Gayle: Don’t pressure boys to behave like girls

WESTERN BUREAU:

Dr Herbert Gayle, social anthropology lecturer at The University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona, says that boys should not be expected to act like girls in emotional expression or communication style and must be trained in how to show respect to others.

“Twenty-first-century humans actually expect men to develop a brain like females. What you want to do is to understand how a boy communicates his emotions, and embrace that while you are making him into a guided male, where he understands how to appreciate everybody,” said Gayle, while addressing a students’ town hall empowerment seminar virtually on Thursday.

The meeting, which was held under the theme ‘Making It Against The Odds’, was the second in a series hosted by the St James-based Anchovy High School and the Coalition of Principals (COPS) to examine the social issues affecting education and the development of students.

According to Gayle, boys need to receive balanced training when they are taught about masculinity in order for them to not become too aggressive or too passive.

“Do not encourage boys to become girls, nor encourage girls to become boys, because they are not the same. I have seen people pressure boys to behave like girls to the point where the boys become confused, and I have seen people pressure boys to be more masculine to the point where the boys become aggressive,” explained Gayle.

Teach respect

“We must teach them how to respect everybody, and the more a boy learns respect, the more he is tolerant of everybody,” added Gayle. “But neither of the two extremes is going to help you create a stable male.”

Gayle also noted that only a small percentage of men are able to communicate on the same level and to the same degree as women.

“We are nowhere near comparable to women in communication. Women talk three and one-eighth times more than men per day, and only 13 per cent of men can talk on the average of women,” said Gayle. “But 85 to 87 per cent of men do not like to talk too much. We are not good at communicating.”

Cornwall College principal and COPS member Michael Ellis, who participated in the meeting, said that effective communication and conflict resolution are crucial to restricting the tide of societal violence.

“We should reject violence, and to me, that means we should operate in such a way that we seek to resolve conflicts through dialogue and negotiation. We cannot win everything, so we have to accept somebody else’s point of view, adopt a win-win strategy, and we should listen to understand,” said Ellis.

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