigating a total of eight incidents

00:01:49.680 at the school and the basketball and football seasons have been canceled. Um, so the school

00:01:55.620 can undertake a respect and culture review. If you want to read more about it, look it up online.

00:02:02.060 I just wanted to position that as the context of this episode in the same way that, uh, episode

00:02:07.820 one was a story that acknowledged transgender day of visibility and said, this is what's going on.

00:02:13.380 This is the violence and the hurt and the trauma that we're talking about. So 0.85

00:02:16.380 yeah this is a story about hazing a story that will shed some light on what that kind of violence

00:02:24.100 means to a 15 year old boy and what we can do to stop it it's really what happened at camp which

00:02:31.100 was uh first night I walked into the cabin with the older kids and they grabbed onto me and told

00:02:39.080 me to strip down my underwear and they're yanking on me and I was like no I'm not doing that and I

00:02:44.840 just got my hand my wrist out of one kid's hand and started smacking the other kid on the hand

00:02:50.580 to get out and then I get out and I hear them saying don't be like him don't be like him

00:02:55.660 he's not cool like stuff like that right uh at first it was a bit of fear but not really fear

00:03:04.400 from the sense that like I was scared for my well-being because obviously I didn't get to a

00:03:10.800 point where they had me stuck in a room with them. But it was fear as like, I've never seen this

00:03:18.620 before. What the hell is this type of deal? Like it was kind of really in my face, like, holy crap,

00:03:28.120 like what? Yeah. And then after that, it was a bit of like a, it was kind of a like, really? 0.98

00:03:37.200 They think that because I didn't do something stupid, because I didn't strip down my underwear and face a wall and do whatever they told me, be their bitch essentially, because I didn't do that, I'm not cool or I'm not chill or I shouldn't be accepted. 0.98

00:03:57.520 And I learned very quickly that, uh, that's totally bullshit that like, you're not going 0.99

00:04:07.300 to be accepted because you didn't get hazed. 0.92

00:04:10.460 Like it was, it was very much a, but it was very much a new experience, like really random

00:04:16.300 kind of like this happens, like, holy crap, this has to stop type of deal.

00:04:23.660 Chad's got a measured kind of voice.

00:04:25.880 So you have to sort of imagine his heart racing, the adrenaline, the fear, you know, and projection of helplessness.

00:04:35.300 This happens, but he says it's got to stop, which most people can probably, like you can probably imagine would be the response of a lot of boys who experience or witness hazing.

00:04:47.160 Hazing is visceral.

00:04:48.480 It's like a punch to the stomach that says,

00:04:52.340 this is what power imbalance feels like.

00:04:55.960 This is what exploitation looks like.

00:04:59.500 A lot of boys know that's not fair.

00:05:03.180 Like if you think of the boys and you're like,

00:05:05.060 they probably know it's not fair.

00:05:06.680 They know that's not right.

00:05:07.980 But statistically speaking, 92% of high school students won't report it.

00:05:14.140 I'll say that again.

00:05:14.800 and 92% of high school students won't report hazing.

00:05:19.680 So why not?

00:05:21.460 They don't want to be snitches.

00:05:22.880 Okay, so let's talk about that somebody else.

00:05:24.480 Well, in the moment, what's holding you back is fear.

00:05:27.760 It's fear of if you say something, they're going to try and hurt you,

00:05:31.960 or if you say something, they're going to get even more angry.

00:05:35.460 There's a lot of emotions in the moment.

00:05:36.980 It's like you're scared, you're all tense, you're thrown off,

00:05:41.840 that make you want to just kind of not say anything

00:05:46.820 and then just, like, run, not be involved.

00:05:49.780 Everyone's afraid of the same thing.

00:05:50.980 Everyone's afraid to stand up because they feel like if they stand up,

00:05:53.660 no one else is going to stand up with them.

00:05:55.520 They think that if they do, they're not going to fit in.

00:05:57.360 They're not going to, they don't have a second chance with these people

00:06:00.660 who they want to be friends with.

00:06:02.360 Really, if these people have such high standards to be friends with them

00:06:06.380 and that they have to put themselves on the line in such a way,

00:06:09.620 why be friends with them?

00:06:10.580 it very much comes from a deep down kind of insecurity

00:06:15.320 and it's

00:06:19.000 I know because I've had it

00:06:20.860 I've felt before that I don't fit in

00:06:25.200 even last year at school

00:06:26.240 I felt like I didn't fit in with the guys

00:06:29.380 that's why I only hung out with girls really last year

00:06:32.200 because I couldn't fit in with the guys

00:06:34.420 and it was because I had a bit of this insecurity

00:06:37.740 that if they were doing something that I don't kind of connect with,

00:06:42.940 like, I'm not going to say anything about it

00:06:45.340 because I don't want to be a snitch.

00:06:50.560 And there's, so 92%, that's like a big number.

00:06:54.880 That's more than I would think.

00:06:56.720 But no, it definitely comes from just the desire to be cool,

00:07:00.380 to be liked, is not telling people about it.

00:07:03.340 And it's kind of messed.

