You’re a monster. If you’re a good monster, you’ll be able to resist your terrible urges for a long time. We like good monsters! You should be one. But eventually you’ll do something unspeakable and hurt those around you, those you love. Because you’re a monster. We all knew it would happen sooner or later. We were just waiting, dreading the day when you’d reveal how awful you truly are.

But there are other monsters out there who tell you that you aren’t a monster. None of you are. Just like them, you aren’t evil. Maybe you could use a better attitude, some self-improvement. Your new friends have lots of advice about that. But those others who tell you that you’re a monster? Lies. Jealousy. Those lies are sick mind games meant to control you, to trap you, told by liars trying to profit while you suffer.

You don’t have to listen to those lies. You just need to be stronger. You need to be harder, and faster, and better. You need to understand that those people who say you’re a monster, their opinions don’t really matter. They don’t really matter. You can do better without them. If you really want people like that in your life, make sure that you’re the one in control—not them.

After all, you’re the man.

Or maybe you have some other privileged identity, and the people telling you that you aren’t a monster are spinning a slightly different story. That’s not the important part. What really matters is that there are people who tell you that you should feel bad, and others who tell you not to worry about it. Which ones feel better to listen to? Which ones give you hope?

In case you couldn’t guess, this is a follow-up to Are Boys The Problem?

I assume you already read the rest of that post, but as a reminder I finished with this:

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.

We don’t have a great track record of treating people like they aren’t inherently bad. We quickly sort and categorize and pre-judge. All that pre-judging (often based on hard earned life experience) saves us a lot of ongoing effort and pain. It also traps us in the same cycles that we claim we’d like to see end.

If I tell you you’re a monster, and that your best hope is to restrain yourself until you die, what can you hope for? If I tell you instead that people can make monstrous choices, and that they can make heroic choices, what can you hope for? If I tell you that people can make monstrous or heroic choices, and that I want to work together with you to make heroic choices, what can you hope for?

Those people on that r/newparents post I mentioned last time, the ones who were reminding the new mother that her boy would grow up to be a man and that men were dangerous? I’ll bet they’d experienced truly shitty things at the hands of men who made monstrous choices. Our society has long enabled men, or anyone else with power, to make those monstrous choices and face few repercussions.

Those people on that thread weren’t wrong to be angry or disgusted or afraid. But they were ready to tell someone who’d not yet done wrong that they were a monster. And even if they were talking about some future monster instead of a current one, I have to ask: when does the baby boy transform into the monster?

If we want young boys to grow into better men, we need ways to talk about monstrous choices—and monstrosity—that don’t tell young boys that they are doomed or already monstrous themselves. We need to treat them like they aren’t inherently bad. The simplest way to do that? Using specificity instead of sweeping generalizations.

By “specificity” I mean being very explicit and detailed about what you like or don’t like about people’s behavior (in this case, especially men’s and boy’s). Speaking explicitly about specific behavior demystifies what behavior is desired or undesirable. Think of some of the practices of nonviolent communication, if you need another example.

Anyone can use explicit communication. You don’t need to be a role model, or be male, or have any men or boys in your life. If you want your listener to understand what you don’t like, especially if you want them to learn to act differently, be more specific. State the unwanted behavior clearly, like “that guy makes me uncomfortable because he seems unaware of others’ discomfort and avoidant body language” or “that man tells jokes that are dismissive of women, and talks about women like they aren’t equal human beings” or “I think that guy treats women like shit; he constantly tries to get in their pants and then insults them behind their back when they say no.” Your listeners will understand what bothers you, even if they don’t always understand why it bothers you. Each statement is unambiguous. That makes them effective teaching tools for your audience.

Do you need to do this all the time, with everyone? No. It’s not on you to put in the extra work to teach everyone around you. But if you want things to change, this’ll help. Plus it’s distressingly easy to let shorthand dismissals and expressions of disgust—which, let’s be fucking honest, are extremely cathartic at times—it’s easy to let those color the rest of your thoughts if you aren’t intentional about it.

How about an unfortunate counter example?

The phrase ‘toxic masculinity’ lacks specificity. The phrase captures a gestalt, a vibe. It conveys no actionable information. While it has roots in the mythopoetic men’s movement, it has become such a catchall term in modern internet culture that it is nigh useless as a teaching tool. Depending on the speaker’s context, nearly anything a speaker finds objectionable can be labelled toxic masculinity, whether the behavior is gendered or not. This leaves lots of room for misinterpretation. It requires the audience to intuit the objectionable behavior rather than be told it explicitly.

Worse, if your audience isn’t already on the same wavelength as you they may believe that you are saying there’s something wrong with masculinity, or with all men. Maybe you do think that. Maybe you are saying that. Personally, I think there are a number of things wrong with our culture’s vision of masculinity. But mirroring what I said above, if you want things to change this lack of specificity won’t help.

There’s another step here; people don’t learn by negative example alone. In addition to precisely identifying and speaking about what we find objectionable in men’s behavior, we must commend the behavior we want to see become the new norm. It helps if you model this behavior yourself. Openly appreciating positive examples of masculine behavior that you see in media works too. Best of all, we can affirm the good behavior of the men and boys in our own lives by using the same specificity used for talking about negative behavior.

I’m not talking about giving out cookies or awarding “good boy” trophies every time we see something we like. Nothing devalues a nice thing like having too much of it all the time.

My understanding of this is that honest and genuine specific appreciation that isn’t over the top works best—that’s true for their big or small actions, and for your big or small reactions. Your appreciation is most effective when it isn’t a constant barrage; you don’t need to commend every action, and you can vary your appreciation from a nod and a ‘thank you for that’ to a full on song and dance about why you feel so happy with whatever they just did. The idea is to share this appreciation when it’s heartfelt, whether in the moment or when you reflect on the recent past. Giving this kind of positive feedback is a skill that can serve anyone well.

Just remember, nobody has to be a monster. We don’t have to force people into that hole. We can offer them other ways to be.