Original subtitles

JOE EHRMANN:

My earliest memory

was my father bringing me down

to my mother's basement,

putting up his hands

and teaching me how to throw

jabs and punches.

It was there that he gave me

those three words: "Be a man."

"Stop with the tears,

stop with the emotions.

If you're going to be a man

in this world,

you better learn

how to dominate

and control people

and circumstances."

That was a source

of tremendous shame.

I left that room with tears

coming down my eyes,

just feeling that

I wasn't quite man enough.

Football became

a tremendous place to hide.

You can hide

inside that helmet,

you can hide

behind the roar of the crowd,

you get to project this facade,

this persona,

the epitome of what it means

to be a man in this culture.

I thought if I could manifest

this hyper-masculinity,

somehow that would validate

who and what I was.

Certainly my father

would respect that,

see how powerful,

how strong, how tough I was,

then give me

the love and attention

that I desperately wanted.

I'd ask every man

to think about

what age they were,

what was the context

when somebody

told you to be a man.

That's one of the most

destructive phrases

in this culture, I believe.

- Stop crying.

- Don't cry.

- Stop with the emotions.

- Pick yourself up.

- Don't be a chump.

- Don't be a pussy.

- Don't let nobody

disrespect you.

- Be cool,

and be kind of a dick.

- Always keep your mouth shut.

- Nobody likes a tattletale.

- What a fag.

- You little bitch.

- Don't let your woman

run your life.

- Bros come before ho's.

- Get laid.

- Be a man.

- Be a man.

- Grow some balls.

- Man up.

- Man up.

- Man up.

- Man up!!!

- Grow some fuckin' balls!

- Act like a man.

- Be a man.

- Be a man!

NEWSCASTER: Yet again,

another teen

has taken his own life

after being bullied for years.

The details of the gang rape

that took place

outside a high school

homecoming dance

are horrifying.

Three teens

confessed to shooting

an Australian man for, quote,

"the fun of it".

13 people were charged

in the beating death

of a Florida A&M drum major,

a result of a banned

initiation ritual.

The student was found dead,

alcohol five times

the legal limit in his system.

He killed his girlfriend

and then shot himself.

Over 20 little children dead,

he also shot his mother.

The shooting was

apparently pre-meditated.

One gunman,

and he is among the dead.

OFFICER: ( on radio )

3-15 and 3-14 for a shooting

at Century Theaters.

Somebody is shooting

in the auditorium.

( siren wails )

If you really knew me,

you would know I feel

like an outsider at school.

When I'm having a bad day

sometimes it's hard to talk

to somebody about it.

If you really knew me, you

would know that when I'm sad,

I really don't say

anything about it.

I used to hide emotions.

Like, when I'm sad

I wouldn't tell anybody.

And when I'm mad

I wouldn't tell.

For a long time

I didn't have any friends,

so I didn't have

anyone to talk to.

We don't really

talk about feelings

or nothing in our house.

If you really knew me,

you'd know

that sometimes

I feel like I can't be myself.

If you really knew me,

you would know

that I don't really know my dad.

If you really knew me,

you would know that my dad,

he in jail,

and I don't think I've ever

seen him out of jail.

Around fifth grade,

my mother passed away.

Most people don't know

that about me.

If you really knew me,

you would know that my mom

and dad fought over me.

My parents went

through a little phase

where they told us they were

going to get a divorce.

I just needed someone

to talk to about it.

My mom didn't have

no good boyfriends.

We were abused.

I felt like

just giving up on life.

I got bullied

in sixth grade.

I felt like an outcast.

I felt alone for--

for a long time.

KIMMEL: If you walk onto

any playground in America

where there's a bunch of boys

happily playing,

you can start a fight

by asking one question:

"Who's a sissy around here?"

And two boys will go,

"I don't know.

He is, he is, he is,"

and they can have a fight.

Or all the boys will go,

"He is, he is."

And that boy will either

have to fight them

or run home crying.

That idea of being

seen as weak,

as a sissy

in the eyes of other guys,

starts in our earliest

moments of boyhood.

And it follows us

all the way through our lives.

Proving to other guys

that we're not girls,

that we're not women,

that we're not gay.

We've constructed

an idea of masculinity

in the United States

that doesn't give young boys

a way to feel secure

in their masculinity,

so we make them

go prove it all the time.

If I can man up,

why step down from that?

You feel me?

Masculinity is not organic,

it's reactive.

It's not something

that just develops.

It's a rejection of everything

that is feminine.

Sometimes my friends

act like they're tough,

when I feel like

they're not.

From the beginning,

we're taught as boys

to lock down our emotions.

We can't talk about

being afraid,

we can't talk about

being hurt.

We could talk about

being pissed off,

we could talk about

being angry.

We can't talk about

being sad.

If you never cry,

then you have all these feelings

stuffed up inside of you.

And then you can't

get them out.

We put them on that trajectory,

through our popular culture,

through our parenting styles,

through our educational styles

and through assumptions

about natural manhood

and maleness

that we pass along,

that are incredibly

insulting and damaging.

And then there's

a whole social system

that polices them

through this low level of threat

from other men

if they're not man enough.

Today we're gonna get into

how we learned

masculinity as children,

where we learned it from,

who taught it to us.

I'm just going to ask

some of you guys to shout out

the ideas that you had

on it from your childhood.

In my household,

we don't cry.

Showing emotion is like

you're weak.

If you're hurt,

just hold it in.

No tattletaling.

Fight back.

You know, everything

was surrounded around money.

Money, money, money,

money, money.

Be the best,

go for the triple

instead of the double.

It was okay

to be a womanizer.

A man has to be dominant

and in charge and has control.

You know, a man does

everything to the extreme.

Never back down

from anything.

A man uses violence

to solve problems.

The first lie every boy

learns in America is

we associate masculinity

with athletic ability.

Size, strength,

or some kind of skill-set.

I've always felt the pressure

of you need to be buff,

you need to be masculine,

you have to have a six pack.

JOE: Those boys that can catch

a down-and-out,

or hit the hanging curve,

they're elevated.

JASON: I want to play football,

basketball,

one of the sports,

have fun doing it,

make some money.

Like one of them

TV-type lives.

They're set up

for a tremendous failure

and frustration in life,

because being a man

doesn't have

a single thing to do

with athletic ability.

You think about

all the other boys

on that playground,

they don't just

want to play sports.

They want to do computers

or music or drama or debate.

This past month,

I took part in my first

theater production.

And now I'm looking back,

I wish I had taken part in that

throughout high school.

I don't know, I guess I didn't

because it was something taboo.

You just weren't

supposed to do it.

Second lie every boy

learns is that

we associate masculinity

with economic success.

MAN:

My name is Jordan Belfort.

The year I turned 26

I made 49 million dollars.

Which really pissed me off

because it was three shy

of a million a week.

JOE: You know,

it's been said that

comparison is the thief

of all happiness.

So if you're building

your sense of masculinity

based on power or possessions,

there's always going to be

someone that has more.

That leads to an

incredibly empty life

of striving for things

at the expense of

what's really important in life.

I've had 8-year-old kids

sit on my couch,

8-year-old boys,

and I'll say,

"So what do you want to be

when you grow up?"

And they'll say,

"A venture capitalist."

There are so many

things wrong with that

that I hardly know

where to start.

The extent to which he comes in

and has already been programmed,

he is going to have very

limited options in his life,

and they will never feel

authentically like his own.

Then the third criteria

is that as a culture

we associate sexual conquest

with masculinity.

Zeke the freak!

This man is a legend

with the ladies!

I can only imagine.

I found the top five

hottest girlfriends

of Derek Jeter.

Men everywhere,

we all salute you.

Associating that with

masculinity is so dehumanizing.

You tapped that ass,

didn't you?

Tell the truth.

You know you tapped

that ass.

You put her in the backseat.

Bam! Code-X.

Look, man, I got a wife.

You got a dick.

You do have a dick,

don't you?

Those words are designed

to keep boys silent,

to keep them

conforming to the construct.

My grandfather is very much

that alpha male type.

He's a former military

drill sergeant.

Good ol' boy

from the South.

He was able to go out

into the world

and sort of pull himself up

by his bootstraps

and very much fulfill the

American dream in that regard.

