Psychologist Michael Thompson has pointed out that silence in the face of cruelty or sexism is how boys become men.

I kind of wish, even after I fired back at him, there was still an opportunity for him to have that conversation with me. Maybe if he had said 'This [porn] will skew the way you view women. It's not real. And it's not going to help you get a girl; it's only going to keep you from interacting with girls in a healthy manner', that might have made a difference for me. But my parents were to fearful to actually deal with any of it.

As culture critic Dara Mathis tweeted about Kanye West, 'Daughters are not spiritual retribution for your misogyny.' They are neither a form of punishment nor "tiny spiritual guides sent to newly show you the humanity of girls and women.

Alcohol has been shown to diminish boys' ability to read social cues or notice a partner's hesitation. It gives them the nerve they might not otherwise have to use coercion or force to get what they want: drunk guys are more aggressive when they assault and less aware of their victim's distress. Inebriation also makes boys less likely to step in as bystanders than they would be if they were sober.

That is exactly what teenagers of ass sexualities need: ongoing discussion and education that addresses pleasure, mutuality, safety, love, intimacy, and self-discovery. They need to understand the potential to either be the perpetrator or the victim of intimate partner violence and sexual assault. They need to have agency over their bodies. And for all of them, adult denial puts them at risk of physical and emotional trauma.

One in four men said women would need "some convincing" in order for sex to happen; this was not twenty or thirty years ago, mind you: this was 2016. Those perception gaps are a setup not only for assault- out of unexamined entitlement, if not flat-out ill will- but also for boys' subsequent denial of responsibility and, quite possibly, their claims of false accusation.

He [Aziz Ansari] was just another overeager guy trying to talk a woman into sex, viewing her limits as a challenge he needed to overcome in order to score. What he did was not unusual and was not, in truth, newsworthy; yet that was the very reason it was news. Because it extended the conversation beyond legality, revealing the most banal and pervasive of power dynamics: that men interpret women's behavior through the filter of their own wishes.

They [boys] are particularly eager to have their fathers talk to them about their own experience with sex, love, even regret.

By midway through Kindergarten- that's age five or six- they've learned from their peers to knock that stuff off, at least in public: to disconnect from feelings, shun intimacy, and become hierarchical in their behavior. The lifelong physical and mental health consequences of that gender performance are ingrained as early as ten. By fourteen boys become convinced that other guys will "lose respect" for them if they talk about problems.