High school’s athletes formed ‘Fantasy Slut League,’ awarding points for sex
By The Associated Press, in Toronto Star, October 23, 2012
PIEDMONT, CALIF.—Male teenage athletes at a San Francisco-area school formed what they called a “Fantasy Slut League,” awarding points for sex with female students.
Piedmont High School principal Rich Kitchens says the so-called league, which had existed for up to six years, has been disbanded.
School officials learned of what the athletes were doing after a date-rape awareness assembly this month. The number of students involved is being withheld.
The San Francisco Chronicle says Kitchen sent a letter to parents Friday saying officials learned that athletes earned “points for documented engagement in sexual activities” with girls who often weren’t aware of the game.
The school is not planning to discipline the students involved.
After reading this, I am extremely grateful I am neither a teacher nor a parent of secondary school children, especially girls. There are so many troubling questions:
1) Why did the school not know about this "league"?
2) Why have the girls not complained before now?
3) Why have the parents not known about this activity, both the parents of the boys and the girls?
4) Why is the school not planning to discipline the students involved?
5) Why is there not a public meeting of parents demanding that the school principal be put on administrative leave, pending a formal investigation of the issue?
6) Why are the boys being permitted to remain in this school, pending a full investigation?
7) What follow up activities, including counselling for both the boys and the girls, not being initiated by the school board and its administration?
8) In how many other secondary schools is a similar "league" operating, and for how long has that been going on, in other cities, states, provinces (of Canada)?
9) Where is the research money that would be needed to conduct a research project, even an oral history, for the purpose of a longitutinal study, covering the past six or seven years, through interviews of the male and female students who are and have attended Piedmont's School for Scandal?
Call me a prude, yet if I were the parent of an adolescent girl who attended this school, and caught even a whiff of this "league" and the pressure that such activity puts on young women "to perform," I would certainly want to know what the school was going to do to assure me, and other parents, that not only is the activity "disbanded," but that there will be both instructional programs and monitoring of in-school activity, as well as after-school programs, to nip additional activity before it starts.
This story casts a cloud over both the young men and the young women, many of whom were undoubtedly unaware of the "league" in which they were participating, and are now both embarrassed and angry at their own betrayal.
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
Saturday, October 20, 2012
Study: Peers influence men in sexual abuse of women
Journal of Family Violence, Vol. 10, No. 1, 1995
Sexual Abuse in Canadian University and College
Dating Relationships: The Contribution of Male
Peer Support
Walter S. DeKeseredy I and Katharine Kelly 1
DeKeseredy (1988a,b, 1989a, 1990a) shows that having abusive male friends and peers who verbally encourage and legitimate female victimization increases the likelihood of both physical and psychological variants of woman abuse in university dating relationships. He also developed a theoretical model which explains how malepeer support contributes to these two behaviors as well as sexual abuse(DeKeseredy, 1988c).
His male peer support model is informed primarily by social support
theory which is a perspective generally used to explain how social integration
and the various resources provided by interpersonal relationships influence
people's ability to cope with stressful life events (Wills, 1985).
Although social support theory deals mainly with health issues and not specifically with the relationship between male peer group dynamics and sexual
assault, it is relevant to this problem.
For example, many men experience stress when their dating partners
refuse to have sexual relations with them (DeKeseredy and Schwartz, 1993).
Some men attempt to alleviate this stress themselves. Others, however, turn
to their male peers for advice on how to deal with sexual rejection. Informational support provided by male friends may influence men to sexually
abuse their partners; especially if they are defined as "teasers," "economic
exploiters," "bar pick-ups," and "loose women" who do not want to engage
in sexual intercourse (Kanin, 1985). Additionally, male homosocial cohorts
often provide sexually aggressive members with a "vocabulary of adjustment"
so that their actions do not alter their conceptions of themselves as
normal, respectable men (Kanin, 1967a).
DeKeseredy (1988c) also contends that male peer support can influence
the probability of woman abuse regardless of any type of dating-related
stress. In fact, most of the male peer support studies conducted so
far do not identify stress as a prerequisite for men interacting with male
friends or receiving pro-abuse support (DeKeseredy, 1990b). There are
many situations in which factors other than stress characteristic of malefemale
courting dynamics, such as leisure activities and work, integrate men
with other males who encourage sexual abuse. These are considered
" . . .violence-supporting social relations that may occur at any time and
any place" (Bowker, 1983, p. 136).
Behaving as part of the herd or gang of men, especially if that group supports the retaliation by men against women who refuse to "comply" with their sexual request/demands will naturally breed both contempt for those "unco-operative females, and enhanced desire for revenge and even more power, through abuse.
Men have names for women who refuse to "obey" and those names are not complimentary.
First, relationships that circle around the exercise of power over another human being are spiralling downwards. Men who are not taught this basic information are being short-changed, and so will their female partners be upon discovering that gap in their male partner's learning.
Next, group-think, in the form of gang-assumption of power offended or resisted, is another of the archetypes into which males, when threatened and vulnerable, escape at their peril.
Third, men need to be formally taught about the merits of mutual, respectful and integrated relationships different from those with other males. And the differences are substantial.
With males, competition, including all forms of satire, ridicule, dissing, and even embarrassment are the norm. This kind of irony, acting as an enemy or opponent and as competitor, is taken by the male conventional perceptions to be both normal and expected. In fact, men come to know they have been "accepted" when they are being ridiculed by their peers, inside the male circle.
However, relating with women, on the other hand, is precisely the opposite.
When a man resists an idea, a suggestion or a recommendation, another man is likely to ramp up the muscle behind the proposal.
However, when a woman resists a suggestion, request or proposal from a male, especially with respect to sexual relations, the man's only option is to respect the resistance, and in so doing, respect the female partner. What happens to a woman's body, as what happens to any person's body, is the exclusive business of that woman. That boundary is neither negotiable nor evil. It is there for very legitimate and supportable reasons. And to disrespect that boundary is to show disrespect both for the woman and for the male involved.
Elementary school curricula about "sex education" will not likely include this kind of topic, given the highly cultural component of its tradition and ethics.
Respect for the boundaries of "the other" is also, not incidentally, one of the basic learnings of any full education in any culture and ethnicity, or ought to be.
Sexual Abuse in Canadian University and College
Dating Relationships: The Contribution of Male
Peer Support
Walter S. DeKeseredy I and Katharine Kelly 1
DeKeseredy (1988a,b, 1989a, 1990a) shows that having abusive male friends and peers who verbally encourage and legitimate female victimization increases the likelihood of both physical and psychological variants of woman abuse in university dating relationships. He also developed a theoretical model which explains how malepeer support contributes to these two behaviors as well as sexual abuse(DeKeseredy, 1988c).