Granted, he was a white male

in a particular time,

which gave him

access to that success,

even if he was poor

to begin with.

I grew up with

my grandfather's voice,

hearing "You need to be

bigger, stronger, faster."

So I was always

having to prove myself.

And never succeeding.

It made me very insecure,

and not feeling like

I was good enough.

When I was a kid

I had long blonde hair,

I had a very high voice.

I wasn't a cool kid.

I was this awkward little kid.

I sang in choir,

I played clarinet in the band,

but I also played baseball

and football and basketball,

and got to do

all of those different things

and express myself

in all sorts of different ways.

Things changed

around middle school.

I started to get bullied

and made fun of

and get called a fag

or a pussy or a sissy or a wuss.

And that's when the social

pressures really kicked in.

I cut my long hair off,

changed the way I dressed,

I dropped my voice.

I don't even know

when my voice naturally broke,

I have no idea,

because I forced it low.

I played more sports

and joined all the teams.

I dated the head cheerleader

and distanced myself

from people

who were less masculine

than me.

I had a friend who

didn't play sports.

He was kind of effeminate.

He was being picked on

even more than I was.

And instead of me

sort of staying by his side

and being his friend,

I remember to some degree,

making the decision

to just push myself

not to be friends

with him anymore,

to not go to his house, to--

And I remember him asking me

why I did that.

And I couldn't tell him.

I didn't know

what to tell him at the time.

School was a training ground

for me to learn

how to perform masculinity,

to perform to be

one of the guys.

DR: ELIOT: Throughout most of

history,

there's been this belief that

men and women are fundamentally

different creatures,

and it probably begins

with the Bible.

Sex is a biological term.

It refers to which chromosomes

you have.

Two X is female,

X and Y is male.

Gender is a social construct.

These are expressions

of masculinity or femininity,

and both of these are spectrums

and they overlap.

Boys and girls

are far more human

and far more the same

than they are different.

If you gave 50,000

psychological tests to girls,

it would fall out

on a bell shaped curve.

If you gave the same 50,000

psychological tests to boys

it would fall out

on a boy bell shaped curve.

If you superimpose them,

they'd be 90% overlapping.

You've got the shoulders

that stick out on either side,

and those are very

often the traits

that feed

into our stereotypes.

People make the assumption

that because

the brain is biological,

that any sex difference

in the brain

must be hard-wired.

But the brain is plastic.

The brain changes

as a result of experience.

You go through a process called

proliferation and pruning

which is that

you make a whole bunch

of brain connections,

and the ones that you use

are strengthened,

and the ones

that you don't use die back.

Whether it's empathy

or aggression

or spatial ability

or verbal ability,

things that a child

spends their time on,

that's what they're

going to be good at.

Parents from

even before a child is born

start thinking about

the child differently.

They decorate

the room differently,

they buy different clothes.

So this notion that there is

such a thing

as gender neutral rearing

or that parents

are not responsible

for gender differences

is a

psychological impossibility.

HELDMAN: We are becoming

much more bifurcated

in terms of hyper-masculinity

and hyper-femininity.

Girls products

have become much pinker

and boys products have

become much more camo

and much more violent.

And it's not just

in the toys,

but it's also in television

programming and movies.

This hyper-masculinization

and hyper-feminization

reflect a cultural tension

and fear about the fact

that gender

is socially constructed.

And we respond in ways

to try to organize

and simplify the world

that actually end up

simplifying it

to such a great extent

that it puts pressure

on young men and young women

to fit into those boxes.

COACH: You got to go in there

and you got to be tough.

But you can't be sissying out.

By the time

a boy is 5 years old,

he's pretty much taught

that it's not okay

to cry in public.

He may still do it,

but the expectation is

by the time he's 10

that he's perfected it.

And if he's 12

and he's still crying in public,

there's a problem.

Oh, my dear God,

are you one of those

single tear people?

You are a worthless

pansy-ass

who is now weeping

and slobbering

like a 9-year-old girl!

POLLACK: Boys are not

encouraged to talk about

any kind of pain

with anyone else.

And when they

do talk about pain,

fathers particularly,

but mothers also,

tend to focus more on

how to solve that

or what they're going to do,

or their actions.

Hit me, hit me,

come on, come on.

Come on, son.

Come on.

Son, left.

CHU: They're learning

how is it possible

for them as boys

to be in the world

and to engage

in their relationships

and to behave in ways

that will be considered

socially acceptable.

And in learning

to accommodate to those ideals,

they're learning to conceal

or just downplay qualities

that are traditionally

associated with girls and women.

Mothers are told that if they

hold a boy too closely,

they're hurting his development.

You're making him

a mama's boy.

Do you want to be

a flying monkey

mama's boy snitch?

Or do you want to be a man?

POLLACK:

Now, being a mama's girl,

or Daddy's little girl,

that's wonderful.

But a mama's boy?

It means

somehow he's soft.

Have a great day,

sweetie pie!

We're concerned

that our child

is going to be ridiculed.

We're concerned that our son

will be the target of violence.

And so, we give him

what we think

he needs in order

to avoid that.

Mario, football players

don't cry.

What?

Football players don't cry.

The reason men are less

likely to show empathy,

less likely to show

vulnerability,

less likely to bring up children

in that kind of way,

is that they've been

socialized into this.

I was really very moved

by the fathers

who brought their little

4-year-olds and 5-year-olds

to school in the morning,

and how tender

these men were with their sons.

How patient and loving

they were

with these little boys.

So I asked them,

"What do you see in your sons

that leads you to say,

'I hope he never loses that?'"

And the fathers

spoke about their sons'

"out there" quality.

They were

so emotionally open,

and their real joy

in their friends.

And the men felt that

on the road to manhood,

they themselves

had lost touch

with these qualities

in themselves.

And the quandary

for them was,

would they have to silence

the very qualities

that they most valued

in their sons?

It was the most

exquisite sense of dilemma.

Nice.

STEVEN: My father,

we didn't really

have a great relationship.

His night job was drinking,

he was an alcoholic.

I was afraid of him.

He was a mean man.

He was emotionless,

he didn't care about much.

In his eyes, going to school

wasn't the power behind

what we should

have been doing.

It was get a good job,

get a lot of women,

and then you're a man.

My mother was more

of my striving force.

She taught me that

education was important.

So every year

on Mother's Day, of course,

I would send her

a Mother's Day card,

but also I would send her

a card on Father's Day.

And I would just thank her

for playing both roles

in my life.

The moment I found out

I was going to be a father

was very scary for me.

I was an undergrad,

and my son's mother

told me she was pregnant.

And we were no

longer together.

And I told her

if she wanted

I would raise him.

I would take care of him.

My father didn't raise me,

and this is very important

for me to raise my son.

It's been very hard

to play both roles

as a mother and father

for Jacksen

because I was taught that

men are tough, they're strong.

I spent

a lot of nights crying.

Because he did have feelings

and I had to,

you know,

take care of that.

And then one day,

it clicked,

and it clicked because

Jacksen said to me,

"Daddy, I'm sensitive."

And I was like, "Okay...okay."

So then I just started like,

I started reading a lot,

you know, doing Google searches

on how to be sensitive

and stuff like that.

I started just

asking him how he felt,

like how do you feel,

why are you sad, are you okay?

He taught me

how to be more in touch

with my own emotions

and his as well.

He would cry sometimes,

I would cry with him.

And I would tell him,

"Daddy wasn't allowed

to cry growing up,

but it's okay,

if you need to cry, cry."

It took some time

for me to get there.

Porter: Men are doing better.

Men are much more

loving with their sons

and speak about love,

and hugs and kisses, you know.

Men are much more

purposeful in,

you know, the experience

of nurturing their children

and sharing

in those responsibilities.

So we are getting better.

The fact that we're having

this conversation

speaks to progress.

But it doesn't take away

that there is a lot of work

still to do.

CODY: Growing up

in the household

that I grew up in,

there was a lot of

physical abuse.

My father

used to beat my mother

pretty horrifically,

from my recollection.

My father sold drugs,

and that's how

he made his living.

He was in and out of prison

my entire childhood.

In fact, I think

he was gone

the first 2 years

that I was born,

so I didn't even

really get to

establish that connection

that most young boys

get to establish

with their father.

