To the mothers of sons

To the mothers who believe they don’t need to speak to their boys about sexism because they’re ‘kind and compassionate boys’ and who therefore, presumably are immune to the influences of patriarchy and white supremacy, ableism, classism and homophobia.

I have a son too. I understand the pull of motherhood to protect them from the ugliness of the world.

My son is divine. He’s the very best of humanity wrapped up in one small package. At the age of 2 he plays with dolls and chooses the pink bowl each morning for breakfast and picks up teddies and wraps them in blankets and carefully places them in toy beds. He is compassionate and loving. He’s kind and sweet.

He also pushes trucks and trains around the floor and runs around the house yelling for the pure pleasure of hearing himself make noise. He pulls books and games and toys out of cupboards and leaves a trail of destruction wherever he goes.

Soon enough he’ll be at school and people will start telling him that ‘pink is a girls’ colour’ and ‘boys don’t play with dolls’. If the boys in my daughter’s class are anything to go by, it’s inevitable that he’ll be shown what a gun is and that he’ll be encouraged to play ‘wars’.

I’m doing what I can to inoculate him from these things but I’m also realistic; he was born to be a part of this world. He was born to influence life on earth, just as much as it influences him. To do that, he need to understand the waters he is swimming in. 

Showing him the waters is my job. 

If I pretend the waters don't exist or if I just pop him on a life raft so he only ever floats above the waters and doesn't actually look at them, I'm not doing my job. 

You don't protect your son by not mentioning that many men treat women appallingly. You don't do him any favours by not bringing systemic inequality to his attention. 

What you do is turn him into a privileged misogynist; a Brock Turner or a Harvey Weinstein (one, a young man who raped an unconscious woman behind a dumpster, the other an old man who’s preyed on women over which he’s had enormous influence and power his entire career).

Perhaps you’re wondering why I’m writing this letter to the mothers and not the fathers of sons. Is it because Dads already all get this? No. As a group, they clearly do not. (There’s a whole other letter for the Dads. This is not it.)

This one is vitally important because when women turn against one another and deny other women’s experiences it makes me sick to the pit of my stomach.

I get that we all want to protect our children. I want to protect mine. I’m also trained by the patriarchy to assume that women are the enemy. That women are the ones who lead men astray. That girls are the ones who make up stories about ‘good boys’ in order to ruin their lives when all boys want is a ‘little bit of fun’.

So I know just how vigilant I must be. I know that the system works to pit me against my own interests and against my sisters every single day. I know that it encourages me to hold my children to different standards. I know it wants me to let my boy do what he wants, behave as he wants, ‘just let him be a boy’. I also know that it wants to control every aspect of my daughter’s life, from the way she wears her hair, to her body shape, to how she behaves when she falls pregnant, to what clothes she wears in the workplace or out to dinner (attractive and sexually appealing being the standard requirement, unless a man rapes her, then she’s obviously made herself too sexually provocative and is to blame for the man’s behaviour).

As a woman, you’ve lived with these limitations. You’ve accepted them in order to get through the day. You’ve become blind to many of them because looking at these things all the time requires a resilience that not everyone is equipped to build.

But are you really interested in putting cotton wool around your son? Are you afraid that if you show him the truth he’ll turn into ‘one of them’? Do you think so little of him?

Do you really want to instil a level of privilege in his psyche which, if he has hopes of becoming a decent human being, he’s going to have to work to unpack later in life?

Shielding him does not serve him. It dehumanises him. It makes him complicit in a system he may not wish to be complicit in. 

Showing him the system, telling him the truth about sexism and about the way men treat women, gives him a choice. It invites him to become the most honourable possible version of himself.

As a white woman I’ve known the discomfort of discovering my own unconscious complicity in systemic racism. It’s horrible to realise that you’ve been perpetuating a system that you not only don’t wish to benefit from, but actually violently disagree with. It’s a terrible thing to realise that people didn’t teach you how to combat internalised racism either out of ignorance, or because of a ‘not us’ story, or because it was just easier to turn a blind eye and benefit from the maintenance of the system.

I don’t want that for my son.

He is far too good a person to treat him like that.

His goodness means that as his mother I will not shy away from ugly truths. He is too good for that.

As his mother, I will not pretend that we’re not all infected by the sexist patriarchal mindset. He is too good for that.

As his mother, I will not stain his soul by allowing him to unconsciously perpetuate a system that benefits him and disadvantages others. He is too good for that.

Instead, I will give him the chance to live up to the promise of his generation. The first generation in history to have a fighting chance at breaking down all forms of oppression simultaneously.

I will explain to him that as a white boy from a middle-class background he experiences certain privileges that others do not.

I will talk to him about the ways in which his experience in a country that perpetuates white privilege, is different from the kids of colour he’ll go to school with.

I’ll talk to him about how money works and intersects with class. I’ll talk to him about the benefits of creating societies where everyone has a great life, irrespective of how much money they have. I’ll share stories of homelessness with him so he knows how vulnerable we all are when, as a society, we don’t create safety nets.