00:07:04.920 And then on to the part about being a snitch.

00:07:07.740 like really I don't think that you can that in that situation you are a snitch if you tell anyone

00:07:19.120 like I told staff that I uh that like what had happened there that I got grabbed like that a kid

00:07:24.580 grabbed on me and told me to take off my pants like I told them that and uh did I get any negative

00:07:31.900 repercussions from that? Not really. If anything, it was positive. There are so many people out

00:07:39.700 there you can fit in with. It's not worth letting someone mess with you in a negative way. No,

00:07:46.100 there's nothing wrong with someone messing with you just in a friendly way. But no, I don't think

00:07:50.940 that there's anything wrong with telling anyone, and I don't think that you are a snitch if you do.

00:07:56.600 if you can't get the leverage to deal with a problem on your own then it's not snitching

00:08:02.460 right I don't know where I'm going with that I'm just trying to I don't know how to say it like if

00:08:08.180 I were walking down the hallway at school and I saw someone vaping I'm not going to instantly go

00:08:13.020 to a teacher and be like that kid right there he was vaping in the hallway so what it's against

00:08:17.980 the rules but could I go up to him and say no you shouldn't vape in the hallway yeah I could

00:08:23.640 and even if I said that to him and he didn't stop

00:08:26.400 are there any negative repercussions on my life

00:08:29.840 there aren't any

00:08:31.180 so why make a bigger deal out of it than it has to be

00:08:36.620 I guess you could say

00:08:37.860 that would be kind of more towards a snitching side of things

00:08:42.360 although it's against the rules

00:08:43.560 going off on a bit of a tangent

00:08:45.320 but like if you're the one who's being directly affected

00:08:49.180 and hurt by something

00:08:50.920 telling someone is not snitching

00:08:52.840 it is definitely the thing to do.

00:08:57.120 Like, as a guy, you're told to hold back your emotion.

00:09:01.980 And I know that I sure as hell do it,

00:09:04.500 and I know that every other guy who I know does it.

00:09:07.500 And if that means channeling your emotion

00:09:09.060 through making a joke out of it

00:09:10.640 or through putting someone else down,

00:09:14.300 that's something that, unfortunately,

00:09:17.020 as a guy, you tend to do.

00:09:19.940 And hazing can be very emotionally straining,

00:09:22.840 and that's why you might not want to bring it up again.

00:09:26.200 I don't think the kids who had the misfortune

00:09:29.820 to have been so brutally hazed at St. Michael's

00:09:36.380 would want to talk about it, because that's scarring.

00:09:41.720 That's hard to channel on emotion.

00:09:45.360 It's something that you'd want to put on a back burner

00:09:46.960 and never think about.

00:09:49.960 And then what happens if you do just put it on the back burner?

00:09:52.840 and it eats away at you you can only boil water for so long until

00:09:59.720 there's nothing left and then the pot melts and as soon as a pot melts then you have a

00:10:06.660 house fire and that's when you go mentally crazy

00:10:09.700 i don't know where that came from that came from somewhere

00:10:16.440 maybe an aluminum pot melts i don't think a steel one would but it would definitely glow

00:10:22.840 there's a lot to unpack there. First of all, he says, you don't report it because you're scared.

00:10:30.960 Either in the moment, you're scared of the power imbalance and you're scared that if the guys

00:10:34.740 instigating the violence direct it or escalate it towards you, no one's going to stand up with you.

00:10:40.460 Or you're scared afterwards. You're scared you'll lose cred in being part of this group that you

00:10:44.120 want to belong to. And, you know, school authorities can't protect you from that.

00:10:50.200 and that's the obvious problem

00:10:53.680 there's no supervision in a locker room

00:10:55.520 and even outside

00:10:57.560 a teacher can't tell a teenager

00:10:59.780 to set aside his sense of betrayal

00:11:01.460 if you've told on something that they've done

00:11:03.880 that's in a lot of ways on you

00:11:07.820 so doing the right thing in that context

00:11:11.200 doesn't always mean a tangibly positive outcome

00:11:14.020 you're a snitch

00:11:16.560 and a teacher can't really change that

00:11:20.200 which is the second thing that Chad says,

00:11:22.800 which is totally interesting.

00:11:23.700 In his perspective as a teenage boy, it's not snitching.

00:11:26.720 Snitching is when you rat somebody out

00:11:28.100 for something you could have handled on your own.

00:11:30.680 If there's a power imbalance,

00:11:32.300 like if you don't have the leverage

00:11:33.940 to fix whatever's going on

00:11:35.040 or protect yourself from what's going on,

00:11:37.800 he's like, telling someone is not snitching.

00:11:42.040 If you're a teenage boy listening to this,

00:11:44.160 like, hang on to that.

00:11:46.640 I didn't tell you that.

00:11:48.020 You know, a teacher didn't tell you that.

00:11:49.460 That's a 15-year-old boy telling you, you're all right.

00:11:52.880 Tell somebody.

00:11:55.520 And then Chad says one more thing to further complicate stuff.

