Introduction
LISTENING TO BOYS' VOICES
"Boys are supposed to shut up and take it, to keep it all in. It's harder for
them to release or vent without feeling girly. And that can drive them to shoot
themselves."
—Scotty, 13, from a small town in northern New England
IN MY TRAVELS THROUGHOUT THIS COUNTRY FROM THE inner-city neighborhoods of
Boston, New York, and San Francisco to suburbs in Florida, Connecticut, and
Rhode Island; from small, rural villages in New Hampshire, Kentucky, and
Pennsylvania to the pain-filled classrooms of Littleton, Colorado—I have
discovered a glaring truth: America's boys are absolutely desperate to talk
about their lives. They long to talk about the things that are hurting
them—their harassment from other boys, their troubled relationships with their
fathers, their embarrassment around girls and confusion about sex, their
disconnection from parents, the violence that haunts them at school and on the
street, their constant fear that they might not be as masculine as other boys.
But this desperate coast-to-coast longing is silenced by the Boy Code—old rules
that favor male stoicism an ... read full excerpt from: Real Boys' Voices ebook
