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Real Boys' Voices: Boys Speak out about Drugs, Sex, Violence, Bullying, Sports, School, Parents, and so much more Kindle Edition
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LanguageEnglish
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PublisherRandom House
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Publication dateSeptember 20, 2000
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File size1118 KB
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Editorial Reviews
Review
Praise for the New York Times bestseller Real Boys
"Just as Reviving Ophelia opened our eyes to the challenges faced by adolescent girls, Real Boys helps us hear and respond to the needs of growing boys. Illuminating, exciting, and courageous, this book should be read by everyone concerned about boys. It is a beacon of hope and a gift to all of us."
— Judith V. Jordan, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychiatry, Harvard Medical School
" I wish I had read Real Boys when my son was a boy."
— Mary Pipher, Ph.D., author of Reviving Ophelia
"Anyone who lives or works with boys should read Real Boys."
— Gail Sheehy
"A thoughtful and sensitive discussion of contemporary American boyhood."
— Dr. Robert Coles
Amazon.com Review
The first and longest section of the book, "The Secret Emotional Lives of Boys," is the most powerful. Boys talk about homophobia--their secret terror that they might be called gay--and of the double life many say they lead: strong and brave on the outside, yet full of worries and angst on the inside. With violence all around them, many boys fear becoming violent themselves. They also describe the intense pressure they feel to lose their virginity and the conflicting feelings they have about sex. "Your virginity is what determines whether you're a man or a boy in the eyes of every teenage male," muses one thoughtful boy, who adds, "It is almost inconceivable to think that your virginity, your one and only innocence, could be your worst enemy." Throughout his book, Pollack offers helpful and concrete suggestions for parents to help their boys lead better lives, including tips on how to deal with bullying behavior and how to recognize signs of depression. While this advice is useful, the true power of this book lies in those very real voices. This is a must-read for parents and for anyone who wants insight into the minds of today's boys. --Virginia Smyth --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
From Library Journal
-DSandra Isaacson, Las Vegas
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
From School Library Journal
Susanne Bardelson, Arvada Public Library, Jefferson County, CO
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
About the Author
William S. Pollack, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist, is an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, director of the Center for Men at McLean Hospital, and a founding member and fellow of the American Psycho-logical Association's Society for the Psychological Study of Men and Masculinity. He and his family live in Massachusetts.
--This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
From the Back Cover
Praise for the New York Times bestseller Real Boys
" Just as Reviving Ophelia opened our eyes to the challenges faced by adolescent girls, Real Boys helps us hear and respond to the needs of growing boys. Illuminating, exciting, and courageous, this book should be read by everyone concerned about boys. It is a beacon of hope and a gift to all of us."
--Judith V. Jordan, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychiatry, Harvard Medical School
" I wish I had read Real Boys when my son was a boy."
--Mary Pipher, Ph.D., author of Reviving Ophelia
"Anyone who lives or works with boys should read Real Boys."
--Gail Sheehy
" A thoughtful and sensitive discussion of contemporary American boyhood."
--Dr. Robert Coles
--This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
From Publishers Weekly
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
From Kirkus Reviews
From the Inside Flap
"In my travels throughout this country, I have discovered a glaring truth: America's boys are absolutely desperate to talk about their lives," says Dr. William Pollack, author of the bestseller Real Boys. Now, in Real Boys' Voices, Pollack lets us hear what boys today are saying, even as he explores ways to get them to talk more openly with us. "Boys long to talk about the things that are hurting themtheir harassment from other boys, their troubled relationships with their fathers, their embarrassment around girls and confusion about sex, their disconnection from and love for their parents, the violence that haunts them at school and on the street, their constant fear that they might not be as masculine as other boys." In Real Boys' Voices we hear, verbatim, what boys from big cities and small towns, including Littleton, Colorado, have to say about violence, drugs, sports, school, parents, love, anger, body image, becoming a man, and much, much more.
