Is This Campaign Bad For Boys?
So, what about men? Do they even have a place in this “Ban Bossy” campaign? In an article on Chicago Now (http://www.chicagonow.com/families-in-the-loop/2014/03/sheryl-sandbergs-ban-bossy-boys/), an author asks, “Is it possible that, in our quest to boost girls and women, we are inadvertently leaving boys and men behind?” She explains that men don’t have the privileges they once had and that their support groups are very small. Thinking about men’s place in the “Ban Bossy” campaign, if they have a place at all, is crucial. Ultimately, men and women are in this fight together to reach gender equality. In my abnormal psychology class, I learned that, even though men are better able to cope with stressful events early in life compared |
to women because they’re generally better able to channel their energy into something else, men are also more likely to become depressed later in life after their spouse has died due to a lack of a support system. This proves that, in general, women have better support systems and are then able to talk about their problems with others. However, because men appear to handle stress better, they don’t have campaigns like “Ban Bossy” to help empower other men and to get them through. It’s assumed that men wouldn’t take offense to words such as ‘bossy,’ so our attention is focused more so on women. While I feel it’s important to have men on board with this campaign, I do understand why this campaign is only focused on women being called ‘bossy’ and not on men.
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