00:11:58.740 Because in order to see seeking help in that respect, you've got to have, to some extent,

00:12:04.440 you've got to have self-awareness about the fear, right?

00:12:06.680 The powerlessness, the weakness that you feel, and the ability to express that.

00:12:11.300 I did a session in response to the St. Michael's crisis with about a dozen grade 8 boys where

00:12:16.140 they revealed feelings that they keep hidden.

00:12:18.520 Every single one of them wrote down fear.

00:12:24.280 So Chad is like, on top of all that,

00:12:26.800 we got pressure to hold in these emotions.

00:12:29.440 So there's fear.

00:12:31.300 I mean, then he interjects with this cool thing about snitching,

00:12:33.700 but then again, he goes back and says,

00:12:35.160 like, acknowledging or expressing those feelings is not easy.

00:12:40.600 That's when we end up burning down the house.

00:12:43.860 so what a lot of these things come down to is the choices of children the choices of adolescent

00:12:51.940 boys we can ban everything we want we can tell boys exactly what to do but until we start

00:12:57.600 listening and empowering boys to make choices that expand the definitions of masculinity that

00:13:01.960 they've been given i'm gonna say things aren't gonna change it's it's kind of like when you think

00:13:08.800 you tell a group of kids to never do drugs or never smoke or something like that there's always

00:13:19.140 going to be people who still do right you're always going to have like you're never through

00:13:26.180 a school that stuff doesn't really impact kids so much uh and i think it would be kind of the

00:13:32.800 same thing with hazing like you'd say hazing stops now this and that and that will help

00:13:36.100 there's no doubt that that will help

00:13:39.320 it's the same thing with mad and drunk driving

00:13:41.680 although drunk driving was a massive thing

00:13:45.160 15-20 years ago

00:13:47.780 although you sit in a mad assembly

00:13:53.320 and you just sit there and you're like oh whatever

00:13:54.840 you don't think about it too much

00:13:56.220 you've always got it in the back of your head that you shouldn't do it

00:13:59.640 that it's wrong

00:14:00.180 and I feel like if it was more expressed that hazing's wrong and stuff like that

00:14:05.100 it would really be

00:14:07.300 it would have a big impact

00:14:08.480 but

00:14:10.420 a big challenge for schools

00:14:15.480 and hazing is that

00:14:16.500 especially at

00:14:17.500 a private all boys school

00:14:21.160 for example

00:14:21.960 there's a lot of

00:14:26.300 well it's just the tradition

00:14:28.340 it's what my dad did

00:14:31.300 to the kids younger than him

00:14:33.000 it's what the kids older than us did

00:14:35.000 to us so it's what we have to do to the younger kids and the only thing that can truly stop that

00:14:41.200 in its path is the decision of the kids to make it stop because when I think to like my year at

00:14:48.760 camp right uh the year before us who had tried to haze some kids in my younger year uh

00:14:57.800 they had done that and the kids who they did haze were like that was they came out of that saying

00:15:04.600 like that was messed up like I stood up against a wall and they said don't look back or you're

00:15:09.500 gonna get hurt kid looks back gets smacked with a broom and like yeah it's it's messed right

00:15:16.280 and it takes kind of that shock therapy in a sense to kind of instill on us that we're not

00:15:25.060 gonna do this to the next guys and so we didn't we never like I'm very proud of that that our year

00:15:31.720 was the year that hopefully ended it.

00:15:35.040 And I hope that next year, because I saw none of it,

00:15:38.220 decides to end it.

00:15:41.420 What we can do is treat a lack of confidence in a sense.

00:15:49.360 Figure out a way to get somewhere with these kids

00:15:55.260 who end up getting themselves stuck in a position

00:15:57.920 where they do become hazed.

00:15:59.400 give them the confidence to not fall for it

00:16:06.480 and go on on their own path confidently

00:16:09.680 because they're the ones who are going to stop it.

00:16:12.800 The ones who said no to it are the ones who stop it.

00:16:17.880 And it's hard to bestow confidence upon someone

00:16:21.260 who is still trying to figure themselves out.

00:16:23.820 I know that last year

00:16:29.600 it was not until really this past summer at camp

00:16:32.560 that I kind of found myself as a person

00:16:35.420 and even in the past month and a half of school

00:16:38.000 or two months of school, sorry

00:16:39.740 I lost that a few times

00:16:42.600 and confidence is a really hard thing

00:16:45.840 but it takes confidence to say no

00:16:47.380 it's very easy to say yes

00:16:50.100 uh it's very easy to say yes when you feel like it's the only option that you have in order to

00:16:57.300 get where you want to be socially or whatever say no say no to it make it be the one who makes a

00:17:05.220 change because if that night i walked in to that room and stripped down to my underwear

00:17:12.760 and got whacked with a broomstick i don't think i would be the same person who i am now

00:17:19.240 if it's not clear when Chad is talking about who he is he's talking about a thoughtful patient and

00:17:24.480 gentle young man like if you if you can't pick that up in like 10 minutes of him talking I'll

00:17:29.520 just tell you he would be as comfortable teaching a kid how to kickflip as he would be kissing that

