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A. We have a complete double standard in this country with respect to sex and violence. Why is it that on a Saturday morning it would be unthinkable to put a porno movie on regular network TV, yet it is O.K. to put on a show in which 87 people are killed an hour? Isn't killing people at least as inappropriate for a young child to see?
Viewing this endless violence encourages violent behavior. We let our kids watch this stuff, and then we are surprised that we have the highest violence rates of any industrialized country. We talk a lot about freedom, but what / kind of freedom is it when a child's worst potential is being encouraged by people who are interested in making money? Where is the freedom of a boy who has watched endless slasher films and goes out and commits acts of rape or other violent acts?
Parents should do everything to protect their boys from these films, but they are being put in an unfair position. It is completely unrealistic to expect parents to constantly monitor everything their child is watching. But parents do have some options. They can install lock boxes on their TVs, which allow them to program their sets so they can control what their children can watch. Parents also should be writing letters to their member of Congress, asking for the creation of a children's public television network dedicated to prosocial, nonviolent programming. This is not to say I have in mind goody- goody, boring programming. You can have entertaining, interesting programming that doesn't have to be filled with gratuitous violence.
Q. How do you turn the Sylvester Stallones into Gandhis?
A. You have to redefine masculinity. We have to begin to encourage boys from the youngest age to be empathetic, to get in touch with their own feelings, to tell them they can be nurturing and masculine at the same time.
Q. As a mother of two girls, why did you write this book about boys?
A. The book focuses on boys for the very simple reason that approximately 89% of violent crimes in the U.S. are committed by males. If you are trying to deal with the problem, you deal with those who are at the center of the problem.
Otherwise, I was drawn to this topic in part because I am a Holocaust survivor. I was three years old when the Second World War started. I was born in Belgium and was forced to leave a very peaceful environment. My family and I became refugees, sleeping in schoolyards and running from bombs.
When my father turned 80, he sat down and counted how many of his relatives had been killed in the Holocaust. The number totaled 135 people. I think my ability to see that masculinity does not have to equal violence comes out of having grown up with a father for whom the values of the masculine mystique meant cossacks raping the women and looting the homes. It meant Nazis gassing his family. Because I grew up with a role model for whom violence was not at all a fun and exciting thing, it was clear to me that there is no necessary connection between masculinity and violence. This is a very different angle from which many women might arrive at this subject, because it is from my own positive experiences that I know that a man can be strong, determined, courageous and adventurous without being violent.