Real Boys' Voices takes us into the daily worlds of boys not only to show how society's outdated expectations force them to mask many of their true emotions, but also to let us hear how boys themselves describe their isolation, depression, longing, love, and hope. How can you get behind the mask of masculinity many boys wear? How can you tell whether a "bad boy" is actually a "sad boy"and how do you spot the danger signals of depression? How can you grow closer to the boy you love? Pollack explores how to create safe spaces and engage in "action talk," how to listen so a boy will speak the truth about, and be, himself. In the real boys' voices here, boys speak eloquently and truthfully about such topics as shame, bullying and teasing, the pressure to fit in, addictions, how they see the lives of the men they know, the importance of their mothers and fathers, their own spiritual and creative experiences, friendships with other boys and with girls, being gay, and coping with divorce and other losses, including the death of a friend or parent. We also hear what boys from Columbine High School and other places say about fear and violence in their lives. Full of insights from and about young and adolescent boys, William Pollack's Real Boys' Voices is an important, illuminating, and invaluable book, for boys themselves and for all the people in their lives.
From Real Boys' Voices
" Boys are supposed to shut up and take it, to keep it all in."
Scotty, from a small town in New England
" What I hate about this school is that I am being picked on in the halls and just about everywhere else."
Cody, from a suburb in New England
" Sometimes people say there are two me's, like I have a dual personality. . . . The public persona is not really who I am. It's a tool . . . to be who everyone wants me to be." Raphael, from a city in the West
" If you see [abuse] coming, just walk out of the room or walk out of the house or go somewhere, go to a friend's house, go for a walk, take your dog for a run, whatever. Just try to get away from that situation before it actually explodes." Paul, from a suburb in the West
" Maybe a couple of times I used to bully some kids. I haven't bullied anyone since the shooting. I try to be nicer to people even if I don't like them." John, from Littleton, Colorado
--This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
From Booklist
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
INTRODUCTION
LISTENING TO BOYS' VOICES
"Boys are supposed to shut up and take it, to keep it all in. It's harder for them to release or vent without feeling girly. And that can drive them to shoot themselves."
—Scotty, 13, from a small town in northern New England
IN MY TRAVELS THROUGHOUT THIS COUNTRY FROM THE inner-city neighborhoods of Boston, New York, and San Francisco to suburbs in Florida, Connecticut, and Rhode Island; from small, rural villages in New Hampshire, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania to the pain-filled classrooms of Littleton, Colorado-I have discovered a glaring truth: America's boys are absolutely desperate to talk about their lives. They long to talk about the things that are hurting them-their harassment from other boys, their troubled relationships with their fathers, their embarrassment around girls and confusion about sex, their disconnection from parents, the violence that haunts them at school and on the street, their constant fear that they might not be as masculine as other boys.
But this desperate coast-to-coast longing is silenced by the Boy Code-old rules that favor male stoicism and make boys feel ashamed about expressing weakness or vulnerability. Although our boys urgently want to talk about who they really are, they fear that they will be teased, bullied, humiliated, beaten up, and even murdered if they give voice to their truest feelings. Thus, our nation is home to millions of boys who feel they are navigating life alone-who on an emotional level are alone-and who are cast out to sea in separate lifeboats, and feel they are drowning in isolation, depression, loneliness, and despair.
Our sons, brothers, nephews, students are struggling. Our boyfriends are crying out to be understood. But many of them are afraid to talk. Scotty, a thirteen-year-old boy from a small town in northern New England, recently said to me, "Boys are supposed to shut up and take it, to keep it all in. It's harder for them to release or vent without feeling girly. And that can drive them to shoot themselves,"
I am particularly concerned about the intense angst I see in so many of America's young men and teenaged boys. I saw this angst as I did research for Real Boys, and then again in talking with boys for this book. Boys from all walks of life, including boys who seem to have made it—the suburban high school football captain, the seventh-grade prep school class president, the small-town police chief's son, the inner-city student who is an outstanding cartoonist and son of a welfare mother—all were feeling so alone that f worried that they often seemed to channel their despair into rage not only toward others but toward themselves. An ordinary boy's sadness, his everyday feelings of disappointment and shame, push him not only to dislike himself and to feel private moments of anguish or self-doubt, but also, impulsively, to assault, wound, and kill. Forced to handle life's emotional ups and downs on their own, many boys and young men-many good, honest, caring boys-are silently allowing their lives to wither away, or explode.
We still live in a society in which our boys and young men are simply not receiving the consistent attention, empathy, and support they truly need and desire. We are only listening to parts of what our sons and brothers and boyfriends are telling us. Though our intentions are good, we've developed a culture in which too often boys only feel comfortable communicating a small portion of their feelings and experiences. And through no fault of our own, frequently we don't understand what they are saying to us when they do finally talk.
