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I guess I am just completely out of touch. Or I attribute the kinds of things you observe to wider phenomena. I agree that we still have societal norms and that there are people growing up who understand that they can live outside of them...which I'm not certain is such a bad thing necessarily.
I don't suppose that young men are ganging up on others because they don't know it's wrong. They do it because they don't care if it's wrong. Young women have their own ways of doing this, too. I'm not sure that they do it because there are no role models, though. After all, apparently young women have plenty of good role models...then why are they fucked up, too? And they are...just as much as young men.
Despite how it looks, I am not trying to be contrary. I thank you for taking the time to reply so thoroughly. Like I've said several times before, I'd like to understand how a young man's future is changed by not having a direct male role model (because I'm not sure it's accurate to purport that there are no male role models). I'm not ready to accept that they don't know what is right and wrong behavior. Obviously we have men here on the board who are fine, good people who feel they didn't have them. What does it really mean to feel you don't know how to be male?
Maybe my confusion comes partly from the fact that I don't feel I had any strong role models. As much as I love my parents (aunts, uncles, grandparents, all of them) and think they are good people who love me fiercely, they aren't really the type of people you would call 'role models.' I won't go into details because they are my family and I love them, but I think it's fairly safe to say that I learned as much about how I wanted to be as an adult by observing what I didn't want to be, as much as that which I did. It wasn't until adulthood that I recall meeting people who seemed 'ideal' to me. My stepfather being one of them (who didn't come into my life until after my first child was born). So, like everyone else here, I am just speaking from my own experience. I'm not perfect, but I am happy with how I am as a person and a woman, even though many people might disagree with me.
But admittedly, it is in my nature to question norms and standards, even be suspicious of them to some degree.
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Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats. - Diane Arbus
PESSIMISM, n. A philosophy forced upon the convictions of the observer by the disheartening prevalence of the optimist with his scarecrow hope and his unsightly smile. - Ambrose Bierce
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