In middle school

it was extremely

difficult to deal with

because I didn't--

I didn't know

what it meant to be a man.

Like, I did not have

a father figure in my life,

I just had strong women.

I was bullied

a lot growing up

because I'm not the most

masculine of men,

I never have been.

Why am I ostracized

and treated different

because I don't want to fight,

because I don't see the point

in having rampant

unprotected sex

with uncountable women,

and then sitting here

and boasting about it over

booze and smoking a joint?

And yet that's what

society deems as masculine.

I don't value that.

And I think it's because

I still am so close to my mom

and to my grandmother.

And they're both extremely

strong and respectable,

not only women,

they're respectable people.

And so, that to me is

what I wanted to emulate.

One of the things

that came up in my study

has to do with the "mean team,"

which was a team

created by the boys,

for the boys,

for the purpose of acting

against the girls.

This was a

pre-kindergarten class.

In the beginning there was

a little bit of intermixing,

but then by December

of that first year,

the boys versus girls

dynamic had become clear.

And even the hierarchy

among the boys

had become clear.

It had these rules

and these ways of being

and these ways of engaging

each other and behaving.

One of the rules was that they

couldn't play with the girls.

And if you broke

those rules,

you could be fired

and technically,

not be a boy anymore.

One of the boys told me,

"I'm actually friends

with all the girls.

"I actually like the girls.

But if Mike--"

the leader of the mean team--

"finds out, then he'll fire me

from his club,

and then

I won't have a club."

They totally understand,

like kind of,

these are the rules and then

these are the consequences

for their status

among the boys.

GABY: When I was choosing

schools for Roman

to go to kindergarten,

I specifically chose one

that was Christian based.

It seemed that

there was an emphasis on

family values

and kindness.

But by the end of kindergarten,

I started to see a change

in my son's behavior

and the kids around him.

And I would describe

it as, like,

just a hard edge

that got progressively worse.

In first grade,

there were days

where he would come home

and just burst into tears.

And I would say,

"What is going on?"

And he said,

"Well, you know, so and so

pushed me out of line

for the fourth time this week,

and the teacher really

didn't do anything about it,"

or, you know, "They were

making fun of me at recess,"

or, you know,

"I went to soccer practice

and they said I was

the worst person on the team."

So it started

with things like that,

and by second grade,

there was one day

where he came home saying

that he was strangled

in the hallway.

By the middle

of the school year,

I would pick him up

from school

and I could see in his face

that he was doing

everything he could

to hold back the tears,

because he didn't want

to be made fun of

even more by the boys.

And the second

we drove half a block away,

just the floodgates opened,

and he was so sad.

ROMAN: I just felt alone.

I wasn't doing

what everyone else was doing.

I was different.

KUPERS:

There's a dominance hierarchy.

There are tough guys

who are on the top

and there are weaklings, girls,

who are the bottom

of the heap.

Now this is the origin

of sexism and homophobia.

In sexism, it's that a girl

isn't as strong as a boy.

With homosexuality,

the gay man

becomes the most stigmatized

version of weakness

and sissiness.

What happens in your

relations with other kids

is that you pick out someone

who appears weak in that way.

You maybe bully him,

but maybe it's just a more

subtle kind of demeaning.

And you start hating

that thing about him

that you're

afraid of in yourself.

MOLY: I was born

in Salt Lake City.

After first grade,

we moved to Massachusetts.

I dealt with a lot of bullying.

I dealt with

a lot of taunting.

I got picked on because

I was the smallest kid,

the skinniest kid,

the most non-white kid,

and lastly, the kid probably

most suspected to be gay,

which, you know, is true.

Ended up being true.

But, yeah, I remember

these kind of big kids

coming over and yelling out,

"Hey, faggot!"

or, "Why don't you

go back to China?"

I would always fight back.

I'd get my

stomach punched in.

I just remember

coming home from school

with like bloody hands just from

being pushed onto the concrete,

and my hands kind of grazing

against the concrete.

It was terrorizing for me.

I would always

end up crying.

I felt a lot of shame from

not being

able to defend myself.

My dad would start

giving me advice

about how to fight back.

I mean I love my mom,

you know, and I love my dad.

But I just got

the same thing from them.

Everybody's telling me

to just deal with it.

After a fight,

I learned to just wash

my own hands of the blood,

I learned to just

not talk about it.

I felt so down

and depressed

to the point of contemplating

suicide many times.

I just didn't feel like

living anymore.

I never really knew

why I had such a difficult time

talking about how I felt

until I looked back

at my history

and then I was like, well,

obviously, that's why, you know,

because I was discouraged

with physical force

from ever expressing emotions.

WAY: Boys directly

make the link between

having friendships

and mental health.

So they tell me,

"If I didn't have

someone to talk to

"about my secrets

and about my personal life,

I would go crazy,

I would go whacko."

Sometimes when I'm sad

I can tell my friends this,

and they could try

to help me out and stuff.

WAY: At 11, 12, 13, 14,

boys tell these

very passionate stories

about other boys and wanting

to be friends with them

and wanting to share secrets.

CHU: This one boy described how

he was having difficulties

with his parents

understanding him,

and the person

who saved him

on a daily basis

was his best friend,

who he felt really

loved him unconditionally.

WAY: Starting when

they're about 15, 16, 17,

the language shifts.

You hear boys

actually talking about

their struggles

in their friendships,

being hurt by other boys,

feeling betrayed by other boys,

wanting to have

intimate friendships,

not knowing how to find

those friendships.

From middle school I had

four really close friends

and we did

everything together.

But once I went

into high school,

I struggle finding people

I can talk to about things

because I feel like

I have to deal with it myself.

I'm not supposed to get help.

They really buy into a culture

that doesn't value

what we've feminized.

So we've made

feminine relationships,

emotions, all these

critical things, empathy,

and so boys begin to devalue

their relational parts

to themselves,

their relational needs,

their relational desires.

WILL: In good times,

guys are like really

close to each other

and they're really

good friends with each other,

and they interact a lot.

But when things

get a little bit worse,

it's more like

you're on your own.

One of the adolescent boys

described it as,

if you spill your guts

the way that girls do,

if you tell somebody

how you really feel,

then they can use that

against you at any time.

WAY:

So the loss of the intimacy

in their friendships,

feeling, oftentimes,

for many of our boys,

very lonely, very isolated,

they really enter

into a culture of masculinity

that makes these

bizarre equations

that male intimacy

has to be about sexuality.

They'll start saying

things like,

"I feel close to him,

no homo.

He's cool, no homo."

So this constant allusion

that any sign of intimacy

is going to be perceived

as potentially gay.

They understand that

if you're straight,

you have no desire

for male intimacy.

We don't do that with women,

we do that with men.

Each of them is posturing

based on how the other boys

are posturing.

And what they

end up missing is

what they each really want,

which is just that closeness.

Drinking and drug taking

are very often a way

that boys relax

those tight rules

which say they always

have to be silent and strong.

And when you get drunk

you can hug your friends,

and you can tell them

how much you love them.

You can have sex with a girl

and not feel afraid

in a way that all people feel

when they start having sex,

because it's intimate

and it's unfamiliar

and it's incredibly exposing.

It's not just acceptable

that teens are drinking,

doing drugs,

and having sex,

it's expected

and sometimes

looked down on

if you're not doing that.

You feel out of place

if you're the only

sober one there.

To the break of dawn, y'all!

♪ Welcome to the party ♪

( song continues )

♪ Welcome to the party ♪

♪ We're just getting started ♪

♪ Gonna play it loud,

let it all hang out ♪

♪ If you're in,

let me hear you shout ♪

♪ Yeah, let me hear you shout ♪

♪ Let me hear you shout ♪

So boys take

drugs and alcohol,

but they're often

doing it to treat loneliness.

When they're lonely

or in a lot of psychic pain

and they don't have the words

to put it into language,

they take to drink

and drugs to blot it out.

Hey, Mom.

Hi.

LUIS: My mom and father

met when they were about

17 years old,

and they decided to leave

Mexico for a better future.

My mom told me, you know,

"Go to school and get a career

so you don't have

to be like me."

( In Spanish )

Would you like

to eat something, Luis?

Like what?

Like a sandwich,

a quesadilla, or something.

