One of my best friends was named DN. He was a real sissy-boy as a young boy, crying all the time. So of course all the rest of us boys gleefully beat him up every time he did that. I remember it now in 5th and 6th grade: “Look! He’s crying! Beat him up!” and we would all run over to him and beat him for crying in public like that. We never questioned why a boy who burst into tears all the time needed to get his ass kicked. We just did it.
Of course now I understand that this was simple male socialization, or I should say heterosexual male socialization. Masculinity is to some extent constructed in males. Boys don’t pop into he world as he-men and all boys cry. Most of us pretty much get the tears beaten out of his one way or another. This is how boys become men – it’s a process.
