"The Mother Part of Me Wanted to Wrap the Patriarchy up in Its Blankie": An Interview with Ruth Whippman

Nicole Graev Lipson

June 10

When Ruth Whippman was pregnant with her third son in 2017, her neighborhood mail carrier offered her these words of support: "I hope for your sake this one's a girl." The message was crystal clear: boys are difficult, rowdy, ungovernable. To be saddled with raising three of them? A kind of curse.

This comment cut to the heart of Whippman's conflicted feelings. On the one hand, #MeToo was shining a light on the systemic ways male privilege harms women. As a feminist, she understood why men—and by extension boys—had become a source of consternation and suspicion. On the other hand, caring for her own young sons made it hard to see males as the enemy. As a mother, she had an intimate window in the ways gender expectations harm boys as well. "Was there a way," wondered Whippman, "to offer real empathy to boys, give them a more expansive story about their own possibilities, without betraying any feminist principles?"

Boymom: Reimagining Boyhood in the Age of Impossible Masculinity charts Whippman's journey to answer this question. Her ambitious investigation leads her to a residential therapy center for young men in Utah, a conference for boys accused of sexual assault, and the Discord servers of incels, among other corners of the "manosphere." Along the way, she interviews dozens of boys and young men, whose heartfelt revelations provide the most powerful window into contemporary boyhood of all.

I had the great pleasure of speaking with Whippman by phone to discuss her fascinating and concerning findings.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Nicole Graev Lipson

From the start, the title Boymom signals that this book is an exploration not just of the experience of boys, but of the experience of boys in relation to their mothers. Is that why you chose this title?

Ruth Whippman

I love this title because it has a built-in story arc and stakes. It captures the inherent tension that arises when a woman gives birth to a baby that's in ways fundamentally unlike her. The #BoyMom hashtag is also hugely popular online, and there's lots of debate about it. She has a sort of wine mom, suburban, "live, laugh, love" sensibility to her, but she can bring up some really sexist tropes like "boys will be boys," and "oh, look at their mud and farts and pee stains and gross toilet." In this conception, the boy is this rowdy little monster but essentially cute and loving, and the mom is this sort of doting servant. She's a little baffled and overwhelmed, but she's game for anything and definitely not politicized. She's in conversation with all these stereotypes.

I hold the Boymom identity very loosely and use it in the title in a way that's not quite ironic, but plays with these tensions and conflicts.

Nicole Graev Lipson

You sum up the experience of being a mother of three young boys during the explosion of #MeToo with a wonderful line: "While the feminist part of me yelled, 'Smash the patriarchy!' the mother part of me wanted to wrap the patriarchy up in its blankie and read it a story." Did writing this book help you resolve this tension?

Ruth Whippman

It really did. I ultimately came to the conclusion that being a feminist is in no way in conflict with caring about boys and men, though in this particular cultural moment, it can feel that way. There was discourse at the height of #MeToo especially that seemed to have no goodwill left for men, and understandably so. Women were enraged. We suddenly saw this huge systemic problem and the harm it had caused, and it was easy to sink into a hatred of men with no wider context.

What I found from reporting and from observing my own sons and the culture they're forced to operate in is that we're all trapped in this together. Systems of patriarchy harm boys just as much as they teach boys to harm other people. And we should be fighting it on their behalf as well as on behalf of women and girls.

Nicole Graev Lipson

The word "sexist" is typically used to describe harmful attitudes toward women. Your book explores the many ways our culture deprives boys of vital opportunities to develop their relational skills and empathy. Would you say that this, too, is a kind of sexism?

Ruth Whippman

It's a problem that we don't have the right vocabulary to describe this, because saying "sexist against boys," feels a bit like saying "racist against whites." It feels like really bad faith, horrible politics. But what we're trying to pinpoint are all the invisible ways boys are forced into damaging stereotypes. Pretty much anything marketed to boys tends to be about weapons, battles, and violence. It pitches human interaction as this combative endeavor where there's a winner and a loser, a hero and a villain. Boys are deprived of the complex relational narratives that are completely standard for girls—books and TV shows that talk about friendship and caring for others and tracking other people's emotions. These are the fundamentals of human connection and intimacy.