( Mother in Spanish )

My husband and I made the

decision to separate in 2007.

And he left.

And I remained alone

with the three kids.

He didn't come to visit them

very often.

He said because he had things

to do and he was busy.

My dad actually,

he was kind of a wild kid.

Like, he would

like to party a lot

and he would like to go out

with his friends.

One night he just

made a bad move

and decided

to drink and drive.

And, you know,

he got pulled over.

They found out later

he wasn't a US citizen.

So they deported him

back to Mexico,

and he's been there

since I was in seventh grade.

I miss my dad

very much and,

you know,

there's nothing I can do

but visit him in Mexico.

( In Spanish )

From that point, the problems

started with Luis.

Luis was a good kid,

he was very sweet.

But when he got

into seventh grade,

he changed completely.

LUIS: I noticed

a bunch of different faces.

There was a lot

of pretty girls,

then there was

like the gang members

and then the skaters

and then the kids that smoked.

When I decided

to join a gang,

it was because

it was just cool.

I was eventually

jumped in and,

you know, I claimed a color.

They gave me a nickname

to just affiliate myself.

I would ditch class.

I had four F's.

I ran away from home.

I just found myself

with a lot of troubles.

And I just didn't care.

( Mother in Spanish )

I ask him, "Luis are you okay?

'Yes'".

But there are times

when I sense that he's not ok.

Then he gets mad, he yells.

It's never a good time

to talk to him.

Sometimes I've felt very

hopeless.

LUIS: Around my

freshman year

is when I felt really

depressed and alone.

And I would just wake up

in a bad mood.

Sometimes I would

cry myself to sleep.

I didn't have

no one to talk to.

Like no one could really

listen to me and tell me,

you know,

"It's going to be okay,

it's going to be all right."

Like, "I got you,"

or anything.

I really felt like

everyone gave up on me,

even my mom.

There's been a time

where I almost

did commit suicide,

but I'm going to put

more pressure on my family,

my mom and my dad.

Basically all I had

was marijuana,

I was smoking that every day.

I would always be high.

I was smoking,

and I wouldn't think

about any troubles.

I remember July 6th,

we went to the cannabis club.

We got THC wax oil.

We smoked a joint.

And then next thing I know,

I saw a cop

flashing his lights.

He wrote us a ticket,

he came back to the car,

and he searched me.

He found it in my shoe,

and he put the cuffs on me

and he told me you have

the right to remain silent,

you're going to be

taken to jail.

( Mother in Spanish )

My heart broke.

I couldn't believe it.

I couldn't believe it.

And it really hurt when I saw

that he was being arrested.

And that he was going to be in

juvenile hall.

It really hurt.

We recognize more and more

that adolescents are more likely

to be depressed and suicidal,

but we imagine that

that will be female adolescence

because of the way

we define depression--

more removed, more quiet,

not responding.

What boys tend to do

when they are getting depressed

is actually the opposite.

Boys are more

likely to act out,

more likely to

become aggressive,

using cursing words

and screaming at people.

But most people

see it as a conduct disorder

or just a bad kid.

And what happens?

Before they see

the other signs of depression,

which will come

in adolescent males,

just as females,

that young male

may become suicidal,

but no one has noticed it.

Exactly at the age

that we began

to hear the language,

the emotional language,

disappear from boys' narratives,

in the national data

that's

exactly the age

that boys begin to

have five times

the rate of

suicide as girls.

POLLACK:

The way boys are brought up

makes them hide

all their natural,

vulnerable

and empathic feelings

behind a mask of masculinity.

And also,

when they're most in pain,

they can't reach out

and ask for help

because they're not allowed to,

or they won't be a real boy.

They are shamed into this,

and they're very ashamed

to break out of it.

So they live

behind an emotional mask

that keeps boys from

expressing their true feelings.

♪ I tried my best to fit in

Looking for a suit to fit in ♪

♪ Standing outside

of your prison ♪

♪ Trying to find ways

I could get in ♪

♪ Now I realize that I'm free ♪

♪ And I realize that I'm me ♪

♪ And I found out

that I'm not alone ♪

♪ 'Cause there's

plenty people like me ♪

♪ That's right, there's

plenty people like me ♪

♪ All love me, despite me ♪

♪ And all unashamed

and all unafraid ♪

♪ To speak out for what

we might see ♪

♪ I said there's

plenty people like me ♪

♪ All outsiders like me ♪

♪ All unashamed

and all unafraid ♪

♪ To live out

what they supposed to be ♪

BRANCH:

This is my high school,

I graduated

from this high school.

I never wanted

to be a teacher.

I was going to be an engineer

and make a lot of money.

I became a teacher

because I saw that

my community was hurting

without good teachers.

And I think one of the

biggest challenges was that,

like, I've been through it,

right?

And so I want them

to be able to know that

they can move forward

and they can succeed

and they can do whatever

they choose to do in life.

But it's going to take

hard work.

If you go two blocks away,

you'll find prostitution.

There's a lot of gang

activity in the area.

I consider it like

a war zone, right?

Our kids get up every morning,

they have to prepare

their mask

for how they're going

to walk to get to school.

So if that mask

requires me not to

let people see

any of my vulnerabilities,

I mean, I may have to put on

a very tough mask.

And when I get here

hopefully I can

take the mask off,

so I can focus on learning

rather than continually

wearing this hardened shell.

A lot of our students don't

know how to take the mask off.

So I want you to take

one of these masks,

take the mask.

Here's what

we're going to do:

On this mask,

you're going to draw

what represents you.

What are some things

that you hold up every day

when you walk to school

that you let people see.

And then on the back,

I want you to write

what is it that

you don't let people see.

Like, what's behind the mask,

all right?

So what I want

you to do is

I want you to take your mask,

and I want you to ball it up.

I want you to hit someone

across the circle

with your mask.

Don't leave your seat,

don't leave your seat.

You can't leave your seat.

Open it up.

Okay.

So who wants to reveal

what's on the mask they opened.

Read it out loud,

just the front.

"Funny, caring and happy."

Okay.

What's behind the mask?

"Sadness and fear."

Sadness and fear.

"Goofy, kindness, happiness,

silliness, smile, and fun."

Okay, on the back?

"Anger."

Anger. Okay.

I'll read mine.

The front says

"entertainment,"

that's what I show

on the mask,

on the back says "pain."

"Energy, frustration,

happiness, friendly,

heart, smile, outgoing."

And on the back it say

"sadness, scared, tears,

missing my dad,

"trying to take care

of my brothers and...

pain."

Why you think

we hold back our pain?

People don't want everybody

to know everything.

You got to keep

your poker face on,

can't let them know

what you got.

How hard is that,

to walk around every day

with a poker face on?

It's not just

an activity on paper,

it's about real stuff

that we are dealing

with as young men,

that we hide behind

because we don't feel safe.

Almost 90% of you

had "pain" and "anger"

on the back of that paper.

That's not a coincidence.

That is real.

And we're only eight here.

There are hundreds

of young men out there

that are having

the same experience,

but they don't have

anybody to talk to about it.

They're holding back sadness,

they're holding back pain,

they're holding back anger,

'cause they have nobody

who's even asking them,

"What's up with you, man?

"What's happening?

What's going on?

How can I support you?"

I want each of you

to be able to say

what you need to say,

because if we're ever

going to dig down

to the deepness of our pain,

young men,

if we're ever going to dig down

to the anger

that we're holding behind,

so that we end up

another man in jail,

because we just exploded

on the wrong person

for the wrong thing,

we got to have

a safe place to deal with it.

That's brotherhood.

PORTER: For many of our boys

who are trying to find

what it means to be a man,

and far too many

without a man guiding them,

they begin to define

their own sense

of what it means

to be a man.

Our boys are yearning

for help,

yearning for guidance

and mentorship and leadership.

What is there about

being a boy in America

that places boys

at greater risk?

We're seeing clearly

that boys who come

from low income families,

and when I say boys

I mean white boys as well,

are less likely

to go to college,

more likely

to drop out of school.

In most schools

we start with humiliation

as a way to punish kids,

write their name on the board,

put them in the back

of the room, send them out.

We rarely stop and ask what's

behind the behavior problem,

why is this child acting out?