His male peer support model is informed primarily by social support
theory which is a perspective generally used to explain how social integration
and the various resources provided by interpersonal relationships influence
people's ability to cope with stressful life events (Wills, 1985).
Although social support theory deals mainly with health issues and not specifically with the relationship between male peer group dynamics and sexual
assault, it is relevant to this problem.
For example, many men experience stress when their dating partners
refuse to have sexual relations with them (DeKeseredy and Schwartz, 1993).
Some men attempt to alleviate this stress themselves. Others, however, turn
to their male peers for advice on how to deal with sexual rejection. Informational support provided by male friends may influence men to sexually
abuse their partners; especially if they are defined as "teasers," "economic
exploiters," "bar pick-ups," and "loose women" who do not want to engage
in sexual intercourse (Kanin, 1985). Additionally, male homosocial cohorts
often provide sexually aggressive members with a "vocabulary of adjustment"
so that their actions do not alter their conceptions of themselves as
normal, respectable men (Kanin, 1967a).
DeKeseredy (1988c) also contends that male peer support can influence
the probability of woman abuse regardless of any type of dating-related
stress. In fact, most of the male peer support studies conducted so
far do not identify stress as a prerequisite for men interacting with male
friends or receiving pro-abuse support (DeKeseredy, 1990b). There are
many situations in which factors other than stress characteristic of malefemale
courting dynamics, such as leisure activities and work, integrate men
with other males who encourage sexual abuse. These are considered
" . . .violence-supporting social relations that may occur at any time and
any place" (Bowker, 1983, p. 136).
Behaving as part of the herd or gang of men, especially if that group supports the retaliation by men against women who refuse to "comply" with their sexual request/demands will naturally breed both contempt for those "unco-operative females, and enhanced desire for revenge and even more power, through abuse.
Men have names for women who refuse to "obey" and those names are not complimentary.
First, relationships that circle around the exercise of power over another human being are spiralling downwards. Men who are not taught this basic information are being short-changed, and so will their female partners be upon discovering that gap in their male partner's learning.
Next, group-think, in the form of gang-assumption of power offended or resisted, is another of the archetypes into which males, when threatened and vulnerable, escape at their peril.
Third, men need to be formally taught about the merits of mutual, respectful and integrated relationships different from those with other males. And the differences are substantial.
With males, competition, including all forms of satire, ridicule, dissing, and even embarrassment are the norm. This kind of irony, acting as an enemy or opponent and as competitor, is taken by the male conventional perceptions to be both normal and expected. In fact, men come to know they have been "accepted" when they are being ridiculed by their peers, inside the male circle.
However, relating with women, on the other hand, is precisely the opposite.
When a man resists an idea, a suggestion or a recommendation, another man is likely to ramp up the muscle behind the proposal.
However, when a woman resists a suggestion, request or proposal from a male, especially with respect to sexual relations, the man's only option is to respect the resistance, and in so doing, respect the female partner. What happens to a woman's body, as what happens to any person's body, is the exclusive business of that woman. That boundary is neither negotiable nor evil. It is there for very legitimate and supportable reasons. And to disrespect that boundary is to show disrespect both for the woman and for the male involved.
Elementary school curricula about "sex education" will not likely include this kind of topic, given the highly cultural component of its tradition and ethics.
Respect for the boundaries of "the other" is also, not incidentally, one of the basic learnings of any full education in any culture and ethnicity, or ought to be.
Am. Academy of Pediatrics Study: Boys reaching puberty earlier
Boys hitting puberty earlier, U.S. Study shows
By Patty Wensa, Toronto Star, October 20, 2012
For years, pediatric experts have warned that girls were reaching puberty earlier, but now males are maturing faster as well.
A new U.S. study shows their bodies are beginning to change on average at 9 for African-American boys and at 10 for Hispanic and white boys.
The research, by the American Academy of Pediatrics, means boys are going into puberty six months to two years earlier than previously documented.
Scientists say they don’t know why it’s happening.
“There needs to be more research,” says Richard Wasserman, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Vermont and one of study’s authors. “Any reasoning we do with respect to cause and effect is pure speculation.”
But doctors say it has important implications for treatment.
“As clinicians it helps us pick out kids who are truly hitting puberty in advance of normal, which means I need to be worried about those kids,” says Margo Lane, a pediatrician and adolescent medicine specialist in Winnipeg, who was not involved in the study. Early puberty in either sex can be a sign of disease.
The new research is also important because it sets benchmarks by race. “That allows us to have an understanding of the variability of different races in terms of what’s normal,” says Lane.
A study done by the same research group in 1997 found that 7 per cent of white girls and 27 per cent of African-American girls were reaching puberty as early as 7. The reason for the difference between races isn’t known.
Experts have speculated the early onset is being brought on by weight or by hormones in the environment. Lane says one of the strongest predictors of puberty is genetic.
In this study, researchers recruited pediatricians and nurse practitioners across the U.S., as well as in Quebec, who measured the genital and pubic hair growth of more than 4,000 boys from 2005 to 2010. Parents were asked for consent.
The study updates 20-year-old information, which is hard to get because of the invasiveness of the procedure.
“The most common first sign of a boy going into puberty is the enlargement of the testicles,” says Lane. “The boys are obviously self-conscious about it and we don’t want to embarrass the boys.”
But Wasserman says all doctors are trained in the procedure and it should be done to determine if a child is progressing normally.
“There is a squeamishness that is emerging about examining the genitals of children that is probably related to the fear of child sexual abuse,” says Wasserman. “But these are examinations done with a parent in the room.”
He also thinks the research means sex education should be taught earlier.
“A more common sense reason to want this all to be assessed is so you can help your child through puberty,” says Wasserman. “There should be a parent who can matter-of-factly say, you know that boys and men look very different,” he says. “It shouldn’t be a mystery.”
That information isn’t taught in Ontario schools until Grade 5, but a group of experts recently advocated that it be part of the curriculum in Grade 4.
Lane says parents shouldn’t worry that the early onset of puberty means kids are deciding to have sex.
“By no means is it strictly hormonal,” says Lane. “There are so many other social and cultural factors that influence when a young person is going to start having sex.”
By Patty Wensa, Toronto Star, October 20, 2012
For years, pediatric experts have warned that girls were reaching puberty earlier, but now males are maturing faster as well.