Boys are acutely aware of how society constrains them. They also notice how it holds back other boys and young men, including their peers, their male teachers, and their fathers. "When bad things happen in our family," Jesse, an astute twelve-year-old boy from a large middle-class suburb of Los Angeles, recently told me, "my father gets blocked. Like if he's upset about something that happened at work, he can't say anything and we have no idea what he's thinking. He just sits in front of the television, spends time on the Internet, or just goes off on his own. You can't get through to him at all. He just gets totally blocked." Of course, Jesse is teaming to do the same. And if we don't allow, even teach boys like Jesse to express their emotion and cry tears, some will cry bullets instead.
A NATIONWIDE JOURNEY
I began a new nationwide journey to listen to boys' voices last summer in my native Massachusetts. In one of the very first interviews, I sat down with Clayton, a sixteen-year-old boy living in a modest apartment in Arlington, a medium-sized suburb of Boston. Clay introduced me to his mother and older sister, and then brought me to his attic hideaway, a small room with only two small wooden windows that allowed light into the room through a series of tiny slits. Clay decided to share some of his writing with me-poetry and prose he had written on leaves of white and yellow paper. His writings were deeply moving, but even more extraordinary were the charcoal sketches that, once he grew comfortable with my presence, he decided he would also share. His eyes downcast, his shoulders slumped inward, he opened his black sketchbook and flipped gently through the pages.
On each consecutive sheet of parchment, Clay had created a series of beautiful images in rich, multicolored charcoal and pastels. "You're a talented artist," I said, expressing my real enthusiasm.
"I haven't shown these to too many people," he said, blushing. "I don't think anyone would really be too interested."
Clay's pictures revealed his angst, and in graphic, brutal detail. There was a special series of drawings of "angels." They were half human, half creature, with beautiful wings, but their boyish faces were deeply pained. Soaring somewhere between earth and heaven, the angels seemed to be trying to free themselves from earthly repression, striving for expression, longing to reach the freedom of the skies. They evoked the mundane world where Clayton's psychological pain felt real and inescapable, yet they also evoked an imaginary place where he could feel safe, relaxed, and free.
In our conversation, Clayton revealed that his inner sense of loss and sadness had at times been so great that on at least one occasion he had seriously contemplated suicide.
"I never actually did anything to commit suicide. I was too afraid I'd end up in a permanent hell ... but that's how bad I felt. I wanted to end it all."
I thought to myself that maybe that's what these tortured angels were about-a combination of heavenly hope mixed up with a boy's suppressed "voice" of pain.
Clayton then revealed "The Bound Angel," a breathtaking sketch of one of his winged, half-man creatures bent over in pain, eyes looking skyward, but trunk and legs bound like an animal awaiting slaughter.
Clayton explained, "His hands are tied, and his mouth is sealed so he cannot speak. He's in pain, but he has no way to run from it, to express it, or to get to heaven."
"Your angel wants to shout out his troubles to the high heavens, but he is bound and gagged. He wants to move toward someone, but he is frozen in space. He needs to release his voice, but he cannot, and fears he will not be heard. That's why he's so tortured."
"Yes, exactly," he said.
"I guess if he's tied up long enough," I responded, "and can't release that voice, he'll want to die, like you did."
"I think so," Clay said.
There is no reason we should wait until a boy like Clay feels hopeless, suicidal, or homicidal to address his inner experience. The time to listen to boys is now.
MOMENTS OF DOUBT
As devoted as our country is gradually becoming to changing things for boys, society remains ambivalent about giving boys permission to express their feelings. I was recently speaking at a Congregational church in a small New Hampshire town. It was a bright October Saturday morning and I was there to talk to boys and their parents about my Listening to Boys' Voices project. Gazing out at the rows and rows of boys and their parents, I explained that several research associates and I were going across the country to interview and capture the unique voices of adolescent males ranging in ages eleven through twenty. I told the audience, "I hope this project will be just the beginning, that we will all find a way to reconnect with boys, listen to them carefully, and get to know what's really happening inside their minds and hearts."