Denying those kids

learning time

actually has the effect

of pushing many of them

right out of school.

They will kick a kid

out of school knowing

that a kid who isn't reading

by the fourth grade

is going to be

in the prison system.

Well, you kicked him out

twice in the third grade

'cause he did this

to his teacher.

Ain't nobody in that

child's life ever hugged him.

Go into a

kindergarten class,

you're talking about boys,

they're doing this.

Ask them a question.

They can't shut up.

They're jumping up and down,

waving their hands.

All right.

Go into the same class

when they're in the sixth grade,

ask them a question.

What do you think?

"I don't know."

"Whatever."

"It's cool."

In those 5 years,

the academic pilot light

has started to go out

because they have decided

that school

is not the place for them.

The number one predictor

of student achievement,

it's the expectations

of the staff.

The school system just--

they didn't believe in the kids.

In fact, because they were

black and brown kids

they didn't think

they could do well.

NOGUERA:

Everybody has potential...

if they're provided

with the right support

and the right stimulation.

BRANCH: I was always told

in elementary,

"Oh, you're really smart."

But when I got

to middle school,

you're not cool

if you're being smart.

Having good grades

didn't mean a whole lot.

It didn't mean nothing

on the playground

and so I had to figure out

how I was gonna fit in.

So I just barely slipped by.

It's cool to be like,

"I don't care.

Take my points.

Call my mama."

I fell into that trap,

right?

And it wasn't till

my last year of middle school

is when I got

my act together,

and it was a teacher

who kind of saved me.

She saw

enough in me to say,

"I know that there's something

going on with you.

"I know that your father died

before you were born.

"But you're using that

as an excuse.

You're too smart

to act like you're not."

She said, "We don't always get

to choose what happens to us,

but we have a responsibility

to make the most out of it."

And I was mad at her.

I was mad at this teacher.

I was like, I'm never

speaking to her again,

she can't talk to me

like that.

But I heard it

and I remembered it

and it changed

the very next day.

And my grades

transformed right then.

And it was really like this

idea that my mom could

raise me the best she could--

there would need to be

other voices that would

help me to find my way.

CODY: By the time

my wrestling coach

came into my life,

I was really, really searching

for a man I wanted to resemble.

I guess it's the type of love

and admiration

that you're supposed to have

for your father,

I felt for my coach,

right off the bat.

And I think it was because of

that yearning I had to,

to figure out

what it means to be a man.

He was a family man,

he loved and cherished

his daughter to death.

I saw this man

that was dependable, reliable,

and not abusive.

My coach kind of stepped in

and showed me

that good men do exist.

EHRMANN:

Coaches in this country

have so much power,

such a position

in the lives of young people

that they do attain

this father-like status,

and I think you've got

all these young boys

trying to seek

the approval of that coach.

DON: I'll never forget

showing up in Catholic school,

just right away just hearing

how on the field, like,

"Hurry up, you faggots!"

And you're just like, whoa.

I heard it

and I thought about it

and then one second later,

I adopted it.

EHRMANN: Coaches can do

an awful lot of good,

and an awful lot of bad.

I was talking

to a 12-year-old football player

and I asked him the question,

what if your coach told you

you were playing

like a girl

in front of

the rest of the players?

The boy told me

it would destroy him.

If it would destroy him to be

told he's playing like a girl,

what are we teaching

this boy about girls?

And actually,

when I say, play like a girl,

I'm using

real soft language.

We have much more aggressive,

demeaning, demonstrous,

dehumanizing ways of making

that point and making it stick.

Don't give me

that soft crap.

Don't cry.

Take your ass-whooping

like a man!

You (bleep)!

You're a (bleep) bleep)!

Sports has gotten

way confused in terms of power,

dominance, control,

a lack of moral clarity...

NEWS REPORTER:

Disturbing new details

about what happened

inside the locker room

at Sayerville High School.

They held four fellow

teammates against their will

and improperly touched them

in a sexual manner.

Racial slurs,

homophobic name-calling,

those are just a few

of the findings

on the atmosphere inside

the Miami Dolphins locker room.

We started the week,

players beating up women.

We ended the week with players

beating up children.

We are

in a very serious state here

in the National

Football League.

In a win-at-all-costs culture

it's strictly about

the win at the expense

of character development.

♪ Oh! Oh! ♪

♪ You could try

and take us, oh, oh ♪

♪ But we're the gladiators,

oh, oh ♪

♪ Everyone a rager,

oh, oh ♪

♪ But secretly

they're saviors ♪

♪ Glory and gore

go hand in hand ♪

♪ That's why

we're making headlines ♪

♪ Oh! Oh! ♪

♪ You could try

and take us, oh oh ♪

♪ But victory's contagious ♪

Drive, drive, block out,

block out, block out.

MAN: Set hut.

One, two, three, cut!

All right, good job, good job.

Ball's to your right.

EHRMANN: I think

the great myth in America

today is that

sports builds character,

but sports does not build

character

unless a coach intentionally

teaches it and models it.

When I did start coaching,

I didn't want to be

a transactional coach

using kids

for my own identity,

so I just started

with a very simple philosophy.

If you're going to be

a transformational coach,

you've got to know

what you're transforming.

I coach

to help boys become men

of empathy and integrity

who will be responsible

and change the world for good.

That's what sports

ought to be about.

And we've got a lot of work

to do in this country.

Many of our examples

of American masculinity,

be it in sports, military,

law enforcement,

the entertainment industry,

the men that men look up to,

a lot of what they're teaching

is domination, aggression.

They're these

hyper-masculine figures

that we try to adhere to.

♪ Too tough ♪

♪ We won't break ♪

♪ Dark shadows ♪

♪ The young pros ♪

♪ They blow

and come back tenfold ♪

♪ We don't need ropes

to climb the walls you build ♪

♪ Ideas and passion

break the bricks with you ♪

♪ Man up ♪

♪ Man up ♪

♪ Man up ♪

♪ Man up ♪

♪ Man up ♪

The average boy

spends 40 hours a week

watching television,

sports, movies.

Fifteen hours a week

playing videogames,

and now what's new is,

2 hours in between those

other things watching porn.

The predominant

male archetypes

that we see in film

and television

and other forms

of popular culture,

are the strong silent guy

who is always in control

and is not emotional.

And then we have

the superhero character,

the hero character, engaging

in high levels of violence

in order to maintain

that control,

in order to achieve whatever

goal he has in front of him.

We also have

the archetype of the thug,

and this is predominantly

men of color,

who are pigeonholed

into much more violent roles.

And then we have

the man child, or the mook,

which is the male

who's in perpetual adolescence.

His body doesn't typically

have a lot of muscle,

but he tends to project

masculinity in other ways,

through the degradation

of women,

engaging

in high risk activities.

KIMMEL: All they want to do

is get laid,

and of course, at the end,

nobody gets anything,

because they get drunk,

they take drugs.

And there have been

a whole rash

of these movies recently

that are funny,

and so you're laughing

at what you could become.

What the fuck?

Of course we know

that media images

have an effect

on people's behavior.

If there was no effect,

the advertising industry

would collapse.

Because the advertising industry

is based on the idea

that media images will have

an effect on people's behavior.

The same kind

of hyper-masculinity

that we see in Hollywood movies

or on television

are the same kind

of hyper-violence

that we see in rap music

and hip-hop culture.

The stereotype of being

violent and dangerous,

selling drugs,

oversexed,

it's all about money,

power and respect.

A lot of rappers

are imitating

what they see

as successful masculinity.

Violent videogames reinforce

those stereotypical structures

of what a man should be.

The typical game character

tend to be white males with--

it gets this specific--

brunette hair,

five o'clock shadow.

When an emotion sneaks in

for a male character,

by and large, it is anger.

And any sort of grief

is very, very underplayed

and never actually discussed

or processed.

Kids end up really

looking up to this character.

And what they end up

idolizing is someone

who cannot express themselves

emotionally,

cannot be honest or open

with anyone around them.

ZIMBARDO:

When you play video games

and you see

the same kind of setup,

It loses it's impact on you

because you habituate

to the sameness.

The video game companies

know this

and they give you

endless variety--

a new category,

a new challenge,

you're moving up ranks.

They are creating

this arousal addiction.

