A reddit thread has been living rent free in my brain and scattering its gross leftovers all over the couch of my cortex.

Last week, while I was prepping my post about Some Desperate Glory, I read a post on r/newparents from a first time mother wrestling with her cognitive dissonance around having a son. She described herself as a feminist who no longer believed that all men were bad (she cited her husband as a good example), but who still struggled to reconcile her fear, animosity, and resentment towards most men with the idea of raising a young boy. She said (I paraphrase) she was trying to understand how to raise a young boy to be a good man with positive models rather than negative ones. She asked for help and advice.

I was immediately awash with thoughts, with so many ideas that I wanted to share. I wanted to lend my perspective as someone socialized male, as a camp counselor working with teens, and as a new father. Yet as I read on through other’s replies, I despaired.

The post has since been deleted. I’m not surprised that the post was deleted. I’m not happy about it either. I’m caught between wishing I’d replied faster and being glad that I didn’t stick my neck out. You might be able to guess why, but let me explain.

There were a few responses that felt like they acknowledged where the original poster was coming from. They tried to help her identify good role models, or give her tools to share with her son. They were supportive of her goal. I appreciated them.

Those supportive replies were outnumbered by posts which boiled down to reminding the poster that men were mad/bad/dangerous, and that she needed to make sure she raised her son to not hurt anyone. These posts infuriated me, even as I understood where they were coming from. I’m not an idiot. Even though I sometimes forget, I know what many men are like.

But those replies were not only dismissive of what the original poster had asked for—gently coaching a woman back into the camp of holding no grace for half the population—they were dangerous. Based on what I’ve seen, based on what I’ve read, their advice was only going to create more of what they claimed to hate.

Leaving aside the ‘men are bad’ side of things, I don’t think it’s possible to raise your child not to hurt others. That’s like proving a negative. That perspective, and that goal, sets up yourself (and your child) for failure. You fail with your child’s first lapse in judgement. Worse, it doesn’t create space to recover and learn from that failure. It’s like not only accepting the idea that there is sin, but believing that there is no forgiveness. Even the most hardline religious believers leave a door open for forgiveness—it’s a door only accessible via them and their version of truth, but forgiveness is still available.

I think what those commenters would actually prefer is raising children (and I mean boys, really) to be considerate of others’ feelings, to respect the boundaries that others set, and to be kind and want to do well by others. I mean boys here because girls in our culture are usually already raised to believe those things. That’s why it’s radical for those socialized femme in our society to pursue their own dreams and prioritize their own desires, but banal when someone socialized masc does the same.

I digress. My point isn’t that people on the internet need to restructure their argument to be more technically correct. My point is that their perspective and their approach will not resolve the problems they’ve identified.

If anything, I think their perspective and approach will only exacerbate the underlying problems. I believe that because there are plenty of people out there who are eager to tell young men that there’s nothing wrong with men, and that a female-dominated society is the source of all the problems young men face. Ultimately, a distressed young man who is unable to recover and learn from failure, who is told that he is the problem, is a much easier target for those messengers. A boy who has learned that he can be a good (considerate, respectful, kind) man, that being a good man can be admirable and healthy, that he can fail and learn and make amends and try again… he will be far more resistant to the misogynists’ promised quick fix of “traditional values,” and far better able to be the kind of man that those replies might have wished for.

The simplified catchy version? What goes around comes around.

If you want to raise good people, you need to treat them—from the get-go—like they are good. Not like they can do no wrong, but like they aren’t inherently bad, like they have some kind of worth and promise. That goes for everyone, not just boys. It’s true across every divide you want to name (race, class, etc.).

You also need to give them good role models, and give them the tools they need to live up to your expectations. You need to model using those tools, and support them in using them. You need to support them when (this was certainly true for me as a boy) they’re made fun of for not matching their peers’ idea of boyhood.

I’ll have more for you on all of this next week, if I am not too addled by sleep deprivation.