Please Come Over To Raising_Sons

A com­ment exchange with selen­ite led me to final­ly cre­ate some­thing that’s been on my mind for some time: Raising_Sons.

There is a real need for resources for boys and their par­ents, alter­na­tives to Boy Scouts, analogs to Daugh­ters, New Moon, Teen Voic­es, and Girl Scouts. I know that there are gen­der dif­fer­ences, and there are times when gen­der-spe­cif­ic spaces and resources are impor­tant, so the par­ents of boys and those of us who love and care about boys have to cre­ate them.

Raising_Sons is a place where we can help each oth­er find those resources, and devel­op new ones.

I invit­ed a bunch of peo­ple, and in fact, hit the lim­it on out­stand­ing com­mu­ni­ty invi­ta­tions. When Sam told me he nev­er got an invi­ta­tion, I went pok­ing around and learned that LJ isn’t send­ing out email mes­sages to tell peo­ple they’ve been invit­ed! So some of you will find that you’re approved as soon as you ask to join if you’re interested.

There are peo­ple I invit­ed who might be sur­prised that I did invite you, and I would tru­ly appre­ci­ate your input. This isn’t just a place for par­ents. This top­ic is impor­tant to absolute­ly any­one who cares about boys, about how our (gen­er­al­ly, West­ern/­first-world) social con­ven­tions and child-rear­ing prac­tices shape them into men. It’s about bull­shit like “boys will be boys” used to excuse bul­ly­ing and the sham­ing of any sign of “girli­ness” in a male child. It’s about refus­ing to acknowl­edge gen­der dif­fer­ences on one end of the spec­trum, and turn­ing them into pris­ons on the oth­er end.

Please — come join us if this top­ic is of any inter­est at all to you.

The com­mu­ni­ty is mod­er­at­ed, sim­ply because I don’t want it to be full of trolling and such. I’d very much appre­ci­ate help from 2–3 mods oth­er than Sam and myself. 🙂 I’ve sor­ta, um, picked a few like­ly peo­ple, but if they don’t respond to their invi­ta­tions, they won’t know who they are!

BTW: The com­mu­ni­ty isn’t par­tic­u­lar­ly for pagans, Chris­tians, athe­ists, hetero/homo/bisexuals, mono/polyamorous folks, big or lit­tle-endi­ans. It’s for any­body, any­body at all, who cares about boys and what hap­pens to them on the way to becom­ing men. That’s it.

Okay. If your inter­est is pruri­ent, it isn’t for you. If you’re a pedophile, reveal­ing your­self here or there is unwise. But, then, I think such peo­ple have prob­a­bly got­ten that idea by now.