A new U.S. study shows their bodies are beginning to change on average at 9 for African-American boys and at 10 for Hispanic and white boys.
The research, by the American Academy of Pediatrics, means boys are going into puberty six months to two years earlier than previously documented.
Scientists say they don’t know why it’s happening.
“There needs to be more research,” says Richard Wasserman, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Vermont and one of study’s authors. “Any reasoning we do with respect to cause and effect is pure speculation.”
But doctors say it has important implications for treatment.
“As clinicians it helps us pick out kids who are truly hitting puberty in advance of normal, which means I need to be worried about those kids,” says Margo Lane, a pediatrician and adolescent medicine specialist in Winnipeg, who was not involved in the study. Early puberty in either sex can be a sign of disease.
The new research is also important because it sets benchmarks by race. “That allows us to have an understanding of the variability of different races in terms of what’s normal,” says Lane.
A study done by the same research group in 1997 found that 7 per cent of white girls and 27 per cent of African-American girls were reaching puberty as early as 7. The reason for the difference between races isn’t known.
Experts have speculated the early onset is being brought on by weight or by hormones in the environment. Lane says one of the strongest predictors of puberty is genetic.
In this study, researchers recruited pediatricians and nurse practitioners across the U.S., as well as in Quebec, who measured the genital and pubic hair growth of more than 4,000 boys from 2005 to 2010. Parents were asked for consent.
The study updates 20-year-old information, which is hard to get because of the invasiveness of the procedure.
“The most common first sign of a boy going into puberty is the enlargement of the testicles,” says Lane. “The boys are obviously self-conscious about it and we don’t want to embarrass the boys.”
But Wasserman says all doctors are trained in the procedure and it should be done to determine if a child is progressing normally.
“There is a squeamishness that is emerging about examining the genitals of children that is probably related to the fear of child sexual abuse,” says Wasserman. “But these are examinations done with a parent in the room.”
He also thinks the research means sex education should be taught earlier.
“A more common sense reason to want this all to be assessed is so you can help your child through puberty,” says Wasserman. “There should be a parent who can matter-of-factly say, you know that boys and men look very different,” he says. “It shouldn’t be a mystery.”
That information isn’t taught in Ontario schools until Grade 5, but a group of experts recently advocated that it be part of the curriculum in Grade 4.
Lane says parents shouldn’t worry that the early onset of puberty means kids are deciding to have sex.
“By no means is it strictly hormonal,” says Lane. “There are so many other social and cultural factors that influence when a young person is going to start having sex.”
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
Brooks on the End of Men, as depicted in Rosin's book of the same title
But, in her fascinating new book, “The End of Men,” Hanna Rosin posits a different theory. It has to do with adaptability. Women, Rosin argues, are like immigrants who have moved to a new country. They see a new social context, and they flexibly adapt to new circumstances. Men are like immigrants who have physically moved to a new country but who have kept their minds in the old one. They speak the old language. They follow the old mores. Men are more likely to be rigid; women are more fluid. (From a column by David Brooks, New York Times, September 10, 2012, below)
There is both empirical evidence to support Rosin's theory, and a different perspective to push back against it. Rosin cites the former; I would like to posit the latter.
Men, for all our warts and pain, are much less likely than women to be "flexible," to use Rosin's interpretation and much more likely to be resistant, because we often see flexibility as co-dependence, or as pandering to the conventional norms or even as becoming subservient to an overwheening and perhaps abusive authority.We are less likely to be compliant with whatever we find in our experience, and much more likely to challenge that "evidence" as sceptics, and for that, the world might consider being more grateful and less judgemental. Our emotional life, while mostly hidden and repressed until it cannot be hidden any longer, is deeper, more profound and also less likely to be amended, shaped or even impacted by circumstances than others, including women, might realize. We do not like, and refuse to perform, in situations where we are reduced to "trained seals" unless and until we choose that curriculum and that culture and that life. And that includes families where the performance "standard" is imposed as "perfection" when we already know we cannot measure up. And it also includes schools where perfect compliance with the rules would and always does make for a very boring day, for us, and for the system that we believe "the system"needs to make more adjustments to accommodate our truth and reality.
And to measure us by women, is to be more insulting than anything we could imagine. We are NOT women, never have been, and never will be. And women do not possess, or incarnate, or express what must be considered the "perfect" role models for us. They are women, and for that we both love and respect them. But we are not women, and never will be, no matter how long or how hard is the push/pull to put our reality into their "container" for that reality.
Tell us women are doing better than we are and we will respond, "So?" "What does that mean?"
For us, it means only that we have left the playing field, because such comparisons are anathema to our existence. And then to hold us accountable for such failure is like saying women have all the right answers for everything, and while we already know that they do most of the time, we cannot subscribe to the world of "somebodies" (women) and "nobodies"(men).
Men will never enter a playing field where we are compelled to match wits with women, for the simple reason that it is not a competition and must not become a competition. If women wish to see it that way, and apparently if we believe books like Rosin's they do, that is their perogative. But don't ascribe to us the same measuring stick(s) that are applied to women.
We cannot and will not give birth.
We cannot and will not play with dolls.
We cannot and will not become more like Odysseus and less like Achilles, simply because that way spells something the world calls "success".
We cannot and will not succumb to the judgement that "we are imposing our wills on the world" just because we refuse to be as complicitous, as easily managed and as "flexible" as our female counterparts.
There is a legitimate place for men, if and when they are seen for what and who we are.
There is no legitimate place for anyone who is the pawn of a system gone awry, as our's certainly has.
The fact that men, far more than women, are responsible for the violence in relationships, and for the wanton destruction of both Wall Street and Baghdad, cannot be pinned on all men, but on a stripe of men whose worth is demeaning to the rest of us. We are not Dubya or Cheney, and more men should have stood up against those bullies.
However, we are not micro-managers either, for the most part, and we find the minutiae of many worlds so confining that we ought not to enter those worlds. And that, while it is somewhat limiting, is also part of who we are.
We need our female partners, in so many ways, not excluding our need for intimacy, and we are very bad at expressing that need.
We need to be understood and held and supported and we are even worse at expressing both our need and our appreciation when it is met.
We need to make a living, and we will work our "butts off" when we are genuinely appreciated, and never when we are treated as trash...and we see our "trashing" as part of a system that sees us as part of the raw material for the production process, and not as integral to the whole system.
Like Mark Twain, many years ago, " The reports of my (our) death are greatly exaggerated!"
And to write that we will have to be more like Odysseus and less like Achilles, is like saying we are not "OK" as we are...and there's the rub!
