ABSTRACT
Whether girls are part of this lesson or not, it is useful to begin by exploring the different imperatives that apply to girls and boys. Boys fear isolation too, but not to the same extent. For boys, the thing they fear most is humiliation. On the whole, boys don't like talking about humiliation because it is humiliating. That makes it hard even to get the boys’ agreement that fear of humiliation is a ‘thing’ for them. The more the boys talk about humiliation in an objective and analytical way, the faster they learn to deal with the feeling with less trauma. It is worth exploring the anthropological origins of girls’ fear of isolation and boys’ fear of humiliation. Humiliation is the mechanism by which male hierarchies create rank order without necessarily resorting to violence.
