Man,
I have been witnessing this stuff for years! We and have 2 daughters in their mid-thirties and a son who is 14. He is a Boy Scout working on his Eagle rank. He is currently enrolled in the Naval Junior ROTC program. His Dad, my husband ( there's a novel idea) is his scout leader and has introduced the entire patrol to the Scolastic Trap Shooting Program. Consequently, several of the scouts, including our boy have become competetive Trap shooters. The boys LOVE the shooting sports. You can only imagine the response we get from some of the other scout moms (and dads). "OH my! Why would you want to expose your son to guns? Aren't you afraid he'll go shoot up his school" My response..." No, I'm not afraid of that. My son can go to the gun club and raise hell with the little orange targets!!!" Same with the military. I was dumfounded to find how little support we got from the counselors and teachers in support of the JROTC program. They seemed surprised that a "SMART" boy like ours would want to expose himself to so much "STRUCTURE". I actually had a conselor say to me,"Go to the orientation (for JROTC), and if you are still interested give me a call......." I said to her," My son has been waiting since kindergarten to do this. He'll be interested..."
Like you, I am sickened by the media's male-bashing ads. No matter what the product, the boys are made to look like idiots who are easily outsmarted by the independant savvy girls. Take for instance the new commercial ( I think it is verizon) where little Susie is running her lemonade stand business at a national level. The poor "dumb" little boy on the bike discovers one of the vending machines is nearly empty and pedals like mad across town to tell his "Boss"(Susie). Meanwhile she uses "Smart" technology to get the info hours before the struggling boy arrives to tell her. Her response..."Nice Bike"! Imagine for one moment, Verizon using a boy lemonade CEO and a little girl driving all over town to deliver a busines report and then being treated like a serf. The NOW ( National Organization for Women) would file a freaking lawsuit before you could turn around.
We have struggled to raise an All-American boy in a time when there is more emphasis on being sensitive than brave, compliant than competitive, passive than aggressive, and where our education system teaches little boys to shut up,sit still, use your words, and even if you are the first one over the finish line everybody gets a trophy so nobody gets their feeling hurt.......
God help us...
MRS. Doctor Encore