We are who we are!
We are not going to become something else!
We are not going to apologize for who we are and for not being something else!
And the sooner the world can see and accept and deal with that reality, the better off we will all be!
I have written elsewhere that a female supervisor once commented to me, "John you are far too intense for me!"
To which I responded without taking or missing a breath, "I am also too bald, deal with it!"
Why Men Fail
By David Brooks, New York Times, September 10, 2012
You’re probably aware of the basic trends. The financial rewards to education have increased over the past few decades, but men failed to get the memo.
In elementary and high school, male academic performance is lagging. Boys earn three-quarters of the D’s and F’s. By college, men are clearly behind. Only 40 percent of bachelor’s degrees go to men, along with 40 percent of master’s degrees.
Thanks to their lower skills, men are dropping out of the labor force. In 1954, 96 percent of the American men between the ages of 25 and 54 worked. Today, that number is down to 80 percent. In Friday’s jobs report, male labor force participation reached an all-time low.
Millions of men are collecting disability. Even many of those who do have a job are doing poorly. According to Michael Greenstone of the Hamilton Project, annual earnings for median prime-age males have dropped by 28 percent over the past 40 years.
Men still dominate the tippy-top of the corporate ladder because many women take time off to raise children, but women lead or are gaining nearly everywhere else. Women in their 20s outearn men in their 20s. Twelve out of the 15 fastest-growing professions are dominated by women.
Over the years, many of us have embraced a certain theory to explain men’s economic decline. It is that the information-age economy rewards traits that, for neurological and cultural reasons, women are more likely to possess.
To succeed today, you have to be able to sit still and focus attention in school at an early age. You have to be emotionally sensitive and aware of context. You have to communicate smoothly. For genetic and cultural reasons, many men stink at these tasks.
But, in her fascinating new book, “The End of Men,” Hanna Rosin posits a different theory. It has to do with adaptability. Women, Rosin argues, are like immigrants who have moved to a new country. They see a new social context, and they flexibly adapt to new circumstances. Men are like immigrants who have physically moved to a new country but who have kept their minds in the old one. They speak the old language. They follow the old mores. Men are more likely to be rigid; women are more fluid.
This theory has less to do with innate traits and more to do with social position. When there’s big social change, the people who were on the top of the old order are bound to cling to the old ways. The people who were on the bottom are bound to experience a burst of energy. They’re going to explore their new surroundings more enthusiastically.
Rosin reports from working-class Alabama. The women she meets are flooding into new jobs and new opportunities — going back to college, pursuing new careers. The men are waiting around for the jobs that left and are never coming back. They are strangely immune to new options. In the Auburn-Opelika region, the median female income is 140 percent of the median male income.
Rosin also reports from college campuses where women are pioneering new social arrangements. The usual story is that men are exploiting the new campus hookup culture in order to get plenty of sex without romantic commitments. Rosin argues that, in fact, women support the hookup culture. It allows them to have sex and fun without any time-consuming distractions from their careers. Like new immigrants, women are desperate to rise, and they embrace social and sexual rules that give them the freedom to focus on their professional lives.
Rosin is not saying that women are winners in a global gender war or that they are doing super simply because men are doing worse. She’s just saying women are adapting to today’s economy more flexibly and resiliently than men. There’s a lot of evidence to support her case.
A study by the National Federation of Independent Business found that small businesses owned by women outperformed male-owned small businesses during the last recession. In finance, women who switch firms are more likely to see their performance improve, whereas men are more likely to see theirs decline. There’s even evidence that women are better able to adjust to divorce. Today, more women than men see their incomes rise by 25 percent after a marital breakup.
Forty years ago, men and women adhered to certain ideologies, what it meant to be a man or a woman. Young women today, Rosin argues, are more like clean slates, having abandoned both feminist and prefeminist preconceptions. Men still adhere to the masculinity rules, which limits their vision and their movement.
If she’s right, then men will have to be less like Achilles, imposing their will on the world, and more like Odysseus, the crafty, many-sided sojourner. They’ll have to acknowledge that they are strangers in a strange land.
There is both empirical evidence to support Rosin's theory, and a different perspective to push back against it. Rosin cites the former; I would like to posit the latter.
Men, for all our warts and pain, are much less likely than women to be "flexible," to use Rosin's interpretation and much more likely to be resistant, because we often see flexibility as co-dependence, or as pandering to the conventional norms or even as becoming subservient to an overwheening and perhaps abusive authority.We are less likely to be compliant with whatever we find in our experience, and much more likely to challenge that "evidence" as sceptics, and for that, the world might consider being more grateful and less judgemental. Our emotional life, while mostly hidden and repressed until it cannot be hidden any longer, is deeper, more profound and also less likely to be amended, shaped or even impacted by circumstances than others, including women, might realize. We do not like, and refuse to perform, in situations where we are reduced to "trained seals" unless and until we choose that curriculum and that culture and that life. And that includes families where the performance "standard" is imposed as "perfection" when we already know we cannot measure up. And it also includes schools where perfect compliance with the rules would and always does make for a very boring day, for us, and for the system that we believe "the system"needs to make more adjustments to accommodate our truth and reality.
And to measure us by women, is to be more insulting than anything we could imagine. We are NOT women, never have been, and never will be. And women do not possess, or incarnate, or express what must be considered the "perfect" role models for us. They are women, and for that we both love and respect them. But we are not women, and never will be, no matter how long or how hard is the push/pull to put our reality into their "container" for that reality.
Tell us women are doing better than we are and we will respond, "So?" "What does that mean?"
For us, it means only that we have left the playing field, because such comparisons are anathema to our existence. And then to hold us accountable for such failure is like saying women have all the right answers for everything, and while we already know that they do most of the time, we cannot subscribe to the world of "somebodies" (women) and "nobodies"(men).
Men will never enter a playing field where we are compelled to match wits with women, for the simple reason that it is not a competition and must not become a competition. If women wish to see it that way, and apparently if we believe books like Rosin's they do, that is their perogative. But don't ascribe to us the same measuring stick(s) that are applied to women.
We cannot and will not give birth.
We cannot and will not play with dolls.
We cannot and will not become more like Odysseus and less like Achilles, simply because that way spells something the world calls "success".
We cannot and will not succumb to the judgement that "we are imposing our wills on the world" just because we refuse to be as complicitous, as easily managed and as "flexible" as our female counterparts.
There is a legitimate place for men, if and when they are seen for what and who we are.
There is no legitimate place for anyone who is the pawn of a system gone awry, as our's certainly has.
