Monthly Archives: November 2016

Goodbye Guy Code, Hello Friendship

Friendship, Love, & Sexuality, Gender Socialization & Identities

“The Guy Code, and the Boy Code, before it, demands that boys and young men shut down emotionally, that they suppress compassion and inflate ambition. And it extracts compliance with coercion and fear.”  ( Way, 2011,p5)

“The participants who stood with close friends gave significantly lower estimates of the steepness of the hill than those who stood alone, next to strangers, or to newly formed friends. The longer the close friends had known each other, the less steep the hill appeared to the participants involved in the study. In other words, the world was perceived as less difficult when standing next to a close friend than when standing next to someone who was less close or no one at all.” (Way, 2011, p9)

I truly had strong feelings for both paragraphs above and wanted to combine them to address some issues. The Guy Code, or the Boy Code is not only an American style but also widely applied in China where it is strange to see guys being emotionally sensitive or having intimate same-sex friendships. After reading this article, I feel even more sympathy for guys since I know that guys do need express their feelings and have someone to talk about things yet they are suffering from the Guy Code, the gender stereotype so that they often times shut down their emotions. Speaking of this issue, I do have a lot to say about my dad to whom I always used Guy Code when I was young. For me my dad is a typical example of masculinity. He always takes huge responsibility and protects our whole family, leaving a little for my mom and I to worry about. I’ve never seen him cry or even shed a tear; I’ve never seen him talk to anyone about his sadness or depression. The only way I knew for his expressing sadness was to keep silent. And this led me to conclude that this is what a real man should be. However, as I growing up, I started to worry about him. How did he let go the negative feelings? How was he able to tolerate the huge pressure if he had nowhere to relieve, nobody to talk? Continue reading Goodbye Guy Code, Hello Friendship →

“At promise,” NOT “at risk”

Friendship, Love, & Sexuality

“Layered over in demonizing public policies and struggling within and against the social ravages of economic disadvantage, silenced needs, desires, hopes, and fears are provided possibilities for voice in a dedicated school context. The persistent pathologization of these youth as ‘at risk’ and ‘abnormal’ denies them the possibility of empowering themselves and attributing educational value to life experience. New Ventures Academy provides the space for students to envision themselves in opposite terms, ‘at promise,’ leading lives that they themselves have had a hand in shaping” (Proweller, 2000, 100).

Continue reading “At promise,” NOT “at risk” →

Acts of Heroism

Urban Adolescents

“In a way, I think of it like being Spider-Man, you know? Like he’s so strong and brave, but he can’t really identify as Spider-Man because he knows it will hurt everyone he loves. And I think I war between that you know, like part of me wants to be, you know, the person that my mom wants to be, but then I realize that I’m a greater person when I’m not the person she wants me to be.” (Sadowski 139)

This piece, especially coming after the election of a vice president who believes in gay-conversion therapy, highlights the level of hate that still exists towards the LGBTQ community and the very real fears LGBTQ students have. I chose this passage because I felt that it truly embodied the confusion and struggle to form an identity as a human being. Continue reading Acts of Heroism →

The new chapter on Systemic Racism

Friendship, Love, & Sexuality

If you wanted to reduce crime…if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every Black baby in this country and your crime rate would go down. This would be an impossible, ridiculous and morally reprehensible thing to do…but crime would go down (CNN, 2005, as cited in Fine & McClelland, 2006, p. 304).

It’s hard to look past the first sentence to analyze former Secretary of Education William J. Bennett’s words without wanting to yell back at the quote, as if it could hear me. This article, although a couple of years old, is relevant to what has transpired during and since the recent 2016 elections. As some of my students put it, it is ridiculous to think that minorities are evil, criminals, illegal, and in some ways even immoral. Continue reading The new chapter on Systemic Racism →

A Not So Happily Ever After

Friendship, Love, & Sexuality, Urban Adolescents

“…..10 participants ages 14-19….I would walk with the girls to the subway. I would hear snippets of their conversations with each other about their home lives…..I couldn’t imagine how these giggly high school girls could possibly transition to be someone’s wife once they left the playful space of our girls’ group.” -Sauti Yetu, A Closer Look at Forced and Early Marriage in African Immigrant Communities in NYC.

This quote definitely made an impression on me as well as being open and honest about the harsh and taboo truths of forced and early marriage. I, like this author, could never fathom the possibility of a teenager, let alone in the United States, be already married before finishing high school. It is one of those topics that is heavily shrouded and not discussed at all within American society. At first, I couldn’t believe that forced and early marriage even existed in the United States while reading this report because the only time I ever actually heard about this being a problem was in Africa, Middle East and Southeast Asia.

While reading this report, I found it amusing how many of the newly or recently arrived immigrants from Africa would do anything to avoid being forced into an early marriage and some were even willing to go through the possibility of being homeless just to avoid being married so young. However, there is a very fine line between being loyal and disobeying your family’s own wishes to pursuing what you believe is being successful-an education. I think that is the hardest thing about being a woman is women are always constantly pressured and questioned as to when they are getting married or when are they going to start having kids. I know I’ve encountered these questions more frequently since I’ve turned 26. Like Mariama and the many other girls who participated in this study,  I want to finish my studies first before settling down and having a family. I want and strive to be an educated woman because I’ve noticed women in my family or friends that I went to high school with have stopped going to school or pursue a full fledge career since they got married.

Why don’t men feel the pressure or need to give up their goals for to settle down to marry just like women? It’s an uphill battle, but it is something that needs to be address and dealt with in schools.