I watched a news clip today. The speakers, Yanis Varoufakis and his wife Danae Stratou, observe that the way that boys socialise with one another when they first go to school is through misogyny. They claim that the banter between boys is founded on a language of diminishing women. Danae continues that she is the mother of a son and has observed that boys are suffering a lot. Danae describes her perspective, that girls appear more focussed, dynamic and energetic. Conversely, she observes that boys appear weak or struggle to find their place. As a mother of two, a 20 year old boy and 17 year old girl, I’d be hard pushed to disagree with the points they make.

However, what really interested me about this post, were the comments underneath. There were a couple of comments agreeing with the speakers. Mostly, there were a lot of women citing violence against women, femicide and many heartless and mocking posts such as ‘boo hoo, poor boys’ and others to that effect. One woman dared to comment that she felt sorry for boys and we should do better to support them – she was pilloried and has since removed her comment. Another woman commented, ‘I do not care about males at all. Of any age’. That comment received, thus far, 156 likes.

I have considered myself a feminist since I first understood what feminism is. But I’m having some real trouble with what I see to be an overly simplistic and, frankly, inhumane response to the glaringly obvious struggles boys and young men are experiencing. Since when do feminists endorse an individualistic perspective on the struggles of a demographic? I always considered feminism to encourage a systemic and structural analysis of the experiences and struggles of any group. So why is the feminist response so different for boys and young men?

I come at this, as we all do, through the lens of my own experience. I have been hurt by men many times in my life. I was hurt, indirectly, by my own father who loves me with his whole heart, but who grew up with a deeply ingrained misogynistic belief system. My mother hurt me in a similar way, because she too had grown up in that same system. The father of my children hurt me in very direct ways. He hurt our children too. He has been an absent father, hasn’t provided any financial support for his children since we separated when the children were very small, he has openly denigrated me to the children ever since, he’s alcohol and drug dependent and holds deeply negative views about women which he has mindlessly shared with both his son and daughter. And I can understand all of that, because surprise surprise, these are the deeply held beliefs of his mother too.

But I am also mother to a struggling young man. And I can see clearly WHY he is struggling. He has been profoundly susceptible to the harmful behaviours of his father because, simply put, he idolises his dad. I believe most people would concur that fathers are the predominant role models for sons. Has my daughter been impacted? Yes of course she has. However, as she becomes a young woman, she has been able to contextual her father’s behaviours and her unconditional love for him is tempered by her flourishing conviction that he is the problem, not her. In essence, my son idolises his father at the moment, because of his choices and behaviours. The pub culture, the drugs, the gambling, the camaraderie between him and a few other divorced men who embrace that lifestyle, and the inevitable misogyny underpinning it all, embraced by my son. My daughter loves her father, yes, but thankfully it’s in spite of these things. She sees it, she feels it and she knows in her toes, that she’s not really welcome in that world as she is.

So what do I do? What, as a society, should we do? My son is in danger of becoming a man who mistreats women. Do I write him off at age 20, knowing what I know? Should society write him off? Or is he too the victim of a system that harms us all? I don’t know the answer. I know I won’t give up on him. And I hope that someday, something will catalyse a willingness to listen, learn and change. I also know this, if you ignore one part of any system, let it falter and rot, the whole bloody thing breaks down in the end.