The fact that men, far more than women, are responsible for the violence in relationships, and for the wanton destruction of both Wall Street and Baghdad, cannot be pinned on all men, but on a stripe of men whose worth is demeaning to the rest of us. We are not Dubya or Cheney, and more men should have stood up against those bullies.
However, we are not micro-managers either, for the most part, and we find the minutiae of many worlds so confining that we ought not to enter those worlds. And that, while it is somewhat limiting, is also part of who we are.
We need our female partners, in so many ways, not excluding our need for intimacy, and we are very bad at expressing that need.
We need to be understood and held and supported and we are even worse at expressing both our need and our appreciation when it is met.
We need to make a living, and we will work our "butts off" when we are genuinely appreciated, and never when we are treated as trash...and we see our "trashing" as part of a system that sees us as part of the raw material for the production process, and not as integral to the whole system.
Like Mark Twain, many years ago, " The reports of my (our) death are greatly exaggerated!"
And to write that we will have to be more like Odysseus and less like Achilles, is like saying we are not "OK" as we are...and there's the rub!
We are who we are!
We are not going to become something else!
We are not going to apologize for who we are and for not being something else!
And the sooner the world can see and accept and deal with that reality, the better off we will all be!
I have written elsewhere that a female supervisor once commented to me, "John you are far too intense for me!"
To which I responded without taking or missing a breath, "I am also too bald, deal with it!"
Why Men Fail
By David Brooks, New York Times, September 10, 2012
You’re probably aware of the basic trends. The financial rewards to education have increased over the past few decades, but men failed to get the memo.
In elementary and high school, male academic performance is lagging. Boys earn three-quarters of the D’s and F’s. By college, men are clearly behind. Only 40 percent of bachelor’s degrees go to men, along with 40 percent of master’s degrees.
Thanks to their lower skills, men are dropping out of the labor force. In 1954, 96 percent of the American men between the ages of 25 and 54 worked. Today, that number is down to 80 percent. In Friday’s jobs report, male labor force participation reached an all-time low.
Millions of men are collecting disability. Even many of those who do have a job are doing poorly. According to Michael Greenstone of the Hamilton Project, annual earnings for median prime-age males have dropped by 28 percent over the past 40 years.
Men still dominate the tippy-top of the corporate ladder because many women take time off to raise children, but women lead or are gaining nearly everywhere else. Women in their 20s outearn men in their 20s. Twelve out of the 15 fastest-growing professions are dominated by women.
Over the years, many of us have embraced a certain theory to explain men’s economic decline. It is that the information-age economy rewards traits that, for neurological and cultural reasons, women are more likely to possess.
To succeed today, you have to be able to sit still and focus attention in school at an early age. You have to be emotionally sensitive and aware of context. You have to communicate smoothly. For genetic and cultural reasons, many men stink at these tasks.
But, in her fascinating new book, “The End of Men,” Hanna Rosin posits a different theory. It has to do with adaptability. Women, Rosin argues, are like immigrants who have moved to a new country. They see a new social context, and they flexibly adapt to new circumstances. Men are like immigrants who have physically moved to a new country but who have kept their minds in the old one. They speak the old language. They follow the old mores. Men are more likely to be rigid; women are more fluid.
This theory has less to do with innate traits and more to do with social position. When there’s big social change, the people who were on the top of the old order are bound to cling to the old ways. The people who were on the bottom are bound to experience a burst of energy. They’re going to explore their new surroundings more enthusiastically.
Rosin reports from working-class Alabama. The women she meets are flooding into new jobs and new opportunities — going back to college, pursuing new careers. The men are waiting around for the jobs that left and are never coming back. They are strangely immune to new options. In the Auburn-Opelika region, the median female income is 140 percent of the median male income.
Rosin also reports from college campuses where women are pioneering new social arrangements. The usual story is that men are exploiting the new campus hookup culture in order to get plenty of sex without romantic commitments. Rosin argues that, in fact, women support the hookup culture. It allows them to have sex and fun without any time-consuming distractions from their careers. Like new immigrants, women are desperate to rise, and they embrace social and sexual rules that give them the freedom to focus on their professional lives.
Rosin is not saying that women are winners in a global gender war or that they are doing super simply because men are doing worse. She’s just saying women are adapting to today’s economy more flexibly and resiliently than men. There’s a lot of evidence to support her case.
A study by the National Federation of Independent Business found that small businesses owned by women outperformed male-owned small businesses during the last recession. In finance, women who switch firms are more likely to see their performance improve, whereas men are more likely to see theirs decline. There’s even evidence that women are better able to adjust to divorce. Today, more women than men see their incomes rise by 25 percent after a marital breakup.
Forty years ago, men and women adhered to certain ideologies, what it meant to be a man or a woman. Young women today, Rosin argues, are more like clean slates, having abandoned both feminist and prefeminist preconceptions. Men still adhere to the masculinity rules, which limits their vision and their movement.
If she’s right, then men will have to be less like Achilles, imposing their will on the world, and more like Odysseus, the crafty, many-sided sojourner. They’ll have to acknowledge that they are strangers in a strange land.
Friday, July 6, 2012
Brooks: Henry V...school drop-out today
Honor Code
By David Brooks, New York Times, July 5, 2012
Henry V is one of Shakespeare’s most appealing characters. He was rambunctious when young and courageous when older. But suppose Henry went to an American school.
By about the third week of nursery school, Henry’s teacher would be sending notes home saying that Henry “had another hard day today.” He was disruptive during circle time. By midyear, there’d be sly little hints dropped that maybe Henry’s parents should think about medication for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Many of the other boys are on it, and they find school much easier.
By elementary school, Henry would be lucky to get 20-minute snatches of recess. During one, he’d jump off the top of the jungle gym, and, by the time he hit the ground, the supervising teachers would be all over him for breaking the safety rules. He’d get in a serious wrestling match with his buddy Falstaff, and, by the time he got him in a headlock, there’d be suspensions all around.
First, Henry would withdraw. He’d decide that the official school culture is for wimps and softies and he’d just disengage. In kindergarten, he’d wonder why he just couldn’t be good. By junior high, he’d lose interest in trying and his grades would plummet.
Then he’d rebel. If the official high school culture was über-nurturing, he’d be über-crude. If it valued cooperation and sensitivity, he’d devote his mental energies to violent video games and aggressive music. If college wanted him to be focused and tightly ambitious, he’d exile himself into a lewd and unsupervised laddie subculture. He’d have vague high ambitions but no realistic way to realize them. Day to day, he’d look completely adrift.
