I have been writing for a while about something I call sacred masculinity, and I have been writing about this concept because I think something is missing from the way we talk about boys and men in society today.
As both a professor and a parent, I spend a considerable amount of time working with younger people, and I keep noticing that we spend a considerable amount of time telling boys and young men what not to be. We tell them not to be aggressive, domineering, reckless, or cruel. Of course, these are important values, but they make up only part of the conversation, and it is the negative side. We need to focus on the positive side far more often and we need to tell boys and men how their strengths, abilities, and instincts can be used. I thought about this again on Wednesday after reading about what happened aboard Flydubai Flight FZ1073.