Boys' brains are being

digitally rewired

to this technology

where things happen like this--

microseconds.

The ones

that are most addictive

are the most violent,

where your job

is to destroy the enemy,

to dominate.

If you don't have

social connection

and you don't have

a lot of friends,

or you have

a crappy home life,

you can escape into a game.

And you don't have to worry

because

you're saving the galaxy.

If your kid sits

in front of a screen

for 4 hours a day

and shoots and kills

in a repetitive,

violent way,

hundreds of people,

there's a good chance

that kid is going to be

impacted by that.

There's a reason

the US Army trains people

for combat

by using video games.

It's because

it gets them used to

some of the experiences.

Well, put your 10- or 11-

or 12-year-old son

in that context.

But they're not going

into Iraq or Afghanistan.

And if they happen to live

in a more dangerous

neighborhood,

or a neighborhood

where they're exposed

to violence more routinely

than they might be

in some fancy part of town,

then that's gonna be

a bigger issue.

I share this story with my kids:

garbage in, garbage out.

Wake up in the morning,

it's Friday. They're going

to a party that night.

They supposed to be at school,

they woke up late,

but the first thing

that they turn on

is the radio or their CD.

And the song is,

( beatboxing )

♪ Kill a motherfucker ♪

♪ Kill a motherfucker

twice ♪

Now, while they're playing

their video game,

it's "kill a motherfucker."

Then, they drinking or using

some type of substance

before the party.

I tell them there's going to be

50 guys at the party,

all of them who listen

to the same song you did,

all of them who played

the same video games you did,

all of them who took up

on the same drugs that you did,

all of them who had

the same armament that you have,

and then soon

as I walk in the party

and accidentally

step on your foot

at the same time

the DJ puts on the turntable

"Kill a motherfucker,"

what's going to happen

at that party?

Somebody gonna die.

♪ Got blood on my hands

I got time to kill ♪

♪ I'm a menace to society,

yeah ♪

♪ When you see me

in your hood ♪

♪ Bet I'm up to no good ♪

♪ I'm a menace to society,

yeah ♪

♪ I'm a menace to society,

yeah ♪

HELDMAN:

The Surgeon General

put together a task force

to study this.

Three major findings,

which have been replicated

hundreds of times since,

that exposure to violent media

often leads little boys

to be less sensitive to the

pain and suffering of others,

it leads them to be

more fearful of the world,

and it leads them

to engage in behaviors

that are more aggressive

towards others

and towards themselves.

They're not the only things

that cause violence

with young people

and with adult men,

but they're pretty

potent predictors.

Childhood is a sequence

of revealed secrets.

Today, there is no sequence

of revealed secrets.

Kids are exposed to porn

at age 5 or 6

because they're

in the middle of a video game

and something pops up

or they click

on the wrong website.

I started seeing it

more and more,

I started seeing it

in other places,

like music, pictures,

magazines.

With my group of friends,

it's more taboo to talk about,

it's kind of like

something like, okay,

everyone knows that

I'll watch it,

but let's just like

not talk about it,

because

it's extremely awkward.

Ladies, your man is nastier

than you ever imagined.

Your man has been watching porno

since he was 12 years old.

Because of abstinence-only

sex education,

because of

the unbelievable shame

that our culture has

around sexuality,

pornography is sex education

for most people.

At the touch of a button,

anybody, at any age,

anywhere in the world,

can have a panoply

of sexual experiences--

visual sexual experiences.

Your brain is being affected.

Dopamine receptors

are being over-activated

and you get addicted

to this visual stimulation.

And the problem is the excess,

and it's in social isolation.

Jimmy is in his room alone

doing this.

He's cutting himself off

from friends, family,

and knowing how to relate

to girls and women.

If you're a teenager,

who's had no sexual experience,

this becomes

the social norm.

And the assumption is

this is what is right to do,

this is what women want

and this is how men

are supposed to perform.

And all of those are wrong.

The way that boys and men

have been trained to think about

and objectify women's bodies

and purchase women's bodies,

whether it's directly

in prostitution

or indirectly in pornography,

and somehow

that has no relation to how they

think about themselves

as sexual beings

and women's sexuality?

To me it's naive to think

that there's no connection.

It seemed like

they were attacking her.

And it didn't make

any sense to me as to,

is this the actual thing?

Like does this

actually happen?

I think we have to be

honest with our sons

that our culture

is sending mixed messages

all over the place.

Boys might be

going to pornography

because they have

the sexual impulse,

but what they get when they

get there is not just sex.

It's incredible levels

of normalized brutality

and sexism that's associated

with the sexual act.

Somehow those boys

are supposed to develop

healthy sexual relationships

with girls and with women?

We have a rape culture.

What that means is that

individual rapists

aren't just

crawling out of the swamp,

they're being produced

by our culture.

Two star high school

football players

have been found guilty

of raping

a West Virginia teenager.

A freshman at Stanford

University

and a member

of the swim team

was accused of raping

a drunk unconscious woman.

Two cyclists witnessed him

raping the woman,

they chased him down

and called police.

Former Vanderbilt

football players are convicted

of raping

an unconscious classmate

in the Vanderbilt dorm room

on campus

and then taking video

with their phones.

As a young man,

you're taught

a man is supposed to

always be on the prowl.

A man is supposed to

always be aggressive.

They say things like,

"Who's that?

I'd like to hit that.

I'd like a piece of that.

I'd like to tear

that shit up."

So think about it:

"Hit." Violence.

"Tear." Violence.

"It." Object.

"That." Object.

We're actually teaching them,

consciously and subconsciously,

on purpose or not, not to see

the humanity in girls.

We live in a world,

right here in our country,

where men's violence

against women

is at epidemic proportions.

IAN:

My first year in high school,

I was going to a dance

with a woman.

And I was standing

next to a guy,

and she was walking away

after talking to me.

And she was wearing

fairly tight pants.

And he said,

"Oh, now I understand

why someone would

rape someone."

The way in which

I've experienced men talk,

oftentimes it involves

doing things to women

that don't seem like

they're particularly consensual.

When I went to college,

there was this pressure

to engage in hookup culture.

Alcohol was this tool

for me to be assertive

and aggressive and predatory,

to find women to have sex with,

so that I could go back

and impress other men with it.

Particularly around

just other guys,

you're always

one-upping the other person,

talking about a woman's ass

or her breasts.

There's an implied sense that

women exist for us

to have sex with them.

They exist for us.

I don't think that we think

about the implications of that.

I call what we do

to our little boys and men

"the great setup."

We raise boys to become men

whose very identity is based

on rejecting the feminine,

and then we are surprised

when they don't see women

as being fully human.

So we set them up.

We set boys up

to grow into men

who disrespect women

at a fundamental level

and then we wonder why we have

the culture that we have.

KIMMEL:

Basically what you have

on college campuses

is young men

desperate to prove

their masculinity,

so you have 18-year-olds trying

to prove it to 19 year olds.

That's a recipe for failure.

The hooking up,

the initiations, the hazing--

what do they get in return?

They get two things.

These are the bonds

that are the most impermeable,

the ones that will

last you a lifetime,

and you also get the feeling

that girls can't do this.

So you get both, horizontal

solidarity with your bros,

and hierarchy--

men are superior to women.

The most important dicta

of the Bro Code

is you never rat out

the brotherhood.

You never, ever,

betray that brotherhood,

so this leads to the notion

that surrounding bad things,

there's a code of silence.

What happens is,

their heads and their hearts

actually come into conflict

because their hearts

may be saying,

"This is wrong.

I know this is wrong.

My ethical compass tells me

this is wrong.

I should do

something about it.

A man would act."

And on the other hand,

"But these are my bros.

I can't betray them.

If I do,

they'll marginalize me."

This is the fear

that so many men have

that keeps them

from acting ethically.

A girl was repeatedly attacked

for two and a half hours

and as many as 20 people

either took part

or stood by and watched.

Many did not step up to help,

but nearly all got out

their cell phones

and started snapping pictures

and Tweeting.

MAN:

Three top Penn State officials

are likely to stand trial

on charges they covered up

years of Sandusky's abuse.

Another adult man

has now resigned

amid accusations

he knew there was a problem

and did nothing.