This is roughly what’s happening in schools across the Western world. The education system has become culturally cohesive, rewarding and encouraging a certain sort of person: one who is nurturing, collaborative, disciplined, neat, studious, industrious and ambitious. People who don’t fit this cultural ideal respond by disengaging and rebelling.
Far from all, but many of the people who don’t fit in are boys. A decade or so ago, people started writing books and articles on the boy crisis. At the time, the evidence was disputable and some experts pushed back. Since then, the evidence that boys are falling behind has mounted. The case is closed. The numbers for boys get worse and worse.
By 12th grade, male reading test scores are far below female test scores. The eminent psychologist Michael Thompson mentioned at the Aspen Ideas Festival a few days ago that 11th-grade boys are now writing at the same level as 8th-grade girls. Boys used to have an advantage in math and science, but that gap is nearly gone.
Boys are much more likely to have discipline problems. An article as far back as 2004 in the magazine Educational Leadership found that boys accounted for nearly three-quarters of the D’s and F’s.
Some colleges are lowering the admissions requirements just so they can admit a decent number of men. Even so, men make up just over 40 percent of college students. Two million fewer men graduated from college over the past decade than women. The performance gap in graduate school is even higher.
Some of the decline in male performance may be genetic. The information age rewards people who mature early, who are verbally and socially sophisticated, who can control their impulses. Girls may, on average, do better at these things. After all, boys are falling behind not just in the U.S., but in all 35 member-nations of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
But the big story here is cultural and moral. If schools want to re-engage Henry, they can’t pretend they can turn him into a reflective Hamlet just by feeding him his meds and hoping he’ll sit quietly at story time. If schools want to educate a fiercely rambunctious girl, they can’t pretend they will successfully tame her by assigning some of those exquisitely sensitive Newbery award-winning novellas. Social engineering is just not that easy.
Schools have to engage people as they are. That requires leaders who insist on more cultural diversity in school: not just teachers who celebrate cooperation, but other teachers who celebrate competition; not just teachers who honor environmental virtues, but teachers who honor military virtues; not just curriculums that teach how to share, but curriculums that teach how to win and how to lose; not just programs that work like friendship circles, but programs that work like boot camp.
The basic problem is that schools praise diversity but have become culturally homogeneous. The education world has become a distinct subculture, with a distinct ethos and attracting a distinct sort of employee. Students who don’t fit the ethos get left out.
Little Prince Hal has a lot going on inside. He’s not the unfeeling, uncommunicative, testosterone-driven cretin of common boy stereotype. He’s just inspired by a different honor code. He doesn’t find much inspiration in school, but he should.
What Brooks omitted, and we believe needs insertion into this piece, is that it is a feminist based culture that has taken over schools. And there are many reasons for that.
First, women have become extremely effective leaders within schools and school systems both in the classroom and in the principal's offices, as well as in the superintendent's offices.
Secondly, men have, for the most part, either preferred different careers with more money, status and opportunity for professional growth or were shut out by those offering teaching positions. In one northern Ontario town, for example, from 1990 to 2000, not a single male teacher was hired in the elementary panel and the situation has not likely improved much since.
Schools need a 50-50 balance of men and women as classroom teachers and as principals, superintendents and directors. And that balance has been tilted, significantly over the last two decades.
Also, classroom teachers want absolute control of their environments, and while girls are generally more compliant than boys with the imposition of strict controls, there are many important ways for teachers to release the "lid of the pressure cooker" in their individual responses and in the overall structure of the curriculum.
In some Canadian schools districts, incentives have been implemented to seek and to hire male teachers, especially in the elementary schools.
Men, in the culture, generally, have also abdicated, as men, in the face of the ridiculous lengths to which the feminist mantra and culture have gone to establish female equality. For example, I experienced a completely irrational and potentially dangerous situation a few months ago when attempting to navigate a stopped and empty car in a line for a ferry crossing, only to have a female driver of a car behind who witnessed my turning into the middle of the road, along with three or four other drivers, and came storming to my driver window to shout, "I saw what you did, and you are extremely rude!" to the entertainment of several observers.
Not content with this situation, I approached her vehicle, on the passenger side, to explain what had happened, that a driver had left his car, and we were merely moving around it in order to accommodate the obstruction.
"Would you like to know what happened?" I inquired.
"Say another word, and I will call the cops!" was her response as she picked up her cell phone.
I was so discombobulated that I reported the incident to the ferry crew who advised me to write the circumstances down in case there might be legal action.
So it is not only inside the classroom that some women have found dominance; it is also in some parts of the culture generally.
And the only group who have any chance of changing this situation, in our view, is men.
Men have to write, speak, discuss, and even risk public scorn on behalf of other men who are struggling to find both their own appropriate expression of their identity, and also to find appropriate ways to make a living.
And schools are a good place to begin. Leaving what is happening in schools to female teachers and female parents, as if education were merely a "social issue" without real significance, as many newspapers do by refusing to "front page" and thereby legitimize the issue, will not work.
The Taliban, for all the destruction they have done and continue to do, have at least brought education (if only of girls) to the front pages. Now, if only the question of male educational success were to become the kind of publicly significant issue it deserves, in all 35 OECD countries...that would mark a significant change in the world culture, and could lead to a significant reduction in our spending on "social ills" like street crime, drugs, and family upheaval.
This is one issue on which all of us need to pull hard on the oars...otherwise our boat will continue to circle in its own parochial eddy, without grappling with this cultural malaise.
By David Brooks, New York Times, July 5, 2012
Henry V is one of Shakespeare’s most appealing characters. He was rambunctious when young and courageous when older. But suppose Henry went to an American school.
By about the third week of nursery school, Henry’s teacher would be sending notes home saying that Henry “had another hard day today.” He was disruptive during circle time. By midyear, there’d be sly little hints dropped that maybe Henry’s parents should think about medication for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Many of the other boys are on it, and they find school much easier.
By elementary school, Henry would be lucky to get 20-minute snatches of recess. During one, he’d jump off the top of the jungle gym, and, by the time he hit the ground, the supervising teachers would be all over him for breaking the safety rules. He’d get in a serious wrestling match with his buddy Falstaff, and, by the time he got him in a headlock, there’d be suspensions all around.
First, Henry would withdraw. He’d decide that the official school culture is for wimps and softies and he’d just disengage. In kindergarten, he’d wonder why he just couldn’t be good. By junior high, he’d lose interest in trying and his grades would plummet.
