How we are raising the male in a world where the female is being raised to win marathons, lead nations, and run empires

Is the word macho now pejorative? Modern definitions include “aggressively virile” or, in the Britannica, it is defined as exaggerated pride in masculinity, perceived as power, often coupled with a minimal sense of responsibility and disregard for consequences.”

In worse definitions, macho, from the word machismo, derived from the Latin mascũlus meaning male, it is associated with violence, the absence of emotion or affection, obsession with power and control and crushing enemies, homophobia, and unhealthy lifestyles, such as excessive smoking, indulgent diets, immoderate drinking, and dangerous, if death-defying, sports and activities. Hardly does macho even mean chivalry or gallantry or a gentleman anymore.

But macho is passé now or, if not, it’s limited to bandits or gangsters. The modern male is now doing yoga or obsessing over the latest model of juicers or wearing pink or powdering their noses or “Bro, I knit hard, I really do.” Is it possible that by masculinizing the girls, we are feminizing the boys?

In a thinkpiece he wrote in Psychology Today, Mark Sherman, who has a PhD in psychology from Harvard University, asked, “Should we try to make our sons what our daughters used to be?”

This is in response to his own observation that over the years there has been a seeming attempt to re-educate the boys because “there is something inherently wrong with , or at least in the way they have been raised (and many are still); and we have to do something about it.”

There seems to be nothing wrong with wanting to raise our boys to be in touch with their feminine side, meaning to be sensitive to others, to not be afraid of showing emotions or expressing affection, to be honest with their feelings. But it is also likely that we are making them behave like girls. Nothing wrong with them behaving like girls, either, meaning less rough-housing, less restlessness, more empathy, more raising of hands in the classroom, higher grades in the humanities, except that they’re not girls.

In her book “The War Against Boys: How Misguided Feminism Is Harming Our Young Men,” American author and philosopher Christina Hoff Sommers wrote how “it became fashionable to pathologize the behavior of millions of healthy male children. We have turned against boys and forgotten a simple truth: the energy, competitiveness, and corporal daring of normal males are responsible for much of what is right in the world. No one denies that boys’ aggressive tendencies must be mitigated and channeled toward constructive ends. Boys need (and crave) discipline, respect, and moral guidance. Boys need love and tolerant understanding. But being a boy is not a social disease.”

Boys will be boys, but in today’s feminized society, in which we have taken away toys like guns and swords because they teach boys to be violent, in which girls have become the model after which the behavior of our boys of the same age are being patterned, it’s hard to tell if that is still true.

Even scientific studies, from Charles Darwin, who explored as far back as 1859 the psychological differences between the sexes, to Douglas D. Burman, research associate at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, whose recent research “Boys' and Girls’ Brains Are Different: Gender Differences In Language Appear Biological,” suggests that “language processing is more sensory in boys and more abstract in girls,” are now making room for new findings that it may be the way we are raising our children based on these gender stereotypes that is making them grow up different.

Where is my John Wayne? Where is my prairie song? Where is my happy ending? Where have all the cowboys gone?

—Paula Cole

In turn, American neuroscientist Lise Eliot in her book “Pink Brain, Blue Brain” defies the old logic that our brains develop from birth to grave according to a biological blueprint, arguing that “each day our experiences lead to growth in some circuits and synapses” and no stimulus in others. In other words, it is possible that boys become boys and girls become girls because we, whether as their parents or as society, provide them with the experiences we believe they should undergo as boys or as girls.

So let’s go back to the question: Are we feminizing our boys? Maybe, yes, maybe, no. Maybe, some.

But why is Lady Gaga lamenting, "Every john is just the same / I'm sick of their city games / I crave a real wild man / I'm strung out on John Wayne?"

And why since 1996 has Paula Cole been wondering, "Where is my John Wayne? Where is my prairie song? Where is my happy ending? Where have all the cowboys gone?"

John Wayne is gone, or he has been maybe feminized. Or, found too frisky, running around and climbing on things, he has been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and—God forbid—medicated to keep him still, prim and proper, “just like a girl,” who, on the other hand, is being raised to win marathons, lead nations, and run empires.