Intentionally or by neglect,

the Baltimore Ravens,

the National Football League,

and Commissioner Roger Goodell

have conducted a cover-up

of Ray Rice's brutal assault

on his then-fiancée

on February 15.

MAN 1: The severity

of Rice's attack

was clear almost immediately

after the assault.

MAN 2:

The NFL did have the evidence

that the police department did.

The league

is still not responding.

There are forces at work

in male peer culture

that keep men silent,

even men who know

that something is wrong,

they don't say anything

or do anything

because they

make a calculation

that if they say

or do something,

it'll lose them status

within their peer culture.

There's a choice.

And many times the choice

is rooted in our privilege.

So while we as good men

don't perpetrate the violence,

we are part

of the collective socialization,

the fertile ground

that's required

for the violence to exist.

I worked for 10 years

in the jails of San Francisco

in a program

that included a project

to deconstruct

and reconstruct

what we call

the male role belief system,

to which I think

virtually all men

in our society are exposed.

Men are defined as superior,

and women as inferior.

And to be a real man,

you also dominate other men.

So in other words,

this is a recipe for violence.

My mom gave birth to me 4 days

before her 17th birthday,

and so she was

a young girl

and she projected

a lot of that trauma on to me.

My mother had like this,

like just a rage

towards me to this day.

And I remember her

kicking me down the hallway

and choking me

and slapping me.

And...

and the worst part about this

was not the physical part of it,

'cause that was normal

for me at that time.

It was afterwards she took

a Polaroid picture of me...

crying.

And I don't remember

her exact words,

but I remember

her shaming me.

And I couldn't figure out

what it was

that was so wrong

with me, that...

why, especially at that age,

why did I deserve this?

I was molested

by one of my siblings' father.

He took me into his bedroom,

closed the door

and then I remember

questioning in my mind like,

why did he close the door?

He asked me to pull down

my pants and, uh...

I remember pulling down my pants

and then my underwear

and he just looked at me

for a while.

And, uh...

and then he touched me.

I eventually told my mom

and she didn't believe me,

which made it worse.

I felt guilt around it, um...

that I should have

somehow--

I should have known better.

I knew that I was suicidal.

Um...I was a cutter.

Once I was hospitalized

for swallowing

an entire bottle

of my aunt's prescription pills.

I didn't feel that

there was any worth to my life,

and then, you know, who would

care whether I was here or not.

The best way that I've been

able to understand

my capacity to murder

another human being

is that I didn't value

my own life at the time,

so I couldn't value the life

of another human being.

A human child knows

it's not loved,

he or she,

if they're beaten,

or if they're just

simply neglected,

ignored, abandoned.

The men that I worked with

in the prisons

had suffered all of these forms

of child abuse

to a degree I've never seen

in any other setting.

And to say they were

dominated by shame

is to say they didn't have pride

or self-love.

Whether it's homicidal violence

or suicidal violence,

people resort to such

desperate behavior

only when they are feeling

overwhelmed by shame

and humiliation.

I grew up with three brothers

and a father that drank a lot,

and I was probably bullied

the most by my dad.

He ruled with intimidation,

you know, and fear.

I was always scared

when Mom said,

"You're in trouble,

and I'm going to tell your dad."

I knew I had

an ass-whipping coming

and that meant

he was going to hit me

with whatever he had

close to him, you know.

Whether it was a fan cord

he ripped out of the wall,

or his belt.

I was shy, I was quiet,

I was always in my head.

I just felt...

terribly alone.

The only culture where I felt

like I belonged a little bit

was in the drug culture

when I found it.

I was 12 years old

when I started smoking weed.

At first,

because of peer pressure,

but I soon liked it

because I didn't have to feel

the way I always felt.

Then I moved on

to harder drugs.

My world changed

when I picked up a gun.

Became a whole

lot more violent.

People around me

started dying.

The guy I killed,

we had conflict.

I had been accepted

in this drug culture.

When he didn't pay me,

I thought, "My homeboys know.

If I don't do something

to this guy,

everybody's gonna take

whatever I have,

play me for a punk."

That's the story

I was telling in my head.

I just felt all the fear

and anxiety

and everything else I had

bottled up in me just burst.

And I shot him six times.

And I ran.

I think that's the first time

I ever felt, um...

like I had power.

For so long I had felt

so powerless in my life.

Like that was a moment

I finally stood up for myself.

But it came

at such a huge price.

If you're told from day one,

don't let nobody disrespect you,

and this is the way

you handle it as a man,

respect is linked

to violence.

Boys are trained

to externalize our pain.

When something bad

has happened to us,

we need to do something

bad to somebody else,

avenge the humiliation

that we've suffered,

the shame

that we've experienced.

To me that's such a basic

and an incredibly important part

of what is going on

in the violence pandemic

in our society.

Plenty of girls

live in a culture

where there's

easy access to guns.

Why don't girls and women

do the shootings?

The national conversation

that happens

almost never mentions

gender as a factor

when in fact, it's the single

most important factor.

But it's unspoken,

and so part of our challenge

is to make visible what has

been rendered invisible.

I've been forced to endure

an existence of loneliness,

rejection,

and unfulfilled desires.

Tomorrow is the day

in which I will have

my revenge

against humanity,

against all of you.

One of the things

that has provoked

so much anger

in American society today

is this notion

of aggrieved entitlement,

that men feel entitled

to positions of power

and all that

but they don't feel like

they're getting them

as much anymore.

That's the injury.

Not that I was in power,

but that I was entitled to be.

The boys that have

committed these crimes,

the men who commit crimes

of violence every day

in the streets

of the United States

and in the homes

of the United States,

are our sons,

they are saying something

about us as a culture.

But we ignore them

at our peril.

And I think the first reaction

of so many people

who are threatened

by introspection,

by self-awareness

and self-criticality,

is to push them aside

as if they're somehow others,

they're somehow

aberrational.

And, again,

this idea of mental illness

is one way

to push them aside.

That's why we don't have

to think about our culture,

we don't have to think

what we're teaching our sons.

We don't have to think about

the role of the media culture

in helping to shape certain

norms around masculinity.

We don't have to think about

the mixed messages

we're sending to boys

and men about violence,

which we send all the time.

Cultures define manhood

in different ways,

and there are healthy ways

to define manhood;

there are unhealthy ways.

So the question is,

can we do better than

we're doing in our society?

And the answer is:

Yes, we can do better.

IAN: My sophomore year

in college

I was in my first real

long-term committed

relationship,

and had learned that

she had been raped.

And I found out later

that my mom had been raped

when she was younger.

It was painful for me

to think about that

happening to someone

that I really cared about.

And that it happened

to all sorts of people.

It gave me the opportunity

to start thinking about

masculinity in a critical way.

Trying to become

more of a full human being

and less constrained

by who I thought I had to be.

I stopped playing sports,

in terms

of collegiate competition,

and I went back

to doing theater.

One of the characters

that I played

was a transgender character.

I remember when my parents

came to the show, um...

and my dad

was really uncomfortable.

He was not comfortable

with his son,

who was more of

a prototypical man's man,

changing into this

very un-man's man-like person.

Even in the context of theater,

where it wasn't really me.

And that sort of began

a point of friction,

I think,

between my father and I.

His response was,

why wouldn't you want to be

what you really are?

CODY: The very last time

that I spoke to my father,

I was a senior

in high school.

I told him that I hated him

and I never wanted

to talk to him again.

In kind of

the heat of that moment,

I decided that

I should write down

everything

that I was mad at him for

since my first memory

of him beating my mom.

And so I sat down

and I wrote a letter,

and I had intended

to send it to him in the mail.

I was taking

an AP English class

and the teacher resembled

my wrestling coach

in a lot

of his characteristics.

I came into his classroom

and I said,

"Something inside me needs

to have you read this

before I can send it,

and I don't know why."

And he got...

I think three-quarters

through the first page,

and he, like,

fell into tears.

Like, tears just

running down his face.

He was like, "I understand you

so much better now.

That's why you push yourself

so hard in everything you do,

why you have to be the best,

why you have to be perfect,

why you stress out about

every single little thing."

He looked at me

and he just said,

"You're good enough."

And apparently,

that's what I needed to hear...

from a man.

STEVEN:

About 4 or 5 years ago,

Jacksen said,

"How about we make a box,

and we put notes in there

every week to each other.

