Post: #1

I just read this (feminist progressive) article which is currently linked from the Chateau:
Sex Ed That Turns Boys into Men

No need to read it, this sentence out of the article sums up what it is about:

Quote:Encourage boys to consider everything they’ve been taught about what it means to be a man, deconstruct it, and then think about how to become a good one.

It got me thinking into why deconstruction has such an appeal to progressives. One part of it is surely:

• Improving
• after you have deconstructed something, you need to build it up again
• When building it up again, you can build it according to what you believe is right and good
  

But I think there is another part to it. I remember when I was a child and built spaceships with Lego, I loved to let them crash on the floor just so I can repair them. The appeal for me was not the destruction of the ship, but being in the role of the space engineer who has to make it whole again. So this might be another reason for the appeal of deconstruction:

• Helping
• when something is damaged, that's an opportunity to be the good, helping person (the Helper Syndrome)
• (if nothing is damaged, you will need to damage something)
  

A third reason I can think of is:

• Learning
• as you watch something come undone, you get to understand it better
  

Like when you reverse engineer something, you will need to take it apart. Or how a medical student that is supposed to understand human anatomy better will need to cut a human body open.

A fourth could be:

• Prevention
• boys will turn into men at some point, and most men are mysoginists (monsters)
• the mysoginists (monsters) need to be "killed" (not literally, but in the sense of their masculinity being taken away from them) when they are young, before they become too strong
  

All these I would classify as "benevolent", because even though progressives are ultimately damaging those boys, in their mind, they mean well. It is just that they don't understand how much evil is being done in the name of good.

This reason could be considered "neutral":

• feeling in control
• Feeling powerless is terrible - I want to feel in control of my world
• If I can control something (boys and their thoughts), I don't feel powerless
  

In the article, the program creator says:

Quote:he’d been a 14-year-old boy — confused, eager for information, and wishing he’d had a mentor-type program

So maybe the boys he uses the program on seem are a substitute for himself?

• correcting one's own biography
• when you feel something went wrong, but the opportunity (in this case adolescence) has passed, it can become a hangup / chip on the shoulder
• working with adolescents on the same situation that generated one's own personal hangup can feel like being that boy again and doing something different
  

Another morally neutral one:

• Feeling powerless is terrible - I want to feel in control of my world
• If I can control something (boys and their thoughts), I don't feel powerless
  

I am making this distinction because I think that apart from these "benevolent" and morally "neutral" reasons, there is a set of "malicious" reasons where people know that they are doing wrong, but they are doing it anyway:

• Envy
• "If I can't have it, nobody should"
• When you are aware that you cannot have something that others do (e.g. a healthy sexuality)...
• ...you might come to the conclusion that this feeling of shortcoming will subside if nobody has it (a healthy sexuality)
  

An obvious malicious reaon (although I don't believe it is frequent with the people who organize these kinds of "deconstructing boys" programs) is hate for men:

• Hate
• I hate masculinity (or men / the patriarchy)
• I will destroy it in any form I can find it (and get away with it)
  

I think the 8 reasons might just be in the order of their frequency of occurence:

1. improving
2. helping
3. learning
4. preventing
5. correcting one's own biography
6. feeling in control
7. envy
8. hate
   

My questions are:

• Can you think of other (psychological) reasons for this behaviour - the appeal of deconstructing boys?
• What do you think of the order of frequency - which ones are the major motivational causes, which are minor?
  

Post: #2

Well fuck, if there are no father's around them women surely want to get bits to deconstruct what it is to be a man. Cause they know they got no clue

Post: #3

I think the idea here is to reconstruct boys' mentalities using the public school system.

The military deconstructs you and rebuilds you, as does any regimen that is supposed to educate. You can't educate someone who already knows something contrary to what you are trying to teach, hence deconstruction.

Post: #4

(05-26-2015 01:01 PM)h3ltrsk3ltr Wrote:  The military deconstructs you and rebuilds you, as does any regimen that is supposed to educate.

Great point. If I spin that thought further, it would resolve like this:

1. You can't educate someone who already knows something contrary to what you are trying to teach, hence deconstruction.
2. Boys do not have a lifetime of indoctrination through media in them, their thinking is more natural/instinctive than that of say a 30-year-old
   

hence

• boys' deconstruction is needed because what they are to be taught is contrary to nature/instinct
  

Post: #5

(05-26-2015 11:30 AM)Virtus Wrote:  Well fuck, if there are no father's around them women surely want to get bits to deconstruct what it is to be a man. Cause they know they got no clue

Yeah - as the involvement of fathers in boys' education (involuntarily) decreases, the need for the state to take on the father's role and educate (= deconstruct) boys will increase.