Current events: A few days ago there was a murder near our town in Vermont, and yesterday the suspect was caught in Kansas — a thousand miles away — but only after he’d killed himself.
I mention this because it was (ho-hum) another one of those guys who kills the girl who just broke up with him — and I think men need to attend to this.
“Murder-suicide”. In a patriarchy we know without asking which person did both. And this is my answer to stopping one more generation of it.
Boys grow up wearing shirts that say “I don’t know karate, but I know crazy” and they think going crazy-violent is something we (males) practice for when we experience shame from feeling attacked or abandoned. But men need to be giving boys daily feedback as they grow up — feedback when they do something pro-social (“You rock!”), or anti-social (“Bogus!”), or when they forget how to articulate their inner thoughts and feelings (“What’s going on inside?”).
Even if they reject it at first, I think it means the world to boys to hear guiding feedback from men who are safe, who pay attention, and who care enough to talk to them.
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