Terry Real
👤 SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
You know, the way we turn boys into men traditionally in this culture is through disconnection.
You disconnect from your feelings.
You disconnect from vulnerability.
You disconnect from others.
You disconnect from your mother.
We call all this becoming autonomous.
Well, this whole story of achieving autonomy has nothing to do with real psychology.
There's no basis for it at all.
It's just patriarchy.
So like, for example, the monosyllabic adolescent boy who won't answer his mother, that's not normal.
We think of it as normal.
But that's not psychologically necessary.
It is a mandate of traditional masculinity.
And I'm here to tell you that traditional masculinity is harmful.
Will and Grace, yeah.
But there's a difference between having gay men
in the public eye and saying that the role of straight men had changed.
Well, they have access to emotion in ways that we didn't.
You know, they were all raised by feminist mothers.
And it had its impact.