00:17:33.580 kid scraped knee he's a good guy he brings a lot of love and there are moments in Chad's life when

00:17:40.260 he has looked at the man code of violence and said no that's not me that's not who I'm gonna be

00:17:46.800 and I know that

00:17:48.660 so I went out there and asked him

00:17:51.760 what are you saying no to

00:17:53.020 and how do you find the confidence to do that

00:17:55.660 something that

00:17:57.560 boys are often taught is

00:18:00.200 oh it's just boys being boys

00:18:02.160 it's a big thing

00:18:03.840 people are getting legitimately

00:18:06.580 physically

00:18:07.340 emotionally

00:18:09.140 physically and emotionally hurt

00:18:12.400 that's not

00:18:13.580 uh yeah it's the very it's very much the idea that just boys being boys

00:18:22.560 is the norm and that that's okay that they're going to do stuff like that uh another thing is

00:18:31.520 that is the idea that you always have to show your dominance as a guy that kind of toxic form

00:18:39.920 of dominance, toxic form of dominance that I mentioned earlier comes from insecurities

00:18:45.260 within. It comes from a need to always be the best when, because you feel like you have

00:18:55.720 to live up to something rather than just being yourself, being your confident self. Like

00:19:04.300 one of the things for me that kind of really just as a guy made me feel better about myself

00:19:15.000 was when I used to be best friends with a guy and when I felt like I could be like yeah I love you

00:19:20.920 man like being able to say that to a guy who you're friends with straight gay bi whatever you

00:19:27.600 are. Being able to say that does so much for your just emotional kind of stance on where you have

00:19:37.880 to be as a person. Having good, proper, healthy relationships with other guys and girls is a big

00:19:47.840 thing that plays into, uh, figuring out how you can be like figuring out

00:19:56.240 how you can be dominant in a healthy way. Like not in that toxic, like I have to be on top. I

00:20:04.520 have to be the best because if I'm not, I'm not, I'm less of a man. If I'm not the idea that

00:20:10.660 healthy relationships could be a way to create norms of nonviolence and patterns of positive 1.00

00:20:19.240 self-identification brings me to a feminist writer named Clementine Ford, who recently 1.00

00:20:23.880 published a book called Boys Will Be Boys. She wrote an article in The Guardian at the start of

00:20:30.620 October that starts with a description of sexual assault within an American high school football

00:20:37.280 team, and then explores societal expectations around boys' sexuality and behavior.

00:20:46.500 One of the things that she says is, we should absolutely demand more of boys,

00:20:51.200 but we should also demand more for them.

00:20:56.480 And I just like, when I came back to this quote after being immersed in the news about St.

00:21:05.100 Michaels, I just was floored. You know, like when somebody says something better than you could have

00:21:11.400 said it yourself. So forgive the length of this quote. It's going to be long. But for me, it's

00:21:16.340 like it almost says everything. She said, I don't want my son to join in while his friends viciously

00:21:23.460 attack someone who trusts them. I don't want him to think that humor relies on someone being

00:21:27.940 humiliated. I don't want him to be afraid of showing too much of his softness out of fear

00:21:32.140 that others will use it against him.

00:21:34.660 I don't want him to stand in a bathroom one day 0.99

00:21:37.280 watching someone be fucked and filmed by his school friends 0.99

00:21:40.060 and not know how to speak up about it to say no. 0.99

00:21:43.340 But worse still is the thought

00:21:44.840 that he could be the one filming it,

00:21:46.800 that he could be the one organizing it.

00:21:50.180 One of the things she points out in her book,

00:21:51.940 this is not a quote anymore,

00:21:52.900 one of the things that she points out in her book

00:21:54.300 is that everyone's afraid that their daughters might be hurt.

00:21:57.780 No one seems scared that their sons

00:21:59.400 might be the ones to do it.

00:22:03.000 I don't want that world for him. This is back in the Guardian article. She says,

00:22:06.800 I don't want that world for him. I will not have that world for him. So perhaps this is where we

00:22:11.400 need to start. Not just teaching men how to navigate healthy, intimate relationships with

00:22:15.620 women, but encouraging them to embrace healthy, intimate relationships with each other without

00:22:19.860 fearing that the authenticity of their manhood may be challenged. Failing to teach and encourage 1.00

00:22:24.940 men to express healthy intimacy, not just with women, but with other men is causing significant

00:22:29.260 damage. We are doing boys no favors when we allow masculinity to be dictated to them by the status

00:22:34.660 quo. Because here's some news for you. The status quo might revere men as a class, but it destroys

00:22:40.720 them as individuals, and it teaches them to destroy others in return. That's the quote. And there's

00:22:48.180 even more in the article that got me, but I'll leave it at that. I wasn't able to get Clementine

00:22:53.920 Ford on the podcast, so instead I've pulled a couple excerpts from an interview with Jesse

00:22:58.380 Mulligan on Radio New Zealand that illustrate boy culture from an unapologetically feminist

00:23:03.980 standpoint.

