ABSTRACT
You’ve probably heard there’s a “war against boys” in America. The latest book of that title by Christina Hoff Sommers claims that men are now the second sex and that boys-not girls-are the ones who are in serious trouble, the “victims” of “misguided” feminist efforts to protect and promote girls’ development. At the same time, best-selling books like William Pollack’s Real Boys and Dan Kindlon and Michael Thompson’s Raising Cain sound the same tocsin. Writing from the therapists’ point of view, they warn of alarming levels of depression and suicide, and describe boys’ interior lives as an emotionally barren landscape, with all affect suppressed beneath postures of false bravado. They counsel anguished parents to “rescue” or “protect” boys-not from feminists, but from a definition of masculinity that is harmful not just to boys, but to girls and other living things.
