Boys are Killing Themselves in Record Numbers, Maybe it’s Because They Believe They are Toxic
It happened again, another teen boy killed himself. I was actually on the toilet doing my daily crossword on my phone when it rang. I recognized the name, it was my cousin. I didn’t answer because I’m weird that way, apparently, I don’t talk to people when I’m making a stinky. I called him back as soon as I was done. He had been wanting to call me and ask me something but the events of that morning had prompted him to call me right away. His neighbor's 17-year-old son was dead. Like many others, he took his own life just hours before. We are barely two weeks into the doldrums of winter and this is the fourth suicide that has come across my radar. All boys. All four of them. This one just one week after a 17-year-old senior took his life and I was attending a community event at that same high school for parents and teens. And this one came just one week after a 13-year-old teen boy killed himself. 13 years old, he was just getting started and now he’ll never know how great life can truly be.
My cousin wanted to know how to support this family, they were people he knew and he considers them to be friends but I also knew that someone needed to ask my cousin how he was holding up. I wasn’t at all surprised to hear his voice quiver after I asked him this. Of course, he partially blames himself, he wishes he had done more, been nicer to the kid and now he’ll always wonder and wish he had tried a little bit harder to reach this kid.
Sometimes I wish people would ask me how I am holding up since becoming the go-to person when a kid kills himself. I started my own non-profit for addressing teen suicide a year and a half ago and I was just hired to provide mental health services for the largest school in the state, a school that had seven completed suicides just a year ago. I don’t know yet how many of them are boys but I know the school is consistent with the statistics. Most, if not all, of those 7 teen suicides were boys.
Toxic Masculinity
Later that same day an ad for Gillette razors went somewhat viral. An ad that fell into same tired rhetoric that depicts boys and males as naturally predatory and violent. A commercial that tells males that they are toxic. “Good!” I keep thinking to myself because a lot of people are pissed. And they should be. I hope that this potentially becomes the lynchpin for the ugly messages being fed to modern males who lost their identity generations ago. It’s time for those people who are pissed to stand up and speak out. It’s time for them to mobilize and start telling boys that they are loved and that they are worth saving.
The proponents of so-called “toxic masculinity” haven’t put any specific parameters on what this term actually means and so it is just tossed out, indiscriminately. No, boys aren’t born rapists. No, boys don’t naturally want to hurt or cause harm. I won’t deny that there are boys are doing horrible things but they are usually the exception to the rule and not the rule itself. If modern males are toxic, it’s because they were raised by women. With fathers being more and more absent, boys are being taught how to be men by people who have no idea what it actually means to be one and have never done it themselves. They don’t understand that boys don’t want to cause harm, they want to be heroes and the ones that do cause harm are the ones that have been neglected, abused and discarded. They are rough and tumble because natural selection has taught them that the day may come when they may have to protect the people that they care about the most.
Boys are Failing
Like many others, when my cousin was surprised to hear the heinous and largely ignored statistics that paint the truth. Boys are leading the way in high school dropouts, high school failure and failure to launch. They are chronically homeless, incarcerated and addicted. They are the quickest to be labelled as ADHD and are quickly punished at school because they struggle to sit through school, motionless and silent. And yes, they dominate the suicide statistics. Those who are quick to label males as toxic don’t care if they die, even when it means by their own hands. It’s time to stop listening to the rhetoric pushed by those that hate males and by those that don’t care if boys fail and who don’t care if they die.
Because I work so closely with teenagers, including many teen boys, both in my own private therapy practice and in a public school, I see what is happening with boys. They look at the floor when an adult addresses them, they are waiting to be put down, waiting for someone else to tell them what a screw up they are. It’s all that they hear anymore. They believe they are born worthless and they born toxic because they are male. They didn’t make this choice, they had no control over it and yet they are put down and told they are toxic for something not of their choosing. I can’t think of anything more ugly than teaching an entire generation of boys that they are toxic when not a single one of these boys had any ability to choose differently.
A Call for Action
It’s a lie. Males aren’t toxic. They aren’t born rapists. And they aren’t flawed girls. These messages of toxic masculinity aren’t based in altruism, they are based in the desire to acquire power and to dominate. Unfortunately, many of us are almost as guilty because we have failed to protect our young boys from those who would exercise their own cowardice by going after our young boys. Labelling young males as bullies simply because they are male is exactly what a bully would do. The real bullies are the ones that go after those that they know are weak and vulnerable.
Please, stop telling boys they are toxic. Tell them they are great. They desperately need to hear it. Please, stop trying to tell a boy how to be a real man when you have no idea on what it means to be one. If you see a boy struggling, please take a moment to look him in the eye and tell him that what he has been told about being male is wrong. Tell him you are proud of him. I promise you that he is starving to hear this.
And, of course, buy different shaving products.