00:23:05.980 Bell Hooks talks about this idea of patriarchy being damaging to men.

00:23:10.560 And she says that in her book, The Will to Change Men Masculinity and Love, she writes

00:23:15.300 the first act of violence that patriarchy demands of males is not violence toward women.

00:23:20.120 Instead, patriarchy demands of all males that they engage in acts of psychic self-mutilation,

00:23:25.000 that they kill off the emotional parts of themselves.

00:23:27.040 If an individual is not successful in emotionally crippling himself, he can count on patriarchal men to enact rituals of power that will assault his self-esteem.

00:23:35.420 Now, that might seem a little bit extreme to some people, but actually when you look at the way that those things play out in day-to-day society, it's very accurate.

00:23:43.660 You know, men are shamed for expressing emotions.

00:23:46.360 Men are shamed for displaying what we code as feminine behaviours and made to feel less than a man somehow.

00:23:54.660 I think those things are all extremely damaging towards men, but one of the other layers of damage that they create then is this sort of externalization of how you be, how do I put this?

00:24:09.580 The harm that is done to other people as a means of proving or displaying masculinity is a good example of that.

00:24:17.180 Harm enacted by boys and men who are proving their dominance probably isn't far from the definition of hazing.

00:24:24.660 and it's arguably not dissimilar

00:24:28.820 from the definition of mass shootings today

00:24:31.060 which Jesse Mulligan mentions

00:24:33.280 in his next question to Clementine Ford

00:24:35.380 he brings up a post-Parkland op-ed

00:24:39.560 in the New York Times

00:24:40.560 probably last February

00:24:42.560 in which Michael Ian Black wrote

00:24:44.720 America's boys are broken

00:24:47.660 you know again that phrase

00:24:50.260 boys are broken

00:24:51.120 is sort of challenging and tricky

00:24:53.080 to some people in the same way

00:24:54.140 that toxic masculinity is because it feels like what you're saying is that boys are reprobably

00:24:58.540 broken and that there's something inherently wrong with boyhood, which of course is not what

00:25:01.920 it's talking about. It's that this understanding of masculinity as being something that's dominant,

00:25:08.700 that is both dominant and revered is very deeply held. And I think that the damage of that is

00:25:16.440 obvious you know that that if we if we raise boys and girls in a society to believe that

00:25:22.960 masculinity exists on a hierarchy and the best position to have is at the top and that that is

00:25:30.020 what makes you a real man then this is what kind of leads to violence not just against women but

00:25:34.720 also against other men. We really need to to put a magnifying glass on that and ask what is

00:25:39.700 happening because the central the you know the central heart of the book is not that boys and

00:25:44.860 men are bad and it's not that the boys and men who do these things are evil outliers who exist

00:25:50.740 on the fringes of society it's that they're actually all normal humans and that they are

00:25:55.460 reflecting the lessons often that they're learning around them and that we have the power to change

00:26:00.460 those things um i think sometimes people make the mistake of thinking that this is all part of human

00:26:05.980 behavior and so therefore it's it's immutable and it's uh you know we just have to accept that it's

00:26:11.700 part of reality and that evil monsters do evil things well they're not evil monsters they're

00:26:15.980 people who do these things and we can change behavior just the way that we've changed just

00:26:20.500 in the same way that we change um you know one of the examples that i often use is laws around

00:26:27.040 smoking you know 40 years ago it would have been completely normal to smoke in a government

00:26:31.260 building um 20 years ago it was normal to smoke in a restaurant 10 years ago it was still

00:26:37.300 acceptable to smoke in a pub we changed smoking laws and at the time at each stage of that

00:26:42.520 legislation people railed against it and said you will never be able to change this i don't want to

00:26:46.840 have my cigarettes taken away from me people love to go to the pub and have a cigarette blah blah

00:26:50.080 blah but actually we're so much more malleable as than that as a species and now if you went to a

00:26:55.980 pub and you lit up a cigarette in the middle of it people would look at you like you would like

00:27:00.060 you just pulled your pants down in the middle of the floor so it is possible to change and

00:27:05.140 challenge people's perceptions of their own behavior. We just need to show the political

00:27:11.720 and social will to do that. This reminds me of Chad, who described the culture shift around

00:27:18.280 drunk driving pretty much the exact same way. They said we couldn't make change, and then we did.

00:27:24.460 But I said in the introduction episode of this podcast that if ending gender-based violence was

00:27:28.520 as simple as that, it would be done by now. What we're talking about is significant choices

00:27:35.580 in spaces where boys are already walking a fine balance between the status quo and their own

00:27:41.920 values, between their performance of masculinity and their inherent vulnerabilities.

00:27:48.000 To elaborate on this is Michael Keeler, research professor in masculinity studies at the Workland

00:27:53.360 School of Education, whose original research centered on boys' bodies and the navigation

00:27:57.560 of locker room spaces.

00:28:00.020 Another example of the rules that we learn is,

00:28:03.240 for example, in the locker room,

00:28:07.400 and I was talking to some 14-year-old,

00:28:09.960 14, 15-year-old boys in high school,

00:28:12.880 and they're talking about the norms or the rules

00:28:15.760 that they adhere to in changing in the locker rooms.