If I'm mad,

I'll put a note in there,

if I'm happy,

I'll put a note in there.

That's how

we'll communicate

about what we're feeling

for the week."

And so Jacksen found

one of my shoe boxes,

cut a hole in the top,

and he named it the mailbox.

And we do it once a week,

and we open it on Daddy Sunday,

which is Sundays.

I wrote this one.

"To Dad.

Dear Dad, I love how we play

together every Sunday.

It's really fun

playing with you, Dad.

Love, Jacksen."

And this.

And my father has never

in 30-some-odd years of life

told me he loved me.

I tell my son

I love him every day.

EHRMANN: The father wound

is any ongoing psychological,

emotional deficit or injury

that would have been met

in a healthy relationship.

So the father wound

is probably one of the most

serious issues in this country.

Wounding boys

become wounding men,

apart from

some kind of intervention.

In my own healing process,

I took myself as an adult man

and myself

as a 5-year-old boy

and I walked

both of them back

down my mother's

basement steps

and there

I confronted my father.

Five-year-old boys

are supposed to be loved,

they're supposed to be

tucked in at night.

It's an amazing thing

when I did that work,

because it was

the first time

I ever had empathy

for my own father.

I've started to think about,

you know,

who hurt him in a way

that he would be so angry

as he was?

I think every man's journey

is how do you reconnect

that heart to the head,

to start living

out of the authentic you?

Today is really

about self-reflection.

About your story, okay,

your narrative,

why that's important to

self-reflect and to share out.

LUIS: When I came

out of juvenile hall,

I knew that I had to make

some changes,

so I quit smoking

and decided to be sober

and see what I can do

to change my life around.

First day of school

I came in here,

you know, I was very excited.

And these past 2 months

have been amazing.

I can share anything

with these guys, anything.

And, you know,

they've been absolutely

more than a family to me,

I love them to death.

I transformed

from four F's to four A's.

I was very proud

of myself,

but most of all,

I made my mom proud.

HAGEDORN: When I see my kids,

I don't see gangsters,

I see my little brothers.

What we're trying to do

is to connect with them,

to create a space where

they can re-humanize themselves,

because they've been

so dehumanized.

We feel safe in here,

we can talk to anybody in here,

it's like another family,

pretty much.

And so the lessons

that we're being taught

from early on,

is that being a woman,

or being feminine,

or being anything

that's not within the "man" box,

within the confines

of this construct, is bad.

So what I'm gonna

do next is,

I erased the labels "man" box,

"not manly" box.

When we take away these barriers

that society places on us,

our parents, our peers,

our teachers,

media, whatever it may be,

when we strip those away,

we get to be

whoever we choose to be

and we find that

we are some of the very things

that we were taught

that are not manly.

I want to just share this

in closing out, too.

You know, before, when I was

stuck in that "man" box...

Yeah.

I felt a sense of incomplete.

I felt that I always never was

the person I was meant to be,

or the person my family

envisioned me to be.

Once I got out

of that "man" box,

through this process

and the work,

I feel like I stand 10 feet tall

and feel that I'm worthy.

I have a right to be loved.

A sense of belonging

with the peers that I've built

and made

a community with in here

and I feel whole.

Many of us are operating

from a place of tradition,

just the way

things always have been.

We need to get men

into their hearts

and out of their heads.

There's freedom outside of these

rigid definitions of manhood.

We need to redefine

strength in men,

not as the power

over other people,

but as forces for justice,

and justice means

equality and fairness

and working against poverty

and working against,

you know, inequality

and violence-- that's strength.

And we need more men

who have the courage

to stand up and speak out,

even when it means

taking a risk.

To go into male culture,

and say some things

that are going to make

other men uncomfortable.

Because this is

about leadership.

We're asking men to use that

privilege to develop a voice,

to speak out, to stand up.

Become

part of the solution.

It's absolutely not about

teaching boys something new.

It's not about

turning boys into girls,

or something

that they're not already.

But it's actually

helping them to stay with

or return to

what they already know.

Empathy

and caring for other people

and being sympathetic

toward people,

these are not just feminine

traits or behavior patterns.

These are human patterns.

We have a responsibility

to our sons

to break down the systems

of emotional constriction

that leads so many men

to have lives of--

of quiet desperation

and depression

and alcohol

and substance abuse

and all the other ways

that men self-medicate.

So if we ever gave boys

permission to process grief,

gave boys

permission to cry,

to develop

all of their emotions,

you'd do away with not knowing

where to go with their own pain.

POLLACK: For mothers,

if in your gut you feel

you want to stay

close to your son,

don't be dissuaded.

The one study we have

of boys being close to their

mothers in a healthy way

shows that those boys are less

likely to engage in violence,

more likely to succeed in life,

and live 5 years longer.

Whatever a father does

with his son is masculine.

If you like cooking,

cook with your son.

If you like fly-fishing,

fly-fish with your son.

But do something

with your son,

because every boy

measures his masculinity

at the deepest level

against his dad.

We have lots of kids that have

no father figures at home

or who just don't even have

intact families.

Those kids need mentors

who are a regular part

of their lives,

who are checking in,

who are spending

quality time with them,

and who provide the kind of

moral support and example

and guidance

that they need to grow up.

Coaches have this unparalleled

power platform position.

They're held up in most

communities and most schools

as kind of the epitome

of what it means to be a man.

Boy, if we ever got

the heart of a coach

pouring it out

into the hearts of young boys,

with an understanding that

I'm really not just a coach,

but I ought to be

a mentor.

Then you start making

huge changes in the society.

Media and technology

today has an enormous impact

on the social

and emotional health of boys.

And we want that

to be a good impact.

So we need to encourage

good media, good technology,

and we need to limit

the down side of the bad stuff.

We need to challenge

boys and men

to rise to the better angels

of their nature.

To rise to the best aspirations

they have for themselves

as human beings

and as men.

I think

that's a positive challenge

and I think a lot of men

can rise to that challenge.

Everyone in boy's lives

should help us stay true

to who we are so that

we don't have to wear a mask.

Bye!

Bye!

(laughing )

♪ I have

a little bit of trouble ♪

♪ Being tough sometimes ♪

♪ Sticking up sometimes ♪

♪ Being enough sometimes ♪

♪ I have

a little bit of trouble ♪

♪ Keeping myself in line ♪

♪ Keeping myself

trying ♪

♪ Thinking I'll be fine ♪

♪ Ooh, it's lonely

at the start ♪

♪ Till my heart says I can ♪

♪ Might be confused

a little ♪

♪ Flying until I land ♪

♪ What it's like to be a man ♪

♪ Nah nah nah nah nah

nah nah nah ♪

♪ What it's like to be a man ♪

♪ I don't ask trouble ♪

♪ But it comes sometimes ♪

♪ And when it does, I find ♪

♪ Little room to grow ♪

♪ If we stand together ♪

♪ Just think what we could do ♪

♪ Those doors

that we'd break through ♪

♪ The places we could go ♪

♪ Ooh, it's lonely

at the start ♪

♪ Till my heart says I can ♪

♪ Might be confused

a little ♪

♪ Flying until I land ♪

♪ What it's like to be a man ♪

♪ Nah nah nah nah nah

nah nah nah ♪

♪ What it's like to be a man ♪

♪ Come with me ♪

♪ Come with me ♪

♪ Come see my side ♪

♪ Come with me ♪

♪ Come with me ♪

♪ Come see this side ♪

♪ Ooh, it's lonely

at the start ♪

♪ Till my heart says I can ♪

♪ Might be confused

a little ♪

♪ Flying until I land ♪

♪ What it's like to be a man ♪

♪ Come with me ♪

♪ Come with me ♪

♪ Come see my side ♪

♪ Come with me ♪

♪ Come with me ♪

♪ Come see this side ♪

♪ Ooh, it's lonely

at the start ♪

♪ Till my heart says I can ♪

♪ Might be confused

a little ♪

♪ Flying until I land ♪

♪ What it's like to be a man ♪

♪ Nah nah nah nah nah nah

nah nah nah ♪

♪ Nah nah nah nah nah nah

nah nah nah ♪

♪ Nah nah nah nah nah

nah nah nah ♪

♪ What it's like to be a man ♪