Claude Mills, Staff ReporterTHE YUTES dem not really angry still. What I find is that they pretend to be angry because they feel threatened or because they want others to feel that they are macho. I feel is an environment thing, not many youths just born angry so, they learn it as a means of self-defence," a self-confessed murderer-turned-Christian said.
When I was 16 years old, I created a whole new persona for myself. Over the course of the summer holidays, I developed a gravity-defying bounce, saved up money to buy trendy black Nike sneakers for school, and made sure that I got new 'Chaplin' pants to wear to school. I started carrying a ratchet knife to school, and began to roll with a bunch of misfits who nicknamed themselves the 'Portmore Thugs'. It was all about being 'cool' back then, which meant being macho, or at least pretending to be, if you didn't want to get beaten up or 'dissed'. On weekends, I began lifting blocks to work on my 'physique' while I invented and practised lies to swap with my friends about just how many girls I had over the weekend.
The only thing missing was the secret handshake that I've seen some US kids do on TV.
Reprehensible behaviour? Maybe. Teen problem child? Dunno.
But you must understand, I was under a lot of pressure - all teenage boys face the same sticky situation - and if you're not careful, you spend your whole adolescence trying not to step over some faded line in the 'sands of coolness' for fear of ridicule.
Teenage boys have it hard. There is a code about what they can or cannot say and what they are allowed to feel. They have to try to find themselves, while publicly, assuming traditional stereotypes such as 'men don't ask for directions so they can't ask for help'. And in an age of confusion such as this, when a young boy should be closer to his mother than ever before, he is forced (by peer pressure factors) to pull away because you can't be no 'mama's boy'.
It's really all very confusing. And sad. Women bitch all the time about having to compete with the big-busted, small-waisted, doll-perfect Barbies, but just look at the styrene hamstrings of GI Joe! How can a man compete with that? And GI Joe isn't even anatomically correct.
Male objectification has almost nearly the same effect that the objectification of females has had for time immemorial for women.
And the body image that oppressed you as a teen stays with you in adult life like some kind of subdermal emotional skin that can never be shed. It just stays there under the surface of this new larger person that you've become. The wounds lie like uneasy volcanoes within.
Luckily, anabolic steroids and creatine aren't easily available to the typical Jamaican teenage male. But they substitute musculature for raw aggression or the threat of aggression. So pretty soon, the stupid 'bad-man-nuh-tek-talk' credo kicks in, and when you add the preoccupation with musculature, small penises or facial imperfections that begins at 15, then you are looking at a lot of insecure young men.
In maledom, the social pecking order is based on physical size and toughness and no one wants to be at the bottom of the food chain. And this sort of thinking carries over into adulthood.
Last week, the guys on my avenue laughed this young 23-year-old man to scorn because he had shaved his chest to 'add definition to his abs'. Our young men are a little brainwashed by those foreign ads they see on television with men sporting six-packs, and this can develop into all sorts of interesting cultural problems.
According to psychologists, in young men, a false self begins to emerge to counteract such intense emotions as fear of physical disintegration or the dread of psychological humiliation.
The false self is reinforced in many cultures such as ours by positive approval and social value assigned to emotional detachment in men in favour of their pursuit of power and wealth. Young men are left to find their path without guides or mentors. Close physical and emotional bonds have been forged with the mother, but staying attached to her, or returning to her, is filled with societal humiliation.
These men, in their relationships with their wives, establish a maternal transference toward the wife. The unconscious threat of the repeat of the original abandonment (with the mother) sometimes forces the men to attempt to control his woman either by clinging on to her or defending against the need for connection with her by staying distant.
Deep-seated feelings of inadequacy about how to become 'a man' and how to protect the family are other sources of internal rage in many men. The rage that is frequently projected to the outside world. The false-self man, now the father who carries childhood feelings of being unwanted, is frightened of his inability to survive and ashamed of his inadequacies as the one who should 'protect' his family.
The question remains: how do we rescue these young men before they damage others or themselves? And how do we prevent this sort of thing from happening in the future? Who will teach a man to become a man if the dead-beat dads continue to turn their backs on their offspring?
If you have any ideas, e-mail me at cmillsy@yahoo.com
