Thanks Scott, I doubt the hosts you’re referring to would disagree with anything you’re saying and I know I don’t disagree.

I know, it’s hard to find much sympathy for the challenges that are faced by rambunctious white cis boys. But I have one, and he means the world to me, and I get a little riled up hearing the implication that there’s something wrong with the way he is and that as his parent I am partly responsible for that. I will say that your hosts made an excellent point about the tolerance for boys like mine being an example of white privilege, and I would wish the same tolerance for all children.

Both his mom and I both take our responsibility to teach him respect for other people very seriously. We talk to him about this a lot, telling him to give people room on the sidewalk, to stop touching people when they say no, and so on.

But despite all of this, we can’t stop him from throwing things at us or head butting us or just being generally aggressive. He has aggressive energy which is just part of his nature, just like my cat likes to follow me around attacking my ankles sometimes. He was like that in the womb – we could hardly get a clear sonogram picture of him because he was trashing around so much. It’s our job to help him learn to control it and respect other people, but at the same time, we have to allow him to express it or he gets crazy.

Now, I’m not trying to create a false equivalency here by claiming that male oppression is on par with female oppression or there’s cis oppression or whatever. What I do wonder is this. Little boys like the one we are raising (I’m not saying all boys, and I’m not saying that some girls aren’t very similar) make it very difficult to keep any kind of order in a house or a classroom. Who are the authority figures in the childhoods of most boys like this? Mothers and teachers, who are predominately female. So you have boys who thrive on chaos up against women who are trying to maintain order. This seems like a recipe for misogyny later in life.

Some answers, maybe. Long paternity leave. Schools that allow for controlled mayhem, rather than pathologizing it, such as the following: http://www.ted.com/talks/takaharu_tezuka_the_best_kindergarten_you_ve_ever_seen?language=en

Honest open talks about sexuality, like they have in other countries: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_education_curriculum

Teaching respect for others, and not shaming people for being who they are.