I was watching a Netflix reboot of The Babysitters Club from the '80s with my sons not long ago, which features four girls. If Netflix were remaking a show from the '80s called Science Club that had four boys in it, they would a hundred percent put some girls in there to correct for that stereotype. We're working so hard to give girls a different vision of who they can be in the world, but not boys.

Nicole Graev Lipson

These days, the adjective most commonly paired with the word masculinity is "toxic." But you use a very different word—"impossible" —to describe today's masculine ideal. Why "impossible"?

Ruth Whippman

On the one hand, we have this escalating fantasy of a bulletproof, emotionally invulnerable manhood. We're seeing it in right wing politics, in online fitness influencers, in CGI superheroes, where our vision of what it means to be a man has become really caricatured. On top of this, coming from the left is a conversation about toxic masculinity that writes off boys as basically just these predators and rapists-in-waiting, as if boys are harmful right from the beginning. That's not a very psychologically healthy environment to grow up in, either. So from all sides, boys are getting these really harmful messages about manhood and masculinity.

Nicole Graev Lipson

In the hands of a less nuanced writer and thinker, I could see this book becoming a sort of self-congratulatory liberal pat on the back, but I love the balance you bring to it. Can you say more about how progressive ideas contribute to the bind boys are in?

Ruth Whippman

It's really hard to imagine progressives saying that girls are innately bad at math or great at household chores or even at relational skills. Feminists have rightly made a point of emphasizing socialization. But somehow the discourse around boys has become so essentializing. We hear, "Boys can't sit still. Boys are reluctant readers. Boys hate school. Boys don't read." It's weird, this modern idea that the boys are biologically hardwired not to be able to do these things, because until pretty recently boys were literally the only people who were allowed to study and succeed in school. They built everything we know as the justice system, democracy, the military, the academy. There's good evidence that when we socialize boys differently, they thrive.

Nicole Graev Lipson

In addition to books and TV shows, you examine the impact on boys of cultural shifts related to technology, like decreased face-to-face interaction and increased access to pornography. Is there one factor that stands out as the most urgent to tackle?

Ruth Whippman

I think it's all these things in combination, that incremental building of a culture of disaffection. It's easy to blame screens for every problem of modern life, and the last thing any American parent needs is more guilt around screen time. Instead of focusing on taking away boys' screens, I think we really have to ask ourselves why real-world socializing and connection is so difficult for them that they'd want to avoid it. We need to focus on building their social muscles and giving them opportunities to do things in person that will give them these skills.

Nicole Graev Lipson

Your research takes you into the most hateful corners of the manosphere, like the chat rooms of incels. I expected this chapter to fill me with anger, and it did. But the overwhelming feeling I had while reading it was a sort of sad despair. Was that your experience too?

Ruth Whippman

Incel spaces are full of paradoxes. You go into the message boards and see misogyny, racism, white supremacism, antisemitism. Your see advocating for the rape and torture of women. It's just the most horrible stuff you can possibly imagine. At the same time, these young men are incredibly open and vulnerable with each other in this strange way. There's this really surprising sense of tenderness and emotional support.

A lot of the manosphere is about the promise of becoming an alpha male, but the incel movement is founded on hopelessness. It's full of guys who are generally, by their own reckoning, unattractive. Many have suffered trauma and abuse. There's such a huge gap between the standard of masculinity they feel they should be meeting and their own selves that they've given up, which frees them to no longer participate in traditional masculine posturing. The incels I interviewed were drawn to that freedom and connection and emotional vulnerability, which they'd never been able to find in their own lives. I think if we want boys to stay away from these spaces, we need to help them find belonging somewhere else.

Nicole Graev Lipson

Are there ways you've changed as a parent after writing this book?

Ruth Whippman

I've really gone all out on prioritizing listening to my sons' feelings. I've given up on every kind of sticker chart and behavior reward system and am trying instead to understand them as people—not just things I'm supposed to control to behave in a certain way. My husband is trying really hard to play the kinds of games with them that girls play as a standard, with the little woodland figures or dolls in the dollhouse.

I want to strike a balance between letting my sons be who they are and enjoy what they enjoy, while also making an effort to prioritize things like in-person socializing. It can be hard, because no one wants to be the mom who's letting everybody down. Pushing through those uncomfortable moments takes confidence in a way. It's just as much about working on ourselves as it is our children.