00:28:19.920 And they made a distinction between the look and the gaze.

00:28:25.300 and they said it's all right.

00:28:28.260 And this was a recurring theme among these boys that I interviewed.

00:28:33.600 They said it's all right if you glance.

00:28:39.980 You can glance quickly at other boys, but you can't look.

00:28:46.680 So it's all right to have a passing glance at your male counterpart

00:28:52.840 part when you're changing. But if you look and stare, you do that at your peril. So again,

00:29:03.380 this sort of unwritten rule, the kinds of ways that we learn about what we can and cannot do

00:29:09.880 as boys is evident. It's pervasive in all these different spaces that we are together as boys and

00:29:18.360 men. It's a very tenuous space because you know that there's more dominant, more aggressive boys

00:29:27.900 in those spaces who adhere to more traditional norms. And they invoke this homophobic discourse

00:29:37.120 where they immediately, if you are looking at another boy's body, the moment if you're caught

00:29:44.560 looking, it becomes a defense mechanism for some boys to accuse you of being gay, to accuse 0.99

00:29:53.280 you of being a fag, because why else would you look at another boy's body than if you 1.00

00:30:00.680 weren't gay in the first place? 1.00

00:30:03.460 So it's a way of defending heterosexuality. 0.87

00:30:07.500 It's a way of actually not only defending, but asserting heterosexuality at the risk

00:30:13.680 and to the cost of other boys.

00:30:16.880 It's a very difficult sort of context where you try and learn

00:30:21.080 what it means to be a boy and a man,

00:30:23.360 but you also know that you can only learn in certain ways with certain boys

00:30:29.960 and you have to be able to gauge and assess.

00:30:34.460 Can you be vulnerable with some other boys

00:30:36.440 without them turning it on you and putting you down?

00:30:40.520 so in many ways on the one hand why I'm saying there are a lot of rules that we know and they're

00:30:46.280 seamless there's difficulty in not knowing when you can transgress those rules without sacrificing

00:30:56.880 your own safety and so we rather than sacrifice that safety we will fall back to just being among

00:31:03.840 the boys because it's much safer. And like I said earlier, we don't have those kinds of safety

00:31:11.000 networks in place. So that kind of intimacy or a kind of willingness to be vulnerable, oftentimes,

00:31:19.540 as these young men point out to me, will occur when you're one-on-one with a friend. They won't

00:31:24.960 occur in the locker room. They won't occur when you're playing basketball or if you're on the

00:31:31.540 corridor through a group of friends, it's going to occur more likely when there's one or two of you

00:31:36.820 who have a longer story together, a longer narrative, a friendship that you've developed

00:31:42.220 over a long time. Oftentimes the locker rooms become the place where you're going to find

00:31:46.780 surveillance. You're going to find people holding on tightly to what it means to be a heteronormative

00:31:54.180 boy. And so those are the kinds of spaces and places in which we learn the rules and

00:32:01.880 we are very careful about how we navigate being among the boys or being apart from the

00:32:09.360 boys. And oftentimes there's perimeters among boys. We know who the dominant aggressive

00:32:14.560 boys are in those locker room spaces. It's what we know is the safest way to protect

00:32:19.560 and to demonstrate we are men, we are tough, and we stand by our shield.

00:32:25.520 So those are just a couple of ways that I think masculinities

00:32:29.780 and the rules about being boys and men are played out

00:32:32.900 in the day-to-day interactions among boys and men.

00:32:37.820 In grade 9, I had mandatory gym class.

00:32:40.820 And in grade 9, I weighed 84 pounds and had long hair.

00:32:44.480 Which meant the locker room was not the safest place for me.

00:32:49.560 Michael talks about knowing when to transgress the rules of masculinity

00:32:54.640 without sacrificing your safety.

00:32:56.000 Well, I transgressed them just by my body, right? 0.65

00:33:00.140 By my hair.

00:33:01.200 I wasn't safe.

00:33:04.720 What that looks like was the biggest, most developed guy 1.00

00:33:09.280 walking out of the showers and telling me to suck his dick 1.00

00:33:12.260 and everyone laughing at me. 1.00

00:33:15.640 I wish I could tell you that I drop kicked him into the bench, but I didn't.

00:33:19.160 I grabbed my stuff and left.

00:33:20.440 I wish I could tell you, like Chad, that I told somebody.

00:33:24.860 But I didn't.

00:33:26.300 I focused on trying not to throw up.

00:33:30.040 And when I went back into the change room, I didn't look at him once.

00:33:34.800 I didn't have the confidence to reject that kind of,

00:33:40.340 you could call it bullying or hazing or violence.

00:33:43.080 I didn't have the courage to stand up to him.

00:33:45.060 I didn't have the strength to tell anybody afterwards.

00:33:48.800 So how do we empower boys to have that kind of confidence?

00:33:53.540 It's a difficult question to answer.

00:33:56.680 I don't think there's any set of rules that I could say to you,

00:34:00.420 this is what they need to do.