"That's not so easy," a young, well-dressed woman said from the pews. "I have four sons," she continued, "and, with all due respect, Dr. Pollack, let me tell you something. Number one: my husband is not so hot on my trying to sit down and get all emotional with our sons. I'm not so sure he's going to encourage me to do that. And number two: these days, I don't think our boys are capable of saying much about any thing other than girls and sports, and girls and sports." People chuckled throughout the church.
"How old are your sons?" I asked.
"Eleven, thirteen, fourteen, and seventeen," the woman said.
"Do you wish you could reach inside them and get to what they're really feeling and thinking about? Is this something you would like to do?"
"If I could," she said intently, "I would." Looking around at the other boys and parents in the audience and shaking her head incredulously, she added, "I don't think many of the people in this room really feel in touch with their kids, especially not their boys. To be able to do that, we'd have to all decide we're going to give boys a break. Otherwise, nobody in this room is going to take the first step. Nobody wants ... --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
Product details
- ASIN : B004SOVBYS
- Publisher : Random House; 1st edition (September 20, 2000)
- Publication date : September 20, 2000
- Language : English
- File size : 1118 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Not Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Print length : 436 pages
- Lending : Not Enabled
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- #1,946 in Emotions & Mental Health
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The author lays out some steps he suggests we follow to reach out and listen to boys, reminding us that it is easier for boys to open up if they are engaged in an activity. Sharing stories from our own lives about our own struggles and painful experiences can help strengthen our bonds with boys. One cannot help but be charmed, even moved, by Pollack's literal yet richly symbolic tale of wading into the mud of a creek hunting for frogs with Zach in order to enable him to open up to Pollack about his worries about the possibility that his mother might die. Society, Pollack sternly advises us, is still leaving boys out in the cold with its impossible tests of masculinity, which boys feel they can never win. Pollack adroitly observes that by expecting certain behavior of boys, we push them to fulfill our prophecies, and also end up ourselves living in fear and expecting danger. The book is worth many times its purchase price just for the appendix containing Pollack's 15-step program for mentoring boys and creating safe spaces in which they can express themselves.
The author transcribes the words of selected representatives of the many boys across the country with whom Pollack and his associates spoke. Pollack sensibly changed only the boys' names but accurate reproduced their stories. This approach allows the reader to get to know a number of boys through their own often stunningly honest self-reports. Chapters are organized according to principal topics addressed by the boys. The chapter titles reflect the many issues of relevance to boys and their parents: the mask of masculinity, coming of age, work and success, spirituality, mothers, fathers, male buddies, sports, coming out as gay, body image, addictions, coping with racism and poverty, etc. Often different excerpts from the same boy's tale appear in different chapters. Activist boys tell us of overcoming twin hurdles--the expectation that they must act macho and prejudice against them due to their sex. Boys who express themselves through music, art and writing talk of the importance of this outlet.
Boys talk of feeling compelled to prove their masculinity by having sex before they are ready, and of how it is not infrequently a girl who urges sex on them when they feel it is still premature. They are as anxious and confused about sex as girls are, and want connection and even Platonic friendships with girls, not just sex. Pollack believes America's boys are crying out for a new gender revolution, and many of his interviewees do indeed have a vision of a world in which both boys and girls are free of gender-based constraints on their behavior.
We meet Allen, who talks of desensitizing himself in order to deal with his loss of his father and his difficulties and fears related to his mother. Gordon had to learn to accept that his father is a hypocrite. One teen from Littleton, Colorado (the only city that is specifically named) had sage words for adult officials and parents attending a town meeting after the tragic massacre. Responding to an official who asked if parents were to blame for not doing their proper job in terms of religious and moral education of their children, Tad said, "God is a powerful force in my life. But you've got to be careful when you ask that question.... [I]f we focus on God just in a way that's gonna make people feel even more at fault, that's going to be just like the teasing and isolation that probably caused Eric and Dylan to shoot at us." Chip tells us the compelling, eloquent tale of his adaptation and recovery from his parents' divorce. Jasper graces us with a harrowing, poetic tale of the honor student who turned into a drug addict following his girlfriend's heart-wrenching rejection of him. Steve speaks to us in plain language about the touchy issues of honesty and disclosure to teens wanting straight information from their parents about drugs and alcohol and trying to figure out their own behavior boundaries. Paul will take some readers to a place they might not otherwise visit with his disclosures about experiments with a broad range of drugs including PCP and crystal meth, which led to a period of imprisonment as well as his being shuttled back and forth between his mother and father. Andy tells us of his recovery from his devastating loss of a beloved stepfather-to-be. Jim speaks poignantly of his survival of a childhood cancer operation. Abraham's eyes were opened when he did volunteer work in Honduras. Jamal volunteers at a sheriff's department doing search and rescue.