I’ll let him know that love is what he is at the core of himself and that love takes many forms. I’ll make sure he knows that he may love whomever he wishes. That in his life he may find he loves one or more genders, and ultimately he should let his heart make those choices.

I’ll speak to him about the fact that even though the world looks relatively fair and equal to him, the system is set up to benefit him over his sister and that this is something he must keep in mind. That it must be something he remembers in all of his interactions because if he does not, he’ll end up perpetuating a system that harms his sister.

As he grows up, I’ll explain to him the meaning of consent. I’ll teach him that he’s the one who has the burden of ensuring that when he’s having sex with someone, they have definitely consented. I’ll encourage him to seek out nothing less than enthusiastic consent. I’ll do this for his sake just as much as I do it for the people he has sex with. Because the hatred and shame you must feel when you realise you’ve crossed a line and caused untold and irreparable damage to another human being is not something I ever want him to experience.

It’s easy to assume all perpetrators of sexual violence are monsters, but the truth is, most of them are regular guys. That’s the problem. They’re regular guys who’ve been led to believe that it’s okay to perpetuate behaviour that’s dehumanising to them and to the people they hurt. They’ve been tricked into thinking it’s acceptable because they see it so often all around them. No one has ever encouraged them to stop and check-in with their hearts and souls. To ask whether the ways of this world actually sit well with them.

My son is too good to become yet another soldier of the patriarchy which is why I will explain to him what gendered insults are. I’ll teach him that calling someone a bitch or a slut or a whore is an act of violence. That it’s the first step along a path that ends in women being raped and murdered. Every. Single. Day.

I’ll be sure that he knows that asking a girl for a blowjob and not considering her sexual desires or needs is abusive. That it perpetuates thousands of years of men treating women as objects, existing purely for their sexual pleasure.

I don’t expect these conversations to be comfortable or fun. I do expect them to be truthful. I want my son to live in truth. He is too good to treat him otherwise.

I want him to know that he not only has the capacity to see the world for what it is, but that because he is a rare breed — the son of a mother who is willing to show her son these inconvenient truths — he’ll also have the power to change it.

I will remind him that taking action to change a broken world is the responsibility that comes with privilege.

And because that privilege is so very great, I’ll ask even more of him yet because I know he is worthy of this responsibility. I’ll ask him to remember that as a white man he has an obligation to open the door of economic empowerment to people who don’t look like him. I’ll remind him that it’s people like him who choose to open or shut such doors and I’ll ask him to treat others as he would wish to be treated.

I’ll remind him that other white men will be afraid to open the door. That they have not had the benefit of having mothers who show them the truth. That they will be afraid, but he will not, because he knows that truth sets you free. I’ll remind him that because they do not know this about truth, and because they have not been shown how to lead, they will need him to lead.

I’ll ask him to remember that when he only sees other ably bodied, white men in a room, he’ll need to challenge that because it’s unlikely that anyone else will. I’ll ask him to keep challenging that so that there’ll never again be a room full of such men presuming to make decisions on behalf of people they don’t understand and don’t represent.

In asking these things of my son, I’ll be asking him to live up to the very best version of himself he can be. I know he is strong. I know he is capable. I know he’s intelligent and resilient and courageous.

I refuse to treat him as if he is not capable of shouldering these things. He is not weak. He is not pathetic. He is not cowardly.

He is too good for this world as it currently exists.

The world needs people who are too good for it to stand up, to speak up, to turn it into a world they deserve to live in.

Mothers of sons, we have a very significant role to play in shaping the men of the future.

Your lines of ‘not all boys’, or ‘this happens to boys too’, is hurting them as much as it’s hurting the girls. It’s weakening and dehumanising them. It’s allowing them to perpetuate a world that isn’t a match for the magnificence of their deepest selves.

You do not benefit them by not giving them the opportunity to see and face their privilege. People who have not faced their privilege are not free. Their cage is gilded but still, they are not free.

Like me, you might dream that your children can reach the fullness of their potential. Unconscious biases, unexamined prejudices, and discriminatory beliefs must all be broken down for human beings to live up to their fullest potential.

Our children are here to serve a purpose; to expand the potential of humanity as generation after generation has done before them. To pretend that there’s nothing wrong with this world — that there’s no sexism or racism or homophobia — or that ‘it’s not as bad as people make it out to be’ is to deny them the golden opportunity of their generation; to alleviate the planet of intersecting systems of oppression. This is an opportunity that generations before them have hoped for and that we can pre-pave the way for.

It’s time to become the mothers our children need us to be. To have the hard conversations. To face the ugly truths. To look at why you might respond first and foremost with a defence of 'not all boys' when a woman is speaking about her experience of sexual assault.

It’s imperative to understand what’s driving that behaviour. To break down the mindset that’s infecting your perspective so you don’t pass it on to your unsuspecting children. Especially your sons. Because they deserve better than to become yet another unconscious upholder of the patriarchy. Will you shine a new path for him?

We're currently talking about motherhood and visibility over on Substack. Will you join us?