00:34:01.920 I think in terms of pushing back on traditional normative masculinity

00:34:08.860 or resisting heteronormativity,

00:34:12.380 resisting being just among the boys,

00:34:15.580 takes a lot of work.

00:34:17.700 And so oftentimes we'll fall back to what's the easiest way of being among the boys.

00:34:24.280 And so resistance involves a level of confidence, a level of courage, and a level of strength.

00:34:33.580 And it's interesting because I think one could hear me say those things and say,

00:34:37.460 well, isn't that what being a heteronormative man is too?

00:34:42.100 So there's this interesting contradiction, I think.

00:34:45.080 courage, strength, and confidence. You need that just as much to step out of the man box

00:34:51.840 as you do to be in the man box. So by stepping out of there, you're actually demonstrating

00:35:00.200 a confidence in yourself and your knowledge of who you are and what you are invested in.

00:35:08.220 So if you believe that we need to accept all people and we need to acknowledge diversity, inclusivity, then that takes courage and strength to say, I'm not going to adhere to a very limited or limiting way of being a boy.

00:35:27.100 And instead, I'm going to cross that boundary, and I'm going to full-on embrace my male friends.

00:35:34.960 I'm going to be vulnerable among my male friends, and I'm going to knowingly do that.

00:35:43.780 That takes courage. That takes strength. And that takes confidence.

00:35:49.420 And you do that with your eyes wide open. We know what the rules are.

00:35:54.600 And so to be able to transgress, to be able to make that move from the box that we have been so profoundly limited by is a lot of work.

00:36:09.020 And so I think to answer your question, it involves, I guess those are some qualities, but it also involves gradually knowing that you have the support of your other male counterparts that in one-on-one or small intimate gatherings that you see, you test, you test to see what you're able to say openly and publicly with other male counterparts.

00:36:35.880 and you read the reaction.

00:36:40.420 You listen to how they respond, other guys respond,

00:36:43.920 to your truthfulness, your honesty,

00:36:47.760 your willingness to be vulnerable.

00:36:51.120 And then you move from there to see,

00:36:54.380 can I be vulnerable more in different spaces?

00:36:57.700 Looking around, the time is ripe.

00:37:01.580 We're in a moment in, I want to say,

00:37:05.540 in our sort of narrative as boys and men that we can shift the ways of being boys and men,

00:37:13.860 that we can embrace one another publicly without fear, immediate fear and attacks,

00:37:23.960 physical attacks, because the rules are changing.

00:37:28.740 Now, I'm not saying that we need to go full on and do this without careful thought and forethought about where you are, because we also know in which spaces it's dangerous to be unlike the rest of the boys.

00:37:44.980 And that's what keeps many of us being just one of the boys.

00:37:49.620 So we need to bear that in mind, and we need to be smart about our resistance.

00:37:57.960 We need to be smart about our transition or transgression of heteronormative masculinity.

00:38:05.440 And that's why we need, in many ways, to break the silence around, for example, sexual assault.

00:38:11.060 We need to break silences around the rules for being boys and men.

00:38:17.500 And we need to be able to speak up and speak out.

00:38:19.960 We just need to do so carefully because the rules about how to be a boy have a much longer narrative than the rules that we want to rewrite about how to undo being a boy.

00:38:36.560 I don't know where you're at listening to this, but there are two things that I do want to leave you with.

00:38:41.640 The first is that this is relevant to men committing violence against women.

00:38:46.840 One of my latest favorite quotes is from Phil Chrisman.

00:38:49.960 who said, every social encounter between men is potentially a fistfight. You learn this in

00:38:57.460 elementary school and never forget it. And no wonder many of us have failed to see grabby men

00:39:02.580 as a serious social problem for women. When an American boyhood consists of little else but

00:39:07.480 unorganized combat drills, unwanted invasions of personal territory. It's all grabs, punches,

00:39:13.120 towel flicks, fake homoerotic aggression, threats of unspecified but grim, and as one ages,

00:39:18.220 increasingly sexualized violence. As I've written in the Breaking the Boy Code Medium publication,

00:39:24.180 I don't think boys learn to assault girls by being with girls. Boys, if unchecked, relate to girls

00:39:30.840 through the self-preserving patterns of domination and aggression that they learn in the lateral

00:39:34.380 violence of hegemonic masculinity. The hierarchy of boy culture. The second thing is to say that

00:39:43.740 this isn't a war on masculinity as much as it sounds like it. Clementine already touched on 0.98

00:39:48.260 this when she said, it's not that boys and men are bad, but that they are reflecting the lessons

00:39:52.620 that they're learning around them. And we have the power to change these things. I'm going to

00:39:58.320 send it back to Michael because he puts it really well when he says, we're trying to support a

00:40:02.700 diversity of masculinities. So it's not so much, often it's not so much saying, you know, your way

00:40:10.560 of doing masculinity or your way of being a boy or a man is wrong as it is to say there's more

00:40:15.780 than one way in the first place we we do hear within the research field and i think in mainstream

00:40:23.680 media too um about a war on masculinity and there's this real sense that we need to redouble

00:40:30.940 we need to re-entrench ourselves in masculinity and there's there's a fear that being a man is

00:40:38.780 under attack and so my response to that is that if you feel you're under attack then you need to

00:40:46.960 really look in the mirror and to see what what about being a man is is being questioned what

00:40:55.280 about being this traditional normative man do you feel is is being challenged and you need to think

00:41:08.020 twice about why you subscribe to certain rules and what does that perpetuate? Because oftentimes

00:41:14.800 when we adhere to those rules and we do it so unthinkingly, we're actually subscribing to a

00:41:23.620 larger narrative about gender relations, about differences between boys and girls, men and women.

