Why teenage boys are
told not to feel, and
why that's so wrong
By Irish Author
Dave Rudden
I’m lucky enough to be able to say that
words are my job. I’ve loved them
since I was a kid – the sheer power of
the right phrase in the right place.
There’s a magic to them – these simple
sounds that can cause fights, mend friendships, inspire armies and create
monsters. A well-chosen word is a weapon, and the wrong word can work its way
like a splinter into your head so you never forget it, no matter how hard you try.
Weak. Cry-baby. Soft. Gay. Girl. Loser. Freak. Not a real man.
I was bullied as a teenager. I don’t say this with any shame, because it’s been 10
years and I’ve made my peace with it, and also because 43% of the UK’s young
people are going through it right now. It’s your story as well, or a story you see out
of the corner of your eye every lunch break. And for most of us, for a long time, it
will be a story of silence.
BE A MAN.
We learn that on the playground and we have to learn it quick, because if we don’t
the next lesson has knuckles attached. I’ve never been good at not having feelings,
to be honest. Things affect me. I worry. I care. I get invested in causes and people
and books. I have so many emotions I had to invent fictional people to put them in,
and because I think about words so much…
I wonder when BEING A MAN meant shutting up and toeing the line. I wonder when
the Council of the Rules of Men (not a real thing) got together and decided
that open meant weak and that bottling things up was better. That’s not how science
works (and that is, at base, what feelings are – chemicals reacting in your brain, as
natural and human as the beating of a heart) They don’t go anywhere just because
you pretend they have.
Is lying to yourself strength?
I kept quiet for years, because I thought that was the way to make the bullying stop.
I was quiet for years after the bullying did stop, because in order to survive I
convinced myself not talking about it meant it wasn’t real, because if it was real I’d
talk about it.
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