Then he’d rebel. If the official high school culture was über-nurturing, he’d be über-crude. If it valued cooperation and sensitivity, he’d devote his mental energies to violent video games and aggressive music. If college wanted him to be focused and tightly ambitious, he’d exile himself into a lewd and unsupervised laddie subculture. He’d have vague high ambitions but no realistic way to realize them. Day to day, he’d look completely adrift.
This is roughly what’s happening in schools across the Western world. The education system has become culturally cohesive, rewarding and encouraging a certain sort of person: one who is nurturing, collaborative, disciplined, neat, studious, industrious and ambitious. People who don’t fit this cultural ideal respond by disengaging and rebelling.
Far from all, but many of the people who don’t fit in are boys. A decade or so ago, people started writing books and articles on the boy crisis. At the time, the evidence was disputable and some experts pushed back. Since then, the evidence that boys are falling behind has mounted. The case is closed. The numbers for boys get worse and worse.
By 12th grade, male reading test scores are far below female test scores. The eminent psychologist Michael Thompson mentioned at the Aspen Ideas Festival a few days ago that 11th-grade boys are now writing at the same level as 8th-grade girls. Boys used to have an advantage in math and science, but that gap is nearly gone.
Boys are much more likely to have discipline problems. An article as far back as 2004 in the magazine Educational Leadership found that boys accounted for nearly three-quarters of the D’s and F’s.
Some colleges are lowering the admissions requirements just so they can admit a decent number of men. Even so, men make up just over 40 percent of college students. Two million fewer men graduated from college over the past decade than women. The performance gap in graduate school is even higher.
Some of the decline in male performance may be genetic. The information age rewards people who mature early, who are verbally and socially sophisticated, who can control their impulses. Girls may, on average, do better at these things. After all, boys are falling behind not just in the U.S., but in all 35 member-nations of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
But the big story here is cultural and moral. If schools want to re-engage Henry, they can’t pretend they can turn him into a reflective Hamlet just by feeding him his meds and hoping he’ll sit quietly at story time. If schools want to educate a fiercely rambunctious girl, they can’t pretend they will successfully tame her by assigning some of those exquisitely sensitive Newbery award-winning novellas. Social engineering is just not that easy.
Schools have to engage people as they are. That requires leaders who insist on more cultural diversity in school: not just teachers who celebrate cooperation, but other teachers who celebrate competition; not just teachers who honor environmental virtues, but teachers who honor military virtues; not just curriculums that teach how to share, but curriculums that teach how to win and how to lose; not just programs that work like friendship circles, but programs that work like boot camp.
The basic problem is that schools praise diversity but have become culturally homogeneous. The education world has become a distinct subculture, with a distinct ethos and attracting a distinct sort of employee. Students who don’t fit the ethos get left out.
Little Prince Hal has a lot going on inside. He’s not the unfeeling, uncommunicative, testosterone-driven cretin of common boy stereotype. He’s just inspired by a different honor code. He doesn’t find much inspiration in school, but he should.
What Brooks omitted, and we believe needs insertion into this piece, is that it is a feminist based culture that has taken over schools. And there are many reasons for that.
First, women have become extremely effective leaders within schools and school systems both in the classroom and in the principal's offices, as well as in the superintendent's offices.
Secondly, men have, for the most part, either preferred different careers with more money, status and opportunity for professional growth or were shut out by those offering teaching positions. In one northern Ontario town, for example, from 1990 to 2000, not a single male teacher was hired in the elementary panel and the situation has not likely improved much since.
Schools need a 50-50 balance of men and women as classroom teachers and as principals, superintendents and directors. And that balance has been tilted, significantly over the last two decades.
Also, classroom teachers want absolute control of their environments, and while girls are generally more compliant than boys with the imposition of strict controls, there are many important ways for teachers to release the "lid of the pressure cooker" in their individual responses and in the overall structure of the curriculum.
In some Canadian schools districts, incentives have been implemented to seek and to hire male teachers, especially in the elementary schools.
Men, in the culture, generally, have also abdicated, as men, in the face of the ridiculous lengths to which the feminist mantra and culture have gone to establish female equality. For example, I experienced a completely irrational and potentially dangerous situation a few months ago when attempting to navigate a stopped and empty car in a line for a ferry crossing, only to have a female driver of a car behind who witnessed my turning into the middle of the road, along with three or four other drivers, and came storming to my driver window to shout, "I saw what you did, and you are extremely rude!" to the entertainment of several observers.
Not content with this situation, I approached her vehicle, on the passenger side, to explain what had happened, that a driver had left his car, and we were merely moving around it in order to accommodate the obstruction.
"Would you like to know what happened?" I inquired.
"Say another word, and I will call the cops!" was her response as she picked up her cell phone.
I was so discombobulated that I reported the incident to the ferry crew who advised me to write the circumstances down in case there might be legal action.
So it is not only inside the classroom that some women have found dominance; it is also in some parts of the culture generally.
And the only group who have any chance of changing this situation, in our view, is men.
Men have to write, speak, discuss, and even risk public scorn on behalf of other men who are struggling to find both their own appropriate expression of their identity, and also to find appropriate ways to make a living.
And schools are a good place to begin. Leaving what is happening in schools to female teachers and female parents, as if education were merely a "social issue" without real significance, as many newspapers do by refusing to "front page" and thereby legitimize the issue, will not work.
The Taliban, for all the destruction they have done and continue to do, have at least brought education (if only of girls) to the front pages. Now, if only the question of male educational success were to become the kind of publicly significant issue it deserves, in all 35 OECD countries...that would mark a significant change in the world culture, and could lead to a significant reduction in our spending on "social ills" like street crime, drugs, and family upheaval.
This is one issue on which all of us need to pull hard on the oars...otherwise our boat will continue to circle in its own parochial eddy, without grappling with this cultural malaise.
Tuesday, June 26, 2012
Texas Schools send miscreants to juvenile court..for a criminal record!
Don't send your kid to school in Texas!
Don't even consider enrolling your child in any Texas school unless and until you verify that the school system is not using the court system to effect school discipline.
In a story on PBS Newshour tonight, evidence of criminal records being imposed on adolescents for causing a disturbance in class, or for missing school, or for what we used to call "saucing" a teacher was exposed.
One story documented a straight A student who, because she also holds down two part-time jobs, in order to provide extra income so her siblings can attend college, missed a second day of school, after a warning from the court system, and then was ordered to spend overnight in a county jail cell, for her truancy.
Another story illustrated the sentence of $350 fine plus 20 hours of community service for a fourteen-year-old male, because, after he was punched by another student, punched him back. He also now has a criminal record which will follow him at least until he applies to enter college, when it will likely restrict, if not preclude his admission.