00:41:33.400 We're oftentimes subscribing to power relations, and so that's what we really need to think hard about.

00:41:41.680 And for those who talk about, you know, there is a war, masculinity is under siege.

00:41:50.380 It really is a matter of thinking about the culture of masculinity.

00:41:56.200 It's about the interchange, the exchanges among men that I'm raising questions around.

00:42:03.960 And we need to think about issues of equity and cultures of respect and acknowledging diversity of masculinities, plural.

00:42:15.900 And we need to really think hard about why we've held on to for so long notions of masculinity as singular, unidimensional, flat.

00:42:29.600 And what has that done for us as boys and men?

00:42:35.680 And what hasn't it allowed us to do?

00:42:38.680 And so I think along those lines, then you can start thinking about, so what is this war on masculinity really about?

00:42:49.560 It's not so much a war on masculinity per se as it is a rethink about masculinity, singular, and a redevelopment or a reorganization of gender relationships.

00:43:06.180 It's about, you know, Raymond Connell talks about gender relations and the ways in which we are boys and girls, men and women.

00:43:19.500 And those binaries can be very restrictive.

00:43:22.940 And so we need to think more about the fluidity of masculinities, the fluidity of feminities.

00:43:29.080 And so these polarizing kind of conversations where you're either or are really, I want to say regressive.

00:43:38.320 They're really non-starters.

00:43:40.080 And I think you see that in schools and where we have gender neutral washrooms.

00:43:45.020 And we see that beyond school settings where, you know, we're trying to support a diversity of masculinities and feminities

00:43:54.080 and the ways that people are transitioning.

00:43:59.080 rethinking their own identities and that's a much healthier and a much more

00:44:04.200 positive reaffirming context in which to locate ourselves as individuals than a

00:44:14.980 society that puts us in man boxes and and and women boxes if you will that's

00:44:23.080 That's a much more inclusive, much more embracing, supportive context where you develop a society

00:44:30.700 based on respect and safety and support for all identities, not only those that are valorized

00:44:40.900 by those in power.

00:44:43.440 The boys who were expelled from St. Michael's College and charged with sexual assault aren't

00:44:48.040 criminals or rapists or any other label that you'd put on them that, you know, that would push them

00:44:53.300 to the edge of what's possible. They were 14 and 15 year old boys, which is not to try to excuse

00:45:00.220 them from their behavior, but to say that every single adolescent boy makes choices. And when

00:45:04.300 facing ubiquitous pressure to be dominant, invulnerable, aggressive, those choices can

00:45:09.020 and do reflect violence. Sometimes it looks like hazing, sometimes it doesn't, but it always hurts

00:45:17.000 someone. So how can we raise boys like Chad, who can raise his head and say, I'm very proud of that,

00:45:25.160 that it ended with me? The answers are in Chad's story. They're in Clementine's writing, and

00:45:33.280 they're in Michael's research. Somewhere in building emotional confidence, fostering healthy

00:45:40.100 relationships, and challenging patterns of violence is a world where an 84-pound freshman

00:45:46.120 entrust the boys around him. A world where Chad participates in positive initiation rituals.

00:45:52.900 A world where the boys on a football team are far from harming each other.

00:45:58.780 So let's demand more of boys. Let's demand more for boys.

00:46:06.120 I have one more episode coming before I conclude season one, and I want to ask if any part of this

00:46:10.460 podcast, any part has resonated with you, made you think, made you feel something,

00:46:14.460 could you please leave a review on apple podcasts or facebook in the months to come i'm going to be

00:46:19.760 setting up season two and your reviews will help make that possible this podcast is supported by

00:46:24.940 next gen men an organization that helps boys build that self-confidence the relationships that

00:46:29.460 challenge man box norms of masculinity you can learn more about next gen men at next gen men.ca

00:46:35.440 show notes for this episode are at breaking the boy code.com you can contact me at breaking the

00:46:41.580 boycode at gmail.com or at boypodcast on social media.

00:47:03.960 All right, it's over. And if you're willing to listen to 20 seconds of dope outro music,

00:47:08.840 I really hope that you're willing to spend 20 seconds leaving a review on Apple Podcasts or Facebook.

00:47:13.960 It will really make a big difference.

00:47:16.300 Thank you.

Breaking the Boy Code - December 18, 2018

In That Moment You’re Scared： Boys and Hazing

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