The book also has some important information, such as the finding that 81% of boys are involved in bullying behavior. Pollack sagely reminds us that we must develop empathy for both the bullies and the bullied, who often are the very same boys. The ten pages of advice on overcoming bullying somewhat interrupt the flow of the stories but are nevertheless very helpful. Pollack also tells us that more people die in the US from suicide than from homicide, and advised us on the often gender-specific clues to watch for in our boys in order to detect potential depression. "What may look like a bad boy is a sad boy." Boys need to understand that it is genuinely all right for them to ask for help. One wonderful story tells how a group of friends took action to help protect a suicidal boy.
When Real Boys' Voices stumbles, it is due to one or both of two major defects: Pollack's futile determination to address difficult subjects while avoiding offending anyone, and his attempt to do more things than may be possible in one book. The author weaves analytical discussions in with the boys' stories, but these discussions vary considerably in the level and the thoroughness of the analysis. Although relative to Real Boys, Pollack's failure to provide a complete political and social context for many of the problems boys face is perhaps less striking here due to the focus on the boys' own stories, I again was dissatisfied with his seemingly paralyzing fear of offending single mothers or feminists. All too often a faceless society is blamed for boys' difficulties when the unfortunate truth is that boys' problems are measurably worsened by particular policies and viewpoints such as misguided sexual harassment programs, as well as by specific allocations of resources and outright lies about boys' and girls' respective difficulties. At many points in his discussion, one longs for some male-friendly analysis to be inserted such as Dr. Warren Farrell might provide; Pollack consistently shies away from the more potentially controversial implications of his subject.
Thus, for example, he speaks of the urgent need to dismantle the Boy Code and the homophobia that keeps it in place, but never looks at the powerful corporate, feminist, and popular forces which require men's continued expendability and chivalrous self-sacrifice. Most disturbingly, despite the fact that Pollack must know that the majority of parental violence toward boys comes from their mothers, the chapter on abuse is comprised entirely of tales of fathers as protagonists. Whether Pollack edited out the stories of mother's abuse or never heard them because of his own biases, this is unforgivable. Through such omissions, the author perpetuates the myths and the denial that he is ostensibly struggling to eradicate.
I wish Pollack had found a way around his pattern of repeating excerpts from his interviews elsewhere in the same chapter, which tends to be both distracting and confusing.
Finally, like Real Boys, despite its virtues, the book is at least a hundred pages too long.
And yet, Real Boys' Voices is so very good at what it does do that it still demands to be read. The voices of the boys cry out for our attention. The messenger may be imperfect but the messages are pure gold and--now more than ever--deserve our attention.
Pollack offers EXCEPTIONAL guidance to show us all, parents, peers, teachers, colleagues, and society as a whole to change the paradigm and start to allow boys to be REAL HUMAN BEINGS.
MEN HAVE FEELINGS! One topic that is touched on is that guys are actually being manipulated, and molded to follow, rather than to BE who they authentically are. It is imperative that boys, teen age guys, and all men are honored and ACCEPTED for who they really are, and not what others want them to be. This book brings pivotal advice to anyone who is in the presence of a young man to honor that man, for who he is.
It is a well known fact in psychology that either a person is going to talk it out, or act it out.
We owe it to the guys in our society to allow them the freedom and acceptance of honoring their own truth, and allowing them to express it, even if we may not agree.
By giving guys unconditional love, acceptance, and support on all levels, they WILL grow into men who are whole and complete, and will thus have the capacity to express that in the outer world, which includes being able to be authentic in intimate relationships. If boys are taught to hide their real feelings, how can they EVER know how to be REAL?
This book plays a crucial role in our society for males of all ages. It gets to the heart of the matter, and that is being loved and accepted for who they are. Only then will they know HOW to express their authenticity in their outer life.
BUY THIS BOOK! Highly recommended from my heart, Barbara Rose, author of "Stop Being the String Along: A Relationship Guide to Being THE ONE" and 'If God Was Like Man'
Editor of inspire! magazine
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