ABSTRACT
Boys fear humiliation above all else and this fear drives a lot of their behaviours. Boys find it difficult to talk about humiliation because they find it humiliating. All humans tend to fear humiliation because it can make them both feel shamed in themselves, and be shamed in the eyes of others. Feeling shamed is emotionally painful because being shamed can lead to social exclusion. As adults we develop resilience to these dangers, but it is much harder for teenagers because of their stage of psychological development. In contrast, whilst girls also fear humiliation, they fear isolation more. Boys fear isolation too, but not as much as girls, on the whole. The book describes the way in which humiliation can affect the way boys think, and their instinctive reactions to humiliation and the prospect of being humiliated. In the face of humiliation boys will often seek to become less vulnerable, and they tend to achieve that by being more closed in their overt emotional reactions. When this happens iteratively across a cohort of boys, the effect can be to make their relational culture defensive and sour. Teachers can desensitise boys to their fear of humiliation by getting them to talk about it in a safe and non-judgmental way.
