By : My friends and I were boy scouts. We’d meet at a bank in Rio Vista, Texas, hoist our packs onto our backs, and hike five miles to camp.We were teenagers, ranging from 12 to 18, and a rowdy bunch. We tackled each other. We fought. We dipped snuff. We peed in the woods. We played shirts and skins football. And we learned a lot from our all-male leaders. Most of all, we benefitted from our time together, us boys and men.
Even in the 80’s, boys spent most of the time around women. Some of my friend’s parents were divorced, and they lived with their mothers. The luckier ones (myself included) lived with both parents, but still spent more time with our moms. Moms took us to school, picked us up from school, and were with us while our dads worked evenings. We spent our weekdays at schools led by women, in an environment that wasn’t natural for boys (sitting still, staying quiet, singing songs, coloring in the lines), where the girls excelled, and we got punished. In the evenings, we came home and watched sitcoms and commercials that showed dad as a dope (Al Bundy, Homer Simpson) and mom as the hero. The less fortunate of us also had to spend part of our weekends in female led Sunday school classes, singing feminine songs and receiving more reinforcement to the idea that something was inherently bad about being a boy.
