Raising boys today can be complicated, especially as many deem patriarchy and masculinity as the root of all society’s problems.

Trying to figure out who you are in a world that consistently says you’re inherently problematic isn’t easy, and more and more experts are trying to sound the alarm that young boys and men are in crisis.

Related

Trans man’s “culture shock” after transitioning provides critical insight into male loneliness

One group, it turns out, can provide vital insight into what these men are going through: transgender men who were raised as girls before transitioning. Having the rare experience of living life as each gender, trans men are offering a window into what young men lack (compared to women) when it comes to socialization.

Journalist Holly Baxter explored this in a lengthy piece for The Independent, where she urged readers not to look away from these issues, even if it feels like men take up enough space as it is. Confronting it head-on, after all, may just be the ticket to toppling the patriarchy.

Never Miss a Beat

Subscribe to our newsletter to stay ahead of the latest LGBTQ+ political news and insights.
Subscribe to our Newsletter today

Baxter first spoke with Aidan Key, a trans man who transitioned in the ’90s before trans identities were widely discussed. He described the feelings testosterone gave him and said he couldn’t believe teenage boys with underdeveloped brains had to handle this.

“As Aidan points out, he was going through the hormonal equivalent of male adolescence,” Baxter said, “but with the advantage of a fully-formed, adult brain. For the first time, he says, he felt a huge amount of compassion for teenage boys, ‘because, you know, I found teenage boys quite ridiculously annoying my entire life. And I just felt so bad because I, as an adult — I was in my early thirties — I could have all of those feelings of physical overwhelm because of increased libido. But really, how does one contain it [when one still has the brain of a child]?'”

Key was shocked at just how much more energy and strength he had when the testosterone set in, and also at the different way he began to manage his emotions.

He used to cry if he felt angry or frustrated, but on testosterone, he said, “all of a sudden I realized: I’m angry and I’m going to speak about that, and I’m gonna speak very clearly about that. And I found that the cognitive element of that was shifted in that way.”

He was also struggling to express sadness the way he used to, trying much harder to hold it in. “So in some respects, I didn’t pay attention and take care of the huge pain that was going on because I thought: ‘I’m doing OK. I’m holding it together.’”

“The emotions were all there,” he added. “Like, grief feels like grief, anger feels like anger. But they just felt like there was a greater distance, like they were deeper inside rather than more on the surface of my body.”

Young boys, he learned, are at a biological disadvantage when it comes to managing emotions in a healthy way. Nevertheless, they are encouraged by society to continue holding them in.

Baxter also spoke with Richard Reeves, president of the American Institute for Boys and Men and an advocate for building a more positive culture around masculinity.

Progressives increasingly see men “not as having problems [but] as being a problem,” Reeves told Baxter.

“[Men are] just over it,” Reeves said. “They’re not against gender equality…. They’re just kind of over the censoriousness and the lecturing.”

Reeves warned that this is one way men get radicalized. Frustrated by consistently being told they are misogynistic and evil for acknowledging that, like women, men have problems too, they become easy targets for right-wing influencers.

“He recognizes that young men’s interest in the far right is a huge cultural problem. And he thinks we have to be honest about how to solve that,” Baxter said.

Baxter posed some essential questions: “How do we engage boys in school again, tempt them away from [explicit content] and AI girlfriends and misogynistic YouTubers, navigate questions about feminism and the anti-woke backlash, protect them from seeing content pushed by firearms manufacturers on social media, and give them the space to actually enjoy their lives, all while nurturing the masculinity they’ve been told is toxic?”

It seems one way to start is by listening to trans men.

Trans writer Ben Greene said he was afraid to start taking testosterone because he didn’t want it to turn him into a bad person. When he finally took the plunge, he realized it was more like “turning up the volume on what was already there” rather than fundamentally changing anything about who he was. He now counsels trans boys on the fact that testosterone can’t change you into a bad guy, but influence from the patriarchy can.

Both Greene and Key said they have also experienced a loss of social connection since transitioning. Key said people don’t look him in the eye when they talk to him anymore, and Greene said folks more easily dismiss his emotions. He added that it’s harder to make close friends and it was difficult to get used to understanding that women now saw him as a potential threat.

Baxter said that both men “believe that a lot of raising successful young men involves being open to having the difficult conversations” and “involves approaching parenting boys as a positive, enriching experience, rather than an experience in avoiding worst-case scenarios.”

“And,” she concluded, “it means not visiting the sins of the fathers on the sons who are new to these topics.”

Subscribe to the LGBTQ Nation newsletter and be the first to know about the latest headlines shaping LGBTQ+ communities worldwide.