The following remarks were delivered at Feminist.com's "Young Voices" conference on June 24th, 2014.

The question that is on the mind of all feminists is why are we continuing to see such misogyny or hatred directed at girls and women and such inhumane behavior by boys and men when there has been such great work over the past two decades challenging misogyny and fostering the healthy resistance of girls and women and, more recently, boys and men.

A large part of the reason has to do with the fact that we keep on thinking that misogyny IS the deeper problem when, in fact, misogyny is only part of an even deeper problem. And until we tackle this even deeper problem, we will never truly disrupt our girl and women hating culture.

The deeper problem, according to the hundreds of boys I have interviewed over the past 25 years, is that the patriarchal structure is premised on the dehumanization of all humans and not just of girls and women. In fact, patriarchy can only be maintained if we are dehumanized or disconnected from our own humanity and the humanity of others. The system depends on us not recognizing our full or common humanity, in other words, because if we did, the system could no longer be upheld.

The patriarchy dehumanizes all humans by maintaining a hierarchical gender binary, which, according to Carol Gilligan, is "the DNA of the patriarchy." The gender binary asserts that, in essence, girls don't think and boys don't feel and that some of us, such as those who are Black, poor or Transgendered, don't think OR feel.

And because the binary is always hierarchal and gendered, thinking is not only split from feeling, thinking is put on the top and feeling is put on the bottom. Yet we know intuitively and from the neuroscience that humans think and feel and that feeling, the science shows us, enhances our capacity to think. Thus, if only some of us feel and only some of us think and some of us don't think or feel, then all of us are at best only part human and if we are only part human, we are, in fact, not human at all.

Misogyny is not only a product of this dehumanization process, misogyny also prevents us from seeing the deeper problem because while we are so busy trying to be on the top of the hierarchy where the masculine rests (or anything that smells of rugged individualism, autonomy, and toughness) and trying NOT to be on the bottom where the feminine rests (or anything that smells of the social or the emotional, the relational, or the collective), that we don't see that what we are doing is privileging a part human and thus non-human way of being in the world and demeaning that very part of our humanity that allows us to thrive. Or to put it another way, when we are so focused on achieving stereotypic manhood and on not being "girly or gay" (which for the boys in my studies means being emotional, having intimate friendships, and valuing relationships), we aren't able to see that our humanity rests precisely in our capacity to be "girly and gay."

Thus, the solution to the problem lies in the recognition and nurturing of our full and our common humanity. And by full and common humanity, I mean our common capacity to think and to feel and our common need to be heard, to be taken seriously, to be thickly loved and to thickly love, to be in deeply connected communities, to be safe from harm, to live freely, to be known, and to have our minds connected to our bodies and to control what happens to our bodies.

The research of Carol Gilligan and her former students, including Lyn Mikel Brown, reveal the damage the hierarchical gender binary - or simply the patriarchy-- does to girls and young women. My research with boys, as well as Judy Chu's work with young boys and Michael Kimmel's work with young men, reveal the damage the gender binary does to boys and young men. In my studies of hundreds of boys throughout adolescence, I find that boys' full humanity is still readily apparent during early adolescence. During this developmental period, boys speak openly about love, relationships, and wanting closer connections to male friends, mothers, grandmothers, and sisters. Then a shift occurs in their stories as they enter middle and late adolescence. Just when they are expected to become, in the name of manhood, only part human and thus not human at all, they begin to sound like gender stereotypes and the violent consequences of these gender stereotypes take hold.

Boys, during early adolescence, sound like David, Trevor, and D'Andre --- 13-year-olds in a 7th grade English classroom in an all boys' school in New York City.

In an essay about his "selfless love act"¹ that he carried out with his younger sister, David writes:

The recipient of my selfless love act is my sister, Melissa. She is nine years old. I chose her because I have shown much selfless love to her. When I was between six and nine, we would play tag and run in the park freely, like wild elephants rampaging through the savannah. We would scream like crazy monkeys and speed across the sprinklers on our Razor scooters that showered us with water splashing as if we were out in a harsh rainstorm. When I was ten, playing with her wasn't fun. All her ideas for games seemed boring and we would rarely go to the park. When we did, I always sat on the benches alongside my mother eating ices, observing my sister ride her scooter through the sprinklers by herself. I wish we could do that again. Remembering it now, those were really fun times. She and I now barely bond together. I love her so much because she is the only sister I have. I should protect her and take care of her, but feel that I don't do that.

I plan to play with her for one hour, as my selfless love act, as I have observed that she enjoys playing with make-up and clothes. I have also noticed that she enjoys brushing, combing, and making different hairstyles with her hair. I think we will brush each other's hair and laugh with joy. After I play with her, I think she will be happy and proud that she has a brother who will play with her, even if it means putting on lipstick and trying to make weird hairdos.