Of course, there is no evidence either that such punishments lead to improved behaviour or that such punishments help to keep kids in school. In fact, the reverse is true: such punishments drive kids towards the decision to drop out.
Not only has Texas the highest number of executions from the death penalty of all the U.S. states, we now learn that it has neither imagination nor compassion, nor insight into how to run the school system.
Dubya used to call his "swagger" a "walk" as it was known in Texas, and yet this policy of criminalizing adolescents for minor offences in school is more than a swagger; it is tantamout to torture, in the guise of school discipline.
Rather than disciplining the students, the whole system needs to be disciplined, through the most obvious and effective of measures: throwing the adults who administer the schools through the courts out on their ears, permanently, and bring in some enlightened administrators whose capacity and willingness to confront the students about their responsibilities and obligations, within the schools themselves. There are literally libraries of outstanding literature on the enlightened administration of schools.
Throw out the legislators who permit such a travesty, and are proud of their "absolutist" solutions.
We used to have a professor at the University of Ottawa, Dr. Ramunas, who frequently referred to the Russian method of solving problems, "Eliminate them!" he would shout and then guffaw in derision.
Where is he now, when the State of Texas needs his satiric insight?
Don't even consider enrolling your child in any Texas school unless and until you verify that the school system is not using the court system to effect school discipline.
In a story on PBS Newshour tonight, evidence of criminal records being imposed on adolescents for causing a disturbance in class, or for missing school, or for what we used to call "saucing" a teacher was exposed.
One story documented a straight A student who, because she also holds down two part-time jobs, in order to provide extra income so her siblings can attend college, missed a second day of school, after a warning from the court system, and then was ordered to spend overnight in a county jail cell, for her truancy.
Another story illustrated the sentence of $350 fine plus 20 hours of community service for a fourteen-year-old male, because, after he was punched by another student, punched him back. He also now has a criminal record which will follow him at least until he applies to enter college, when it will likely restrict, if not preclude his admission.
Of course, there is no evidence either that such punishments lead to improved behaviour or that such punishments help to keep kids in school. In fact, the reverse is true: such punishments drive kids towards the decision to drop out.
Not only has Texas the highest number of executions from the death penalty of all the U.S. states, we now learn that it has neither imagination nor compassion, nor insight into how to run the school system.
Dubya used to call his "swagger" a "walk" as it was known in Texas, and yet this policy of criminalizing adolescents for minor offences in school is more than a swagger; it is tantamout to torture, in the guise of school discipline.
Rather than disciplining the students, the whole system needs to be disciplined, through the most obvious and effective of measures: throwing the adults who administer the schools through the courts out on their ears, permanently, and bring in some enlightened administrators whose capacity and willingness to confront the students about their responsibilities and obligations, within the schools themselves. There are literally libraries of outstanding literature on the enlightened administration of schools.
Throw out the legislators who permit such a travesty, and are proud of their "absolutist" solutions.
We used to have a professor at the University of Ottawa, Dr. Ramunas, who frequently referred to the Russian method of solving problems, "Eliminate them!" he would shout and then guffaw in derision.
Where is he now, when the State of Texas needs his satiric insight?
Monday, June 18, 2012
My Vitamins
Received this piece a few moments ago from a male friend, read it quickly, then re-read it more slowly in amazement, thinking, "I have never heard such a message of support from a male in 70 years!"
We really are moving, seismically, tectonically, and ireversibly...as men, to acknowledge our inter-dependence on one another, the joys and meaning of our real friends, and at the same time, shedding centuries old repression of authentic feelings.
To Peter, who sent it, I say a warm, heartfelt THANKS!
To others who have been thinking of sending a thought/sentiment/thanks to someone, please feel free, and do not hesitate! There are friends waiting for this long-overdue note of thanks!
My Vitamins
Why do I have a variety of friends who are
all so different in character?
How can I get along with them all?
I think that each one helps to bring out a
"different" part of me.
With one of them I am polite. I joke with another friend.
I sit down and talk about serious matters with one.
With another I laugh a lot. I may have a coke with one.
I listen to one friend's problems.
Then I listen to another one's advice for me.
My friends are all like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.
When completed, they form a treasure box.
A treasure of friends! They are my friends who
understand me better than myself, who support
me through good days and bad days.
Real Age doctors tell us that friends are good for our health.
Dr. Oz calls them Vitamins F (for Friends) and counts the benefits of friends as essential to our well being.
Research shows that people in strong social circles have less risk of depression and terminal strokes.
If you enjoy Vitamins F constantly you can be up to 30 years younger than your real age.
The warmth of friendship stops stress and even in your most intense moments it decreases the chance of a cardiac arrest or stroke by 50%.
I'm so happy that I have a stock of Vitamins F!
In summary, we should value our friends and keep in touch with them.
We should try to see the funny side of things and laugh together, and pray for each other in the tough moments.
Thank you for being one of my Vitamins
We really are moving, seismically, tectonically, and ireversibly...as men, to acknowledge our inter-dependence on one another, the joys and meaning of our real friends, and at the same time, shedding centuries old repression of authentic feelings.
To Peter, who sent it, I say a warm, heartfelt THANKS!
To others who have been thinking of sending a thought/sentiment/thanks to someone, please feel free, and do not hesitate! There are friends waiting for this long-overdue note of thanks!
My Vitamins
Why do I have a variety of friends who are
all so different in character?
How can I get along with them all?
I think that each one helps to bring out a
"different" part of me.
With one of them I am polite. I joke with another friend.
I sit down and talk about serious matters with one.
With another I laugh a lot. I may have a coke with one.
I listen to one friend's problems.
Then I listen to another one's advice for me.
My friends are all like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.
When completed, they form a treasure box.
A treasure of friends! They are my friends who
understand me better than myself, who support
me through good days and bad days.
Real Age doctors tell us that friends are good for our health.
Dr. Oz calls them Vitamins F (for Friends) and counts the benefits of friends as essential to our well being.
Research shows that people in strong social circles have less risk of depression and terminal strokes.
If you enjoy Vitamins F constantly you can be up to 30 years younger than your real age.
The warmth of friendship stops stress and even in your most intense moments it decreases the chance of a cardiac arrest or stroke by 50%.
I'm so happy that I have a stock of Vitamins F!
In summary, we should value our friends and keep in touch with them.
We should try to see the funny side of things and laugh together, and pray for each other in the tough moments.
Thank you for being one of my Vitamins
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