To a point, true.
However, as a Scout leader, I’ve engaged with quite a few effeminate young boys who required guidance, coaching and mentoring to help see them through their trials, not treating them like a pariah or sissy.
This is also my way of helping myself deal with the way I was treated by bullies. Helping these kids bridge that time in their lives when they are vulnerable.
It doesn’t have to be a “brutal process for the weak” and for some, it is anything but “an effective way to form social norms”.
Exactly.
And what some men (they are so hung up on “manliness” and very insecure) call “effeminate” is really just variation from the norm.
Men are SO paranoid about “manliness”. Very insecure; God forbid they stray just a bit off the “norm”. God forbid they be like the dreaded, hated average woman. Meanwhile, perfectly acceptable for girls to do anything men are supposed to like. Wearing pants, playing GI Joe, gun battles in the yard, all OK.
I can think of so many men who are off the beaten path, but hardly homo. That is what men seem to be so scared of.
My uncle is one who is absolutely a wimp when it comes to anything “blood”, even mentioning it (I fear my son at 6yo is much this way, as well as like his father who has many fears). He starts to faint, and I do not mean just at age 80. But he is a very smart man, a lawyer, and speaks multiple languages he learned himself and reads even more. He was also very handsome, and he and his brother (the doctor, LOL) were much coveted by the ladies. And he really LIKED the ladies, despite some of his own “feminine” proclivities.
:nodding: Having been an Eagle Scout and Asst. Scoutmaster back in the day, I know just what you’re saying.
Hazing was and still is a necessary part of growing up; unfortunately, that aggressiveness is being bred out of our youth. If you can, as a Scouter, get them thru this period in time, then that’s precisely where you need to be, and good on ya!
On the second and unrelated point, I also get tired of normal peer pressures and social development being classified as bullying (not that you were). I would also guess that these boys you are speaking of have other environmental issues... no dad, parents that are not engaged, or any one of a million reasons they do not have the skills necessary to integrate or cope with the problem. I would also guess that when you "guide" them, you aren't telling them to "keep dong the same thing, it's everyone elses fault", are you? You are helping them in some way to be stronger, more confident... not come up with excuses or reasons to keep things from changing. That is what we expect from the actual adults and your role is an important one. But still, nothing teaches a young man social norms more effectively than his own peers.
For instance (and this is true).. I can tell my 12 year-old son that he needs to put on deodorant every day and explain why. But he won't... that is, not until a girl at school called him stinky. He doesn't skip a single day now. In fact, he even puts it on a second time before football/basketball practice. It's just the way we are wired