Fight Club Explains Why You’re Still Acting Like A Boy

As fathers spend more time at work, sons lack male role models

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U14Evfm2ifQ

Here’s a transcript of this Fight Club video clip:

Brad Pitt: After I graduated, I called him long distance and asked, “Now what?” He said, “Get a job.” When I turned 25, I called him and asked, “Now what?” He said, “I don’t know. Get married.”

Edward Norton: You can’t get married. I’m a 30-year-old boy.

Brad Pitt: We’re a generation of men raised by women.

Historically, a mother might raise her son up until he is about 12 or 13 years old, and then he became the apprentice of his father, or other man in the community whom he could learn a trade from.

Today, however, fathers spend an increasing amount of time in their workplaces and mothers raise their sons through at least the age of 18.

Nothing against mothers, but there are some ways that women are not equipped to teach their boys how to be men, especially when it comes to how to act around women.

A typical mom probably tells her son to be as nice and polite as possible around girls his own age. He starts to believe that being as nice and polite as he can possibly be will land him a girlfriend eventually. But then he gets frustrated as he grows up and sees the girls he likes dating and hooking up with “assholes” and “jerks,” bypassing him for reasons he can’t fathom.

As he gets to be in his late 20s/early 30s those girls have grown into women who view him as good husband material. He may not incite within them the arousal they felt toward the “assholes” and “jerks” but he’s a much more predictable, riskless man with whom to settle down and start a family with.

But he still adheres to the same behavioral trait around women: subservience. So when he and his wife have a son (if it’s really his son), the cycle continues into the next generation.

I’m not saying more guys need to be “jerks” or “assholes.” I’m just pointing out that many mothers bestow upon their sons a skewed perception of women, and how to act around them. There’s nothing wrong with raising boys to be nice and respectful toward girls, but that niceness often morphs into a docile, supplicating manner that will repel women at a much more efficient rate than it attracts them.